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May 30, 1998
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
News Links
External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
May 30, 1998
Took time to vote today (via absentee ballot), something I encourage of all sentient beings living in countries which hold free elections. If you don't vote, you shouldn't complain when the political winds don't blow your way!Updated Game Eight of my on-going chessic slug-fest with Al Starfy. Basically I missed a beautiful move that would've given me a decisive advantage in the end game. Read all about it.
May 29, 1998
Well, interesting news on the long-over-due-monitor front. Apparently mine wasn't the only return in that batch of 19" Princeton EO90s. Early, CDW had told me mine was the only one out of 70. Guess they've had a bunch more since then. I spent a couple hours today trying to find a different monitor in my price range that would better fulfill my criteria and was unsuccessful. At $659, the EO 90 remains in a class by itself (though, I concede, only if it actually works). If I had another $150 and wanted a stellar 17" monitor, ViewSonic's PT775 got rave reviews everywhere I looked. But I want 19".Don't know if anybody else gave them a try during the recent $9.99 introductory offer, but Papa Murphy's Chicago-Style Pizza is superb. The price is now up to $12.99, but it's still a steal in my book. And better yet, it even tastes like the real deal. Recommended.
May 27, 1998
Caught the pseudo-sequel to The Fugitive, the aptly titled U.S. Marshals, down at the Oakes Theatre today. Whereas the former movie centered around Harrison Ford's Dr. Richard Kimble, and Tommy Lee Jones' Deputy Samuel Gerard (and crew) was a secondary focus, U.S. Marshals changes the focus to the law enforcement group. This time Wesley Snipes plays the runaway, and Robert Downy Jr. comes aboard for added star power.It doesn't matter. Snipes, though good, is no Harrison Ford. Jones is as good as he was in the first film, but his character doesn't have a lot of depth to begin with, so we get more of the obsessed cop routine. But the real problem here is the script. It's action-packed, to be sure, but it's clichéd in more ways than I can count, and many, if not all, of the plot twists you can see from a mile away. On top of all this, I didn't even like the ending. If you're looking for a mindless action flick, you could do worse, but if you want something interesting or original, you could do a whole lot better.
May 26, 1998
As I mentioned a couple days ago, I've been watching Perry Mason, a late '50s/early '60s film noir-style lawyer show. Immediately following is a rip-off on the "America's Funniest Videos" concept called Real TV. It is, more or less, a variety of home video and professional quality video clips of dangerous, funny or intriguing events. I'll generally watch the show's opening 30-second montage preview, and turn off the TV. I've never seen a complete Real TV episode.And I just learned that I never will. Today we were subjected to home videotape of a B-52 crash which killed all on board. I saw the crash in the opening clip, and I was amazed. Who could survive a crash like that? But they wouldn't be showing it on daytime TV otherwise, right?
I didn't have to wait long to find the answers. The video was shot by friends of the pilot, and we even got to hear their anguished cries as the ball of flame enveloped the plane. Commentators went over the video in slow motion pointing out the technical flaw in the turn ("here's where the plane lost lift" and things like that). Then they appended a quick memorial on to the close of the segment in a "oh by the way, everybody died" kind of summary that left me speechless with rage.
It was the most vile, inhuman display I've ever seen in pursuit of a TV rating point. To sensationalize and exploit witnesses' anguish and these aviators' deaths like this, well, you'll forgive me for thinking that there should be a special place in hell for the producers of this show.
May 25, 1998 — Memorial Day
Great party for bro-in-law Joe on his graduation from Sonoma State University. Family and friends showered Joe with praise and presents, and this was followed by a delicious chicken dinner. If his college experience was like mine, this meal was probably far better than anything he ate in the last four years at the University Commons. In the midst of the party, family friend Loretta immediately noticed my goatee and was kind enough to hurl adjectives like "suave" and "dashing" in my general direction—proof, I think, that my whole facial hair experiment hasn't been a complete waste of time.Jennie and I began the second series of East Coast Swing dance lessons this evening. This "General Social" class is kind of an "Advanced Beginner" arrangement, and pretty close to perfect for the level I'm at. Through everything, it's been extraordinarily helpful to have a friend like Jennie who has had the patience of a saint as I stumble my way through the new steps. I wouldn't be half as good as I am without her help.
May 23, 1998
A quick word of congratulations to my brother-in-law Joe who graduates today from Sonoma State University. Way to go, Joe!May 22, 1998
As some of you know, I compose a lot of what I write well "after hours." In fact, it's 2:15 AM as I write this. All of which is my way of saying, "Boy, I sure do make a lot of spelling errors." I ran a spell-checker over a couple of my pages, and I don't think I can begin to describe my astonishment. Well, this extended parade of spelling errors ends today. (The grammar snafus will continue until further notice.) I'm spell-checking each page, and I will post updated pages throughout the day. This terrible blight on my professionalism must be eradicated.Al and I competed "mano-a-mano" in the "Chess Match of the Century," and it was a great one. Easily the longest game we've played, Al thwarted my King's Indian Attack early on by using the Caro-Kann Defense, a decision, he admitted after the game, that he made on the spur of the moment. We'll hold a rematch in a few weeks.
