The never ending quest to stop Junk Mail and unwanted direct Mail

Thanks to the CAN-SPAM Act (and better spam filters), junk email has become less of a problem over the years, however physical junk mail is still a huge problem and it can be very painful to get companies to stop sending you junkmail, especially if you live in an apartment and you get all the prior tenant's mail.

Many catalogues and mailings have ways to remove yourself from their mailing lists, sometimes it is listed on the mailing itself, or sometimes you'll need to do a search, it is time consuming, and sometimes it doesn't work, but is a good start.

Here are some resources I've found to help stop the junk mail.
CatalogChoice.org
DMAchoice.org
DirectMail.com
Stop Junk Mail and Save 1 Million Trees Annually
Junk Mail - Fight back! Get junkmail out of your life for good!

We really need legislation like the CAN-SPAM Act for junk mail and direct mail, but until then the tips and sites listed can slow down the endless waste that comes through the post office.

Costa Rica through cheapOair - review and warning

We just got back from our Honeymoon in Costa Rica and had a great time, despite problems with the company we booked our flight and rental car through. I had never heard of this company before cheapOair, but when I was trying to book a flight to Costa Rica, their prices were less than the rest of the well known travel sites such as expedia and travelocity. So I booked the flight, LAX (Los Angeles) with a layover in MIA (Miami) and finally to LIR (Liberia). Everything was fine, except I don't like American Airlines and won't be flying with them again if I can avoid it because of problems getting an assigned seat at LAX, but that's another story. Anyways, relatively smooth trip until we landed in Liberia and tried to find our rental car. We booked a car through cheapOair and I choose the cheapest option for a rental car, this company called "NU" turns out that there is no rental car company called "NU" in Liberia and they are probably in the capitol city of San Jose instead. So we just land in Costa Rica and about 20 different people are trying to rent us a car and nobody has heard of this company NU, "You want a new car?." After trying to call customer service with no luck, and the phone calls costing $30 we give up and choose Thrifty, and instead of costing $250 for the trip our car cost over $800! That kinda started the trip off on the wrong foot to say the least. With the difference in price I should have just gone with a more reputable company instead of this cheapOair in the first place and I would have saved money and hassle. I'll never make the mistake of booking with cheapOair again.

Many people have had similar experiences, just see these pages:
cheapoair.pissedconsumer.com
ComplaintsBoard

Space Strategy Games Sector

Recently I discovered the site: SpaceSector.com, Adam Solo has really created a great site for blogs, reviews, and a community forum for the types of games I love to play: 4x space strategy games! Since the early days of my gaming persuits my favorite games were space strategy games. For the Amiga I played Overlord and Stellar Conflict, for the PC I loved Star Reach and for the genesis (and other platforms) I loved playing Star Control. Probably my favorite game of all time is MOO 2 (Master of Orion 2), it was completely addictive and has infinite playability. Newer games that come close to the enjoyment of MOO2 include Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations. I am especially grateful to Adam for writing a great blog post about Astriarch: Ruler of the Stars, my own space statrategy game that I've developed in Silverlight and am in the progress of releasing on other platforms.

If you love space games as much as I do, head on over to SSGS!

Who Caused the Mortgage Meltdown Financial Crisis

My coworkers were discussing the housing bubble and the financial crisis today and I had heard lots of talk about different things causing the crisis, from deregulation to credit default swaps and everything in-between. I found a couple of good articles on the subject:

This article appeals to my democratic sensibilities:
The Real Cause of the Mortgage Crisis: Conservative Opposition to Sensible Financial Standards

It has some compelling arguments about the Bush administration failing to act back in 2004, but in my view this crisis is far too large to simply blame the Republicans.

I think this article from FactCheck.org is much more fair laying the blame:
Who Caused the Economic Crisis? (FactCheck.org)

Some of the deregulation of the banking industry goes back to the Clinton administration yet the crisis was further enabled by the Bush administration's failure to regulate the mortgage-backed securities market. Of course it wasn't just deregulation that caused the crisis, it was Americans buying houses they couldn't afford and irresponsibility and greed on the part of Wall street that has caused the economy to tank for the last two or three years.

It is frustrating that it seems that hard-working american families have to pay the price for Wall Street's greed and there has been no bailout for the middle class, just billions of dollars of the taxpayer's money going to line the pockets of the rich bankers and investors that got us into this mess.

