If you haven’t heard, Late Night with Conan O’Brien is coming to town. His show will be filming at the Orpheum Theatre from April 30 to May 4th. You can find more details through this link.
I’ve only been to one television show taping in my life. It was back in the 80’s when I went to a trip to LA. The show I was lucky to see: Gimme a Break. Yeah, I don’t remember much about the episode that was taped. All I can recall is that it was well rehearsed and pretty much lasted 20 or so minutes.
BossaNova asked me to look at some web hosting companies for him. The rates on his account were going to increase over 50% I believe - I’m not good with math. He called in to complain. To appease him off the bat they offered to keep his pricing the same as his current hosting price. But at that point he was upset that it was necessary to call in at all.
I have personally experienced the same type of tactic. AT & T would do the same thing when my DSL passed each contract year. They would send me email saying my DSL price was going up unless I committed to another year. Then one year they decided not to contact me or offer me any special pricing. I think it was because they noticed my account was very old and that I had services they offered at a premium price without any additional cost on my part (e.g. a static IP). I would need to call in, being on hold anywehre from 10 to 30 minutes, just to get my pricing back down. Finally I got fed up with the customer service and crappy speed and went to cable.
So, I told BossaNova there are many good web hosts out there with many more features than his current one offers. I volunteered to do the legwork for him. This also gave me an opportunity to use Google’s Spreadsheet.
I find the free service easy to use. I was able to put the data in (hopefully) a presentable format. The service only freaked out on me once, saying I lost my Internet connection and any changes I made weren’t saved. Good prompt warning message as the only modification I made was in a single cell. If you have an Internet connection and don’t have access to Microsoft Office but need a simple spreadsheet program, I’d give Google Spreadsheet a try.
So, BossaNova, here is the spreadsheet for you (and anyone else I suppose). I may update it again after this post, but it will be accessible at the same link.
I hope you are able to find a good host out of the ones I have listed. From the list, I have personally hosted websites at four of the six companies. I recommend them all. But for me lately, disc space offered hasn’t been one of the features I’ve been looking at since I host my photos on other services. If this is the case for you, and if you like good service and reliablity, I’d go with Dotable. I’ve only been with them for about a month right now, but it’s been pretty smooth sailing. You can see their uptime server stats at http://status.dotable.com/.
I was listening the TWIT podcast this past Tuesday. Leo mentioned a site called Tumblr which sounded interesting by his description. (He also writes about it on his Vox page here). From their FAQ, Tumblr describes themselves as:
To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.
Setting up a Tumblr page is quick in easy to do. What do I put on there? I’ve been posting photos, stories, sites and other small things on there that I want to revisit or share that I really don’t want post a lengthy blog entry about. It’s pretty easy to post those items through a simple bookmark link you add to your browser. For some reason it doesn’t feel redundant having a Tumblr page and a Vox account. Not sure why this might be the case.
So visit my Tumblr page when you get a chance. Some of the links I post might be NSFW (Not Safe For Work). I’ll try to denote when it is so.
Baron Papanoida aka George Lucas
…you can do anything you want.
I usually don’t go to StarWars.com, but I received a spam message and decided to check it out. I saw the little figure to the right and thought it bore a resemblance to Ol’ Georgie himself. I guess I was right.
Eagle-eyed fans watching Revenge of the Sith may have noticed George Lucas’ first-ever Star Wars cameo as the blue-faced Baron Papanoida waiting outside the Coruscant Opera House. What some may not realize, however, is that the entire Lucas enclave – Katie, Amanda, and Jett Lucas – also made brief appearances in the movie, immortalized now for the first time as Hasbro action figures!
For $26.99 (on sale), you too can own the Lucas Family!
Tigger has, as of this writing, twenty-four friends. Twenty-four friends? Yes. He has about nineteen more friends than I have on //LJ; eighteen more friends than I have on //Vox; and three more friends then on //360.
If you deciphered the above comments, then you know that Tigger has a social network page. Check it out at //Tigger’s page. And there is also //Dogster if you happen to have a dog.
Now I won’t blog on behalf of Tigger to often. These sites seem well suited to find out more about issues facing pet lovers, as well as sharing memories of those who love us unconditionally. I think that type of niche community site is better suited to finding answers, then say a MySpace page.
