But I’m No Expert

LA. La-la-land. Yes, this was the day we saw LA. Not all of it, but a good chunk. We started the day by having a traditional Chinese breakfast (the resident sister-in-law is chinese). It was kinda weird not having eggs, bacon, and toast, but Chinese breakfast is definitely worth trying! We ate Dim Sum style, which describes the style of eating and the food itself. You seat yourself, then they bring around these carts full of little dishes. You pick whatever dish you want and they put it on the lazy susan in the middle of the table. Each dish holds maybe 3-4 pieces of whatever it is and you can put onto your plate from there. Frankly, I have no idea what we ate, but it was all excellent food. Afterwards, we went to a Chinese market and got to try cool Chinese desserts. Then we began driving around to see the sights. We started with the La Brea Tar pits, which was a major let down. I thought it was supposed to be real tar! It might be, but it just looked like water to me.

We then drove down to a place called The Grove where they have a nice outdoor mall and the farmer’s market. Which really isn’t a farmer’s market, per se, it’s more like an outdoor grocery store with a bunch of county-fair-booth style restaurants. The food there was decent and the shopping wasn’t bad. I finally used a ‘Naner store gift card I’ve had for a year plus and got a nice long sleeve shirt there. Plain, but nice.

From there we drove toward Hollywood and Vine. We drove down Melrose Ave, which seemed like an interesting place to shop, but everyone says it’s kinda shady. I was dropped off at the corner of Hollywood and Vine and got my picture taken there (I don’t have it yet, otherwise, I’d post it). I think it also has the Capital Records building in the background. We walked down the walk-of-fame sidewalk to Mann’s Chinese Theater and for some reason I couldn’t help but read every single name along the way. Even when I noticed I was doing it, I couldn’t stop! Weird…

Anyway, my brother/musician-in-law got pictures of several of the stars, like Jimi Hendrix, Danny Kay, and a few others. Then we gawked at all the cement impressions at the theater entrance. It’s amazing that putting your hand into someone else’s impression can be so cool. It’s not like I’m all giddy or anything, but I couldn’t help being a stupid tourist and trying my hand in every one of them. By the way, Judy Garland has the tiniest feet I’ve ever seen!

We went up to the top and got pictures with the Hollywood sign (that’s the best place to get them!) and then went to Rodeo Drive. I know that Rodeo is supposed to be this Mecca for designer shopping, but I was unimpressed. It was just a bunch of stores on a street with chandeliers instead of lights. Ooh. Aah. We drove down to see UCLA next, which was nice, but uneventful. Since it’s winter break, hardly anyone was on campus, so it was more like a ghost town. A ghost town would have been cool…

Anyway, that’s when we went to eat the best BBQ I’ve ever had. Now, keep in mind, I’ve had stuff that’s almost fresh from the cow, I’ve had BBQ from all over the US (mostly the South), but the stuff from Korea just can’t be beat! The restaurant could use a little ambience, but the food and the way they serve / prepare it was amazing! So you’ve probably been to one of those places where they cook the food on a giant flat grill in front of you right? This place, they bring out plates of raw meat and you cook at a little grill in the middle of the table! First, they brought brisket. It was cut into real thin slices (kinda like short bacon), and it cooks quickly. You take the meat straight off the grill with your chop sticks and put into a rice pasta wrapper. Then grab a side (kimchi, pickled onions, etc) and some lettuce and put those inside. Then grab your meat and dip in a sauce, put it back in the wrapper, and somehow (probably clumsily) pick up the whole thing and stuff in your mouth. Its kind messy the first few times and I preferred to skip the wrapper, but man that was good stuff!

Next they brought sirloin, rib meat, and marinated sirloin. We barely finished those plates! Technically, it was all you could eat, but I was stuffed after those two plates of meat. After eating there, I’m seriously thinking of bringing Korean BBQ to the South! What could be better? For a flat fee, they bring you inexhaustible plates of raw meat that you grill yourself, without having to deal with charcoal, lighter fluid, or even standing up! That sounds like a Southerner’s paradise, but I’m no expert.

PS – we played an awesome game later that night called Time’s Up. You have to describe a celebrity to your teammate and they have to guess who it is. You have 40 cards for each game (out of a deck of several hundred) and you reuse the deck for three rounds. The first round, you can describe, motion, etc as much as you want. The next round, you get to say one word to describe the person, but you can mime or motion as much as you want. The last round, you can only act & motion, no words! The hardest one we had Art Garfunkel. Apparently, the expert wife didn’t know he had a ‘fro, otherwise she would have gotten that one!

