merrappy haunnamass and a happy new year if you aren't chinese or jew-like



back in the ol' office. a week off is never enough. my company "highly encouraged" us to take this week off as well, but i like to take my vacations on my terms (when possible), so there!

i though my brake was full and restful, and christmas day was pretty good. i pretty much forgot about hannukkah and even called my jewish grandmother on christmas day and said "MERRY CHRISTMAS GRANDMA!!!"

some cool gifts i got:

ninja throwing stars
PS2
first season of "three's company" on dvd
boxer shorts

i only went online one time during the break, and told myself that when i come back to work, i'm going to spend less time wasting my day online, and try to do work only (and here i am blogging first thing in the morning)..oh well. i guess i need to go.


cheerio!

an actuall letter sent by me to the FCC



Subject: Complaint regarding problems keeping my phone number

I recently tried to switch my land-line phone service to an existing carrier and had difficulties taking my old phone number with me. Now that number portability is supposed to be a reality, I didn't expect the kind of problems I encountered. Please investigate my complaint below so that in the future, consumers like me can be assured that they won't have the kind of problems I experienced when I tried to take my number with me.

Original carrier: SBC
New carrier: Cingular

Details of my experience (e.g. long delay, unexpected charges, etc.):

I have been trying to port my number from my land-line phone to my existing Cingular account since December 11th (one week now) and have been unsuccessful. It has been hell. The problem seems to be with Cingular being ill informed on the port procedure. The first Cingular representative told me "I don't know how to port a number to an existing Cingular account, but I will try anyway" which seemed to screw things up. So far the number switch has not happened yet, and every time I call Cingular customer support I am put on hold for hours sometimes, just to be told that there is an error in the system that needs to clear before a new port request is made. Then they tell me to call back later (I was given a spefific date one time) and make the request again, and when I do, I get put on hold again and then have a different person tell me the same thing. This is getting ridiculous. If I want to port my number the procedure should not have to be this painful.
Sincerely,

Leon Levy
**** * street
Sacramento, CA
95816

via escapeCellHell.org

in celibration of ROTK, i bring you...


this never get's old to me

i came. i saw. i had ass pain



i saw all three LOTR movies in the theatre yesterday. it was fun. a lot of neeards, exited kids dressed up like elves and hobbits and a lot of grown men with man-boobs.

discontinued.......bagels?



for some reason, noah's is discontinuing their cracked peppercorn potato and new york rye bagels.

WHYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!??!?!??!?!
actually their rye sucks kinda (too seedy), but cracked peppercorn?.. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!OO!O!O!O!!!

2772 songs to choose from, yet not one i want to hear again... for a while anyway



i notice that people with huge music collections (such as myself) have a hard time figuring out what they want to listen to, and often feel like they have nothing good to listen to. i need to spend some time ripping songs to my ipod this weekend since i'm back in hardcore programmer mode and i'll need a good soundtrack to develop to. i was listening to bob dylan's "nashville skyline" and the opening track is a duet with the late, great johnny cash. fucking brilliant song. i need more johnny cash in my collection (all i have now is "live from folsom prison"). any recommendations?

np: "getting older" - the clean

di.. di.. did.. i stutter...?



jeeez! these days i feel like i'm having really bad communication problems. am i having trouble articulating what i am thinking or are people just fucking retarded when i'm being perfectly clear? i can't tell. maybe i'm going crazy and don't even know it...maybe that drunk homeless guy who walks up to you on the street shouting and pointing incoherently is just trying to say "beautiful day, isn't it" and is not trying to kill you after all (and wonders why you are handing over your wallet and crying).

are you an ageing hypocrite?



take this test and find out?

feeling groovy



i feel a lot better today. took yesterday off work to rest and cure my sore throat. i feel like a million bucks today even though my throat is still a bit sore. chamomile tea with honey and jolly ranchers seem to help.

