./janella.com

Today’s blog entry was typed in the Yosemite Lodge, room 4109 Aspen building in Yosemite, California. It’s around 10:40 pm right now.

Today is my birthday. It has been a wonderful day. I don’t have access to the Internet here, at least not in the room, so I am typing this blog entry into Microsoft Word and will place it on the site later. And later is now, since you are reading these words at this moment.

We arrived in Yosemite late yesterday. We left Sunnyvale around 11:45 am, but not before Farrah and my mom sang happy birthday to me. Farrah bought me a huge chocolate chip cookie from Mrs. Fields, candles and frosting included! After blowing out the candles, going to Huong Lan and Starbucks, we headed off to Yosemite.

Coming in on the 120 route (West entrance) we were treated to a lot of snow and a view of valleys and waterfalls we haven’t seen before. The trek into Yosemite was through some high altitude and winding roads. Very high, hitting 4000 feet, and very winding—on par with some of the hairy stuff on Highway 1. We were trying to take the Southwest Entrance (which is Highway 140), but mistakenly thought 120 was the route we were thinking about. Oh well, it worked out great. We saw a lot of great snow and even saw two wolves on the way in! They were on the roadway, causing people to stop and stare. Luckily no one was stupid enough to get out of their car, or at least I think they weren’t.

We checked in late afternoon, getting a very nice room on the second floor. The room has two full beds, a bathroom, balcony, and surprisingly a television. Granted, the television only receives 5–6 channels, but we weren’t expecting one at all. We have been watching mostly the National Geographic Channel, which is on a religious kick this weekend, it being Easter weekend and all. The show we’ve been watching is called Quest for Truth. We watched episodes Quest for Noah’s Flood, King Solomon’s Tablet, and the ever-popular Quest for Hogzilla.

Getting to today’s events…

The morning started off slow for me. Farrah woke me up saying happy birthday and trying to get me up. She pried my eyes open by mentioning presents. Presents I got to open on my birthday were:

• Mike and Ikes
• Hershey’s Miniatures (nuts and regular)
• Superman/Batman Hardcover – covering the Supergirl saga
• I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown
• The Batman Handbook

When I post the photos you will be able to see that I still looked a little groggy. Farrah let me sleep a couple more hours.

We had breakfast at the local Yosemite Lodge cafeteria, where the food is so-so and the price is a little high. Convenience has its cost. We then took a trip to the Yosemite Village, where we scored some very good parking in the lot. At Yosemite Village we went to the Ansel Adams Museum, which we never visited. After looking around the Village more, we decided to head back up Highway 120. We noticed several places to stop off and take photos, but didn’t take the opportunity on our drive in.

We stopped by a riverbank and took some photos (see the feet photo), and then made our way up further for a valley-type shot. We were amazed at the number of people here this weekend, as it wasn’t this crowded the last three years we came. At least from what we remember, the park is usually sparse this time of year. Oh well, just have to deal, right?

After our Highway 120 trip, we headed back to Yosemite Village to get lunch at Degnan’s Deli. A couple of weird things happened:

1. A dog we ran into twice at Yosemite Village earlier, we ran into on Highway 120 as he was heading out of Yosemite!
2. After circling the parking lot once at Yosemite Village, we ended up with the exact same parking spot we had only two hours ago!

Degnan’s Deli was a good choice as the food was good. It was also a bad choice as the line and wait were very long. It took about an hour to get our sandwiches. Having a late lunch pushed our dinner plans back considerably, as we were going to have dinner in the Mountain Room Restaurant.

Dinner at the Mountain Room

The Mountain Room Restaurant is here at Yosemite Lodge, walking distance from our room. The restaurant is somewhat pricey because:

1. Their food is good
2. The view is good—well, during the daytime

We had a great late birthday dinner. Farrah had the Pork Roast—ever so tender—and I had the Lamb Shank—ever so tender as well. Each bite almost didn’t require thought to chew or even the ability to chew itself. The food just melted in your mouth.

