Gracie Closeup (P1000053)

Gracie Closeup (P1000053)
Originally uploaded by orayzio

I've posted a set of photos with the new camera.

New Camera Time

I purchased my first digital camera, a Canon PowerShot G3 in early 2003 and I've taken around 13,000 pictures with it. It's always been a great camera with a lot of great features, most of which I've never used. My favorite features are the high-quality images, the 4x optical zoom and the swiveling LCD screen that allows me to see myself while I take self-portraits.

About two weeks ago, I noticed a line a single pixel wide that traveled from near the center of the picture to the bottom edge of the picture in every shot I took that day. The bad line was showing up in the LCD while I composed the pictures as well as in the image file itself. "Uh oh," I thought, "my sensor is going bad!"

Well, I dropped my G3 off at my local camera store, George's Camera, a few days ago to send it to Canon for a repair estimate. I won't know if they'll be able to fix it or how much it will cost me to fix it for another two weeks. Since Comic-Con is next week and since Kara has expressed interest in owning a compact camera of her own, I figured now was the time to get her one that I could use during Comic-Con and then turn over to her when I get my G3 back.

After a few days or research, I decided to go with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 and I bought it at my local Costco last night. I could probably have gotten a better deal online, but I wanted time to play with it this weekend before Comic-Con starts on Wednesday. I chose this camera for the following reasons:

• It's small enough to fit in my pocket or Kara's purse.
• It has an awesome 10x optical zoom, much better than my G3.
• While I would normally stick with Canon or Nikon, the Panasonic Lumix cameras are actually Leica cameras with Leica lenses. I've never owned an SLR, digital or otherwise, but I recognize the Leica brand as having quality lenses.
• Digital Photography Review gave it a "Recommended" review. I relied on their review when I got my G3 and I trust their reviews now.
• It has an image stabilizer
  
• It has 20 different fully automatic scene modes, including a mode for fireworks

I told Kara that I'll know after Comic-Con if I'll be keeping this camera for myself.

The best "free" software that I use

My friend James asks, What is the best 'free' software you have stumbled upon?.

I seldom stumble upon free software, I usually go looking for it. My home computer runs Windows XP Home Edition, so I'm always looking for free software that improves upon it. I will say that the most important piece of free software on my PC is what I'm using right now: Mozilla Firefox. If you're still using Internet Explorer, I pity you.

I'll skip the usual free software that everyone has (Windows Media Player, iTunes, Adobe Reader, etc.) and talk about the free software that you might now know about:

• Google Desktop: I've turned off
  the sidebar and all its distracting gadgets and pop ups and use this
  strictly to search my computer. Since I have emails going back to 1998,
  this has been a lifesaver.
• Notepad++ and Vim: Windows ships with Notepad, which is probably the most pathetic and useless text editor. If you edit text files regularly, like I do, you absolutely need a replacement text editor. I use Notepad++ for most of my text file viewing and editing needs and it's all I need much of the time. However, if I need to do some complex search and replace using regular expressions, vim makes it easy. Easy for me, that is -- if you've never used vim or vi and you're not up for a challenge, I can't recommend it to you.
• PDFCreator: If you're on a Mac, you don't need this. Macs can create PDF files without any additional software. If you have Adobe Acrobat, you probably don't need this either. But if you don't have either and you don't want to spent hundreds of dollars to create PDF files, PDFCreator allows you to create them from nearly any Windows application. Plus, it's open source and ad/nag-free, unlike PDF995, which is what I used to use.
• WinMerge: This handy tool is a file comparison utility that can compare two files or two directories.
• FileZilla: This is a free open source ftp client that I use whenever I need to connect to an ftp server.

Just doing my part for the economy

A window retrofit, a new air conditioner, a new 1080P DLP TV and new furniture...

I work from home and although San Diego doesn't get as hot as other parts of the country, it gets hot enough during the summer months to wish I had air conditioning. Last summer, I bought a portable air conditioner for my office, but either something was wrong with it or it just wasn't powerful enough and I quickly returned it to Costco.