last night i fixed my record player. the last time i had the same problem i took it to an electronic repair shop that turntables unlimited suggested. i had a feeling they ripped me off (i spent over $60 dollars and it took a month for them to fix it) so i thought i take a stab at repairing it myself last night. wouldn't you know. it was so simple that i was able to fix my record player with only my swiss army knife in less than an hour. now i can listen to all those weird 60's reissue records i got at the big tower sale for a buck a piece and my MC Shy D record i got off of ebay. sweet!

speaking for records. i highly recommend this one

under the weather...


feelin' kinda sick and uninspired this week.

comments are back

almost forgot


You're a Mod. You dig expensive things, like suits
and speed. You have a fine appreciation for the
Kinks and know that Motown started it all, and
you have fabulous style. Hey, nice hair.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

enough with that stupid cartoon already!



back at work...just had lunch. my frozen soup that i left in the freezer all weekend took a good 20+ minutes to cook in the microwave. it started out as one frozen solid bean mass, therefore it took a while. it was good, but not hot enough (and probably radioactive by the time i ate it).

the thanksgiving 4 day weekend was great. food, family, friends, enjoying the outdoors during sunlight hours, and the kings won last night. what more could a brotha ask for?

what the...?


...due to script flooding that originated from your network or ip address -- or this IP might have been used to post comments designed to break web browser rendering. Or you crawled us with a rude robot, especially one that doesn't understand RFCs very well.

If you feel that this is unwarranted, feel free to include your IP address (156.153...


someone on my network tried a DOS attack on slashdot.org. now slashdot won't let me in. bootywack!

weekend

• too loud band practice


• had super beta carotene dinner with butternut squash and carrots


• read some


• went to gym


• went to the D.A.M. house for grilled cheese party


• ate burritos at taqueria guadalajara


• went to galleria mall


• watched t.v.

if it ain't broke, why attempt to fix it?


i hate when cartoons are remade as live action movies and the marketing that goes with them. when "the grinch" movie (which i still refuse to see) came out, a line of action figures that looked like jim carey dressed as the grinch were sold to the youth. plus, the friggin' cartoon version already rules. same thing for the flintstones movies. i don't get it. well who would have thunk that the cat in the hat stunk (stank, stinks)? i will not see it in a house, i will not see it with a mouse.

what's next? a charlie brown christmas featuring bernie mack as "chuck"? well actually that would rule (but never happen), but i could see them trying to use some popular actor of the moment (will ferrell) as charlie brown with all the characters made up with big fat rubber heads, scaring the bejesus out of kids all over the world.


yes. i know the grinch and cat in the hat were books first.

JAJAJAJJAJAJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJJAJAJAAAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA!!!!!


this is the best news article i've read all week!

ok. i'll post something


since new good music is hard to come by these days, i've been updating my music collection with the classics (and i happen to like most stuff that came out in the late 60's for all genres of music).

i finally found a rolling stones album i can sit all the way through. i love a lot of songs by these dudes, but sometimes i can't stand some of the bluesy/country tinged stuff they seem to like to mix in with the good songs. this is their 'psychedelic" album which gets a little ridiculous at times (with trippy soundclips and whatnot), but all the songs are pure gems. my friend has the original vinyl version of this record with the 3-D cover (one of those things i "need" to aquire one of these days). i heard that they would have made more albums like this if brian jones didn't drown in his own vomit, or whatever happened to him, but who knows.

so far my top five stones albums:

1. their satanic majesty's request
2. aftermath
3. flowers
4. beggars banquet
5. let it bleed

product placement


tonevendor records. located on J street between 18th and 19th on the right hand side. open 11am-7pm tu-th, 11am-8pm fr-sa, 11am-5pm su.

visit them at www.tonevendor.com

monday five bragging rights

1. jandek on corwood - scott miller gets to live. i wish i recorded more songs back when i wanted to play guitar, but didn't know how to. i didn't know people would actually get into that shit.



2. bayside clearance sale - tons of flying nun cds for $1. a bunch of 60's reissued 180 gram vinyl records on sundazed for $1. the creation "bif bang pow" comp on vinyl for $1. i felt like i was in a freaking dream that was too good to be true. holly shizzle my nizzle!



