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Aug. 30th, 2009
Shallow Thoughts
Aug. 30th, 2009 10:07 pmWhenever a Geico commercial comes on TV or radio, I change the channel. I shred their mailings unread. Way too much $ is being spent which ought to go to lowering premiums. And their ads are so annoying.
Got email from Radar saying to keep an eye out for email from Radar. She's program director for Silicon, I volunteered to be on panels.
Not going to BASFA meetings till football season is over.
Had dinner at the Hooters in Fremont. They have a hugely expanded menu since the first time I was in one of those places - back then all they had for food was wings and celery sticks. Now there's a 3-page menu. The parmesan garlic sauce for wings sounded good, but was way too sweet and salty. Many HD TV screens, I watched the Broncos give away the ball way too often, the Bears knew what to do with these gifts.
On several other screens was ESPN2 showing poker. Poker. I can't understand a card game as a spectator item at all, much less a sport. It is a card game, people. There is little skill required, absolutely no athleticism, and dead boring.
Almost as boring is golf. Golf at least requires skill and some athletic ability. But it takes all day to get through a game which contains maybe half an hour's worth of action. Pretty much like a low-scoring baseball game, that.
Got email from Radar saying to keep an eye out for email from Radar. She's program director for Silicon, I volunteered to be on panels.
Not going to BASFA meetings till football season is over.
Had dinner at the Hooters in Fremont. They have a hugely expanded menu since the first time I was in one of those places - back then all they had for food was wings and celery sticks. Now there's a 3-page menu. The parmesan garlic sauce for wings sounded good, but was way too sweet and salty. Many HD TV screens, I watched the Broncos give away the ball way too often, the Bears knew what to do with these gifts.
On several other screens was ESPN2 showing poker. Poker. I can't understand a card game as a spectator item at all, much less a sport. It is a card game, people. There is little skill required, absolutely no athleticism, and dead boring.
Almost as boring is golf. Golf at least requires skill and some athletic ability. But it takes all day to get through a game which contains maybe half an hour's worth of action. Pretty much like a low-scoring baseball game, that.
Busy Sunday
Aug. 30th, 2009 10:42 pmIt cooled down a lot today. Cool enough to fire up the big PC , answer some email from Thailand, install Quicken 2009 because BofA stopped downloading, with a note that they will only support this version as of yesterday. It still didn't download, probably they shut down for the weekend for the transition, or someone is asleep at the switch. Probably the latter, because I was able to do a web download.
Los Altos Ye Olde Towne Band concert this afternoon was excellent, the weather was perfect, I hit most of the high notes (and my lips are not happy about that), and the audience was very appreciative. They spelled my name wrong in the program, and put me down playing Baritone sax instead of baritone horn, but I'll get that fixed for next month. I'm just happy to have found such a fun group to rehearse and perform with. I love conductor John DeLoach's style, he's positive, great sense of humor, gives easy to read cues and if there's something in a piece which needs special attention, prior to starting the piece he'll walk over to the section in question and let them know what he's looking for. If there's an especially tough part, during rehearsal he'll warn the section which has the part (usually the trumpets) and make sure they're okay with giving it a try (they always are). I also like that we have women tuba players. During this concert John pointed out soloists and important sections after we played a piece. Best line of the afternoon, I think was him pointing out the front row (flutes, piccolos) and crediting them with having the most notes to play.
Home, changed out of my concert uniform, into cutoffs and a lightweight shirt, grabbed my camera and went to the east bay photo meetup, which was followed by a shoot at Shinn Park & Arboretum. I thought we were going to get to shoot models, but it turned out one of the organizers was doing a private shoot and merely invited us to be at the same place at the same time. There really isn't much to photograph there, some flowers and such, I decided to use the opportunity to see if my flash worked the way the manual said. Total fail. Everything was overexposed and off-color. Big WTF that the semi-pro Nikon D300 doesn't communicate TTL info with the $400 Nikon SB-800 flash. The next notch lower D80 works just fine. You would think the higher-end camera would work better, not worse. No usable photos this time out.
Saw a Hooters was on the way to the park, decided to drop in for Monday Night Football and wings. Had wings and buffalo shrimp with their new parmesan-garlic sauce. Too sweet & salty. I'll stick to their mild normal sauce. Excellent service, but the place was almost empty - odd for a sports bar this time of year. Fremont has no economy and just lost the auto plant, so maybe not a huge surprise.
Chatted with the parental units. Nothing new. They survived two rounds of children visits, now all is quiet.
Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt
Monday Night Football
Los Altos Ye Olde Towne Band concert this afternoon was excellent, the weather was perfect, I hit most of the high notes (and my lips are not happy about that), and the audience was very appreciative. They spelled my name wrong in the program, and put me down playing Baritone sax instead of baritone horn, but I'll get that fixed for next month. I'm just happy to have found such a fun group to rehearse and perform with. I love conductor John DeLoach's style, he's positive, great sense of humor, gives easy to read cues and if there's something in a piece which needs special attention, prior to starting the piece he'll walk over to the section in question and let them know what he's looking for. If there's an especially tough part, during rehearsal he'll warn the section which has the part (usually the trumpets) and make sure they're okay with giving it a try (they always are). I also like that we have women tuba players. During this concert John pointed out soloists and important sections after we played a piece. Best line of the afternoon, I think was him pointing out the front row (flutes, piccolos) and crediting them with having the most notes to play.
Home, changed out of my concert uniform, into cutoffs and a lightweight shirt, grabbed my camera and went to the east bay photo meetup, which was followed by a shoot at Shinn Park & Arboretum. I thought we were going to get to shoot models, but it turned out one of the organizers was doing a private shoot and merely invited us to be at the same place at the same time. There really isn't much to photograph there, some flowers and such, I decided to use the opportunity to see if my flash worked the way the manual said. Total fail. Everything was overexposed and off-color. Big WTF that the semi-pro Nikon D300 doesn't communicate TTL info with the $400 Nikon SB-800 flash. The next notch lower D80 works just fine. You would think the higher-end camera would work better, not worse. No usable photos this time out.
Saw a Hooters was on the way to the park, decided to drop in for Monday Night Football and wings. Had wings and buffalo shrimp with their new parmesan-garlic sauce. Too sweet & salty. I'll stick to their mild normal sauce. Excellent service, but the place was almost empty - odd for a sports bar this time of year. Fremont has no economy and just lost the auto plant, so maybe not a huge surprise.
Chatted with the parental units. Nothing new. They survived two rounds of children visits, now all is quiet.
Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt
Monday Night Football
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