We don't have vents, so putting in central air conditioning would be far too expensive. A window air conditioner would work for most of the houses in our neighborhood, but our windows were replaced before we moved in with brand-new vinyl windows that slide left-to-right, rather than up and down. Since most of the windows in the house are too narrow to fit a window air conditioner in the half-width that I could slide it open and since I don't want to give up one of the big picture windows for a window air conditioner and a huge piece of plastic to cover from the top of the A/C to the top of the window, my only options were to suffer again this summer or to replace one of our windows. I opted to replace one of our narrow side-to-side windows with an up-and-down window.

The new window was installed today and I discovered during the install that I was getting less window than I expected. I had asked for and was expecting a total window replacement and I even asked the company to come out and measure the window for this purpose. What I got was a "retrofit" where they removed the middle of the window and insert a new window with a new frame inside the existing window. In other words, I lose about an inch along all sides. Needless to say, I was not happy and I'm still trying to work out with the window company a solution that will get me a big window without additional cost to me. I don't know how successful I'll be at that.

In anticipation of having a new window installed, I ordered a Haier ESA3105 window air conditioner last Friday and I am waiting for it to be shipped to me. This model was a Consumer Reports "Best Buy" and it's an Energy Star model with 10000 BTU, which should be more than enough for my living room and office.

Not content at spending hundreds of dollars for a new window and a new air conditioner, I also bought something today that is much cooler. The only TV I've had since 1995 is a 25" Zenith with standard-definition picture-tube technology and, while its served me well for 12 years and still works perfectly fine, it's no match for any of the HDTVs on the market. Kara told me a year and a half ago that I could buy a new TV, but I could never make up my mind on what I wanted. Well, I finally decided and this morning I ordered online a Samsung HL-T5689s for the lowest price I could find. Most sites list it at $2,799 or $2,599, but I found it through the Samsung web site at The High Definition Store for $2,199 and with free shipping. I used some of that $600 savings to buy the extended 5-year warranty, but I would have bought the warranty anyway and, even with the warranty, it was still the lowest price I could find.

My new television is the new model for 2007. It's a 1080P 56" LED DLP with 3 HDMI 1.3 inputs. It has an amazing contrast ratio of 10000:1 and with the new LED technology, I won't have to ever replace a bulb. It's got too many cool features to list here -- probably more than I'll ever use. I can hardly wait (although I'll have to wait at least 5 days) for it to arrive.

I didn't order the Samsung TV stand but instead ordered a nicer-looking Bush stand (Model #VS13988-03) with enough room for my audio and video components. Unfortunately, that'll arrive about a week after my TV, so I'll probably have to prop the tv on top of the coffee table for a week.

Once my tv arrives, my next purchase priority is to get an upconverting DVD player with HDMI output to replace my ancient non-progressive scan DVD player. I haven't figured out which one to get yet, but I figure I can get something for under $100 that will cover my DVD viewing needs until a victor is declared in ththe Blu-Ray and HD-DVD war or until a good hybrid unit is available at a reasonable price (might be by the end of the year). If anyone has a good recommendation, please feel free to comment on this post.

Also after my tv arrives, I'll need to upgrade my DirecTv to HD with the HR20 HD-DVR to replace my R15 standard-definition DVR.

Anyone want to buy a used Zenith?

A little bit about myself

Many years ago, I created a page on my web site that provided some details about me in a question-and-answer format. I figure it's time to update my faux interview with myself:

Interviewer - Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Me - My name is Ray, I live in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego, California. Professionally, I work for Cutek (pronounced q-tek) and my job is to provide consulting and custom programming services for credit unions that run on the Symitar Episys platform. (It's a bit of a niche market -- I used to work for Symitar in their product development department, so I know their Episys software inside and out.) Personally, I'm married to Kara and we have two black lab mixes named Buster and Gracie.

Also, I was born and spent the first seven or eight years of my life in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. My family moved to San Diego in 1974 and I lived in El Cajon, California from late-1974, early-1975 until I graduated from El Cajon Valley High School in 1985. I then spent a semester and a half in Los Angeles attending the University of Southern California until I ran out of money, had to drop out, and moved back to El Cajon in 1986. Around 1989, I moved to the city of San Diego and I bounced around neighborhoods of San Diego until I met Kara and moved in with her in 1999. Oh, and I was married to someone else in the mid-90s, but I won't talk about that here.

Interviewer - What do you look like?

Me - There are tons of pictures of me in my Flickr photo stream. I'm the one with the ever-changing facial hair. If you want to know what I used to look like, I have some older pictures on my old web site.

