I got back from my trip to California last night. As previously noted I was intending to relax a bit but that never really happened. For better or worse (more of the better), I went around. A lot!. I had a different city for pretty much every day. And I really don't know what I was expecting, but the traffic and driving were too much for me. Although, I was doing much more traveling on account that I was a tourist.

I had a relatively painless flight into I flew into LAX Thursday night and right off the bat, I could see why people dread that airport. Too much traffic, crowds, commotion, police - enough to make you want to avoid it. It took well over an hour and half to get to where I was staying in Orange County with my brother.

I was on the beach Friday and later drove out to the Santa Monica Pier to watch a Cirque Du Soleil show: Kooza. It was pretty entertaining. I will have to write a more in depth review of this in the days to come.

Saturday we spent the day in San Diego. We watched the UofM vs Penn State game at the Pacific Beach Bar & Grill where apparently there is a significant number of Michigan fans. I met up with some college friends and we did some site seeing in San Diego. What a gorgeous city! The view from the top at Cabrillo National Monument overlooking the San Diego Bay was magnificent. You could see all the way to Tijuana (no I did not visit there). Lots more to do there. Sadly I did not plan enough time. Perhaps next trip?

Sunday after church, we drove up to Pasadena. I made a quick side trip to El Monte to visit someone, but eventually we reached our destination: Rose Bowl Stadium to see U2 perform. This will definitely require an additional post. Despite some drunk-thinks-she's-hot girl accidentally pouring beer all over me, I still did manage to enjoy the performance. The U2 360 Tour was just over the top, but an 100% unforgettable experience! We were lucky enough to have someone arrange free parking for us, but unlucky enough to get lost on the way back.

Monday, after a late night, we once again drove back into the mess. This time to Universal Studios Hollywood. I think this may be my first trip to a Theme Park as opposed to a general amusement park. It was really fun, with extra praise for The Simpson's Ride (did it twice!) and The Mummy Ride. Unfortunately the Terminator 3-D attraction was closed down, which was a major let down. Otherwise the park was pretty fun. I think we picked a great day to go as we never waited more than 20 minutes for anything. The people who paid double the general admission price were foolish, there is no way they got their money's worth! We had dinner at the park and I split up to catch up with a friend. We did some cruising through the nicer nearby areas. By that night I noticed my voice had pretty much given out. Probably the screaming..err..singing at the concert.

Tuesday I had lunch in Anaheim. Nothing special, just a place to relax halfway between LA and Laguna Beach. Spent the evening not doing anything special. Watched some DVD's, had some drinks and told some silly old stories. Sometimes the craziness gets a little too crazy with siblings, but all in all enjoyable.

Wednesday I flew back. I wouldn't mention the flight, but the damnedest thing happened. We encountered some unusual turbulence. Apparently somewhere near Colorado, we hit some "mountain wind" which caused the plane to instantaneously drop 500 ft in altitude. It was quite shocking and in truth, a little exhilarating. Everything flew 2-3 feet straight up (including un-belted passengers). I wasn't really scared considering I was buckled down, but the attendants were yelling at everyone to sit down. The real mess was that the passenger next to me had a full glass of wine that also flew up 2 feet and hit me in the stomach, crotch and right leg. It was a mess. I endured over 2 hours smelling like wine sitting in a wet seat. He felt terrible, but I figured it wasn't the worst thing, his wife's wine covered the seat and lady's hair sitting in front of her.

But besides that, I think I was really happy with my time spent in "Cali". I think my brother and I were a bit too ambitious when planning considering we intended to do much more with less time. Even so, I am quite impressed how much we were able to enjoy. This was a first for me visiting where everyone had their S.O. with them. Everyone was a good host (and hostess) to me, considering how thoroughly irritating I can be (was ... am ... will be).

Lots of fun stuff and crazy stuff. Dowsed with alcohol twice (luckily no one lit me on fire ... although some of those California girls ... ). First time doing continuous status updates on my mobile. Too much driving (almost 600 miles total!!!). Lots of talking, singing and screaming. For the people who were making the pitch I should consider relocating ... well, all I can say is this trip was a really compelling argument.

Much more things to say, but I fergit, ask me and I'll tell you. A review on the performances to follow...

Posted in: Life, Music, Travel, Stuff,

It has been rather stressful summer for me. Lots of ups and downs both personally and professionally.

Unsurprisingly, I survived the last round of layoffs, but in some weird way I would not have been upset had I been let go. Quite a few "alternate" scenarios played out in my head. I'm an excuse person, I need an excuse to do something and not the other way around. Losing your job would be a great excuse to take some time off and relax or do some exotic traveling (China perhaps?).

Anyways I landed in LA last night. Going to spend some time with my brother and some friends. Would have posted this last night but couldn't figure out airport WiFi. As always I have an excuse for this trip too, there's a band playing that I couldn't see in Detroit. Thought this would be fun.

Everybody needs a "reset" once in a while. Hopefully when I get back I will feel like I'm back at "zero" and not stuck in the red, like the whole world around me.

Look for some updates in the usual places ...

Posted in: Life, Travel,

There is a pretty popular video featuring a staged wedding intro dance at a church in Minnesota. When I saw the video a week ago I think the view count was somewhere near the million mark(?) and as of today it is has passed 13 million views! Almost every news outlet has picked up the story considering the story is quite simple: a fun dance at a wedding featured on Youtube.