So Wednesday, we drove out to Edwards Air Force base to see where the expert brother-in-law works. He’s in test pilot school there and lives on base, while his wife, already a finance degree holder, studies law at UCLA. Anyway, we slept in after the long day at Disney and got going after lunch. The drive was nice, with lots of varied scenery along the way. The expert mother-in-law said she never connected California with mountains, but there were plenty to be seen on our drive.

The base itself was nice, but it was really windy so we had a hard time sightseeing. We saw the training center, including a really new flight simulator that will soon have several plasmas screens to envelope the pilot. We also saw the control center, which gets feeds of data from planes that are being tested with a 100 mile range. It reminded me alot of 24, Alias, or any other government show where they lots of screens in the command room. They did have plasmas, but they should paint the room a dark gray and put up some random metal sheets for it to look more “movie-ish”.

Apparently, the expert sister-in-law ordered a new elliptical machine, but it was shipped to the base instead of her apartment, so we had to go pick it up. We took the truck because the people at the shipping location didn’t know how to measure (it wasn’t 4′x4′x5′, it more like 3′x5′x1′). Anyway, we took a wrong turn on a road that is apparently split and ended up off-roading in her pickup truck. I thought it was the best part of the day, by far! We were bouncing all over the place, but stopped when we came up on a dry creek bed. There was a blockade ahead, blocking the other part of the street from the creek bed. Apparently, they were aware of my non-expertise because we backed up instead of plowing through…oh well.

We bought me some new comfy New Balance shoes, which I have been happily wearing for the past few days now. New shoes are always such a pain. You have to break them in, you have to learn how to tie your shoes again (every pair needs a different tightness…), and you have to get used to how this pair fits your foot. I like them, but I’m still trying to get used to them…

Anyway, we had Thai that night, which was very good and drove back to the apartment. It wasn’t as jam packed with activity as the day before, but that’s a good thing. Oh yeah, I got to drive the Vibe, which I am really loving. The expert wife and I have been debating what kind of car we’d like to have next and I think we’ve settled on the Vibe/Matrix. Probably the Matrix, since I’m a big Totoya fan. They seem to be the best cars on the market, but I’m no expert.

Ok, so I’ve been hounded into posting my second day’s stuff. The day after Christmas the expert wife, her sister, brother/musician-in-law, and a very single friend from Nashville (originally from CA) all met up and went to Disneyland. Having gone to DisneyWORLD about 15 years ago, for some reason I expected Disneyland to be the forgotten, red-headed stepchild compared to Florida’s Disney. Not a chance. In fact, it seems just as big, if not bigger, and my feet will testify to that. Unfortunately, since I’m not an expert, I did not bring another pair of shoes for this trip. I expected it to be moderately cool, so sandels were out, and I wear the same pair of shoes, pretty much all the time; so they “should” do just fine. Ok, let me explain something for the clueless out there: if you’ve sprainged (spelling?) your ankle recently and plan to spend lots of time walking – bring good shoes! My Docs are awesome shoes, but are in desparate need of replacement are a little worn out for walking around a theme park all day long. So yeah, my footsies were killing the entire day. But that was the only real downside.

While visiting Disneyland, we discovered these beautiful things called Fast Passes. These ingenious little tickets allow you to reserve a time to come back and skip the lines for a ride. It was funny to me that everything didn’t have a Fast Pass (even though I understand the logic), because the ones that did have it seemed to be the ones where the lines were the shortest, even if you just waited in line without a Fast Pass.

The rides…ah, the rides. Several minutes of adrenalized bliss, followed by more standing, walking, and foot aching. But completely worth it. I could give you a ride-by-ride detailing of the day, but that would take forever, so I’ll just give you the basics:

1. Space Mountain
2. Buzz Light Year Astro Blasters
3. Matterhorn
4. Lunch at the Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante. I highly recommend the chicken burrito!
5. Mr Toad’s Wild Ride
6. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
7. Pirates of the Carribean

Cool ride, but not Fast Pass and we stood in line for at least an hour. The movies, I’m sure, have helped this ride’s popularity and parts of it are really impressive considering it was built in the 60’s. They have updated it with the new Johnny-Depp-alike Jack Sparrow. One of the coolest parts is there is a restaurant that seats inside the swamp part of the ride (very beginning).

