Category: Uncategorized

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Jaunty Soooper Gooogly Mooogly Tooosday Voter Guide

Dear American Heroes,

If you, like we knuckleheads in California, are part of the primary voting cluster of democracy tomorrow, you’re no doubt excited about the possibilities. The possibility of having your vote on a ballot proposition overturned by an aggrieved loser in court. The possibility that your favorite candidate will change positions sometime in May to appeal to the important baby seal-clubbing voting block. The possibility that superdelegates will trump everything that you thought you were voting for at the convention.

This is the important turning point of our cherished democracy.

Well then, now that we’ve got all the pessimism out of the way, let’s get to The Jaunty Little Blog Recommendations For Filling In Those Tiny Dots!

  • Proposition 91 – Transportation Funds. Initiative Constitutional Amendment Please. Amending the state Constitution again? Stop it already. Vote no just on principle.
  • Proposition 92 – Community Colleges. Funding. Governance. Fees. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. Um, with the Constitution? No thanks.
  • Proposition 93 – Limits on Legislator’s Terms In Office. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. This one’s a stinker. Not only because it amends the Constitution like a drunken, um, Constitution amender, but because it grandfathers in current legislators for another 12 years when they would’ve been termed out now. Looking at you Perata and Nunez. Those guys and their cronies need to go away. Vote no on this one. Who knows, maybe you’ll see some cool Fabien Nunez For Dogcatcher mailers in November. Or they’ll go to court to overturn your vote.
  • Propositions 94 through 97 – Referenda on Amendments to Indian Gaming Compacts Wow. How much money has been spent on campaigning for and against these? The folks against own some dog tracks and Vegas casinos. Oh, and a couple smaller tribes who don’t like the new facilities these compacts afford four of the wealthiest tribes. We here at Jaunty Election Central think that’s just sour grapes. The smaller tribes can negotiate their own new compacts and the dog tracks can pound sand. In exchange, the tribes give the state some more money than they do now. They really don’t have to, being sovereign nations. Sounds like a winner to us.
  • Presidential Candidates Vote for the person you like. I like Mister Obama despite the looks and smell of his financial dealings in Chicago. I certainly can do without the crabby Clintons. I get my recommended daily allowance of mud slinging just getting out of my driveway in the morning, thankyouverymuch. Romney could theoretically convince me to buy a watch out of the J.C. Penney catalog (it looks good on him), but little else. McCain, or as we refer to his candidacy around the office here, George Bush’s third term? Yeah, um, no. We’re not saying, we’re just saying…

There you have it. We’ve staked our positions which should prove highly valuable if you’ve just landed here from Mars. Otherwise you’ve already made up your mind, made your choices, and for crissakes gone out and placed your vote. Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the next Assistant Secretary of the Interior nominee…

Your pal,

– bob

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Happy Birthday Holiday Season!

Friends,

It’s officially the beginning my Birthday Holiday Season. What festivities are planned? Well, we’re holding a private dinner this evening, then a big football game tomorrow, a multi-state election on Tuesday…

You’re welcome!

– bob

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Powerful Sadness

Friends,

Listening to the Bluegrass station on Sirius on my way down the mountain this morning (“won’t have no more pain, ain’t gonna cry, when I go to bed this evenin’ just gonna curl up and die…” **sniff!** Tragic.) I had plenty of time to consider the car holding up the line. (Speaking of lines, did you know that Bluegrass music is almost completely obsessed with trains? Why not mules? Or perhaps corn liquor? The mind reels.)

The car holding up the line wasn’t a car at all. It was a Volkswagen Eurovan.

Styling by Kelvinator.

What ever happened to those things? I understood that they were okay drivers, if underpowered. The genius of communal speculation that is Wikipedia reports that they stopped selling in the states way back in 2003. This brings me to the saddest news of the week…

Isuzu has announced that they’re going to stop selling passenger vehicles in the United States. Their end date is a year from now but the worst part of all is you don’t even care.

Styling by committee.

How soon you forget about the mighty Isuzu Impulse. The diesel I-Mark. The fun and sporty Stylus!

Styling by some middle manager's nephew.

But most important of all were the Isuzu P’up/Chevrolet LUV twins. Just marvel at the flowing design… I’ll wait.

What may be the saddest part of this story, besides the crushing economic loss to the dealers and all the people who support them, would be the L.A. Times story itself. Clearly it would be difficult to provide analysis of the company’s failure so instead they interviewed David Leisure, the man who played Joe Isuzu on the teevee.

Yep. Journalism is dead. I think I’m gonna write a song about it.

Your pal,

bob

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Photo Blort!