We had to save room for dessert as well: bread pudding for Farrah, and two scoops of chocolate ice cream for me. Man, how many times have I used the word “chocolate” in this entry?

It is almost 11:15 pm right now, as I’m finishing up these last thoughts. Farrah is sleeping soundly. The room is nice and toasty, and the view from the window into the dark night is wonderfully lit by the full moon.

Tomorrow we plan to see a waterfall or two, hopefully around sunrise. As for today—and actually this month, as my birthday was celebrated with Rex’s on March 12th—it has been a great birthday this year.

I love you all and thank you for making my birthday this year memorable.

I haven’t posted anything personal lately.  I’ve been a bit busy with little things here and there.  Plus most of the things I want to vent about deals with work.  If you’ve read some of my past posts you’ll know about reasons for my hesitation to vent about work.

Farrah and I have been planning our concerts to see this year.  So far on the agenda there is U2, Tori Amos and Jack Johnson.  The Tori ticket buy was just as hectic as the U2 buy, as described earlier.  Jack Johnson went without a hitch because it is a general admission event.

Last week, March 12th, we went to Santa Cruz to celebrate Rex’s and my birthday.  We had some great ribs, and crab for those who didn’t want ribs.  I packed away my share of ribs, stopping at 9 - though I could have continued.  There are some digital pictures of the dinner, but I want to wait and get the film photos developed as well.

Gordon’s birthday was also this month, the 9th I believe.  Sorry for the check mix up Gordon.  Guess I was thinking of those [Girl Scout Cookies] that Tessie still needs to send!

Ok, I couldn’t stand just having the Spring Fairy theme as an option.  So I implemented the [Theme Switcher] plug-in for WordPress.  In order to switch the look for [janella.com] simply choose from the pull-down menu on the right.  The default theme for now is the Spring Fairy theme.    Janella Default is the theme with the rotating banner images.  WordPress Default is the standard theme.  I’ll be adding more, tailoring the theme for  [janella.com] when possible.

Well, spring is just around the corner.  So I decided to use a spring theme on the site.  Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.  It’s a girlie-type theme, and since I’m the one who mostly updates the site I probably wouldn’t normally use this theme.  But it’s springtime.

I’ve been thinking of allowing different themes on the site.  What is a theme?  Well, for WordPress purposes a theme gives a blog a certain look.  WordPress has a theme changer plug-in that will allow a visitor to see the site in various ways.  I haven’t had a chance to work on implementing it, but I think I will in the future.

Anyway, back to doing some other work.  Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

It looks as if [Friendster] has joined the blogging craze! I just did a test blog at http://giron.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/ It seems simple enough.

The blogging engine is provided by [Six Apart] who also does [TypePad] and recently bought [livejournal.com] It looks like Six Apart is trying to take over all of the blogging community!

• The deal with Friendster provides them with a very good user base and exposure to revenue
• TypePad is a pretty successful subscription service
• livejournal.com is probably not too far behind in becoming (partially probably) a paid service. I think they will probably use livejournal.com more as a test environment, beta testing a few things out on that community then porting those changes over to TypePad and perhaps Friendster, depending on how that deal is structured.

All I have to say is that it’s interesting.

I haven’t been feeling too well, especially since last night. I had that itch behind my nose feeling on last Saturday. Sunday it was the same as well. I took my Claritin but no use. I think it’s a cold, because others at my work (in my row!) are sick. Great.

Visit the [Baby Name Wizard] for a visual historical look at your first name’s use. Just enter your name in the upper left corner, next to the flashing cursor. You will need to launch the link in Internet Explorer as it requires Java and some other Internet Explorer aspects. At least I wasn’t able to use it with FireFox. Link provided by Steven.

Insight / joke forwarded by Tage (and worth sharing):

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

• "House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa."
• "Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."

A student asked, “What gender is ‘computer’?” Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether “computer"should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that “computer” should definitely be of the feminine gender (“la computer”), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is impossible to understand for everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval;
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

(No chuckling… this gets better!)