In my opinion this crisis should show us that Government intervention into the economy is necessary, without oversight, checks and balances, and regulation, basic human greed will outweigh personal ethics and companies will do anything in their power to make money. It's time for the American people to stand up and take back the government from lobbyists and greedy corporations! Vote with your hearts and don't buy into this two party system where both sides of the fence are equally corrupt, doing whatever it takes to be re-elected. Electing President Obama was a start, but we need to get involved like we did in the 2008 election, come together as one country instead of bickering between Republicrats and Democrans to solve the important problems that face our generation such as Wars, Healthcare, Poverty and Global Warming.

House Hunting

I've been starting a search for a house recently, I've been using this nice site: http://www.redfin.com

It has a really nice user interface and is pretty snappy.

Tammy's dad (Darrold) is pretty experienced with buying houses and here is a list he gave me for big ticket items to look for when viewing houses:

• Copper Piping
• Tile Roof
• Double paned (or newer) windows
• Hardwood floors
• Main water line to the street (has it been recently replaced?)
• Blockwall in backyard (or is it a wood fence, blockwalls are expensive to build)
• Patio / Covered
  
• Hot Water Heater (how new is it? what shape is it in?)
• Raised Foundation (slab foundation is cheaper but can have more problems and is expensive to repair)
• Central Heat / Air (what condition is the A/C in?)
  
• Landscaping
  

Surgery for myself and my computer

Yesterday I had surgery to remove a piece of bone that was loose in my knee. The history of this injury is long and perhaps a bit uninteresting but I'm going to share it anyways.
It started during a skiing trip in Tahoe when I was in High School, it was the end of the day and I was tired and thought I could do a little jump but I turned in the air and somehow landed with my right ski going uphill and at that point my knee swelled up and the ride back to Santa Rosa in the car was pretty miserable.
The second serious injury was when I was working in San Francisco for Landor Associates and a couple of us were kicking a soccer ball around at an off site party. I planted my foot and turned and heard my knee pop, this time it was really bad, I was taken to an urgent care in San Francisco because the swelling was so bad they drained some of it from my knee, which was very unpleasant. I suspect that it was this injury which broke off the bone that I had removed yesterday, since that time (which I think was about 7 years ago), every so often the bone would slip out of it's place within my knee and it would be very painful, but I could push it back down into it's hiding spot and it would be ok. I think because that injury was Worker's Compensation, the doctors just kinda pushed me through the process, at that point I didn't know that I had this large piece of bone floating around in my knee.
The most recent injury to my knee happened while practicing the Japanese martial art: Aikido where once again my kneed popped and swelled up. Months after many x-rays, MRIs and Doctors apointments I finally got the surgery (The HMO run-around is a topic for another blog post) and now I'm happilly recovering at home. This recovery is almost like a vacation for me because I've been insanely busy at work lately and am enjoying "Working from home," catching up on TiVo, Facebook, Blogging and other things that some of my coworkers do while "working."

In a related topic, the day before my surgery I moved my computer downstairs so that I could work from home without going up and down the stairs all the time. While moving my computer I heard a sound of a light clanging around in the box but didn't think much of it because there are some small peices that make noice on the system when I move it. Last night when I went to power on the system it gave me an error in the bootup sequence, something about CMOS or BIOS checksum failed which I'd never seen before, I went into the BIOS and checked for anything obviously amuck, but didn't notice anything glaring. Attempting to continue past the checksum error the system refused to boot up giving some RAID error. I then realized that the BIOS wasn't detecting my primary hard-drive and then proceeded to perform some surgery of my own on my system. I quickly found the cause of the noise, somehow a metal drive mount had come loose and was sitting on top of my main HD, I removed the offending metal piece (which incidentially I wasn't able to find where it had come from), and tried to boot up my system. After a bit of tinkering it looked like the BIOS was set for RAID (which I don't have), so I disabled the RAID settings and my drive was detected and the computer booted up sucessfully, what a relief! Somehow it seems that the metal peice must have caused the BIOS to reset back to factory defaults, I'm just lucky that it didn't fry my motherboard. The strangest thing to me about all this is that my Computer needed surgery at the same time I did.

Barack Obama 2008

It has been a great 2008 with Obama winning the presidency this November the 4th, we the American people have voted in this new change in Washington and I am ready to do my part in this great stuggle of our time.

Thanks to Barack Obama for being the shining beacon of hope in our lives and us for having the strenghth and wisdom to elect him today.