May 21, 1998
As remarkable as this sounds (at least to me), there's only six months left if I want to have my album done by December 1. With soccer starting up in late October, that means I truly need to step things into an even higher gear, because there's still a lot of work to be done.Musically, things are proceeding well. I continue to write and fine-tune songs almost daily, and I should have completed rough draft demos over everything within the next couple of weeks. Translating those demos into finished songs will be an interesting musical and technological challenge, particularly since I still don't have the recording/sequencing software yet.
On the business end of things, I need to create a music publishing company and set it up with the State of California and BMI. I don't know yet what kind of taxes I'll be facing, but thank God I have the experience of having run my own company before. (I just knew I hadn't used up all that post-college time and energy for nothing.) On top of this, I need to start putting together marketing materials--fortunately something I enjoy.
Finally, there's the whole legal/copyright situation. I don't think it's overly complex, and there's a million and one books on the subject out there, but it's definitely an administrative headache and something of an expense.
May 20, 1998
Concluded the beginning swing class tonight, and signed up for the next set of classes. I've amazed even myself at my improvement over the course of the last four weeks, and though I'm no Fred Astaire, at least I don't think I'll make a complete idiot of myself on the dance floor when this is over either.May 19, 1998
With a considerable degree of apprehension, I've signed on to AOL's Instant Messenger service. This free program and service automatically contacts you when your friends are on the Internet (assuming they've signed up for the service). Since at least seven people I know have signed up for AIM, I figured it was worth a try even though it stuck two(!) extensions in my already stuffed System Folder. I'll let you know in a few days whether I think this adventure has been a good idea or not.I've been watched a good deal of Perry Mason in recent weeks. What an incredibly well-made, film noir-style lawyer show! I watched it occasionally as kid; now that I'm older I even more amazed at the quality of the acting and writing. It really is top-flight entertainment, and besides, it gives me something to do while I eat lunch.
Both Buffy and Dawson's did their season finales tonight, the former being kinda of lame and the latter being pretty good.
May 18, 1998
Okay, so I couldn't stand the not knowing. I finally added another counter to my main web page today. It's not really all the important, but given the effort I put into maintaining this site, I thought some feedback, however limited, would provide a nice psychological lift. My latest check shows it at 11—a decent total for a weekday. My goal is to get it over 1000 by the end of the year. I don't know if that's reasonable or not, but why not aim high?I've not talked about India's recent nuclear tests yet. That's mainly because I've been too appalled for words. I'm not crazy about India joining the official nuclear club, but I'm even less crazy about it if they're going to behave completely irresponsibly by testing nukes near the Pakistani border. Other than sanctions (which the EU countries don't want to go along with) I don't know what you do about the situation. The only upside I can think of is that their are no strategic interests for the United States in either India or Pakistan, so a war would have a relatively limited impact on U.S. Of course if the war went nuclear, then all bets are off. Here's hoping that neither side is that dumb.
May 16, 1998
Finished the lyrics and music to a new song, "Catch the Blue Sky." It joins "Much Finer Things" (which I've re-written) and "Undeserved" on my "finished rough draft" list. Another song I've been working on, "Stream of Consciousness," is just about ready as well, but not quite. I've been reading the World War I poets in my research for another song, "Verdun." It's progressing, but the going is slow. I've updated the Album Info in my Music section with a track list in case any one's interested.Erin and I spent a couple hours with our friend Jennie work on the East Coast Swing. Jennie went to a drop-in dance party on Thursday and picked up some really good tips. My footwork is getting better; I may even be ready for some of the weddings this summer. Who knows?
May 13, 1998
Extended coolness at the Yahoo! Chat session this evening with friends Helana (36 weeks!), Shan, and Joe. As always, chaos, abrupt topic changes and witty one-liners were the order of the day. I continued, with Shan and Joe's help, my on-going pseudo-academic-style study of the use of profanity. It's probably not ground-breaking work, but it sure is interesting! Man, I'm loving these Yahoo! Chat sessions.Prior to chatville, I had the opportunity to listen a good chunk of the first candidates debate in the California governor race. I wonder if the Democratic candidates won't just end up destroying themselves in the primary. Al Checchi and Gray Davis repeatedly fire-bombed one-another, while Jane Harmon—who has slipped into single digits in the polls—lobbed the occasional grenade to try to get in on the action. Only Republican Dan Lungren, who faces no opposition in the primary, came across as a consistent voice of reason. On radio at least, Lungren was calm, humorous and smooth—and more than happy to watch the Democrats self-destruct, I'm sure.
