8:30 a.m. is the best time for a gas powered leaf blower

Damn gardeners. Don’t they know I work nights?

… So I am now able to leave the country when I want. I have a passport, and surprisingly fast I might add. I applied for it on a Monday and got it eight days later.

The one thing I did notice was that the passport was property of the government. If that is the case, then why did I have to pay for it? Maybe it should be called a rental if that’s the case. Or maybe I’m just being stupid about it.

… It has been two weeks since I shaved last. I’ve only let my facial hair grow out once before. When I was a freshman in college and that was a fu manchu and it was only for a month.

I just decided one day to stop for some reason. Maybe it is because I trying something different or I just don’t care about my outside appearance and am telling the world “Bite me.” I think it’s more of the first.

I don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep this. But when I do decide to shave it off, what am I going to do?

One option is to get some electrical clippers and cut it down that way so I can use razor. Or take the more manly approach and go to a barber where they will use the long sharp blade. A friend of mine had that done and told me there is nothing scarier than seeing the blade out of the corner of your eye moving towards your face.

… More than a week ago, I was walking through an Albertson’s getting groceries when I found a DVD I had been looking for at a sale price. “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert s. McNamara” was the 2003 Academy Award winner for best documentary. Being a documentary makes it hard to find at places. But at Albertson’s, it was $10, a bargain for the story to be told.

The documentary is basically an interview with McNamara who was Secretary of Defense for President Kennedy and Johnson during most of the ’60s, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. McNamara not only talks about that, but his whole life.

The 11 life lessons are powerful. Not all of the 11 life lessons apply only to war, except for No. 5, and can be used by the average person.

1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There’s something beyond one’s self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can’t change human nature.

The documentary does a good job in explaining each lesson at the same time making the viewer relate to it.

If you have a chance, check it out.

Working on Labor Day is ironic

Don’t you think? OK, maybe it’s just bad luck like the rest of that song which had little irony. Then again, that makes it ironic when you think about it.

… Today is the first day I go back to work after taking another mini vacation. After working 10 of 11 days ending on Labor Day, I was off for five straight days, and I gladly took it.

I spent time with family and friends and the “Dirty Harry” marathon on AMC. Now there is a man that had a way with words.

My last day was one of rediscovery, however. I’ve been meaning to get stuff I’ve had in storage at one of my sister’s house in Pasadena. I had my birth certificate there and needed it to apply for a Passport. I’m not traveling anywhere, but I figured it would be good to have in case I decided to go somewhere out of the country. Like after Election Day.

While I was there, I rediscovered a lot of memories – some good and some bad.

The bad should be pretty obvious for the two people that read this blog consistently: EPJ and ‘The Enemy,’ you two are my heroes. But I found a lot of high school and college memories and photos I remembered taking but forgot all about.

I also found all these baseball cards, including the one that I thought at the time would be worth close to $500 now, and that is the Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card. Due to injuries, that card is probably worth $50. But hey, what are you going to do?

I also found knickknacks from college. The mini Buddha, Bullwinkle are on one side of the shelf on my desk while Gumby is sitting on my Rubik’s Magic, which I’ve made into a bench, with Pokey next to him and a Rubik’s Snake I’ve made into a dog nearby.

… So in trying to figure out what I’m looking for in a girlfriend I had an epiphany while jogging. When I got home I was IMing a friend and wrote the following:

“You know, I thought about it today and what would be perfect for me is if I could find someone that is a Giants and/or 49ers fan, and not for the reasons you think. I’ve gone so long with people always rooting against my teams, and that includes my family, that it would be nice if someone cared about the same thing. I know I shouldn’t ask for much living in Southern California and I get what I get, but for once it would be nice to have some that will cheer with me as opposed to against me.”

Ah, EPJ you’re always there for “brilliance.” Too bad I couldn’t be the writer I am now. Then again, ‘All in’ is coming back to lead you.

Anyway, as I thought about it, and for those that pay attention, sports aren’t really my life as much as it was about 10 years ago. I spend my time not watching sports as much. I still read about it, but that is my job – staying up to date on what is going on.

So why would I think that?

… Netflix is helping me catch up with movies I’ve should have seen a long time ago. What it has also done is proved a point: Blu-Ray is not for every movie.

I own one BR movie and that is “No Country for Old Men,” and it is an excellent choice for it. The cinematography and sound are excellent. And that is the key to BR.

Netflix sends me movies in BR as I’ve selected that option. I watched “Juno” in BR. While it is a great film, BR did not add anything to it.

So if you are considering buying a BR player, and I love my player on my computer, think about the movies you are going to either buy or rent for it. A majority of romance, drama, other similar type genres and the Police Academy set are not going to give you anymore on BR than what you would get on a regular DVD.

Time waits for no one

I’m slowing getting into watching Mr. Show. I just wished I had caught it sooner.

… Probably the most interesting website I’ve found is a time and date counter. It can track how long it is until, or has passed, since a certain point in time.

Now I haven’t really had anything to look forward to, but I did figure out how long I’ve been alive in forms of days, hours, months, minutes and seconds. When you only look at things in a larger scale, you miss all the smaller things.

So I discovered, with a little math, I’ll be alive for 1 billion seconds on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 5:04:40 p.m.