Friends,

Here’s the reason why I ventured outside on Tuesday morning…

Steamy!

The snow caught in the tree bark was catching the sun and was turning to steam. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Of course, there was a little danger involved…

Icicle danger!

Not the ice daggers above, but the icy walkway below. Here’s a shot from immediately after I checked whatever hip padding I may or may not have…

Wuh?

Thank goodness my cellphone cushioned my fall. [btw, the replacement refurb is much better than the old one] Also by the way, I now wear stretchy tire chains on my shoes whenever I venture downstairs. They’re brilliant and you should try them. Highly (and also muchly) recommended.

And lastly, this is the project I’ve been working on lately. Yes dear friends, it’s a door. Some people had said during the last Christmas season that gift cards are lousy gifts. I beg to differ. Home Depot gift cards are always welcome around here…

Compartmentalize me.

Yeah, the stain isn’t quite right but wait for the tannins from the wood to work and start turning the wood yellow with age. Give it half a year. Heck, I’ve got the time.

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: Howdy socalmountains.com forum folks. Please drop a line in the comments to let everyone know who you are. Thanks for stopping by!

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From Our Secret Alpine Laboratory…

Friends,

You know how when water gets really cold it enters a solid state? And how it becomes very slippery after that state change? It’s going to be very exciting to go down the driveway…

What goes up...

…like a chute for flying across the street into my neighbor’s living room.

Another fine picture

This might have to be a Christmas card. Thoughts?

– bob

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Freakish Geek Nonsense Alert! – Webclip Icons

Friends,

Now that you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you must know that you can save bookmarks to favorite websites on your home screen (or another of nine screens, but that’s for another day). I’ve added new webclip icons to the famous bobtherieau.com site for your amusement. Just cruise to the page on your iPhone and hit the plus sign at the bottom of the screen. You’ll be asked what to do, so just click “Add to Home Page.” Glossy finish, rounded corners, it looks swell.

And for the rest of you, KCRW is giving away an iPod Touch every hour or so during their pledge drive this week. Donate to the station and get a chance to win! You know you love them. Give them money.

– bob

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Weather Alert!

From the paper of record:

The weather is so unpredictable.

“It is clam adn cloudy this morning. Today is predicted to be cloudy with highs in the low 40s. Tonight is predicted to be cloudy with a slight chance of showers and lows in the low 30s.”

It’s getting so you can hardly keep track of the weather around here, you know?

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: You knew it had to happen. Based on a suggestion from K8 and a concept stolen borrowed from The Beachwood Reporter, we’re inaugurating The Idyllwild Weather Clam. It’ll be easier to update once I figure out some tricky code, but it’s straight text courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Internet at the moment. Enjoy!

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A Little Late For Work

Friends,

I’d love to be a weatherman, as would you. While you’re working on your mission-critical widgets, wouldn’t you love to be wrong all the time and keep your job? Blatantly wrong. All of the weather widgets I check, from Yahoo! to The Weather Channel to Accuweather (tee hee) missed the snow this morning. Each one of them.

There was snow, ice, fog, and some windy wind thrown in for maximum fun this morning. In the Midwest and East, they see that and scoff. In Southern California, we flip our cars over with something that must amount to glee. I saw one this morning that I reported to the rescue personnel in person since the mobile phones weren’t working. I woke the firemen up, and friends, please feel free to throw away your Hot Firefighter Every Month calendars. There’s not a lot of glamour in half-asleep firemen pulling up their pants asking you if you know whether the driver is dead at 6:30 in the morning.

You’d have thought that the word would’ve got out by this afternoon, but nobody told the Volvo driver at the Keen Camp Summit. He seemed okay and was clambering out of a window with his briefcase when I drove by. A dozen spectators and helpful citizens were on his side of the road. Two underdressed and shivering families from the valley were conducting snowball fights on the other side. I dunno, a little callous?

By the way, Accuweather now says it’ll snow tomorrow. Good catch!

– bob

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U.S. of China – Puttin’ On The Feedbag

Friends,

Now that you’re restricted from reading this lovely mess by say, Websense, fire up your feedreaders and point them here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ajauntylittleblog. Let’s see if Mao’s Little Helper has stopped that.

Mouse to Cat—check.

– bob

UPDATE: (sounds like you’re striking back against the “crushing of dissent.” are you actually dissenting? -ed The truth is like a bouquet of flowers that smell bad! What’s the worry?)

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Monster Jamb

Friends,

My nephew and his staff invited me to America’s Finest Okay Joyless Awful Substandard** City to be his guest at a brazen display of carefully choreographed vehicular nuttiness. I’m referring, of course, to monster trucks.