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (“el computer”), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem;
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The men won.

… for Latin American Spanish (la computadora). In European Spanish, it is masculine (el ordenador).

When I found out the weblog wasn’t resolving, I looked on [wordpress.org] for answers. There I found a new version of Wordpress available. I downloaded and installed it. Now the thumbnails included in some posts (mainly the reviews) are not appearing. Hmmm… need to figure out how to fix this problem.

Oh well, at least the site is up and running again.

The weblog has been down most of the day due to database issues. Hopefully they’re resolved now.

Well, I’m no longer an AT&T Wireless customer. I’ve made the switch to Verizon. It wasn’t as painless as the [previous experience] for Farrah’s phone, but I think it went as smooth as possible.

The main selling points with Verizon for me were (1) the good rating for Nationwide reception, (2) the good rating for customer service, and (3) it wasn’t Sprint or AT&T. I’ve never considered T-Mobile or Cingular for service. I don’t have a good feeling about them, though Dave is on T-Mobile and he finds it good for his use.

Of course I wanted the latest and greatest phone. Problem was the Verizon stores don’t get them for a couple of months after their release, but they are available online. The phone I wanted was the [LG VX8000]. I wanted this particular phone because (1) it was new, (2) it was bigger than my current phone - which to me is a little small, and (3) it has a color screen. I didn’t necessarily want to take pictures with a phone, but it seems almost impossible to find a phone that doesn’t take pictures.

I tried to order the phone online, along with another phone for my mom. I kept running into a problem with porting over the two phones. It was ok to port a single phone/single phone number, but the ordering flow didn’t accommodate moving over two or more phones. Time call and test their customer service.

I got a really nice sales rep on the phone who understood what I was trying to do, and was able to answer any question I had without a single hesitation. Do this phone include Nationwide long distance? Yes. Do the IN-Network minutes apply to all phones in the family plan? Yes. How long does it take for the phone to be delivered to me? Two days by FedEx. Again, so the IN-minutes aren’t restricted to the primary phone? Yes, that’s correct. Simple.

A day and a half later the phones arrived at my work. I had them up and running later that night. I did run into a little delay on the phone in activating them. I was on hold for about a 30 minutes with apparently no end in site. But my subsequent call to customer services was another good experience.

I wanted to analyze our phone usage for all three phones to determine if were were on the right plan. The rep was helpful in suggesting the right minute plan and also said I could save a little more by being under the family plan. And if it didn’t work out switching was too difficult.

What this whole experience has boiled down to is just good interaction with a large company. As long as this level keeps up, and the phone services is good, I don’t see switching phone companies for a while. But if that comes to that I need to I do like that you can bring your phone number with you now. No more telling family and friends, “Hey my new number is….”

More random thoughts:

Here’s a list of things I’ve heard said or were said to me:

• "It's good to see some CEO's here today." - Said by a priest to his parishioners (as relayed by Evan - because I don't really go to church myself). CEO means Christmas Easter Only church goers.
• "Stuck in the pad." - Said by anonymous. Literal meaning: a fart that is trapped in a menstrual pad. Other meaning: thoughts that can't be converted to sentences properly (see also brain-fart).
• "No, there is no room for advancement." - Said by my supervisor, regarding movement into a different position.

Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5)

Quick Shot: A blind masseur is more than he seems.

What I liked about the movie:  There are about three or four subplots in this film, woven together with Zatoichi in the middle.  It’s done very well.  Plus you can rarely go wrong with Beat Takeshi.  Just remember, it does get a little bloody in this film.

What I didn’t like: It took me a while to get adjusted to the cinematography/look of the film.  It was very ‘clean’ and modern, not helping to take the viewer back in time which made it distracting.  Once the action started it was an after thought.  The dance number - yeah, there is a dance number - was a little out of place for me as well.  After reading the [IMDB trivia] about this movie, it made a little more sense.