3. the frenchmen playing live on KALX followed by the live broadcast of the bananas at 924 gilman. we went to the show after we were done and as we walked into the building the KALX dj at gilman was talking to the DJ in the studio. niki was still in the car listening to the radio and heard "it looks like the frenchmen have arrived..." i wonder if they announced when we left the building.



4. the bananas calling the sound man and gilman "sound-o"



5. realizing i haven't been to 924 gilman in ages, but seeing that dude with the spiked hair and studded jacket still hangs out there and enjoys "slam-dancing", and he's still like 12 years old or something.

-jeff ott

one new song every 6 months. that's what i call productivity!

weird..cool

office tricks


how to take an unnoticed extended lunch break.

instead of coming back at 2 or 3pm, leave at 10:30-11am.

batman and robin logic


i always enjoyed how robin would piece together clues on the old batman and robin tv series from the 60's and i use this type of logic everyday to come up with pneumonics. my latest: how to remember my combination-lock combination

the luckiest number

there is a convenient store that uses this number in it's name. it is open # hours a day. divide this number in half

the lucky number is the sum of X and Y, take the number X and repeat it to make the double digit number XX

there. now you can steal my ipod out of my locker next time you see me at the gym.

KAPOW!!!

hey kid. i'm a computer!



these little GI_JOE PSAs (with overdub) crack me up.

heya!



yesterday i got out of work by volunteering to paint a school for "special people". it was pretty fun. someone brought in a boom box and trashy tunes to listen to (abba, van halen [both roth and hagar era], REM). i got to use the "hey who sings this song?"..."REM"..."yeah could you keep it that way..har har har" joke when tim started singing along to "shiny happy people". there was a pub right next door, so being the beer drinkers people at HP are, we all headed over there afterwards and downed a couple pints before hittin' the road home (or back to the office to check email).

i've fallen into the "come home from work, watch tv while eating dinner, fall asleep" rut. i need to change this!

clone wars sucked


i thought it was going to be a real cartoon, but it turns out that it's a 3 minute mini series (in 20 installments). it reminded me of conan o'brian's "60". about as worthless anyhow. the whole thing came across as the network's conspiracy to suck us star wars geeks into watching cartoon network (which i do enjoy at times. no need for trickery). following the 3 minute waist of my time was "pokemon the movie". i think cartoon network needs to do a bit more research in the demographic department.

saturday i went to ben's for some LAN gaming. one would say "leon, you spend all your weekdays in front of your computer. why would you waist your weekend doing the same?", well if i were reading email and surfin' the web, i would agree. we played some old school counterstike and opposing forces, drank beer, ate burritos. good times!

sunday i participated in a scavenger hunt for heather's birthday. it was fun running around downtown in the pouring rain. after it was all over, the scavenger hunt teams met up at dan and heather's house for food and drink. i came up with a new mixed drink: consume 5-6 beers, get a cup and fill it with a shot of vodka, walk around to the back patio looking for some mixers in the cooler, after coming up empty-handed, go back inside, but instead of opening the sliding glass door, just slam into it and get vodka all over your face and in your eyes. i call this drink the windex

me: "i got some vodka here"
mike: "oooh...nice! what did you mix it with?"
me: "my face"

skyansfikshun



people keep asking me how i liked the matrix revolutions, and this is what i keep saying:

matrix 1 - cool "ground braking" movie. makes you get all philosophical

matrix 2 - refresher course for those who haven't watched the matrix 1 in 5 years (a little repetitive of matrix 1)

matrix 3 - blow shit up

...and i liked it. apparently not everybody does.

if you are a big fan of the matrix, i suggest watching Tron and reading the sprawl series by william gibson (if you haven't already)

and i'm going to watch clone wars today, so i'll be cutting out of band practice early so i don't miss it! it's all about setting priorities.

for chris's birthday last night we went to the burbs and ate at fudruckers and krispy kreme. when i got home i wanted to puke!

all you suckaz can get tha bozak!


