What's New? Roleplay Humor Music Quotes	Blog - October 2006	About... Photos E-mail Me Sign Guestbook View Guestbook
This page stores my blog entries from October 2006.  The entries are from October 5 and October 19. Back to the Blog Archive Monarch's Playoffs / Firefox is Hot / Pleasure and Pain of the Last Four Weeks / New Run 'N' Gun Personal Best / No Fun with Foley Thursday, October 5, 2006 Pam and I went to the Monarch's game on Wednesday night (September 6). They had a chance to clinch the championship at home, but they blew it. I had an eerie feeling during the game and had to make sure who I was watching: the Monarchs played a lot like the Kings. The team played well in the beginning, but they started to show signs of similarities to Mike Bibby's team (Bibby was present at the game) and failed to make baskets, rebound, or play good defense. Heck, they played a lot like many NBA teams with respect to rebounding; I rarely saw more than one person in position to rebound in any scenario in the second half. Not making their shots certainly didn't help things defensively. Detroit came in to win, and they certainly did in spades. I listened to as much of the Monarch's Game 5, and didn't feel any different about how they played. Apparently they were having a lot of difficulty this year, so they certainly got far on that. Next year? ********** ********** I recently downloaded and installed Firefox. Oh, I think I'm going to love it. It seems to work better and more fluidly than IE6 (on Win98SE, for anyone keeping tabs). It certainly seems to load faster, but it might be because it may not be deleting all files from cache upon exiting (which I believe I have IE set to do). I love the tabbed browsing and how opening a link in a new tab puts that new tab in the background rather than active. I'm happy that I don't have to deal with the stupid ad pop-ups from CNN or any other site unless I specify that I want it. My next upgrade adventure will probably involve using Thunderbird for e-mail. Frankly, I don't like the direction Qualcomm went with Eudora (with its various versions depending on whether you pay for it or have ads) and I really don't care too much to spend money on it when decent, free alternatives are available. ********** ********** My recent bout of silence came from two sources: pleasure and pain. Pleasure: Pam and I bounded off to Mendocino on vacation. We enjoyed the Botanical Gardens with its numerous themed areas (begonias, succulents, and others) and other attractions, including the gravesite of some of the original settlers of that area and a community garden. We visited North Coast Brewing Company's restaurant and store. I know them best for Old Rasputin Imperial Stout, a rather good brew. A little tennis, many visits to the ocean (which was too fierce in which to go swimming), and a stop in the redwoods to eat some very good Black Forest ice cream from a Fort Bragg creamery made for a great vacation. Pain: I'm a member of my company's softball team. A couple of weeks ago, I got a hit in the game and stretched it to second base. In doing so, I slid in safely. I scored not too long thereafter. I learned afterwards that I had a really large scrape on my leg and a bleeding scrape on my knee (the leg scrape was 3.5" wide and 6.5" long; the knee scrape was roughly 2" wide and 1.5" high and looked like a golf divot). It was painful to wash and hurt when the peroxide did its job, but the ensuing infection and cleanings of the wounds hurt the most. But, three weeks later, I'm much better. No more oozing, and I can walk normally again. ********** ********** I made a new personal best in Run 'N' Gun. After many 63-0 games, I finally had a breakthrough game. After rushing for 458 yards and passing for 443 yards (a total of 901 yards), I won 77-0. ********** ********** I had a great idea for political satire involving Mark Foley, in which I'd have a picture of him with "Supporter of Traditional Family Values" under it. When he "came out", that ruined my opportunity. Even though I could still put "pedophile" over his picture, it'd lose the impact and could be a little confusing. Back to the Top