Note: For the next few questions, I play the Interviewer role as an adversary and ask the same types of questions that I often hear from god-believers.

Interviewer - I've heard that you call yourself an atheist. What is an atheist, anyway?

Me - My answer is still the same as it was several years ago. I like to break the word into it's 2 root parts, "a"meaning without, and "the(os)" meaning religion. Thus, an atheist is someone who is without religion, or more commonly, someone who is without a god. Some atheists may have a slightly differentdefinition, but this is mine. Also, I'm not an agnostic - to me, agnostics are people who can't make up their minds.

Interviewer - Why are you an atheist?

Me - Just like everybody else in the world, I was born an atheist. My parents tried to raise me as a Catholic (I went through all the major milestones: I was baptized, received communion and, finally, confirmation), but I always spent more time admiring the stained glass windows, architecture, and decorations of the church than listening to the mass. When we stopped going to Catholic church (except for major holidays), my mom tried to infuse me with religion by sending me to various other-than-Catholic-denomination Sunday schools and bible camps (actually, I think she just wanted us out of the house), but I never really paid any attention to the indoctrination attempts. Finally, one day when I was thirteen, I was walking home from school talking to "god" in my head when the realization popped into my head that I was really just talking to myself. I've been an atheist since that day and I've never looked back. It did take a few years, though, before I "came out" as an atheist to my family.

Interviewer - Why don't you believe in God?

Me - First, before I explain this, let me clarify something. I always spell god in lowercase (unless I am playing the questioner or if sentence rules dictate it.) This is because I consider god to be a pronoun, not a proper name. I do not believe in any god because, I believe that gods are myths, I don't need gods to make my life "complete", and the whole concept of god makes no sense to me. I am a logicial, sensible person - I realize that there are things that are not easily explained by science (yet), but it takes an unreasonable leap of faith to assume that a god is behind it. Gods do not fit into my equations.

Interviewer - Aren't you worried about getting into heaven?

Me - I don't believe in Heaven or Hell, or Satan, or angels, or any other religious trappings (although, I do rather enjoy demon and devil artwork).

Interviewer - Then, what do you think happens when you die?

Me - Nothing. When I die, I'll be dead. There is no afterlife, my "soul" will not leave my body, and I will cease to exist. (poof)

Interviewer - How can you go on living?

Me - Easy, I want to. I have no desire to die because I know that once I die, it's over baby. I like my existence and I want to live forever. I realize that this is highly unlikely, but,hey, I'm gonna try my hardest to live as long as I can and enjoy as much of it as I can.

Interviewer - What does your family think?

Me - My mom and Chuck (her husband) are religious and they worry about me. My sister and her family are deeply involved in their church and I believe they worry about me as well. They probably do a lot of praying for me. My dad's not so religious and I don't think he worries about it much, of if he does, he doesn't let on in any way.

It's nice to know that my family cares about me, but I don't really care whether they pray for me or not. I mean, if it gives them comfort to do this, more power to them. I just think of it as a waste of time.

Interviewer - Is the fact that you are an atheist the most important thing to you?

Me - Absolutely Not! The fact that I am an atheist may influence my views on many issues, but it is not all that I am. I am a complex, thoughtful, caring person - who happens to be an atheist. While this is important to me, I am much more than just an atheist. My life does not revolve around me being an atheist, my job has nothing to do with me being an atheist, and the little pleasures that I enjoy have very little to do with being an atheist. Everything about me has everything to do with me being me.

Interviewer - What else can you tell me about yourself?

Me - That's what my blog is for and if you read my posts, you'll probably get a good feel for who I am. If I had to apply labels to myself, they would include (in alphabetical order): amateur photographer, atheist, independent thinker, intelligent, liberal, likes dogs, loves his wife, married, politically aware, progressive, stirrer-upper and locally involved person.

Suffer The Innocents - Oh, really?

I pick up a copy of San Diego CityBEAT every week (religiously, you could say) and I usually agree or sympathize with the opinions of the editor. Not this week.