last night i helped DJ danimal sub on kdvs for some hip-hop dj. you can listen to it here:

mp3: stream, download
realAudio: stream, download

we played a bunch of old school hits and some new good stuff

np: "get the bozak" - EPMD

jason


rad!

famous last words (pt. 1)



friend X: "dude check out that hottie!"
me: "word!"
friend X: "oh look. she's a smoker. lame"
me: "ok"


friend X now lives with his chainsmoking girlfriend, (who, in my personal opinion is a very nice person, but is far from "hottie".)

i love cold and cloudy weather!



i hope this keeps up... i should move to seattle (or SF).

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappppppppppppppppppppppppppyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

i put up with way too much bullshit from people


this goes out to someone special, you know who you are...

more on the isle of aisle


so i'm in charge of supplying the music for my aisle for this contest (see below). our theme is going to be "the spoooorts barrrrr" WHOOOOOOOOOO SCARYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! and i made a comment that someone should build a fake jukebox out of cardboard boxes and stick speakers inside it for the music. me and my big mouth. i'll put up a picture of what i had to make tomorrow or friday. boooooooooooooooooooooooo!


3 postings in one day. i think this is a world record for me.

happy malloween


wiiitches brewwwwwwww!

and i'm like...
so halloween is coming up and someone in the company who has nothing better to do got the big idea to have an "aisle decorating contest" on friday. i bet this same person's favorite time of the year in high school was homecoming week. some people really take this stuff seriously, but 99% of the people who i work with couldn't care less about it and feel somewhat annoyed by the whole thing (including yours truly), yet they pretend to be all competitive with the other aisles. weird. our administrative assistant -aka- the secretary, who works in the other aisle, just came over while we were talking about how we are going to decorate. She was acting all suspicious like she was trying to spy on us, and then my boss was all "shhhh everyone...maria is here" and then maria, with a mischievous look in her eye was all "just wanted to say good morning".

the guy at the end of my aisle has a fixation with spongebob squarepants and made sure all of the decoration themes we came up with would incorporate the silly yellow fellow.

what you blog may come back and bite you in the butt


it looks like some temp worker over at micro$oft got canned after he posted a blog of the mentioned company buying a bunch of G5s (along with an accompanying photo in his blog to back up the claim).

i guess that means i should keep it to myself the fact that most HP employees would rather have a DELL pc any day over the compaq/hp pieces of crap they make us use (i'd even take a G5).

book launch party




np - "book launch" - pipas

whhhaaa happened


i can't remember what i did friday night. i had band practice until 8, planned on checking out the feeling at the true lame cafe, but for some reason didn't go. did i just fall asleep on the couch watching tv? pathetic! i can't even think of anything interesting i did on Saturday other than laze around the apartment. me and my homie anh went to brunch at cornerstone, i had dinner later on at hamburger mary's but that's it. lame! sunday i did a bunch of crap (went to lake natoma to take pictures of coworkers in a relay marathon, went to evangeline's for my secret halloween outfit in old sacramento, helped anh put together ikea furniture, had band practice, watched "kill bill" again. saw some crazy insane show on mtv called "one bad trip".)

ALMOST FORGOT!!

np: "baby lemonade" - syd barrett

"that's what connections is all about"


i'm stoked the frenchmen are back in action. back to our old antics. last night instead of actually practicing, we all just hung out in the apartment, drank beer and listened to records until amy's cat allergies got the best of her.

np: "connections" - leaders of the new school (who happen to be considered "old school" these days. i guess that means i'm old school too)

*******



nothing to report on today

np: "jigsaw puzzle" - the rolling stones

songs i want to cover someday



early morning cold taxi - the who
friends of mine - the zombies
don't tell me that - pipas
girl from the north country - bob dylan
where's bill grundy (now?) - television personalities
the gnome - pink floyd
rather stay awake/new years day - the bright ideas
thorn - my bloody valentine
immigrant song - led zep
luckiest guy on the lower east side - magnetic fields

black eye for the white guy


i wish i would have picked up an extra pair of tickets to this.

