BrewBlog

Acura Annie

We're putting some serious miles on the SUV on this road trip (see previous post Hotel Blues).  We have an Acura MDX (which we really love) and have come to depend on the navigation system.  At first the idea of a navigation system seemed kind of stupid to both of us.  What's the point when maps are so easy to come by?  But let me tell you, it is really great to have. 

We've had the MDX for less than a year and we have already used the navigation system dozens of times.  First, because of the GPS, it shows you exactly where you are and direction you're facing on its map.  So right off the bat you already have a map, which is stored on a DVD underneath the front passenger seat.  The map can be expanded to show more area with less detail or closer with more detail.  The current road you're traveling is on the display as well.  Icons on the map show nearby places to eat, ATMs, landmarks, etc.

What makes the system so great is the directions and guidance system.  I'm sounding like a commercial now, I know.  By simply entering in the name of your destination, address, intersection or phone number, the navigation system comes up with a path and directs you there.  You just follow the blue line on the map and listen to the voice.  We use this all the time and it takes all the guesswork out of driving.  Another cool thing is that you can verbally ask it for nearby parking, places to eat, etc. and because it knows where you are, it will give you ideas in order of closeness to your current location.  Very cool. 

This is totally cheesy, but we call the car Acura Annie.  The voice warranted a name and that's what we came up with.  You can have a male voice if you prefer.  The male voice was lame to me, probably because I'm a man.  So, thumbs up on the navigation system.  It actually does much more than what I've described but you get the idea.  Okay, commercial over.  Back to our regularly scheduled program 

Hotel Blues

My wife and I are in the middle of a road trip, driving all over California.  We're visiting national parks and driving routes less traveled.  I've lived in California my whole life and there is still much of it I've never seen which I suspect is true for many.  After this trip is done, we'll have both visited places we've never been and taken highways we've never driven.  As always, we're on a budget and part of why we chose a road trip was to save some money by avoiding flights and expensive resorts on tropical islands.  We love the tropical island vacations but with a little Brewer on the way, we're trying to save a few bucks.  So, when we planned out our trip, we went cheap on most of our hotels.  More on that in a second.  Fortunately, we did fork out for a night at the Tenaya Lodge in Yosemite.  As you would expect from a higher end place, all the amenities were present.  The lobby was great, very comfortable and relaxing.  Any time the lobby is really nice, you can typically expect a nice room and good experience, which was the case here.

Other than the Tenaya Lodge, like I said, we went cheap.  And as always, you get what you pay for.  We're still midway through our vacation so we still have another few stops but we've already experienced some less than ideal hotel conditions that I thought I'd share in the form of a top ten list.  So this is the top ten things we got to experience this week in our lovely cheap hotel stays. 

1. Bugs.  Granted, we were in the desert, but we had a few visitors.  Nothing serious really.  We had a giant stink bug I was smart enough not to crush.  We also had a large spider and some winged thing I've never seen before.  Also, there was an alleged scorpion hanging out  by our front door.  I went out to the car to get something late in the evening and a drunk British guy was standing in front of our room with a flashlight.  "There's a big scorpion running around here", he slurred.  Then he looked at me very seriously and said "I don't like scorpions". 
2. Smoke detector wasn't working.  Or at least the little light was out.  I don't so much care about this one too much.
3. Cigarette burns and Spackle on the bed blankets.  This is typical in crappy hotels.  The blankets are nasty.  Sometimes you get the tiny bloodstains on the pillows and sheets.  yuck.
4. Noisier than hell.  Paper thin walls make it impossible to get a quiet sleep.  You can hear the dumbasses in the next room or out in front of the room.  We also got the 700 pound guy upstairs, doing calisthenics at 3:00 in the morning.  In our San Diego hotel, we were directly under the flight path and we could hear the planes flying over.  It sounded like they were about 10 feet or so above the hotel.
5. Broken refrigerator.  This isn't really a problem since we had an ice chest in the car.  We had some leftovers were wanted to put in the fridge but it was busted and not even running. 
6. The alarm clocks in two of the places were set to go off in middle of the night, causing me to have to fumble around in the dark, dead asleep, trying to turn the damn thing off.
7. The fans in the bathrooms were unnecessarily loud.  The fan automatically goes on when you turn on the light.  So in the middle of the night, the loud fans helps to wake us both up all the way.  Two of the places we stayed had a loud fan in the bathroom.  A fan does not need to be loud.  These fans made it sound like you were standing close to a giant assembly line in a factory.  I was waiting for the damn thing to fall out of the ceiling. 
8. Non-potable water.  One of the places we stayed had non-potable water for all outlets with the exception of one, clearly marked as drinking water.  Again, understandable since we were in the middle of nowhere in the desert.
9. Busted secondary door lock.  This really doesn't matter but when you are staying in a city I'd call "the butthole of the world", you can really benefit from locks on the doors.  Ours was clearly busted off, reattached and then busted off again.  I was envisioning a drug raid in the middle of the night, police ramming the door down to catch the drug dealers off guard.  Come to think of it, that would make sense given the disabled smoke alarm.  Someone was probably cooking up some crack and didn't want to set off the alarm, so they disabled it.  Then, the cops rammed the door down, causing one of the purps to drop their joint on the bed blankets, burning a hole in it.
10. Men will appreciate this one; wrong remote for the television.  The stupid remote didn't work with our television because it was the wrong remote.  Obviously frustrating. 
11. I was going to do a top ten but I have one more.  Somebody, at some point, pissed in the air conditioner.  We were hot and turned on the air conditioner to cool off the place.  Suddenly, almost immediately, the room reeked of a very strong urine smell.  That's nice.  Somebody must have pissed in it because I just can't think of another reason for the stench. 

