good times
August 18, 2003 by Eric Richardson
Friday night Red Elvises were at Rusty's. I think this is the fourth time I've seen them, dating back to July 4, 2000, when I made the trek over to Summerfest in Ann Arbor, MI, to check them out after hearing them online. Since then two members of the band have left, and two new ones have replaced them, but at the core the Red Elvises are still the same fun time they've been for years. How can you go wrong when Oleg's playing that bass? (DISCLAIMER - pizza slice not present at most shows) Anyway, it was Oleg's birthday and mine was the next day, so the confluence of events required that I attend.
Rusty's is a $10 cover if you're 21+, but $12 if you're under, so I figured I'd try rationalizing to save a few bucks. As I handed the guy my ID I told him, "I'll be 21 by the time I leave." He looks at my ID for a bit, which in bright red letters says "UNDER 21 UNTIL 08-16-2003," then looks back up and me. "When's your birthday?" "Tomorrow." "$10." Score.
everybody's got a sky cam
August 15, 2003 by Eric Richardson
The end of the 6pm episode of The Simpsons got interrupted today by "breaking news" of a car chase. These are pretty boring... Just long shots of a suspect driving down a freeway usually. A portion of today's chase happened to head down the 10 west, which I can see from my apartment. I walked out to the balcony and counted eight helicoptors over the freeway. KCAL9 (or CBS2) looked to be in the lead, followed by ABC7. Most of the others were less bold in their coloring, so I couldn't tell who was who. Right now I just want this to clear so I can take that freeway to get over to Venice Beach for dinner.
mod_perl
August 11, 2003 by Eric Richardson
Today I switched my server over to mod_perl. The change has been a while coming, I finally just got around to finally doing it. eThreads still isn't the happiest, and leaks a little memory, but I've got things set up to clean up every while and keep control. In return I get a 250+% speed increase, so it all works out.
reading the newsgroups
August 11, 2003 by Eric Richardson
I've always been fascinated by urban planning and transit systems. Growing up I loved SimCity. Now that I'm actually living in an urban area, and even making an attempt to be a transit commuter, I've started to read newsgroups related to the subject. The ones I hit daily: la.transportation, alt.planning.urban, and misc.transport.urban-transit. Cool stuff if you're interested in the subject.
matrix: reloaded on IMAX
August 11, 2003 by Eric Richardson
Last night we went out to the rip-off known as Universal CityWalk and saw Matrix: Reloaded on IMAX. I enjoy the movie, so it was cool, but I couldn't help but think about how that IMAX screen really isn't a lot bigger than the screen at the Chinese, which was where I saw it on opening night.
I call CityWalk a rip-off, and it really is. $8 for parking. $12 for IMAX. Resturants that are expensive shadows of their real selves (much smaller menus than their original counterparts). And it gets really crowded. For what? What's cool about it? I really don't plan to be back.