Amtrak Surfliner Trip to San Diego

This last weekend we traveled down to San Diego, instead of choosing to cram into a car and sit in traffic on I-5, we took Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner, it was fun, relaxing, and not too expensive (about $60 round trip per person). I would definitely do it again, we enjoyed some cheese and crackers that we brought along with us (mmmmm.... brie cheese) and bought some wine and beer from the cafe car to go with it. We picked the train up at Chatsworth station and it was a pretty 3 1/2 hour ride into San diego along the coast. I really like the train and I'm going to have to consider it for more of my trips, perhaps take it up north the next time I go.

Free AJAX Web Chat

Conversive, Inc. (where I work as a Sr. S/W Engineer in Malibu), is a leading provider of Customer Self-Service Solutions.We've just released the Beta of our newest application: Conversive Chat, which is an AJAX-enabled Web Chat system that is easy to setup and add to your site. It's ideal for providing live, web-based customer service, but you can use it for anything you want. It even includes an FAQ manager that can learn FAQs based on your conversation. Try it out and let us know what you think!



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A Great Day

The last day of the first month of 2007 will be a day long remembered for me, because it was my big day in court for my third traffic ticket within a year. The theme of 2006 was my propensity to get traffic tickets in Los Angeles; I got three moving violations: the first two were within a week of each other in January of 2006 when I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and into my current place, and the final one was a California rolling stop I was sited for late one early October evening.

Well, I was really dreading my court date and was pretty sure I would get the point on my driving record because I'd already taken traffic school for the two previous tickets. In L.A. (perhaps also in other areas) they allow you to take a 12 hour, in-person traffic school (also called "Second-chance" traffic school) if you have a second ticket within 18 months and you request it. Anyways, it turns out that the officer who cited me didn't show up for my trial and I was sectioned off with about three other people who's cases were dismissed for that reason, then they told us our bail money would be refunded and let us go! Oh my god! What a relief, this is enough for me to become religious! I have been driving super carefully, I obey all traffic laws and posted speed limits, and I will continue to do so - as long as I can. If you are driving on Mulholland or Las Virgenes / Malibu Canyon Road and get stuck behind a Corolla that is going at or under the speed limit, give me some room and enjoy the scenery, I'm just going to keep obeying the speed limits.

Thank you God, Allah, almighty, Karma, or whatever is responsible for this wonderful day!

As Promised: Lamborghini Shots

I'm finally into my new room, not quite settled in, I haven't setup my phone line, and the only space on the floor is a path from my door to my bed and to the closet. This weekend (on Friday) I was at the Laugh Factory and the comics were really funny, but the last comic to come out was Dave Chappelle! It was really awesome, the whole crowd stood up and cheered for him, it was surreal for me, having seen all the episodes of his show it felt like I knew him personally and was a good friend of his. After the show I shook his hand and said "Thanks for showing up Dave, It's nice to meet you," then he said "It's nice to meet you too." and then he kinda made his exit because lots of people were swarmed around him. Anyways, Dave Cheppelle seems like a really cool guy, and very down to earth for someone who's "Rich Biatch!"

In my last post I told you about how I saw a group of Lamborghinis parked outside the RedRobin in Calabasas and said I would post a link to the photos I snapped of them, so here goes, feel free to drool and post comments!
Lamborghinis

Greeting Another Year

I just got back from a very fun-filled trip up to Northern California to visit my family for Christmas and New Years, I can't believe 2005 is over, it went by faster than imagineable (I think it's a sign of getting older). This post is really shaking the dust off of my Ghost Town of a Blog, I figure starting 2006 off with a post is a good way.
What's new, let's see...
I'm finally moving out of my outrageously priced 1 bedroom apartment in Calabasas to a room in a house, so I'll save lots of money in rent, but now I've gotta downsize lots of my stuff, washer and dryer and refridgerator, and lots of furniture.

I had a great day today, sunday 8th of Jan. 2006, going out for a nice late lunch at La Salsa in Calabasas Commons, and then watching King Kong later on. The highlight for me was that I got pictures of 7 lamborghinis all parked outside of the Red Robbin in Calabasas, I setup a flickr acct. (which I was resisting for quite some time) to upload the pics, hopefully I'll post the link to my shots shortly.