Apparently, the regular editor was on vacation so they had a guest "opinion" from Carl Luna today. His editorial, Suffer the innocents: The Diocese's other victims, concerns the liabilities stemming from 150 lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, their filing for bankruptcy protection, and his feeling that his (Mr. Luna's) rights and interests should be taken into consideration by the court:

"But it is my hope that, in achieving justice, the rights and interests of the hundreds of thousands of people who make up this diocese will also be taken into consideration."

Go and read the editorial and then read my letter to the editor:

"WTF? As you've testified in your editorial, you've spent thousands of dollars and hours over the last 18 years building your diocese and now that that same diocese has been found to be harboring and supporting the crimes of its priests, you don't think your diocese should be held responsible for compensating the victims? And your reason for thinking that your diocese should not be responsible is because you are innocent? Are you insane? You and the "hundreds of thousands of people who make up this diocese" are directly responsible for this mess. You funded it, you supported it and you made it what it is today. If you hadn't had such blind "faith" in your leaders, you wouldn't be in this mess. Claiming innocence at this point is just plain selfish.

If you really feel that you are innocent and that you were tricked or misled by your leaders, then leave your diocese and sue the Catholic church to get your money back. Otherwise, quit complaining and own up to your own responsibility for this mess."

For more background information:

• Catholic diocese weighs bankruptcy
• Google News Search for "San Diego" "Catholic diocese"
  

Technorati Tags: religion, news, San Diego, Catholic diocese, Catholic

Movie Catch-up

Kara and I caught two movies at the local all-digital projection cinema this weekend so I thought I would post my thoughts on the movies we've seen in the last year.

First up is the most recent movie, the one we saw this afternoon: Knocked Up. We had both been looking forward to seeing this and it did not disappoint. It was great to see some of the freaks and geeks back together again and Judd Apatow is really good at writing dialog and scenes that look and sound like people we know. I got the feeling, though, that many in the audience didn't quite get "it" with a few of the scenes that Kara and I were loudly laughing about. Maybe it's generational or maybe we're just more in tune with the movie-fan subculture.

Spoiler Alert: The following may contain spoilers, especially if you haven't seen Little Children - read at your own risk

Yesterday, we saw Pirates 3. I liked the first pirates OK but Kara really liked it. The second one... we both thought it sucked. The 3rd one was much better than the 2nd, but that's faint praise. I didn't remember any of the plot from the 2nd installment so I was completely lost for the first hour of this one. The battle scenes (which, is really 90% of the movie) had no excitement to them. The only truly interesting thing in the movie were the scenes with multiple Johnny Depp and even those scenes got tired after a few times. If you haven't seen the second movie, don't bother with the third. Just wait until next year when they show it non-stop on HBO.

Between the two big-screen flicks this weekend, we watched Little Children on DVD. It was an interesting movie, worth the rental, but I don't quite get all the critical acclaim heaped on it. Jackie Earle Haley was great, but I think he got nominated for best supporting actor half because he did a great acting job in both this and All the King's Men and half because his character castrated himself with a butcher knife (see Mel Gibson's career for reference).

On a side note, I remembered Jackie Earle Haley as a child young adult actor in the great coming-of-age movie from 1979, Breaking Away. If you haven't seen Breaking Away, go out and rent it.

Getting back to movies we've seen (past tense), Spider-Man 3 was wonderful. Sure, it's not as good as the second one, but few movies are that good. It's still Sam Raimi, it's still Bruce, and it's still Spider-Man. After the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man was my favorite comic book character growing up and I always loved the marvel team-ups where there were multiple heroes and multiple villains. If I had one complaint, it was that the movie wasn't long enough; there was so many characters and plot points and it would definitely benefit from a LOTR-style extended version (just like the first two LOTR, though not the third which was already too long).

Going back a few more weeks, I thought Grindhouse was greatly entertaining (more so for RR's Planet Terror than QT's Death Proof), Blades of Glory was, well, another fun if mindless Will Ferrell film and 300 was very good. Speaking of 300, I borrowed the Troy DVD many moons ago from my friend Jim and finally got around to watching it just this past week; it was OK, but 300 was so much better that I think I liked Troy less for having seen 300 first.

Taking a half-step backwards, I wanted to see Stranger Than Fiction last year when it was in theatres but we never got around to it until it came out on DVD. If I had seen it last year, it would have been one of my favorite films of last year. All I can say now is that it was excellent and I highly recommend it. Also, in that same half-step but a little to the side, I miss GOB and Arrested Development. Arrested Development was one of the great TV series and it's just too bad that it couldn't find an audience. Oh, and if you haven't figured out the half-step, it's the two Wills: Will Arnett and Will Ferrell.

