Garbage Truck Ablaze on Caribbean Dr on the overpass over Freeway 237, Sunnyvale, CA
Copyright (c) 2004 Matthew Lorono

I'm Sailing, I'M SAAILLING

More sailing practice today...well, not really more cuz it's the first time the Spitfire crew has practiced this year.  It turned out to be pretty fun, without the pressure of the run.  Our first race of the Summer Series is this Friday.  I think we are ready!

Four Problems with California Politics

Item 1:  There are too many laws which mandate spending.  This creates two problems.  Well over 50% of the California budget is locked up by these laws that prevents the legislature and governor from putting money were it is needed on a yearly basis.  Second, they create government spending that cannot be eliminated.  We need to not pass any more mandated-spending bills, and scale back on such laws already on the books. 
Item 2:  We have this ridiculous requirement for a 2/3rds supermajority vote on the budget each year. This is a democracy, where the majority rules, but the rights of the minority are protected. How is a supermajority vote requirement for something as mundane as the yearly budget supposed to do either?   When used on something mundane as the yearly budget, supermajority actually allows a very small number of powerful legislature members to mandate their own personal desires onto the entire body.  Supermajorities should be reserved for when they are most useful, as in cases of political crisis (impeachment) or changing winds (changes to the constitution). To use them for anything else is antidemocratic! We need to get rid of the supermajority vote requirement for the state budget. 
Item 3:  Term limits in the state legislature is leaving our leadership in shambles. Any experienced members are lame ducks, and the rest are rookies. There's no accountability because no one is around long enough to care! Originally, term limits was supposed to help minorities and women get into government, but now it is having the opposite effect. We need to get rid of term limits. 
Item 4:  Single-minded religious centric people and cooperate egomaniacs have a stranglehold on the Republican Party in California.  This has hampered its ability to put up electable members to the legislature.  Coupled with term limits, this has created a scenario where the Democratic Party has an unnatural majority at the state level.  The Republican Party needs to put more socially and secularly minded conservatives or moderates up for election.  Again, term limits would also need to go.  These two actions would hopefully bring more balance back to the legislature.  

 If Californians took these bold steps to correct the problems mentioned here, I feel the state would have much few budge crises and we'd have more resources to tackle older problems that just keep getting worse, such as the detoriation of our public school system, fire departments, road system and other urban infrastructure.

Bumble Bees and Cows

If you glued a million bumble bees to a cow, you'd have a flying cow.

(a saying I came up with over ten years ago)

So, why do I recycle?

I'm confused as to why I recycle. As a Californian, I'm stuck paying a ridiculous 5 to 10 cent deposit for buying plastic bottles and aluminum cans. If you bring in your saved cans and bottles, you only get a percentage of that back. Additionally, each major city has set up a recycling collection program in which they expect you to hand over your recyclables to them. Instead of getting your CRV back, home owners actually have to pay for the service! What the hell? It's no wonder that recycling has dropped a bit in the past 5 years.
Ok, so I actually attempted to save my aluminum cans. I've been saving them for 3 years now. You might think, "Man, that's a lot of cans." Not really. I had only 4 kitchen garbage bags full. The first problem I encountered is that it is not easy to find recycling centers. Where the hell are they? I found one by accident last month, so today I brought my cans to it. The place was closed in the middle of the morning on a Monday. So I came back at lunch. Finally, I was able to offload these cans...for the tremendous sum of...16.54 (including a few plastic bottles). 3 years worth of saving netted me an amount that is substantially lower than my hourly income. Yeah, so tell me again why I'm supposed to recycle?

Paintballin'

Dave, his g/f Miriam (no relation to the other Miriam I talk about here), Nate and I paintballed today. Man...fun! Outdoor, of course. We went to Bearcreek (backup link) in the hills outside of the Los Gatos area. It's only a 30 minute drive from my place. We got there around 8am, but didn't get started til 9:30 cuz of sign-in and orientation. By the second game, I was hella tired, but I got past that and came back strong. This one game I ran up the hill up the middle. Some how I got to the enemy base, ran right around their main bunker and took four guys out before I was hit. At the end of the last game, after lunch, I moved to the center of the field and held my position for the whole 15 minute game. I ran out of ammo about 6 minutes into the game, but kept myself from getting hit. I had two snipers come up at different times to my position. I would stand over the barrier, yell, and fire blanks in order to draw fire, then duck. The sniper was able see who shoot at me and take them out. The second sniper eventually got hit and passed off the last of his ammo to me...which I promptly used up. Finally, an opponent got around our rear, taking out a nest of our guys. He was so focused, he didn't notice me running right up to his position. I took him out just before the whistle blow to end the game. I got 8 minor welts around my body. I'm sore. Damn I had fun.

Weekends special ...ahhh

My g/f and I have been enjoying some fun and pleasant weekends. Last weekend, we took thangs easy, just enjoying each other’s company. We did go to Great America for the fireworks display on the 3rd. We also had good dinner with her folks on Sunday. We saw Stepford Wifes too. It’s an OK movie…coulda been a lot better. It may be sick, but it’s nice just spending some time with my g/f. :)

Errands and Bank Hours

Doesn't it suck that everyone has pretty much the same business hours? To take care of any real personal business, you hafta take time off from work. I took all of last Thursday off. Got my oil changed, got my new license plate tag down at DMV (lost my original before I put it on my car), had lunch, got a Police Office at the Sunnyvale station to sign off on the fix-it ticket I got for not having the current license plate tag on my car, mailed off a bunch of bills, etc. I didn't even have time to finish up my errands when the business day was ending. Arg.