1. Coffee Break at Burr-r-r Bank Ice Cream
2. Soarin’ Over California – what iMax is supposed to be!
3. Monsters Inc, Mike & Sulley to the Rescue
4. Muppet Vision 3D
5. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – interesting note – the hotel this building is modeled after really exists. I saw the “Hollywood Tower” sign while gawking at the Hollywood sign from Hollywood and Vine.
6. Splash Mountain

Ok, I have to interject here. First off, don’t ride this ride if you have electronics. I had a big scare with my Treo 650 (I thought I would need it at some point during the day – nope!) and it getting wet. I think my battery just died around the same time cause it works fine now… Also, don’t EVER ride this thing after dark…especially in December. It’s not that cold in Southern Cali at this time of year, but it is miserably cold this time of year when you soaking wet after dark…and it’s breezy…

1. Dinner at the French Market Restaurant
2. Jungle Cruise
3. Star Tours
4. Holiday Fireworks Display
5. Fantasmic – really cool fireworks / projection / live action show on the water
6. Indiana Jones Adventure

Whew! I’m tired just thinking about it all. It was a very fun day and we are very grateful to our very single friend, Chris Thomas, for being our guide. I’m sure we would have missed most of the cool things this park has to offer if he weren’t telling us where to go, but I’m no expert.

So the expert wife and I are in sunny California for Christmas. It has been a long day, but a great Christmas. I was up till 2 am last night waiting for sis & bro-in-laws to come in; we were flying together. After a brief nap, we were out the door at 6:15 am. We flew Southwest, which is always fun, because the employees there make sure of it, but the kids in front us couldn’t be stopped! They watched Elle Enchanted and several other movies with no headphones and the sound cranked up nearly all the way. Their parents, who sat across from them, of course, did nothing. This is a classic case of oblivionism if I’ve ever seen it. Even the flight attendants came by several times and asked the kids to be mindful of the people around them. Did it help? Of course not! At one point, the 5 to 7 year-old girl decided to sit in front of me and apparently wrestle the boy sitting next to her. I was trying to read a book (resting on my tray table) and I began to fear for my nose after having the back of the seat coming uncomfortably close several times.

Besides that, we’ve had an awesome day. LAX was huge, but cool. I got to see that big UFO-looking thing out front, which happens to be a restaurant. Seeing mountains out of the picture windows was surreal. I kept telling everyone that I keep thinking we’re in a foreign country (which is exactly how I’ve always viewed California anyway), but I know we’re not really… We got to see all the family, cooked a big lunch (duck is surprisingly good!), and exchanged presents with our secret santas. I didn’t know they existed before today, but I can’t imagine not grilling out with my grill LED light now. I’ll be able to check my chicken with out having an assistant hold the flash light!

So, we also did a little sight seeing. We cruised down the 10 to the Santa Monica Pier and I got to put my feet in the Pacific. It wasn’t a angel-chorus-blasting-in-the-sky moment, it was actually freezing! But it was fun nonetheless. That’s two oceans and a gulf. Five more oceans to go. We walked the pier and I called the expert father and told him I watching the sun set into the ocean for the first time. It was pretty cool. If you can’t have a white Christmas, a nice night on the beach with your honey is the next best thing, but I’m no expert! Merry Christmas!

So, first – Merry Christmas. And as a little present to you this year, I thought I’d show you how to properly kill yourself. Ya know, because you’re going to want to after trying on your new pink bunny suit!

No seriously. You gotta check out energyfiend.com. It shows you how much caffiene you need to drink in order kill yourself. See, I wasn’t kidding that I’d show you how to kill yourself! Here are my results from just a sampling of available poisons drinks:

Iced Tea (my first choice, served sweet only, thank you): 297.69 cups

Chocolate Milk (and since I’m allergic to milk anyway, this would be a much lower number) : 2798.25 glasses

Coca-Cola Classic (best consumed at a restaurant – from the tap – over ice): 411.51 cans

Regular Brewed Coffee: 130.15 cups

Dr. Pepper (my first choice of sodas): 341.25 cans

Hot Cocoa (only when it’s cold, of course!): 2798.25 cups – hmmm…same as chocolate milk…