I saw this CNN link about the video via the blogosphere. From the article (emphasise mine):

"The joyous video of the group busting their loosely choreographed moves down the aisle went viral after the newlyweds posted it on YouTube."

The only problem is that the link to the Youtube video is not anywhere on the page from CNN. Don't you think it would be nice? The internet as a medium is meaningless without linking to content. This isn't a newspaper. Obviously the first thing any reader will want to do is see the video.

It seems incredibly out of date to report news about a website, a post or internet sensation without actually linking to it. I agree there are many things I don't want to see (violent images for example), but reporting on anything that is "viral" is naturally going to increase its popularity. Unfortunately this issue is not limited to funny videos. There are plenty of useful websites that news sites like CNN discuss at lengths (Wikipedia anyone?) but intentionally refuse to provide any links. In the least, it makes sense to place a link to the content at the end of the article so people can see it after reading (MSBNC for example). The effect of sites like CNN will make me completely disregard the news piece and just google for it myself.

No, I don't really visit CNN anymore. When they figure out how to use the internet, someone please let me know.

Posted in: Internet, Rants,

And the cycle is complete... Today Mozilla released version 3.5 of their popular Firefox web browser. The browser came with a exclusive Private Browsing mode which by their own words claims: "won't leave a single browsing fingerprint behind for others to discover". As silly as that statement is, Firefox is actually the 3rd browser to ship with such a feature. Chrome by Google (ironically Mozilla's primary "benefactor") introduced "Incognito Mode" last year, and even Microsoft's IE8 beat Mozilla with "InPrivate Browsing" in it's release several month's ago. (Opera I love you too, but you don't have this feature ... yet)

All this privacy feature does is prevent the client (that's you!) from recording basic web history, cookie data or cached versions of web pages (included images). Many were quick to point out that this would be ideal for browsing those "mature" websites that you wouldn't want others to know about. First of all, private or not, there are usually at least 3 entities that can see what you're doing: you, your ISP, and the site you are visiting. I won't even try to bother to figure out if it is forensically impossible to detect anything you did while "privately browsing" (anybody know?).

Even with all that in mind, if your browser does not record your activity there are no rules about what your plugins record. Might those "mature" websites use video? Well surprise: Adobe Flash (which practically powers 99% of the video on the web) does in fact leave little tidbits of webby goodness somewhere deep in your personal computer profiles. Lets not forget an occasional Java applet? And I have no idea how what else people allow their browsers to load and run these days (ActiveX I hate you).

Anyways, I honestly don't think that browsing the web has become any more or less private with all these new releases of software. I just hope people don't get the wrong idea and get themselves into bizarre situations assuming their computer is doing something its not (or vice versa).

But hey, don't let this (possible) shortcoming detract from the many new features that the big browsers have been putting out. Great stuff to see, check it out - in "private" if you want.

Posted in: Internet, Technology,

I think it was during late 2004, that my younger brother said he wanted to buy a digital camera since he would be taking a trip to France. After a little bit of research (and seeing the ugly pictures from a co-worker's Sony camera), we both settled on a Canon PowerShot S410. I had a gift certificate from Best Buy, so I picked up S500 that Christmas (same camera but 5MP instead of 4.1MP). I have never regretted that purchase. For the past 4+ years my camera has taken some great pictures on various trips and vacations (especially my last India trip).

Unfortunately, last Christmas my S500 had developed a minor problem where every picture had either a purple bar or light pink/purple hue in all of the pictures. Luckily a few months previous to my younger brother's wedding, my youngest brother had picked up a PowerShot SD 880 IS which took some great pictures at the wedding. The only issue was that there were some moments that a better camera might have produced better pictures. So, reluctant to invest in an DSLR, my oldest brother bought a PowerShot SX10 IS which produced some amazing pictures at my youngest brother's wedding last month!

However, it became quite obvious that the SX10 might be inconvenient for quick pictures and trips when I needed to pack lightly. So I thought I would go ahead and purchase a new camera similar in size to my S500. However, before I did, I found a story about Canon Support on the Consumerist website. I thought I had nothing to lose in contacting tech support. Before I contacted them, I decided that I would be willing to pay ~$100 to have it fixed. Primarily because (1) I had accessories (case, spare batteries, 2 2GB Compact Flash cards) and (2) I would end up spending at least double for a new camera.

I finally got around to calling them 2 weeks ago on Monday (Jun 15). The tech support lady was quick to tell me that there was an advisory that did affect my S500. She also stated they would evaluate it and tell me the repair cost. So they emailed me a free UPS shipping label, and I sent in just my camera (no accessories) on Wednesday (Jun 17). The UPS tracker stated the camera arrived at their repair center on Friday (Jun 19). It wasn't until Monday (Jun 22) that I got an email stating that all repairs would be done free of charge. I was so happy. The final email I received was on Thursday (Jun 25) that the camera was fixed and shipped on FedEx Next Day Air. This last Friday my fixed camera was waiting for me after work. Great service for less than 2 weeks!

I didn't start out to write a "Canon Love Fest", but I can honestly say that there is nothing better than a company that produces good products and (more importantly) has great customer service. My biggest regret was not contacting tech support earlier.

Posted in: Stuff,