And in case you are wondering, it is 11,574 days from the day you are born – 31 years, eight months and approximately seven days. And if you know what time you are born, add one hour, 46 minutes and 40 seconds to the time.

… So I have a stupid problem. I’ve allowed my vacation time to hit the ceiling and for a paycheck, couldn’t accrue anymore. It was a combination of good and bad planning.

What I’m trying to do is save up all the vacation time I can in case there is another round of layoffs and I get as much as I possibly can.

However, I didn’t think clearly. I’ve capped at 120 hours and can’t take any more time off until the end of September. I just took a small vacation and killed out 16 hours, but at the rate I’m going now, I’ll be capped again around that time.

I hope I will be taking some extra time off then, but there are no promises.

… The Olympics are about to end and they have been amazing to watch. Michael Phelps winning eight gold medals and Usain Bolt winning the 100- and 200-meter dashes in world record time and relative ease.

There are also some odd moments: a wrestler refusing his bronze medal and a Cuban taekwondo fighter kicking the official of his match after he was disqualified for taking too much injury time. Why it is no laughing matter, I will say the World Taekwondo Federation now has a new use of their acronym, WTF.

I had the day off of work more than two weeks ago and was able to watch the Opening Ceremonies in peace. I thought it was a wonderful show; then the truths came out. The little girl singing was a Milli Vanilli; the actual girl I guess didn’t meet the standards of the Chinese. There were fake fireworks, which I kind of suspected.

But there was also a story about a dancer that was hurt days before the opening ceremony. She fell 10 feet off a moving platform and of course the Chinese are not releasing any information about the true condition of the dancer while there are reports she may be paralyzed.

I will say London has a lot to do in order to top what the Chinese did to light the flame. But it still doesn’t match the archer from the 1992 Barcelona Games lighting the flame. After all, that guy had one shot to do that.

And maybe, who knows, I can get a handball team going and I could be there. Doubtful, but there are only 1,434 days to go to get it done.

Summer colds suck

There is nothing worse than have time off and being sick all those days, especially in the summer.

… I can’t remember the last time I saw the San Francisco Giants win a baseball game in person. I saw them lose on opening day this season at Dodgers Stadium. I didn’t go last year and the last time before that; I had stuff thrown at me. I honestly can’t remember the last time they won.

So it was fun to watch the Giants beat the Padres at Petco Park in San Diego at a different place. This was this first time I went to Giants game outside of Dodgers Stadium since I saw them in 2001 at what is now AT&T Park. In fact, when I discussed it with my friend Eric who came with me I discovered I’ve been to every current MLB park in California now. I’ve also watched the Giants play at Candlestick Park.

But what made this game so fun was the mascot to end all mascots – San Diego Chicken. It was very entertaining, although there were two moments that were kind of scary, each involving children.

The first was a parent gave their baby to the SDC to hold on top of the dugout while the game was going on. It was cute, but you just hoped there would be no foul ball hit that way.

The second involved a skit where they get four to five kids dressed as chicks and they walk around during the inning break. I had seen this skit before and knew that they usually walk in front of the pitcher as they warm up. Well I guess the SDC didn’t warn them and the pitcher was halfway through his wind up when he saw them and stopped. Pitcher wasn’t too happy.

But the SDC was very entertaining and of course it was nice to see the Giants win.

… I spent a day working where I used to earlier this week. I was designing the Olympic special section for the Press-Telegram back at the Arco Center.

It was strange since I remember a full sports staff being there. I also had what was the entire sports area to myself. I was there for about 12 hours, mainly because I wanted to make sure everything was designed before the following day’s deadline.

It was sad since I remember what it was like when there was a full desk working and all the laughs we had.

I had a chance to get dinner at one of our old haunts, but decided it just didn’t feel right with everyone gone.

… I recently signed up for Netflix mainly to see two movies I knew I would have a hard time finding at a video store.

The first movie I checked out was the documentary “The Bridge.” One of my sisters told about when I went to San Francisco last year and walked half way across the Golden Gate Bridge. The movie told stories about people jumping off the bridge in 2004. For those of you that didn’t know, the Golden Gate is the most popular place in the world to kill yourself. The film actually captured jumpers. Some from the moment they jumped following them down and others where they just has a wide view of the entire bridge and all you saw was a big splash.

But before you condemn the film as being another snuff film like “Faces of Death” it isn’t. They talk to family and friends of those that jump along with people who were on the bridge when they saw people jump, like a family on vacation. There is another story is of a person that pulled someone back on to the bridge. One of the most memorable stories is of someone that survived the jump.

It was a good documentary, and gives an idea about what a person would think before taking their life and the people they left behind and what they think.

The second movie was much less heavy called “Zero Hour.” It’s a drama about a troubled war pilot that has to land a passenger plane where the pilots became sick and are unable to fly. Of course, everyone knows the movie by the comedy remake of it “Airplane!”

I’ve seen Airplane more than probably the average person and watching Zero Hour was difficult. Zero Hour is a serious drama and most of the dialog of Airplane comes from the movie with the jokes added after each line. I heard the lines and was expecting the punch line to come, but it never did. But it was just odd on how similar the two movies were, yet so completely different. If anyone is a big Airplane fan, give Zero Hour a look.