Mello Yello (the better Coke-made version of Mountain Dew): 274.34 cans

Mountain Dew (just for comparison): 254.39 cans

Mountain Dew Code Red (I used to drink this): 259.10 cans

Starbucks Double Shot (supposedly the worst of the bunch): 107.63 cans

Starbucks Grande Cafe Mocha (the only to drink coffee…other than Mocha Frappaccino…): 120.61 cup

Sun Drop (the better version of Mello Yello & Mountain Dew): 222.08 cans

Brewed Tea (the way my wife likes it): 297.69 cups

Water Joe (I tried this once…repeat…once…evil stuff): 233.19 bottles

So there you go. That’s just a few things, I didn’t check the drinks that I’ve never tried anyway. I’ve had Red Bull, but it was nasty enough to where I’d rather kill myself slowly with Sweet Tea than drink that junk anyway. Since its Christmas and I’ll be in LA for the week, I’ll go ahead and bet that you’ll have a Happy New Year…but I’m no expert!

Do you ever read something in the news and think, “What the hell were they smoking?”  Yeah, that would be today.  I read that the FCC has changed the rules for telecoms and how they build out to cities.  Basically, they’ve said that telecoms no longer have to provide service to every part of the city, but they can pick and choose where to provide their services based on what is profitable for them.  Which totaly sucks.  This, combined with the fact that these same telecoms are fighting towns and cities that provide broadband or wireless internet as a utility, it sounds like we’ll forever have a small group of companies that can decide what we see on TV, whether we get phone service, and if and when we can get to the internet.

This probably doesn’t call to your mind (like it does mine), the whole internet neutrality issue too.  Think about it: Greedy Telecom contracts with the state to be the “exclusive provider” of their services to the state.  But they don’t provide to the rural areas because the infrastructure is too expensive to build.  Then, they censor what channels will show up on your TV and filter your ability to access certain websites based on their beliefs / politics / religion / etc.  Your internet connection is pathetically slow because only the super rich can afford a “real” connection (or a typical broadband connection these days).  Innovation is gone.  They have no reason to advance the technology like the rest of the planet because we are lemmings and will pay for whatever just to keep up with the Joneses.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world has fiber to the computer (which is super super fast, BTW) and we’re all stuck back at dial up speeds.  Welcome to the future.

What should happen is the FCC and all other government organizations should regulate the pee out of these companies and tell them to stuff it if they gripe about cities starting their own services.  History has shown us that competition is good for business and the consumers and that sometimes government just makes bad decisions, but I’m no expert.

Did you hear? A penny is no longer worth one cent! It’s actually worth 1.73 cents now. At least the metal is, according to the US Mint. The Mint is banning people from melting down pennies and nickels (now worth 8.74 cents) and also exporting either of them in mass quantity.

So, it seems that the Mint is also redoing their formulas to make production of these coins cheaper, but it has to get the updated formulas approved next year by Congress.

I’m kinda wondering how they plan to enforce this kind of thing. Maybe they’ll put RFID chips in every penny and track each one with some killer computer system located in the NSA headquarters. Then when one gets melted, whether accidently or on purpose, they can drop that $10,000 fine on some poor schmuck.

Here’s my solution: do away with both of these ridiculous coins! Make the dime the smallest thing you have to carry in a coin tray and simplify everyone’s lives a little! Then you reduce the size of a quarter a tad, then keep the dollar the same size it is now. Then you only have 3 coins to produce. They could change up the designs every year to commemorate something (see my posting on ridiculous month themes) and businesses, consumers, and beavers would be happier. I don’t know why beavers would be happier; cause I’m no expert!

I know it’s been a while, yeah, yeah…I’ve been busy too. Anyway, I’ve found something really cool that I’m adding to Christmas Wish List.

It’s called a frybrid. Yeah, you read that right…fry – brid. It’s such an ingenious concept, I’m surprised nobody’s done it before. Apparently, this guy and his family built a vegetable oil processing system into their 21′ RV and traveled from Seattle to Maine on $47 of diesel fuel…and a bunch of free used cooking oil. pretty sweet concept, huh?

They built the system into the baggage compartments in the bottom of the RV. They can pump used cooking oil into on tank, it filters out all the crap and pumps the good oil into another tank. That tank then gets fed into the engine and propels the vehicle! I’m sure, by now, you’ve heard of biodiesel. Well, instead of processing the used into full blown biodiesel, you can actually just use the oil and it works. I’ve heard of people doing that, but I’ve never seen anyone actually filter and use it inside the vehicle. I’m thinking this is what I would buy for my future tour bus…but I’m no expert!