So that's it.  Next time you want to go cheap on the hotel, just be prepared for these types of things. 

Before and After

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went for a walk along Miner's Ravine in Roseville.  We'd taken a similar path together a few times before.  While walking the trail we reminisced about the first  time we visited this trail together, very early in our relationship.  Even though we are both happy to think back to those days when we were dating, we're also very glad to be where we are today and wouldn't want to be in any other time of our lives.  At the end of our walk we passed by a very large sculpture that is rumored to look like a rose from the sky.  An artist donated the sculpture, named Cosmos, to the city of Roseville in the eighties.  I can vaguely recall when the sculpture was built, sometime when I was in high school. 

Back in those days I was a typical punk-ass teenager.  Actually, I was a bit of a hybrid of rocker and geek (or goober as my good friend Don Crandall called us).  I got good grades and listened to  hard rock music.  Shy but against the grain in a lot of ways.  A mamma's boy but with long hair and always wearing heavy metal tee-shirts.  A few years after graduating from high school, in the summer of 1991, my friend Jeff Dean and I were hanging out when we stopped by Sculpture Park.  We snapped a few photos that day.  One of the pictures he took was of me standing at the base of Cosmos, looking like a punk-ass.  Back then, there were many things for me to figure out before becoming the person I am today.  There is no simple or easy way to describe the journey one goes through in becoming a man. 

About a year ago I was putting the finishing touches on an auto-biography I wrote called "Thanks for Coming In".  One of the purposes of writing that book was simply to explore that journey, to take a serious hard look at my twenties.  How did I get from where I was standing there on the Cosmos to where I am today, all grown up and getting old.  The book project never really answered any questions about the journey but it did examine some of the thoughts and motivations behind my actions, all of which eventually lead up to now, the current day. 

I'm not at all attempting to take this somewhere deep, but these thoughts occasionally come up and when my wife and I were finishing up our walk, I was compelled to take the same picture I'd  remembered taking back in 1991.  And just like the feelings my wife and I share about our relationship, I personally wouldn't want to be at any other stage in my life.  It just doesn't get any better than this.  What will the next stage be like?  Now that I'm looking forward to being a parent, from what everyone is telling me, things are just going to get better.  Different, but better.  I can't wait.

More Cowbell

I simply must document my appreciation for the famous SNL "More Cowbell" skit.  This is hardly anything new but I've watched it a few times recently and it still makes me laugh out loud.  If you've seen it, you either like it a lot or don't really get what the hype is (was) about.  It's classic Will Farrell and Christopher Walken is hilarious.  Thanks to Putfile, you can watch it again or for the first time.  Check it out if you have five minutes:  http://media.putfile.com/SNL-Cowbell

Build More Prisons

Protecting society and reducing crime is the Federal Bureau of Prison's goal.  As a taxpayer, I'm thrilled to support this concept.  We have federal and state prisons.  We have city and county jail houses.  Each have their own budget and funding, they are each managed and overseen by different authorities and they each have their unique purposes.  All I care about is that they keep the bad guys off the streets.

Too much lately we're seeing and hearing about prisoners being released early and sentences shortened because the system simply cannot handle the volume of criminals.  Prisons are over capacity.  Certain offenses that warrant time in the slammer are no longer automatic because there just isn't room for them.  Murderers and rapists are released on good behavior and you can't tell me that there isn't an increase of that because of the strain of overcrowding. 

