Sean Takes a Subtle Dig at LAist

March 22, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I don't think I've said this lately, but Sean Bonner is a funny guy. Take, for instance, this post on blogging.la (which quotes from LABlogs, which quoted from LAist, which... oh, wait, that's all...). From the LAist:

"LAist was unsuspectingly whisked off to the wilds of Alhambra the other day for what was promised to be some of the best Chinese food in the city, taken under wing to Sam Woo BBQ by some folks who swear by this hole-in-the wall place for chowing down on some chow mein."

To which Sean replies:

I have say it's damn cool of someone to take everyone who writes for LAist out to eat and just want to put out there if someone is looking for another website full of bloggers to buy dinner for blogging.la is always interested.

Dude. He just zinged the editorial "we"...

Good on him for also making a pass at how everything's so wonderful and new to the LAist singular collective, no matter how long ago others in the blogosphere caught on.

Two Jobs on Wheels

March 22, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Via Camworld I just read the article "A Coder in Courierland" over on kur05hin. I think that spending time as a bike messenger would be fascinating. Alan agreed:

that has always been my alter ego dream job

Speaking of odd jobs, I've also given thought to applying to be a part-time bus driver. The MTA is in desperate need of drivers, and it would definitely be a way to learn about transportation issues. My lack of Spanish would hurt me, though that's not listed on the job requirements.

Fun With X-Rays

March 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Last of my sort of leftover posts from travelling... Yesterday at the Charleston, SC, airport I managed to really confuse the x-ray guy. As requested I pulled my laptop out of its case and sent it through seperately. Even so, my bag had lots of interesting shapes for the guy to get confused with. The screener took three or four minutes looking through every pocket and ended up pulling out my little bicycle pump. I hadn't intended to bring it along, but I had forgotten to take it out after giving the bike a spin on Tuesday. Running that and the bag through seperately seemed to satisfy him, but it definitely seemed more trouble than was warranted.

This isn't the first time that bag's given me x-ray troubles. One time going into City Hall the security guard never could figure out what a shape he was seeing in the x-ray machine was. He looked through everything in the bag and ended up baffled, but at least satisfied I was harmless.

Can They Fit Twelve Doctors in One Car?

March 20, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So yesterday afternoon Kathy and I drove up 17 to the new mall in Myrtle Beach, SC. I bought a pair of Gamecock color Adidas warmup pants (on sale, $25, garnett with three black stripes). It's a nice new mall, with space for two more anchor stores. We walked the length of it, and then on the way back passed a few people huddled by an older lady being attended to on the floor. Especially in the off-season Myrtle Beach has a large retiree population, so I'd imagine this isn't too odd of a sight. But this part was: two of the people attending to her were clowns, in full get-up. That was just a little odd and surreal.

Man the Periscopes!

March 20, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I've mentioned before that the fire alarm in my building sounds like you're on a submarine that's about to dive. This afternoon the alarm went off, and I imperiled myself for thirty seconds or so to record a little sample for you to hear (mp2 file).

Of course I got downstairs (via the stairs, mind you) to find that the alarm was due to water leaking onto the control panel on the ground level. Sort of an anti-fire.

Back in LA

March 20, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So I'm back. Even though the weather wasn't that great I had a blast being back down south and just spending a week hanging out with family and seeing some old friends. This morning we left the house at 5:15am (EST), which meant getting up at what is 1:30am out here. So I don't know how long I'll last tonight. It's nice out right now, so I think I'm going to walk around for a little and take a few pictures.

Mmmm... southern food

March 17, 2005 by Eric Richardson

It's fun to be back down here spending time in South Carolina. I've had a good chance to spend time with family, and Kathy and I are getting in the tourist things here and there (tomorrow we're heading down to Charleston for the day). No trip to the south, though, can help but center around food.

Monday night I had a fried chicken breast, mashed potatoes, biscuits, corn, and collared greens. Tuesday night I had fried shrimp, a baked potato, and hush puppies. Wednesday night I had stew beef on rice with peas and a biscuit, and peach cobbler for dessert. Tonight I had fried flounder, fried shrimp, and hush puppies. And of course, sweet tea.

So what if it's not healthy? It's good.

Fly-by

March 15, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I just looked out the window and saw three A-10 Warthogs buzzing low down the beach here in South Carolina. It's been a long time since I lived near an air force base and saw those planes all the time.

a fun looking ping

March 14, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm now in the Charlotte, NC, airport and again I'm online via my phone. Access where I'm sitting is a little ugly, though:

--- 206.124.64.1 ping statistics ---
576 packets transmitted, 410 received, +141 duplicates, 28% packet loss, time 575426ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 433.710/6312.642/73431.795/12311.383 ms, pipe 74

What's up with the duplicates? I get those everywhere on this connection.

Sitting in LAX

March 14, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm sitting in LAX Terminal 1 right now, waiting for our plane to board. I don't know if it's just me, but we're flying US Air this time and I'm finding the whole process just confusing. First of all, always avoid airlines in the same terminal as Southwest. Their lines invade everything. But then US Air has multiple gates clustered in the same area, and people line up when nothing says that any particular flight is boarding. So our flight might be starting to board, or it might not. I just don't know.

Fun With SMTP

March 13, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'll warn you ahead of time, this post's geeky.

Before I head out east tomorrow morning, I wanted to get email working on my phone. Like Sean I don't plan to recieve email on the phone, but I do want to be able to use it for sending photos. The s710a actually has pretty much the same email configuration any normal email client would have, so most of the settings were easy enough to configure. But authenticated SMTP (sending mail) was failing, and I needed to figure out why... — Continue Reading...

An Afternoon of Trains

March 13, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Kathy and I took a fun little trip last night. Originally we were going to go get an assignment for my transportation class out of the way. That involved riding a rapid west on Wilshire, the Red Line to Hollywood, the Gold Line to Pasadena, and two stops on the Blue Line down toward USC. Well, that wasn't what we ended up doing. We still ended up with a good little public transit journey, though. — Continue Reading...