the frenchmen rocked bottom of the hill last night, so if you missed out, it may be your last chance to see us for a long while. well. maybe in november for operation tiger trap for a late halloween show. it is a well known fact that we started off as a "one-off talulah gosh cover band" (with a different drummer) for a halloween show two years ago, so we thought we pay tribute to one of our other favorite bands. you won't want to miss it!


no more jury duty!

my duty as an american citizen



i'm on jury duty right now. light posting this week...and no more pictures of tofu. it was nice to walk to the corner of 7th and I street, buy a burrito for $3.75, walk over to the capitol find a nice bench in the shade, eat my burrito and read a book during lunch. i need to get a job downtown!

55378008



i have a pop up blocker on my browser, so i didn't realize my poll was causing annoying pop ups to happen. i'll discontinue it starting today. sorry about that!

the weather is nice in sacramento now, so we had frenchmen practice for the first time in like 2 months (the heat made in unbearable). it was like riding a bike. we pretty much nailed all the songs perfectly. we never have to practice again! i really enjoy hanging out with charles and amy, so it was a blast. i think it was the first completely sober band practice we ever had. usually at any given moment in time, at least one of us is drunk. practice was inspired by this up coming show. the crab apples are playing this show too, but they're not listed.

i'm working at tonevendor this weekend with loren, the fuckin' best record store clerk of all time. come visit and pick up the new secret shine cd while you are at it! it's amazing!

well. i got to get back to coding like some kind of deranged monkey. have a good weekend!


jp : "the pee wee herman" - joeski love
np: "other side" - beat happening

total recall



i hate when people say "governator". come on! get original! how about "conan the governarian" or "kindergarten governor" or "danny devitos twin brogovernor". looks like arnold is going to "jingle all the way" to sacramento after all.

last night's show was pretty good. the sac_indie_chicks were having a book club meeting in the back of the capital garage while we were playing, so i thought i'd make myself an audience member by standing in front of the stage, clapping after every song and making requests (which happened to follow the set-list). we had fun, but there was no vodka in the establishment, so i reluctantly cashed drink tickets in for newcastle (beer has been making me feel sick in the morning...even the good stuff).

dressy bessy was great. their old songs from their first 11-songs-in-20-minutes album are still their best songs, and i'm glad they busted out one-or two of them to keep me happy. after the first song they played, the singer's fuzz pedal crapped out on her, so i saved the day by busting out mine. funny thing is, i was inspired to buy that pedal because of them and the apples in stereo.

while dressy bessy was playing, some hippy guy standing next to me started doing some crazy hippy dance*, which inspired some other kid across the room to do some crazy russian folk kick dance. later on some flash mobbers came in and started a dance party, then suddenly left.

for some reason becky and frank from my favorite SF band, the mosquitoes, were at the show, so i went up to them to say hi (becky was also in #poundsign#, frank's real band is the bright lights, and he toured as boyracer's drummer once) since the frenchmen played with them a long time ago.

np: "the fan" - my computer

p.s. there is something wrong about this


* the closest mainstream comparison to this dance is Axel Rose, Guns & Roses, circa Use Your Illusion putting his arms together and sorta twisting his way while sorta movin' his backside around in a flowy, yet testosteronially charged manner (I mean, he was a rock star.)

sHOw tONIGHt



dRESSy bESSy
mUNIa
(eLECTROGROUp or sOMe gUy fROm sOMe lAMe bANd and not gUSTo or tRACe)

8pm
$6
cAPITOl gARAGe
L & 15th sTREEt



np: "asleep on a sunbeam" - belle and sebastian

ways i keep myself entertained at work (pt1)



playing jokes on Outlook

"New mail has arrived. Would you like to read it now?" dialog box pops up. ignore it.

open outlook, read the email and delete it.

go back to dialog box and click "OK"

"The item has been moved ore deleted" dialog pops up.

look at the computer screen and say "i got you good, fucker!" and click "OK"


funny stuff


np: "give it up" - lcd soundsystem