The New Year and More San Andreas

It's been quite a while since my last post, and lots has been happening in the land of San Andreas. I now own an abandoned airstrip in the desert outside of Las Venturas (Las Vegas area). At the airstrip is a huge hangar that I can store cars and planes in, it generates up to $8,000, and lots of cool vehicles now spawn there including a jetpack, a transport helicopter (I have yet to find how to get the apache to spawn there), a WWII type fighter plane, and most fun of all is a Harrier fighter plane (called a "Hydra" in the game, it has vertical takeoff and landing and fires missles!). I've had quite a lot of fun flying around San Andreas in my Harrier, turning on hover mode and unleashing volleys of missles into the streets, what's cool is when you have three stars (wanted level) from causing chaos in the Harrier, other millitary jets come after you and start firing missles at you so you have to be careful and shoot them down first. Other fun things I've been playing with in the game include: Gambling in the casinos of Las Venturas (slots, video poker, roulette, and blackjack), and just last night I discovered a bar in San Fiero that has a pool table you can play against the computer or even two players. The depth of the game never ceases to amaze me, and being able to still discover new things to do in the game after putting in countless hours is evidence of that fact.

Well, happy 2005! May the new year bring you and I sucess and fortune, and may all our Malibu beach house wishes and Ferrari dreams come true!

Pimping San Andreas

I just bought Grand Theft Auto San Andreas the other day and it's gotten me completely addicted to the game. Some of the really cool improvements to Vice City include: more RPG feel (you have strength, respect, fat, etc... stats and you have to eat every so often or you loose energy and muscle), you can get your haircut, change all your clothes, get a tatoo, and work out at the gym to get buff. I wanted to be able to afford some of the real estate around Los Santos (the L.A.-like area), but it was all 10K and above and I only had a little over a thousand, and I wanted to get some quick cash and didn't know how I was going to do it because the missions weren't making me rich quick. Then I was exploring around Downtown Los Santos and I found this old belvedere looking car that I got into and it was a pimping car which I could do pimping missions in. The pimping missions are very lucrative, every one you do in a row adds another $300 to the cash you get every hooker you pickup (the first time it's $300, then $600, then $900, etc...).
Another thing that's cool is if you get the 10 pimps in a row goal (in addition to all the cash you get) , the game tells you that prostitutes will now pay you to be with them.

L.A. Rain and Crunching Snails

Thank god for rain in Los Angeles, the air is clean, the pollution is washed down the drain and you just feel better throughout the day. Listening to the rain is soothing, and makes you want to just sit by the fire and listen to the sound of the rain droping on the roof and the windows of your cabin up in the woods. Of course, it's really nice when you can just observe the rain from inside your cozy fortress, but when you have to go out and brave the elements it's another story, accidents caused by morons who don't know how to drive in the rain and the resulting traffic that congests the 10, the 405, and the 101 make it somewhat more difficult to get anywhere.
Another disadvantage of the rain is it brings up all the snails and worms who want to get a drink but not drown. If the dammed things would just know not to be in the dark and in the middle of the path to take out the trash I wouldn't have to kill an innocent snail, mearly crossing the asfault to get to the other side of the parking lot. The sound of a shoe against a snail's shell rates pretty high up there with fingernails against a chalkboard, and after you realize that that loud crunching noise was just some poor snails last thought before being gouged and punctured by it's own shell, while trying to wipe off the remains from your shoe you can't help but want to say a buddhist prayer to somehow release yourself from the bad karma brought on by the crushing.

Drunk and Beligerant Rude People at the Ford Ampitheater

Last night I went to see a Flamenco show at the Ford Ampitheater, if you haven't seen Flamenco dancing, you've gotta check it out, fast guitar fingerpicking and strumming, violin and rich vocals accompany the equally fast footwork of the dancers tapping away as they gracefully move around the stage. Last night's performers were very talented and were apparently world-renoun Flamenco dancers and musicians.
After arriving a little late, we sat next to this older couple that was sloshed and kept talking through the whole performance, at one point before intermission someone behind us gave them a sharp "SHHHHH!" and they got a little quieter. After intermission they unfortunately and eventually found their way back to their seats, and they proceded with their obnoxious chit-chatting during the performance, and now the woman was clapping off beat and singing to the music. Being that we didn't come to the Flamenco show to hear these two, at one point I turned my head to the couple and gave them a "SHHHH!", and then the lady looked at me and said "NO!", and then I asked her politely "Please be quiet" and then after another "NO, I won't", a little thrown off-guard I said "Please show some respect". Well, I immediately regretted it, because then the lady started clapping even louder and being more annoying, and a couple of people in front of her also told her to be quiet, and one lady got up and moved saying "You are a bitch!" as she left. After that I started hearing the old guy grumbling things like "He said Shut-up to you? I'll knock him out." and "You don't say shutup to a woman.", for the rest of the show I did my best to ignore them untill towards the end the guy started yelling in my direction somthing like "Hey you! You appologize to my girlfriend! That was really rude to say shut-up to her." and of course when I tried to tell him that I just said "Please be quiet" he couldn't hear me so finally I gave him the universal index finger over the lips gesture, indicating that I wanted to hear the rest of the show and didn't want to shout over the music like he was doing so that his old-ass ears could hear me. When he finally got up from his seat and joined his girlfriend towards the exit of the theater I was happy that I didn't have to worry about this drunk beligerant asshole and his rude insensitive bitch yelling more shit at me as we left the theater.
When we were walking through the parking lot I saw him checking out the crowd as if he was looking for me, and I was thinking I might have to show him a little judo, maybe a throw or two a choke hold or something, but as soon as he saw me, he turned and walked towards his car, "That's right old fart, I look a little bigger when I'm standing up! That's right...keep walking." I thought.