Getting back to the movie theatre crawl, Hot Fuzz was OK (Shaun of the Dead was soo much better), Zodiac was excellent, as was Breach. Pan's Labyrinth was also excellent.

If I include DVD watching, Blood Diamonds was excellent while Music and Lyrics By was barely tolerable (we were looking for something light and Drew Barrymore usually delivers - not so much for this one though). Also, we didn't see Cars until this year on DVD and it's the first Pixar film that was not only not excellent, it pretty much just plain sucked. But, after seeing Cars and thinking about just how sad a commentary it is to note that the United States has become a nation of NASCAR and wrestling-loving red-state-necks, made me appreciate just how close we've come to the society visualized by Mike Judge in his under-rated and underseen Idiocracy. (Kara and her mom hated Idiocracy, but I enjoyed it and it gave me my favorite catch-phrase of the year, "Ow, my balls!".)

Going back much farther and into last year, I liked Children of Men, although I thought the cinematography was just annoying and not visionary (as some critics labelled it). And in the battle of Victorian magicians, The Prestige was a much, much, much better movie than The Illusionist, although I will say that I did enjoy both movies. The Prestige would have been perfect except that I was sorely disappointed by the ending. Not enough to not recommend it highly and not enough to spoil it for you.

I could keep on going, but I think I'll stop now.

Microsoft Outlook 2007: Craptastic

I've used every version of Outlook since it wasn't even Outlook (in 1995 or 96, it was Windows Messaging) and it's generally gotten better with each new release. No more.

I upgraded to Outlook 2007 recently because the previous version of Outlook was not correctly interpreting the time for appointment requests that were sent from my coworkers (who use Macs and iCalendar). They'd book a meeting with me for 10am and it would show up on my calendar at 4am instead. Also, the new version of Outlook promised calendar sharing without Microsoft Exchange (we're a small company so we use our ISP's POP3 mail instead of a dedicated email server).

Initially, Outlook 2007's calendar sharing feature worked fine. I could tell it to publish my calendar to our internet web server and I could then use Google Calendar to view that calendar when I worked at a client without my laptop. But then, after a few weeks, I realized that when I viewed my calendar on Google Calendar, it was sorely out-of-date. At first, I thought it was a problem with Google Calendar but I later figured out that it was a problem with the icalendar file (.ics file) produced by Outlook 2007; for some unknown reason, the file produced by Outlook 2007 is now produced in an invalid format that can't be parsed by Google Calendar or any other third-party ics validator (the UID field is broken into two lines which is a violation of the icalendar spec).

So, my primary reason for upgrading Outlook 2007, to take advantage of the calendar sharing features) is no longer working. Add to that, Outlook 2007 has several annoying habits:

• If I shut it down and then hibernate my computer too soon after the shutdown, when I start it up again, it tells me that it "failed to shutdown correctly" and I have to wait several minutes for a fruitless and pointless error check to complete before I can use Outlook again.
• It crashes randomly - for the last crash, all I did was close a Note window and boom.
• It's terribly slow - much slower to start up, much slower to deliver mail.
• I can't delete bad nicknames because the MS article that explains how to do this is wrong and I can't figure out where the new nickname file is stored.
• Because I can't delete bad nicknames, it has this annoying habit of not sending some emails - they get stuck in the Outbox because the email address is invalid but there is no visible warning to me that they're there.

I'm just hoping that Microsoft hurries up and delivers a service pack that fixes these problems soon.

The Cutek Blog

Not much there yet, but it's a start.

A Real Live Atheist in the Congressional Foxhole!

He's probably not the first and he's probably not the only current U.S. Representative to be an atheist, but Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) is the first to admit it publicly. This is great news and I can only hope that more politicians will follow his lead. I don't know anything about his politics or his effectiveness as a leader, but admitting that he "does not believe in a supreme being"* makes him a hero in my eyes.

From Americans United The Wall of Separation: Stark Statement: Congressman Says He Has No Belief In A Supreme Being

My photo on Boing Boing!