Some of these people are "sorry" and may or may not commit these or other crimes again once they are released.  Fine, let them serve their time and they will get the chance to get their act together, or not.  I don't think we should have any leniency on violent and repeat offenders.  I'm not talking about the drunk guy at the ballgame that punches another drunk guy at the ballgame.  The problem is with the thugs, carjackers, rapists, murderers gang-bangers, etc. etc. etc.  These people are LOSERS and they always will be.  They belong in prison and it's really that simple.  I don't care that they have shitty parents.  I don't care that they are strung out on drugs.  I don't care that the world isn't fair.  If someone cannot resist harming innocent people, then their dumbass belong behind bars.

That may seem harsh and the more sympathetic provide the balance that gets us what we have today.  And maybe that is the best we can do.  But every time I read a horrible story in the paper or see the news about someone that is raped or murdered by a lowlife that should be in prison, it just makes me want to barf.  Build more prisons.  Keep building them and make them bigger.  It's worth it.

Out of curiosity, I looked up some information about the prison system here and found it very interesting.  Look at these California prison statistics from the California Department of Corrections

Facilities: 32 state prisons ranging from minimum to maximum custody; 40 camps, minimum custody facilities located in wilderness areas where inmates are trained as wildland firefighters; 12 community correctional facilities (CCF's); and 5 prisoner mother facilities.

Population:
All Institutions: 163,939. One year change: +2,154  +1.3%. Prisons: 154,161 Camps: 4,146 Community Facilities: 5,473 Outside CDC: 1,702 Escaped: 254 USINS Holds: 17,226 Top 5 counties: LA; 33.%, San Diego 8%, San Bernardino 7%; Riverside 6%; Orange 5%

69% of the felons are from Southern California, 11% from San Francisco Bay Area and 20% are from everywhere else

Characteristics:

Males: 93%

Females: 7%

Parole Violators: 12%

Race: 29% white; 29% black; 37% hispanic; 6% other. Offense: 51% persons; 21% property; 21% drugs; 7% other. Lifers: 27,251 LWOP's: 3,168 Condemned: 637 Avg Reading Level: Seventh grade; Average Age: 36; Employed: 53.6%; Ineligible: 28.7%; Waiting List: 17.7%.

Avg Sentence: 52.9 months; Avg Time Served: 26.1 months.
Commitment Rate: 446 per 100,000 California population
Assault Rate (per 100 ADP): 4.6 in '02; 4.6 in '01; 4.8 in '00
Escape Rate (per 100 ADP): 0.01 in '02; 0.01 in '01; 0.02 in '00.

About Parole

FACILITIES: 19 re-entry centers, and 2 restitution facilities. Most are operated by public or private agencies under contract to CDC. Parole staff monitor these facilities.

OFFICES: 190 parole units and sub-units in 84 locations. Parole outpatient clinics and 150 clinicians.

POPULATION:
Total: 113,768; One year change: -368 -3.0%
Paroled to county of last legal residence: 90%; Other: 10%
Region I (North/Central Valley): 25,271
Region II (Bay Area/North, Central Coast): 22,484
Region III (LA County): 35,529
Region IV (San Diego/S. CA) 30,484
Return rate (per 100 avg daily pop) with new prison term: 12
Return rate (per 100 avg daily pop) as parole violator: 47
Top 5 counties: LA 31%; San Diego 7%; San Bernardino 7%; Riverside 6%; Orange 6%

CHARACTERISTICS:

Males: 89%

Females: 11%

Race: 32% white; 26% black; 38% hispanic; 5% other
Offense: 26% persons; 29% property; 33% drugs; 12% other
Median Age: 37

About the Department

The California Department of Corrections operates all state prisons, oversees a variety of community correctional facilities, and supervises all parolees during their re-entry into society.

Budget: $5.7 billion (2004-2005 Budget Act)
Avg. yearly cost: per inmate, $30,929; per parolee, $3,364
Staff: 49,073 currently employed including 42,453 in Institutions, 3,114 in Parole, and 3,506 in Administration (about 31,220 sworn peace officers)
Total offenders under CDC jurisdiction: 301,181. One year change: +766 (0.2%)

About the State Budget

While it is the largest in terms of staffing, Corrections' operating budget is just 5.8% of the state General Fund in the 2004-2005 Budget Act.

About Prison Capacity

As of February 2002, the maximum prison capacity was approximately 170,100. Upon completion of the administrative segregation housing units and the Delano II maximum-security institution, the California Department of Correction's maximum housing capacity will increase to approximately 176,500

Internet Addiction Clinic?