We've arrived.

The circuit that the unnaturally huge truck owners belong to is well defined. The trucks themselves are brands since you can’t mention the series without Grave Digger popping up. If you haven’t perused the Hot Wheels aisle at Target in a while, you’ve surely missed the madness. Bad night for the guy running—at Qualcomm Stadium at Jack Murphy Field (barf) on the eve of the AFC Championship game in Foxboro—the truck called The Patriot.

When being a patriot is a bad thing.

You’ve never heard such booing. Even after the perky announcer guy implored the crowd to give the guy a break. “He’s from Santa Cruz…” Boo! “He’s a California boy…” Boo! “C’mon people…” Boo!

Chargers fans, it seems, are not the most discriminating bunch.

It turns out that the intermediary bits, the semi-final race heats, are deadly dull for even the six-year old demographic:

When do they jump again?

Things started picking up later during the “freestyle” event. Ninety seconds to crush as many cars and jump as high as possible for each truck.

Okay, this is more like it.

But after we’d seen a contender set his truck on fire, it was time to go. Good thing, too. It was after ten, my host was sleepy, and we’d seen all we needed to see. Rollovers, crashes, fire, jumps, we’d taken in that, hot dogs, and all the exhaust fumes we could stand.

Good times.

– bob

P.S. Remember Jose Jimenez, the comedy persona of Bill Dana, who was popular in clubs and on teevee in the 60s? I guess you’d have to be over 40 to recall this stuff, but who in the Chargers P.R. office has this much of a tin ear?

Don't touch that! It's J.B!

Here’s a piece of his TV Engineer bit to help explain what’s going on here. Even he gave up the bit for its perceived racism. Three decades ago.

** SUNDAY UPDATE: Las Chargitas lost to the Patriots this afternoon. Apparently the booing didn’t work.

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United States of China

Friends,

This site is now blocked by Websense at San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization. Actually, all sites hosted on the blogspot.com domain have been silenced. Other “social networking and personal journaling” sites have been disappeared as well. TypePad sites are among them, but there are a couple that missed the axe for now. I won’t name them and give the thugs ideas, though.

It’s disconcerting of course, but I worry about the greater message. Alternative and private opinion isn’t welcome at a place that some might consider progressive, and that’s a choice made by some anonymous individual. Was it us? Was it a Websense update that just automatically installed (which is likely since it happened on the 15th)? Was it an executive decision made to enforce parity with our ban on Facebook and MySpace? And this—will it make the place happier and more productive?

I’m not happy, if that’s any indication.

By the way, you can send this URL to yourself and give it a try: http://tinyurl.com/39fjs9 It’s a TinyURL for the giant link to this site through the YouHide proxy server. Here’s another one: http://tinyurl.com/26vbdk from SurfUnblocked. The nice thing about this one is that the advertising banner doesn’t seem to be that overwhelming. Proxy servers. Geez, it’s come to this.

Your pal,

bob

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Genius! – Microsoft Edition

Friends,

If there was ever an example to prove that I don’t know what I’m doing down at the Festival of Dirt, this is it. It’s complicated, so bear with me here…

There’s a fairly problematic machine in the mix down there. My predecessors had tried all sorts of idiotic tricks to make various flaky software packages work. Undocumented. Unauthorized. Non-standard reaching for marginal functionality. Workarounds are the norm for anyone who uses that machine, but the bill finally came due today. I had even implemented some of those insane fixes. Internet Explorer 7 stopped working, so I installed Firefox and let it go. The big problem is that some of our internal software now requires IE. Time to finally make it work.

  • Having uninstalled balky IE, I now needed to reinstall.
  • Use Firefox to download a new version of IE and run the installer.
  • Reboot.
  • IE 7 won’t run.
  • Check the DLLs. They’re set to load the Dependency Checker instead of registering themselves. Fix that. Still won’t run.
  • Reboot.
  • IE 7 still won’t run. Use Firefox again to download IE 6. Run installer. Error message says “setup has detected a newer version and will quit.”
  • Uninstall IE 7 and restart.
  • Run IE 6 installer again. “Processes requiring a restart have not completed. Installer will quit.”
  • Reboot.
  • Run IE 6 installer again, and again error message says “setup has detected a newer version and will quit.” Wha?
  • Check Start menu and notice that IE 7 is listed as the default web browser. What are the odds? Click on IE 7 and it runs. It runs!

In a nutshell, I uninstalled a piece of software, which then appeared and ran properly. What? Are you kidding me?

Absurd Microsoft shenanigans? Alright super genius Windows dudes, what happened here? Cripes!

– bob