Anyway, Tigger is on the Internet. Next thing you know my Mom will have her own blog!?!?!?
The weekend started with a slight dilema. On Friday night I was surfing //bayarea.com looking for things to do on Saturday. I stumbled upon a blog notice saying that Ms. Lauryn Hill was playing the //Catalyst on Saturday!
For those who don’t know, the Catalyst is a nice small place in downtown Santa Cruz. I’ve seen several concerts there, including Maria McKee, the Lemonheads, and Pearl Jam. The combination of a good performers and a small venue is always exciting. The problem: we needed to get up early for the AIDS Walk in San Francisco.
Farrah and I went back and forth on the problem, but ended up not going to see Lauryn Hill. It looks like it may have been a good decision according to a //review of the concert. But it would have been nice to see a good performer in a small venue.
The AIDS Walk was a trek for someone who doesn’t walk long distances, like me! The day started early with the bus taking off at 8:15 am sharp from Mountain View. It was cloudy when we hit Golden Gate Park, but the sun broke out by the time we started the walk at 10:45 am.
It took a while to get out of the starting gate, but once we hit the 1/4 mile mark the crowd started to thin a little. The walk lasted two and a half hours, with Farrah and I stopping at 2 of the 3 rest areas. Two things I learned from the walk: (1) I’m out of shape, and (2) there’s Bison in Golden Gate Park!
By the way, it’s not too late to donate on behalf of Farrah or I. To do so:
Farrah and I are doing the AIDS Walk in San Francisco next Sunday. Care to donate (sponsor us) on our walk?
Click here to donate for Farrah.
Click here to donate for me.
Now, online donations are a minimum of $25. If you wish to make a donation by check, please make it out to ‘AIDS Walk San Francisco’. Cash donations are welcome as well.
Oh to live in the City and have an opportunity to see special events such as Bjork playing DJ. Oh well. [Source]
It must be time to stop using AT&T services all together, not just DSL access:
The new policy says that AT&T -- not customers -- owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service -- something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.
This is scary stuff, isn’t?
Read more at //sfgate.com
I haven’t been busy, but busy enough I suppose. I’m still unemployed at the moment, with optimistic hopes on one of two positions I interviewed for this past month. Right now it’s a bit of a waiting game, so have a good thought for me.
Hail Hail
It hailed here in Sunnyvale today, around 4:30 PM-ish. It lasted a good minute or two.. Here is a photo of the results:
This almost makes me want to head up to Lake Tahoe to see the snow. But I hear chains are required and it takes about two hours just to reach the summit from the base. Now that would be a pretty long drive.
Good Eats and Other Finds
Have you ever visited //Yelp.com?
Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great - and not so great - in your neighborhood and beyond. You already know that asking friends is the best way to find restaurants, dentists, hairstylists, and anything local. Now, Yelp makes it fast and easy to make and receive real reviews from real people. From San Francisco to New York City, and Madison to Mesquite, Yelp is everywhere!
Yelp doesn’t just review places to eat, but reviews on things to do and places to visit. You have to love a site that offers various views on the //Golden Gate Bridge.)
The site is similar to //Judy’s Book and //Yahoo!’s Local pages, but appears to be more active for the Bay Area than the former site, and not as spartan looking as the latter. You can see //my Yelp page here. I’ve written a few reviews on places I’ve been to in Hawaii and Oregon, providing some photos of food I’ve tasted. I hope to write a little more.
I love being able to share my viewpoint on a place, but I think I lack the appropriate words to convey the joy of going to a particular place to eat. I do use the site as a resource, looking for other places to try. But sites like Yelp - remember how active Friendster once was - might slowly die if people do not continue to contribute reviews. Yelp appears to be very active from the postings on their front page, so I’m optimistic it can survive. So consider joining Yelp, if you want to share some thoughts with others.
Wedding Photo
Farrah and I got our wedding photos! I’m slowly posting them to view, so they will soon be up on //my Flickr and //my Smugmug pages. I’ll send out an email when they are all posted.
A little clip from Family Guy. Good for a Friday laugh.