There was a time when banks had dreadful hours. I think it was something like 10am to 2pm. Then it was a big deal when they started staying open til 4pm. Then it was a big deal for a bank to be open on Sat. Now, they are open from 9 or 10am til 5pm everyday, 6pm on Fridays, and 10am to 1 or 2pm on Sat. Even with all of these changes, their hours still suck. At least banks have made an effort to be available during some of the time that the average person has a free time.

Essential Software for your Treo 600, Mid-2004 Update

To get the most out of your Treo 600, these additional software packages are necessary. This is an update from previous posts.

mLights – Allow you to control screen backlighting and keyboard lighting intensity and hours of operation.

mVoice – Turns your Treo 600 in a voice recorder and .wav player. (You must upgrade your Treo 600 OS to the latest version in order to use this software.)

PowerRUN – Enables your Treo 600 transfer and run .prc programs from your SD Card.

Skinner – Change Dialpad and Favorites skins. Software is included that allows you to create your own skins.

Treo shortcuts – Enables you to program the Phone and Power buttons.

Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm OS – Enables your device to view PDF files. The package also has a program that allows you to print from several programs to a fax machine, among other things.

pTunes (Pocket Tunes) – Plays MP3 files from SD Cards. You can install various skins to change its look too.

QuickOffice – Open, view and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel native formats.

Snappermail – POP3 email software that handles file attachments. This software package also includes a program for handling and creating ZIP files.

VeriChat – Enables you to chat on AOL, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ instant messaging all at once. It also allows you to keep these IM sessions open on standby 24/7.


Additional software that will enhance your Treo 600 control, but aren’t useful on a daily/weekly basis.

Filez – This Palm OS file manager lets you view all the individual files on your Palm device and SD Card.

Batterygraph – Tracks battery statics, such as battery status, settings and usage. It displays details on a graph.

Friends

Miriam cooked dinner for my g/f and I on Sat. Tasty pasta. Very good.

Weekend Report with ...

Blink and No Doubt were a lot of fun. My g/f and I had a great time! I do get a kick out of the fact that they both did they ol' Let-Me-Here-You-Make-More-Noise-Than-Those-Other-Cities routine. The Blink 182 set was pretty long...maybe even too long. The No Doubt set was a little too short. A little strange, at least for this area where No Doubt is a bit more popular. Either way, the Shoreline was packed!
No Doubt did do some midset set changes and put on a fairly artsy show. Blink wowed the crowd when drummer Travis rose out of the mid audiance platform playing as hard as ever.
I ended up with one t-shirt for each group. I was a little disappointed they didn't make a combined tour t-shirt. I guess that's so you'll have to get two t-shirts if you want something from both groups.

blink 182 and No doubt tomorrow!

Seems like forever since I got tickets for the blink/no doubt show. I'm pretty excited about goin.

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Logitech spyware

In the recent past, I’ve battled such masterful spyware foes as myseach and apropos. To my surprize, the latest foe turned out to be Logitech. Logitech installs include a spyware known as Backweb. Though this little spybot isn’t nearly has dangerous as the likes of mysearch, it was just has hard to get off my system. I literally had to jet through my registry looking for the strings “backweb” and “logitech” in order to remove all references to this insidious spyware. In addition, I had to ascertain the difference between legit Logitech software, and their backweb references.
I started off my disabling the active backweb service from the Windows Task Manager. Then I found and deleted the directory containing the backweb software. Of course, it was looking all legit by being a subdirectory of the Logitech directory. Then I hunted through the registry as noted. There were over 30 references in the registry that had to be removed. When I rebooted, I had error messages because of the now broke links. I dealt with those.
Now backweb is no longer on my system, but I dread the idea of updating my Logitech drivers for fear it will reinstall its spyware.

Working out

Ok, so it happened, I finally started working out. Strengthwise, I was doing pretty good up until 2001/2002. I was in a couple accidents that really just sapped me of my strength. In the first one, I was rear-ended by a truck while I was stopped in traffic. That messed up my back a bit and started the ball rolling toward desending strength, but I was ok. Almost a year later, I was driving a rental pick-up. The truck had a problem where it would suddenly slip into neutral on its own. The malfunction happen while I was in a freeway entrance on a rainy day. Needless to say, I lost control. The pick-up rolled. It was totalled, and my back got more fucked up. From that time on, I was noticing myself progressively getting weaker and less agile. I've played sports and stuff since than, but I'm really now realizing how little that helped.
Well, that's all changing now. In just one week, I am feeling a substantial difference. The stronger I feel, the more I realize how far I've fallen. It's helping me feel more energized and more satisfied. I've even been hornier. lol Dare I say that I'm actually excited about how much I can improve. It's a rare event for me to use the word excited when referring to myself. I'm a pretty casual, easy going guy.
I've already got a feeling that this is a turning point for me.