Seriously?  BBC News published a story that has recevied a bit of attention.  China has an internet clinic to treat internet addiction.  So if you just can't stay off the internet, you can go to this clinic and received serious treatment.  The doctor that heads up the clinic sees this as a major problem.  The centre is expanding by adding 200 beds and opening similar clinics in other cities.  Check out the picture in the article of the guy wearing the head gear as part of his serious illness.

Addiction is obviously a serious problem, but is this really necessary?  Where do we draw the line?  People have real problems and need help.  Shouldn'y we increase our efforts elsewhere?  Who's paying for this anyway?  So stupid.  I was almost certain this was a joke when I first saw a reference to the article.  Maybe I'm missing something.

Article:  Treating China's online addicts

We’re Really Having a Baby?

This whole baby thing is starting to get real.  Sure, we knew what the double line meant, but seriously, a baby?  My wife is, and has been, well aware if the baby for months now.  She knows it’s there, of course, because of all the physical symptoms of being pregnant.  Her feeling sick the first few months was an obvious sign but the notion of having a baby becomes all too real when the belly starts growing.  Now that she looks pregnant, most topic of conversation starts with questions about the baby, health, preparation, etc.  The baby is already center stage and it hasn't even been born yet.

Our second and final ultrasound went well (photo1 & Photo 2) and it looks like we are on track for February 2.  What a week that will be.  Everyone with children have resounded the fact that it is great, life altering, crazy, and all sorts of other descriptions that make us both wonder what we are in for.  I'm thrilled about it and I can honestly say I've never been more excited about anything in my life.  It would be impossible to capture all my thoughts on this subject in a blog but my guess is that plenty of my minuscule place in the blogosphere space will be devoted to our new family addition. 

Digital Music

The digital music revolution has been a blast for consumers.  The record was then the tape that became the compact disc.  Of course there are a few missing steps but that is the basic evolution of the industry in my lifetime.  Each of those steps has been exciting and offered something good for music lovers.  The recent explosion of digital music has been simply awesome.  It's easy to remain loyal to older formats and it's common for "experts" to be critical of compression formats, pointing out a loss of quality.  Similar to digital photography, there are both loss and lossless formats.  Hardcore digital photography folks writhe of the thought of archiving photos in JPG and music buffs hold a certain disdain for the MP3 format.  Sure there are better ways, but for most people, the easiest and most economical of choices are good enough.

I'm not about to give my opinion on the matter because I'm not an expert and it would bore you and I both to tears.  What I will say is that I love digital music.  I've ripped all of my CD's into VBR (variable bit rate) MP3.  Yes, MP3.  The VBR makes for a much more effective use of space, allowing for less compression where it matters and less where it doesn't .  Highly compressed MP3 files is where you get into the poorer qualities.  Anyway, there are countless ways to rip, encode, burn, store, play, stream, etc.  I've adopted a system that I'm very happy with and I thought I'd share.  Although I must warn, if you have a lot of music, you'll need a ridiculous amount of time and patience to convert it all to a digital format.  There are services that will do it for you but it is outrageously expensive!

First of all, I use an open source program called Exact Audio Copy to rip my CDs.  Ripping is simply taking the WAV files from the CD and putting it onto your PC.  It's an exact copy of your CD.  EAC does this very well and also puts the hooks into other handy functions.  Next, I encode with LAME.  Encoding is the conversion of a WAV file to another audio format.  Like I said, I've adopted the MP3 format with VBR.  EAC and LAME work very well together in both ripping and encoding.  It's reasonably well integrated as well.  Also built into EAC is the CDDB (Compact Disc Database) look-up.  I've adopted the open source version, of course.  More about CDDB.  This service simply takes the unique ID of your CD and automatically enters the applicable information into the tag fields of your music file.  For example, It will apply a chosen naming convention for your music files and apply it as it's ripping and encoding.  The name of the artist, song name, year, etc. are all stored in the music file properties, some are visible in the file name and some are not. 

There are a myriad of ways to store and organize your music files and it's really just a matter of preference.  I organize mine in simple folders by genre, then artist name, then album.  It's basically a three folder hierarchy.  This whole process takes many hours so I'd highly recommend backing up your music files.  I have a backup on a separate hard drive and then I have a backup on DVDs that I keep outside my home.  I'm not about to lose my files!  What you  do with these files is important as well.  There are many uses but my primary two are mobile player and home streaming.  My digital music player of choice is the iRiver (I have the HP40 hard drive player).  I love the versatility and high capacity.  They don't make my specific model anymore and I've heard mixed reviews of the newer ones. 

