Don’t throw it awaaaaay!

Artist: Jeff Weigant

I put my brownbag leftovers in the hotel room’s fridge — I pulled them out just now and found everything half frozen including the green grapes. Actually, they tasted somewhat like Grape Popsicles.
mini bite size.
not bad.

I’m only about a third of the way into the A’s and 3500 songs to sample…
Listening to sweet Alison Krauss & Union Station – ‘Let Me Touch You For Awhile‘ whilst navigating media directories. This chore is easy with WinAmp Pro and a nifty plug-in iTunes clone, ml_iPod, interface. Assigning ratings and building playlists. Hold up! The Allman Brothers Band – Whipping Post is playing now. Crank it up !

Evidently, a few X-Box(s) got toasty and Microsoft decided to go pro-active and organized a recall campaign. Our replacement power cable arrived a few days ago and it is beefy. Over-engineered with integral sensors and warning LED as well as built-in circuit breaker, test and re-set buttons. It came with an 11 page “X-Box Protection Cord Manual” too. This assures that my son’s gaming platform won’t go up in flames. Good liability insulation. In the bigger scheme of things, I wonder if their action (fix) will raise the bar and (all/most) future consumer appliance will now come so equipped.

Heck. FORD (singed by it’s SUV roll-over controversy) is now recommending that tires be replaced every _____ months regardless of wear and tear (!). How long before the other car owners manual has adopted similar fine print.

From the 7th street hotel, do NOT turn right. The view is fine from the top of this hill but descend into San Diego’s Gas Light District at your own peril. Low class tourism, trashy street urchins, barbary coast urban decay, and expensive restaurant pricing await thee. The city is trying so hard to remake this section of town, and they’ve succeeded in pockets scattered around. But it will take a few many more visitors and their dinero for a successful transformation.

Dang! I wish’d I’d stocked up on R-134a last summer… The price has easily doubled. I got a clue — browsing the AutoZone and not finding the A/C supplies for garage do-it-yourselfers. The stuff is now too pricey to set out. Would be easy pickin’s. They keep it locked up. Dupont has the market cornered says the sympathetic cashier. Cost of oil blah blah blah. Gotta keep cool. Hopefully, it will only take one can to blow ice cold.

A hotel’s Business / Computer Center — the modern day equivalent of the public phone booth. People lined up outside the cubicle impatiently rapping on the glass door, “R U almost off?”. Don’t know about phone booth etiquette? Whatsa phone booth?

No. 1 daughter, undergoing some kind of stress test assignment hazing, was nervous. Afraid that she might be singled out or embarrassed in some way. She was tasked with going to a Sunday Church that was not of her own choosing and one that was somewhat foreign (way different). “Listen, if you happen to get up before the group DO NOT let the grand master of ceremonies place the palm of his hand on your forehead. You will go down..”, I advised preying on the butterflies. “For sure don’t give out your contact info — recruiters will soon be making rounds. How ’bout a little donation!

From the list of things to-do someday (like today): Preserve 9 hours of HOME MOVIES to save for posterity or until the popular world again changes media type (which ever comes first). The general belief is that analog tapes will eventually begin to decay, not to mention that VHS players may go dinosaur in the near future. Remember 45’s? LP records? 8-track? the floppy disc? Planned obsolescence. 16mm –> 8mm –> Super 8mm –> Betamax –> VHS –> VHS-C –> CD –> DVD. What comes after DVD? Luckily, we still have a functional VCR which when connected inline with a DV Cam functions like a Video Capture card. The digital stream will output via FireWire to a PC hardrive. Next step will be to edit the raw footage (or who in heck could stay awake watching them?) and burn to DVDs. I’ll put a man on it…