Napping

I took a nap today for about an hour, and now I've decided I need to nap more often!
I've been staying up way too late for the past week and have been trying to catch up on sleep (staying up late writing this blog entry doesn't help either), but I think the nap in the middle of the day equates to about twice as much normal (night) sleep.
You know that you're not getting enough sleep when every morning you are singing the tune of "I'm so tired" by the Beatles...and can't quite wake up without that shower and morning cup of coffee, well...at least that has been my morning "tiredness" guage.

Streets of L.A. and the Line 6 FBV Shortboard

I recently bought the Line 6 Shortboard to go with my new Amp, it is a really great addition, and now I've been playing my guitar lots more and playing with the Wah pedal. The FBV Shortboard unlocks something like 32 extra amp models/effects to play with too...at first I bought the Line 6 Floorboard model, which doens't work with my Spider II series Line 6 amp. The Shortboard is only $20 more, so I'm actually glad the floorboard didn't work with my amp so that I could get the FBV Shortboard footswitch. Line 6 definitely needs to get a better naming convention for products, the floorboard box says "Works with all Line 6 digital amps", and the FBV Shortboard says "...not compatable with spider...series amps," if you go to the Line 6 website, their nice little footswitch guide makes it clear that the floorboard is for the older Spider I series amps and the FBV series of footswitches are for the newer Spider II's and Vetta's.

I've also been playing True Crime Streets of L.A. again on my PS2, after killing the zombies and the demon heads in the sewer, I couldn't kill the freaking dragon for months until I finally passed the annoying laser sight gun-improvement test, and used that on the little guy. The trick is to hit him as much as you can in the head while he's going around the outside (hold the fire button to get into slow time mode), then when he popps his head up to breathe fire on you, use the slow time mode again to hit him as fast as you can in the head, if you get him enough he'll just drop down into the lava and you can do it all over again, if you don't...run like hell to the side so that he doesn't flame you, and look out for his tail. I'd be done with the game by now if I had the PC version, first person shooters are impossible on a console when you don't have the perfect mouse/W-A-S-D (keyboard) combo.

Incubis Concert

Last night I saw Incubis at the Forum (in Inglewood), Incubis was great and the Sparta band that opened for them was pretty good too. The only thing that sucked about the venue was the $20 parking and the fact that they didn't have the parking lot under-contol at all leaving, so we just sat in the parking lot waiting to leave last night for almost an hour. I don't think I would choose to go back to the Forum again unless I really want to see the band and they aren't playing at another venue in the area.
Not much else to report, I've signed up for classes at Santa Monica College and Pierce College, I'm taking a couple of music classes, a drawing class, and hopefully a creative writing class (if I can get my transcripts from CSUS in time). So starting Aug. 30th I'll be really busy, but I'm looking forward to the classes, they should be lots of fun.

What the Bleep?

Last night I saw the new independent film: "What the Bleep Do We Know?"
It is a very thought provoking flick, and I would suggest it to anyone who is interested in the meaning of life, and learning how to live it to the fullest potential.
What the Bleep could be considered a hybrid-documentary, half of the movie is interviews and blurbs from some really smart people discussing Quantum Physics, the power of the human brain, and the nature of the universe, while the other half of the movie is a more standard story format following the main character on her journey of self-discovery and awareness.
One idea or suggestion that I liked from the movie, was when you wake up in the morning, "Make your day," by deciding what you want to do during the day, and then throughout the day taking notice of small happenings that are caused by us as observers creating reality. By creating and training our neural networks in this way, our brains will more-easily accept the idea that we can shape or even create our own realities.
Visit the "What the Bleep?" website: http://www.whatthebleep.com/