I was reading through the Boing Boing posts this morning in Google Reader when I came across a familiar photo. Apparently, Games for the Brain uses Creative Commons licensed Flickr images in a game they call "Rotate". It's similar to those little puzzle games where you push the squares around but, in this version, you rotate the squares in place.



Here's the image they used in the Boing Boing article next to my original, uncropped image posted on Flickr:







Boing Boing: Game made from CC-licensed Flickr photos



Technorati Tags: Flickr, Creative Commons, Boing Boing

Snippy's is gone

Snippy's Tavern Wall (IMG_5580)
Originally uploaded by orayzio.

Snippy's was an old dive bar across the street from our old house in South Park. It was purchased about a year or so ago by Sam Chammas, the same guy that owns the Whistle Stop. It had been closed pretty much since the purchase and the rumour was that the place was going to be remodeled and reopened. And, that's what appeared to be going on for the last few weeks.

Then, about a week ago, they tore all the stucco off the building and exposed this great old cigar ad. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed a picture. And, it turns out that taking its picture was a good idea... today when I walked by, the entire building had been torn down.

Snippy's is no more.

I imagine that they're planning to rebuild something on that spot, but it's really too bad that this piece of Americana is gone.

Vacation Photos... Lots of 'em

Kara and I took our first trip to Europe since 2003 with a two-week trip to central Europe this past October. We stayed six days in Prague, two days in Bratislava, and five days in Vienna. We had expected that it would rain during our trip, but we were very pleased to encounter no rain whatsoever. Also, the temperature was great for the first week and only a little cold for the second week.

We had a wonderful time on our trip and I especially loved Prague and I would love to go back again some time. There was just so much to see in that charming city and it was very tourist-friendly. Although Bratislava didn't have as much to offer as Prague, it was a great place for a short visit and it served as a nice rest between the bigger cities. On the other hand, Vienna was a bit overwhelming. It's a fascinating city with lots to do, but perhaps it had too much to see and do and we really didn't know how to take it in for such a short visit. Also, unlike Prague, Vienna wasn't nearly as English-speaking tourist friendly; my assumption is that if your national language is spoken only in your tiny country (as it is in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia), you have to provide translations in English, but if your national language is German (as it is in Austria), you don't have to worry about tourists understanding things as much. In Prague, virtually all signs and directions were available in both English and Czech, but in Austria, English was rarely seen (except on menus).

I took more photos during this trip than I ever have before -- over 1800 -- and I just recently finished uploading most of them to my Flickr site. You can view them in my photostream or you can view them in the sets that I've created:

Central Europe 2006 (1627 photos)
Kunsthistorisch es Museum 2006 (123 photos)
Slovak National Museum 2006 (77 photos)
Melk Abbey 2006 (147 photos)
Wachau Valley and the Danube 2006 (170 photos)
Austria 2006 (812 photos)
Vienna 2006 (611 photos)
Slovakia 2006 (242 photos)
Prague 2006 (493 photos)
Karlstein Castle (80 photos)
Prague Marionette Theatre (19 photos)
The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (57 photos)

Why I'm not a Democrat

I switched party affiliation several years ago from Democrat to Green because I saw the writing on the wall — Democrats were becoming more and more like Republicans. I don't agree with everything in the Green platform, but they're much closer to my own views than the Democrats are.

With the recent election, I was happy to see that the Democrats had taken Congress, but after reading "The Kids Are All Right" by John Cook in Radar, I'm not so sure that anything has changed. As the article states:

They're pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Jesus—meet the new class of Democrats

Technorati Tags: politics democrat republican green

The Most Dangerous Toys

I only wish I had some of these toys.

Oh yeah, there was an election, wasn't there?

Some thoughts on Tuesday's election:

Schwartzenegger was re-elected. I voted for Peter Camejo, the Green candidate. Eh. I didn't really follow or care much about this election, but I'm not surprised that the unwashed masses voted for the movie star.

Actually, of all the top California state officers up for election, only two candidates I voted for won election: Jerry Brown (Democrat) for Attorney General and Steve Poizner (Republican) for Insurance Commisioner. Coincidentally, those two elections are the only ones (for top California state officers) where I didn't vote for the Green candidate. Oh, and my local Assembly person, Lori Saldaña (Democrat), whom I voted for, also won re-election.