At home, I use (and love) the Sqeezebox from Slim Devices.  This little appliance sits with my receiver.  It has an optic connection going out to my receiver.  It is wirelessly connected to my computer.  The computer runs a server called the SlimServer.  Using a sexy little remote, I can play anything from my music collection with the touch of a few buttons.  I can select by genre, artist, song, pretty much anything.  it supports play-lists as well.  A two line display shows you what is playing and allows you to move around the interface with ease.  Did I mention wireless?  There are all kinds of add-ons as well.  It has a Internet radio service, support RSS feeds and a few other cool things.  It's under $200 too, which is great.

Finally, because we recently moved into a new house, I was able to easily set up for distributed audio.  By having some speaker wire and CAT-5 wire strategically placed during house framing, I was able to have volume controls and speakers in three other rooms and the backyard patio in addition to the family room where the stereo is.  I used a simple switch box to enable or disable music to the alternative rooms.   You need a good receiver that has decent watt output in an alternate zone.  The volume controls themselves have a little amplification, which helps.  I used the Russound A-BUS system for amplified volume controls. 

So that's about it.  I have credit a buddy of mine at work, Greg Matthews, for most of these ideas.  He introduced me to EAC, LAME and Slim Devices.  It helps when someone you trust does the footwork because then you don't have to figure it all out yourself, which helps when there are so many choices.  I'm sure my setup is already outdated as it is two years old after all.  But that's okay, it makes me happy. Following this stuff is fun and it's exciting to see where the industry is going.

Doctors Warn About Toddlers' Diets

Link: Doctors Warn About Toddlers' Diets.

As toddlers begin eating "grown-up" food, they may also develop grown-up eating habits — like too much junk food and too few vegetables, warn doctors who want parents to change their ways. Within the childhood obesity outbreak is an increasing number of overweight 2-year-olds, according to pediatrics experts.

The article goes on to say that 10 percent of 2-year-olds are overweight, which is said to be doubling the rate from the mid-1970s.  Wow.  I knew that kids and teens were more overweight and even obese but I didn't think it was so rampant with toddlers.  This seems like a health crisis.  This is not just an issue in the U.S. either.  I'd like to see my generation do something about it.

Carpool Parking

When my wife and I drive to work together, which is about two to three times a week, we get to park in the very special carpool parking places in our multiple acre sized parking lot.  The only reason we don’t is usually because one of us is telecommuting, we have errands to do that we can’t do together for some reason or because one of us has a meeting that is, what we call, geo friendly.  A geo friendly meeting is basically a meeting outside the normal working hours of eight to five, local time, so that we may “share the pain” of globalization (or, globalisation for some of you in one of those other geo regions).

With our drive being a little long (28 stops and getting longer), we truly benefit from carpooling.  We also work in the same building, so we don’t even have to drop each other off or worry too much about timing.  The carpool parking at work is actually useful because it does get crowded in the parking lot and the carpool spots are obviously closer and better.  We have the required carpool pass that we applied for through an official process.  It’s interchangeable (not a stupid sticker) so that we can move it between cars since we trade off driving. 

When we don’t drive together, we don’t use the pass.  Even though we easily could, we don’t.  Why don’t we?  Because carpool parking is for people that are carpooling THAT DAY.  Just because you have carpooled once before, does not mean you can park in carpool parking.  You sometimes carpool, you sometimes park in carpool parking.  Seems simple enough, am I wrong about this?  If you carpool twice a week, you don’t get to use the carpool parking space on days that you are not carpooling.  It’s like disabled parking in this way.  When my leg is busted and in a cast I get to park in disabled parking.  Once my leg is all better and no more cast, I don’t get to just keep parking in disabled parking, obviously?  Why is this any different?

I’m always seeing people park in carpool parking, alone.  Oh they have the pass, but they didn’t carpool.  What’s up with that?  If I asked I’d get in trouble for harassment or something, I’m sure.  If I did, I’d say, “Why are you parking in carpool parking”?  What could a legit answer possibly be?  Maybe they dropped off their carpool person at another building and this is likely common, actually.  Otherwise, they would just lie or stare at me blankly, wondering why I’ve confronted them about this.  I always want to call people on stuff like that but of course I never do.  Some day I’d like to do all the things I always think about and then later reflect and wonder if it was worth it.

Sometimes, when one of us running late for an eight o’clock meeting, the other person, let’s just say me for example, would drop her off right at the guard shack.  Then, I’d drive another few dozen yards and park in carpool parking.  Whenever we do that I always wonder if people think I’m parking in carpool parking when I’m not supposed to be.  I always hurry a little more than usual, to reduce the chances of being pegged as an abuser.