Category: My Blog

Miscellaneous blogging.

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The Holidays

Thanksgiving is over and the rush for holiday shopping has begun. Black Friday came and went and so far it doesn’t look as good as we liked at least from an economic standpoint. The number one gift that many people are looking for this is year is getting a job.

The holiday is suppose to represent cheerfulness, fun, family, unity, and excitement. But as long as I could remember the holidays were never anything close to what we see on Christmas cards, movies, and in stories. Every year there are groups of people fighting over the use of “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays”. Fights and protests break out because of this these little phrases. They both mean the same if you asked me, and I’m sure it does for many people.

Shopping is a big part of the holiday season. People wait in line for hours in the cold to get those great deals. I remember last year a Walmart employee got stomped to death by a stampede of shoppers. It was very unfortunate. I sometimes wonder if anyone in that stampede realized that they were running over a person on the floor. I’m sure at least one person who wasn’t aware would have tripped over the doomed employee and caused some sort of disruption to the flow of people coming into the store, but instead the horde of shoppers stampeded over and around the employee as though they knew he was there. Again, it was very unfortunate.

The holiday season gets more commercialized and more detracted from it’s true meaning every year. It’s all about sales numbers for retail stores, awesome deals, and religious conflicts. I’m sure there’s still some true holiday spirit left somewhere in our society. We see it from time to time and it’s should be noted when it happens.

Anyways, happy shopping and happy holidays.

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Mobile Friendly

For those who actually read my blog. I’ve installed a plugin that makes viewing my blog site much better on your mobile devices. The site recognizes popular mobile web browsers (i.e. Blackberry, iPhone) and will display the site in a mobile friendly format.

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New WordPress Blog

As you can see the new WordPress blog is up and running. There are still some work I have to do, but so far it looks good.

I ran into a few problems getting WordPress switched over. Initially, I was prepping WordPress on a virtual server and once I was finished with it I would just move the VM over to my main machine. But the problem started out with hardware problems. It was having problems running Windows 2008. The drivers caused several BSOD, so I installed Windows 7 RTM instead, and now it works like a charm.

I’m running VMware Server, so I transferred my VM over easily. The big problem was when I had to change my staging domain to my real domain. Things fell apart from there. The site didn’t load up because the URI was not set before I moved my website. After correcting the URI none of the images loaded up. It turns out that the link to all my images in my posts have been hard-coded with my staging URL.  After several hours scouring the internet I found the simplest solution. I had to export my database and use wordpad to replace my old URL with the new one then import the database back.  In the end it all worked out.

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2009 Subaru WRX

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For the past 11 years I’ve been driving my trusty old 1995 Toyota Camry. It was my first car. I’ve driven it since high school all the way through and beyond college. Over the past few years the car began falling apart. The radio stopped working. The air conditioner refuse to blow any cool air, and the upholstery started to rot (maybe it wasn’t rot, but it had a weird distinct smell to it). And the final straw that broke the camel’s back was when my car spun out on the freeway. Luckily for me nothing serious came of it besides being shook up. Getting new tires and getting my suspensions check was too expensive. I didn’t want to throw money into this old car so I finally got rid of it.

At the beginning of May I purchased a brand new 2009 Subaru WRX at Capitol Subaru in San Jose. The car is fantastic. Anything compared to my old Camry probably is. With a 265 horsepower engine and race tuned suspension it is ridiculously fast and nimble like driving a go-kart. I usually ride my motorcycle during the summer, but I’ve been driving my new car almost every day leaving my Harley lonely and dusty under its covers. But there are a few things that I think that Subaru can improve on their WRX. First off, the ride is noisy. Some of the noise can be attributed to the performance summer tires, but you can hear the road and wind blowing loudly from inside the car. For me, it was no louder than when I drove my old Camry but I didn’t expect it to be as loud coming from a newer car. Second, I wish the car had a standard outlet port to plug your electric gadgets. My girlfriend’s 2004 Pontiac Vibe has one, and I was disappointed to find my WRX didn’t have one. But other than that my WRX rocks. I can’t wait to take it up to Tahoe this year and see how it tears through the snow.

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Cabo San Lucas

I just recently got back from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was my first real getaway vacation, and it was my first time being out of the country. The hot and humid weather there will make you sweat like Al Sharpton at a clan rally. The tourism in Mexico dropped dramatically in the past few months due to the swine flu, but I don’t think it’s as bad as people make it out to be. There’s a better chance of drowning at one of the beaches than getting the swine flu.

I went to Cabo with my girlfriend and her family. We at a buffet breakfast almost every morning and feasted on large Mexican dinners each night. I think I gained about 15 pounds during the entire trip, but I guess vacations will do that to you. I always thought Mexico was one giant dessert with homes built with mud and bricks and people walked around in ponchos and sombreros. But it’s nothing like that, at least in Cabo. There were resorts everywhere all along the Baja California coastline and the streets were filled with Mexican selling odd ball ornaments, candy, and clothing. It’s almost like one big flea market. It seems like there’s only three kinds of jobs in Mexico. You’re either working at a resort, driving a cab, or selling home-made jewelry and toys at the beach. Those who say Mexicans are lazy are just plain wrong. During my trip I didn’t see one homeless person begging for money. The all worked. Even if they have to stand in the 100+ degree wearing pottery and plates draped over their shoulders or bicycling in old beaten down rickshaws. You have to give it to them for working in that kind of heat.

Overall, my Mexico trip was great. For those who are interested make sure you take advantage of the low fares and cheap resort stays. As the swine flu incident dies down I’m sure prices will go back up and Cabo and other hotspots in Mexico will be crowded.

(Pictures will be added soon)

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Blog Upgrade

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It was over a year ago when I was planning to move away from Simple PHP Blog to a more robust blogging engine. Many suggest that I just switch over to one of the many free-hosted blogging sites. I like having my blog hosted on my own server. The fact that I have full control over it gives me piece of mind. I’ve been playing around with Flatpress, a variant of WordPress that uses a flat-file database to store its contents. Flatpress worked well but I felt the development for it was slow and the online community was small. I was adamant about staying away from a blogging engine that required a separate database such as MS or Mysql. I thought it would be too much of a hassle to setup and maintain. The past few weeks I’ve been testing out the latest version of WordPress and I must say it is much easier to manage than I had expected. So I have now dropped Flatpress for testing and now focused WordPress.

What really sold me on WordPress is the vast amount of plugins that are available. I was worried about transferring my movie reviews over and keeping its rating system. With the WordPress Widgets customizing and arranging your content couldn’t be any easier. So for the next few weeks as I upgrade my server from Windows 2003 to 2008 WordPress will be replacing my old blogging platform.

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Mosaic Lounge and Nightlife

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For the past few months I’ve gotten into the night-life-promoting scene. A couple of friends and myself have been promoting parties on the first Saturday of each month at Mosaic, an upscale lounge/bar located in the Hotel Montgomery.

Our parties have been epic and memorable. So if you’re in the neighborhood come by and join in on the fun. You can view our website over at www.epicuresj.com for additional info

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Will Be Back Soon

For all of those out there missing my rarely posted blog. I will be back shortly. I’ve had a very busy first half of 2009.

Well, ladies and gents I will see you soon.