For U.S. Senate, I voted for Todd Chretien (Green) against incumbent Dianne Feinstein (Republican) and I voted for incumbent Susan Davis (Democrat) for her House seat. Both incumbents won, but that's expected when there was no real controversy for either election. I have a strong distaste for Feinstein, especially regarding her seeming disregard of the 1st amendment (re: funding of California Missions and her sponsorship of a flag-burning amendment), but also for her willingness to cater to Republicans. But, it could have been worse - at least the Republicans didn't win.

For all those congressional elections that I couldn't vote on, I'm glad that the Republicans were swept from power, but I don't expect much out of the new Democratic leadership. By making promises before the election to not pursue impeachment proceedings against Bush, they've shown that they are willing to ignore our constitution and let Bush and his administration get away with their crimes. My only hope is that they plug the leak of our civil rights, if they don't have the balls to revert the damage already done.

Moving on to the propositions, I voted with the majority on 1A, but my No votes on 1B through 1E (all bonds) were countered by a population that apparently thinks that money grows on trees. My opposition to almost all the bonds on the ballot is not because I don't think that the projects they fund have merit; it's because I think that approval of bond measures sends the wrong message to our elected representatives. I am so disgusted with California politicians because part of their job is to figure out how to spend our tax dollars but, instead, they pawn this job off to us. Like Libertarians, I believe that bond measures are bad, but unlike Libertarians, I also think that our state taxes are too low. We should be able to fund the projects that need funding and I want my elected representative to actually do some work and figure out how to best spend my tax dollars. As it is, special interests push these bond measures and the ones that win are the ones that have the best advertisements. It's simply disgusting.

I voted for the $2.60 per pack cigarette tax (prop 86) and for prop 87, a tax on oil producers to fund alternative energy research and production, but both propositions lost. I am heartened, though, by the 48% and 45% Yes votes on those two measures. However, of all the propositions, prop 85 was the one I cared about the most - I am very happy that this "parental notification" measure failed, although I hate the fact that San Diego county voters voted in favor of it.

Speaking of San Diego, Jerry Sanders got his way with propositions B and C, both of which I voted against, but the fools that keep trying to put a commercial airport at Miramar lost on prop A, which I also voted against. I live in the flight path for Lindbergh field and would love to see that change, but anyone that thinks that the military is going to give up Miramar is chasing windmills. The better location to replace Lindbergh field, in my opinion, is Brown field, but our local politicians proved themselves gutless when that option was put on the table.

I had a gum graft today

Two years ago, I had a molar extracted and a bone graft in preparation for a dental implant. Long story short, the first implant failed, the second implant required an additional bone graft, and what should have taken less than a year took a year and a half. But, finally, after 18 months, I received my new tooth.

That was 7 months ago.

Yesterday, I went to my dentist's office for my regular cleaning when the hygienist noticed that the gum on the buccal (cheek-side) of my implant was "interesting". Interesting is not a good word to hear from a dentist. It seemed to be a bit swollen and there was a fistula. So, they referred me back to my oral surgeon to have it checked out.

That same afternoon (still yesterday), I saw my oral surgeon and he was perplexed. After a brief discussion, it was decided that, perhaps, some bone graft material was trapped in the gum and the best solution would be to cut open the gum, clean it up a bit and stitch it back together. So, I scheduled my appointment for the next morning (this morning) and left with a feeling of dread.

So, I arrive at my appointment this morning, the assistant prepares my gums with some topical numbing agent and I'm brought into the surgical room. My oral surgeon administers some local anesthetic shots and begins digging around in my mouth. Luckily, I couldn't feel a thing during the whole process.

Afterwards, the doctor explained that my strong gum tissue had receded around my implant and had left behind only weak gum tissue, no bone graft material had been found, but that he had taken some spare strong gum tissue from just to the right of my last molar on the same side and placed it over my implant where the tissue was missing. This is known as a gum graft. He also placed some putty over the grafted gum and surrounding tissue to protect it while it heals. He then sent me home with painkillers and instructions to come back in a week to have the putty removed and to not chew on that side of the mouth until then.

The numbness has worn off and, luckily, I don't feel any discomfort or pain. So, I consider myself lucky and I hope that this is the end of my implant ordeal.