More about Softball / Happy 29th, Jordan! / Firefox, now Thunderbird: thoughts / Tower Records: a reflection Thursday, October 19, 2006 I mentioned last time that I joined my company's softball team. We play in a co-ed league. In this league, we have to field at least an even number of women as men (I think we can field more women than men, but we're not likely to do that). Since we can have a rover, a full-staffed team would have 10 players on the field (including pitcher). We managed to get as many people from work on the team as possible, and we filled out the rest with friends, spouses, and former co-workers. We have two games left. Frankly, we hope we'll win one of the last two. Or both. In either situation, we will have won our first game. (Note: we lost the next-to-last game 10-7, which is the best showing we've had so far.) The last game is a team who is currently 3-4. Assuming that all of my teammates come with an attitude to win, we'll have a decent chance on the final weekend. Despite being hurt and out of action for a couple of games, I rather enjoyed myself this season. I'm not certain whether I'd do it again with this same group of people, but it'll depend on the circumstances. I certainly want to play again somewhere. ********** ********** Pam and I had a great time last weekend at my friend's 29th birthday bash. We drove down to the Bay Area and enjoyed the drive down. We missed the mini golfing due to chores we had to do, but we made it in time for dinner at Round Table. From there, we headed back to the bachelor pad for some talk, drinking, gossip, drinking, laughing, and more drinking. I had my first taste of Fernet, my first Jack-arita (Jack Daniels and margarita mix), and my first Courvoisier. He had a Hello Kitty birthday cake from his girlfriend, too. It was a rather cool cake, fully decorated in an island paradise theme, and it came complete with icing waterfall. Despite how some of my other high school friends feel, I rather like bounding off to the Bay Area on a weekend. The drive doesn't bother me. In fact, I rather enjoy the trip. It's like a mini-vacation for me: I get to go off to somewhere I don't normally go, spend the night, and have a great time with my old friends. ********** ********** So far, I've made the move to Firefox from IE (a good move, since I cannot use IE7 due to my OS), and now I've made the move to Thunderbird from Eudora. Frankly, I would have liked to stay with Eudora, but with their multiple modes of ads, some ads, or no ads, I just didn't want to bother. Since the version of Eudora I use is at least 6 years old, I needed something more modern. I'm not sure I like it yet. I'm still getting used to how it works and what it offers. It seems to work a lot better with Norton AntiVirus, and that's not too much of a surprise. My experience with Firefox has stayed consistently good. Having files delete upon exiting is rather cool, though it does make some sites load slower. Still, I'd rather maintain a minimum of hard drive storage for that stuff. I don't have all the plug-ins for it yet, and I did have it crash once on me (some form or page coming from CNN's site to some other site). ********** ********** One of the saddest things started about a week ago: the liquidation and pending closure of Tower Records. A Sacramento icon since the '60s or so, Tower Records was my home away from home for years on end. Have an album I wanted? Go to Tower. Have a little free time on a weekend? Browse around in Tower. Bored during the summer? Go to Tower. I spent numerous hours in the original Tower on Watt Avenue and bought many albums there. I credit Tower for introducing me to bands like Bolt Thrower, who they had on a listening station at least ten years ago when the "... For Victory" album came out. My love for music burrows rather deeply for me. My emotions run rather high and strong with music and its trivia. Tower has been such a huge icon for selection and availability, and I do not know what I'll do when it's gone. Sure, I can go to places like Dimple and get roughly the same selection, but, somehow, it doesn't feel the same. My first albums came from Tower (Guns N' Roses' "Appetite for Destruction" and Digital Underground's "Sex Packets", both on cassette). I've browsed with friends in Tower as something to do together. Back in '94, I waited in line at around 10am to get Metallica tickets. Heck, I've even been mistaken for a Tower employee. Sure, I may be thoroughly annoyed that Tower kept their prices so high (in my mind, no single, domestic CD should be more than $13.99; multi-disc sets and imports have a reason to be more; $18.99 for a disc is ridiculous). I may be annoyed with the music industry for supporting bands that spew out decent singles but crappy albums. But Tower will always remain a crucial influence on my musical knowledge and experiences. As when 93 Rock moved to 98.5 FM, I know I will shed a tear or two when Tower shuts its doors for the last time. Now that the discounts are at least 20%, I may start thinking about heading over and getting something. As much as I'd hate to support a large corporation whose sole purpose is to help put people out of business such as Russ Solomon's Tower Records, it'd be nice to have one last purchase that I can exclaim, "yeah, I bought it at Tower." Thank you, Russ Solomon, for creating and maintaining such a great Sacramento institution so that people like me can enjoy music and all it has to offer. Back to the Top