Don't Be Sending Me That Holocaust Denial Shit

I received five copies of a spam email from someone named Michael Crook with the subject line, "DENY THE JEWS HOLOCAUST! IT DIDN'T HAPPEND!" in my Inbox today.

First off, if you want to be an anti-Semite, you go right ahead, but if you want to convince someone else to be an anti-Semite, you might want to at least check your email subject line for misspellings.

Second, why the fuck would someone send me this? Do I come across as someone that would believe that the Holocaust didn't happen or that Jews molest children (one of the claims in the email)? I'll assume that the sender was a Christian, so I'll advise the sender that if they want to assault the Talmud for it's content (the email claims that the Talmud condones "sexual contact with young children", they should read their own x-rated bible for great tales of depravity. No, wait, for that matter, they should read The X-Rated Bible: An Irreverent Survey of Sex in the Scriptures by by Ben Edward Akerley, which I personally own and enjoy.

For the record, yes, the Holocaust happened and, yes, genocide still happens today all over the world. I have no reason nor desire to deny that the Holocaust happened. If I have anything against Judaism, it's the same thing that I have against Christianity - they're both based on the false assumption of a supernatural god and, as an atheist, I am naturally opposed to god-based religions. But, I don't deny their acts or acts perpetrated against them.

I don't know how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust for being Jewish, but I don't deny that 5 million, 6 million, or even 11 million are all possibly correct figures. But, even if it was only 1 million Jews or 1,000 Jews, it was still a tragedy.

I certainly don't agree with Judaism or Christianity on the terms of their "faith", but that does not mean that I subscribe to the beliefs of extremists that deny the Holocaust.

Ding Dong, George Stevens is Dead... and Tower Records, too

Not surprisingly, news about San Diego ex-City Councilperson (and Reverend) George Stevens death didn't make it to Central Europe three weeks ago, so I didn't find out about it until today. I was waiting for my fish taco and sashimi salad order at Blue Water Seafood Market & Grill—excellent, as always—when I picked up a copy of San Diego Voice and Viewpoint as something to read while I waited. There on the front page was the news of George Steven's funeral. "Wow.", I thought first. "Good riddance", I thought next.

Mr. Stevens, you see, was not only a Baptist preacher and ex-politician, he was also an idiot who regularly played the racist card while he was on the San Diego City Council. And, after he was termed out of office and his successor was indicted for corruption (but died before trial), he tried to run again for city council for his disgraced colleague's (and his old) spot. Luckily, we were spared another dose of religion and racism when he lost the race (no pun intended).

No, I don't mourn for Mr. Stevens, but I do mourn for something else that died while I was on vacation in Europe. Well, actually, it didn't die yet, but will die in mid-December (probably). Tower Records was sold to some entity as part of a bankruptcy auction and their first act as new owners was to announce liquidation of and closure of all their retail locations. Apparently, the Tower Records web site will remain, but that's it.

I will admit that, except for 2 DVDs that I bought today at 30% off, I haven't bought music or movies from Tower Records in many years. But, prior to the internet and prior to my discovery of used CD stores, Tower Records was my place to buy records and cassettes from when I first started buying music in the early 80s until the early 90s when I finally bought a CD player. I didn't buy CDs there that much, though, but I had (and still have) a huge collection of cassettes, most of them bought from Tower. And, even when I couldn't afford to buy music, I still browsed the aisles at Tower for hours, going through the import section, title by title.

In the age of the internet, it was inevitable that Tower would die. Why buy something at Tower for the full MSRP when you could buy it online or used for much, much less? I don't buy music as much as I used to (and I certainly don't buy DRM-saddled music, like that available from iTunes or any other buy-a-song-not-an-album places), but it was nice to know that, if I wanted to, I could browse through a Tower Records and, if not buy their overpriced product, at least find something that I could look up online and buy at a lower cost later.

I will miss Tower Records. I will not miss old George.

Minor Pet Peeve

I have a pet peeve about pizza places and other restaurants that let you call in your order. If you have a web site that lists your phone number and menu, why don't you put the phone number on the same page as your menu? You get this right when you send out your coupons in the postal mail—the phone number is printed right there on the circular—so why can't you get this right on the web?

I admit it's minor, but still, I hate having to keep one tab open with the menu and the other tab open with the phone number.