May 12, 1998
I wrote an opinion piece about the wonders of Claris Organizer 2.0 last year, and now it seems like I'm not the only one to think it was a great bit of software. 3Com's Palm Computing Inc. has purchased the program from Apple and is now offering it as part of a new Palm MacPac software kit for the Palm Pilot. Organizer will be the Personal Information Manager, or PIM, which hot-syncs with the Palm Pilot to keep all that personal information straight. This really makes the Palm Pilot a very viable mobile PIM, though personally I'd like to see a couple additional application uses for the Palm Pilot before I go buy one.Another good Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episode tonight which looks like it will have some interesting twists in it when the two-parter is concluded next week. Tonight's Dawson's Creek was well-made, but pity the poor lead, Katie Holmes ("Joey"), who had to sing a song from Les Mis and have it held up as some kind of wonderful. In short, she's a fairly good actress and quite attractive, but she's a terrible singer. No number of Dawson's looks of awe and rapture will convince me otherwise.
May 11, 1998
I watched my first streaming video over the web this morning. I tuned in late, and caught the tail-end of the keynote address of Apple's developers' conference in San Jose. Since I've got a 28.8k connection, it was dinky little video, but the audio was rock-solid, and I definitely got enough info to know what was going on. I'm certain that, years from now, I'll look back and say, "That was the day I watched my first TV show on the web."I downloaded a beta of Adobe's ImageReady software. At 8.5 megs, it's a time-consumer, but it's a pretty full-featured beta (though it expires 7/15/98). Basically, it let's you optimize images for the web and do basic image editing. Pretty neat, though the final score will depend heavily on how Adobe prices it. If it's under $100, it's a winner; if it's much higher, it's not. Anyway, I optimized all the .gif and .jpeg images on my web site so, in theory, stuff should load faster than before. Don't know if it will make that much difference, but it can't hurt.
Erin and I had a fun and yummy dinner over at our friend Jennie's house. Erin's busy schedule obviously didn't permit an extended stay, but we did do plenty of East Coast Swing dancing for about an hour. I'm slowly getting the hang of it, though I've found some moves difficult and counter-intuitive because in soccer I would make the move differently. At least that's the best excuse of come up with so far.
May 9, 1998
So Erin and I finally made a night of it last night and headed to a double feature of Wag the Dog and The Full Monty. Wildly different films, both were entertaining in their own way.Wag, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro, requires an incredibly high level of cynicism to be totally effective, something even I had trouble mustering for every scene. Still, it wasn't difficult to get drawn into the movie and enjoy the meager plot's twists and turns. This was an underwhelming production in many ways, but Hoffman and DeNiro are in fine form, and that alone is worth the price of admission.
I confess I had very little interest in seeing Monty. Full frontal male nudity (aka "The Full Monty") isn't exactly my cup of tea. But, like many other Channel Four productions (Secrets & Lies, for example) this was very well done and surprisingly engaging. The British accents and slang were occasionally baffling, but it wasn't that much of a distraction.
While neither film is a life-changer, I'd recommend both pictures, particularly once they hit video.
I've moved my Investing materials into an opinion piece called "Investing Resources." In it, I reviewed my stock picks of February 11. So far, so good. Most picks are up, a couple a little down and a couple way up. On the whole, anybody who followed my advice has done really well, and that doesn't even take into account dividends. I'll update those picks again in another few months.
May 8, 1998
Lucky me: I talked with CDW, the company I bought my Princeton EO90 monitor from (if you'll remember, this is the monitor I had to send back), and I learned two things. First, out of the last 70 EO 90 monitors which CDW shipped, mine is the only return. Second, the next shipment isn't due until May 26. I don't mind waiting a little bit—I've waited eleven years to put out an album, so what's another two weeks? But I am definitely concerned about being the only one who got a bum monitor. It causes me to second-guess myself and wonder if the problem is on my end. Still, I tested it with a Mac, a Power Mac and a PC and it failed on every machine. The guy at CDW said it was better that I got the only bum one than Princeton having massive quality control problems, and I guess he's right about that. But I'll feel a lot better once I've got the new monitor hooked up and working.May 7, 1998
What some people think is news just amazes me. Time and again, groups with an agenda will trumpet their "new" findings about issues which are blatantly obvious to anyone with half a clue. Today's remarkable "discovery" by an Oakland-based children' advocacy group is, essentially, that kids are influenced by TV. Allow me to quote from the front page San Jose Mercury News Article, "Kids say TV roles show racial bias."Even at a young age, children of different races recognize the effects of stereotyping in entertainment and news and believe it is important to see people of their own race on television...
This would seem to me to be news only to the most naive of people. Is there anyone out there who believes that TV doesn't have an influence—particularly on children? The authors of the study conclude that children need positive role models of their own ethnicity on TV—a conclusion that surely seems obvious to the rest of us.
Don't get me wrong here, because I support this group's efforts to get better role models for kids onto the TV. It's just that touting this study as "the first of its kind" and pretending like these conclusions are in any way surprising leaves me rolling my eyes.
May 6, 1998
Had the second in a four-week series of dance classes. I'm learning the East Coast Swing, a dance I've always wanted to know how to do. At this stage I'm mediocre, but with the help of my friend Jennie (who's also in the class), there's at least a chance that by the end of the four weeks I'll be able to get out on the dance floor, do the Swing, and not kill anybody. (Dance partners will, however, be required to provide proof of insurance.)Tonight's Yahoo! Chat session was a lot of fun, even if my friend Dave was the only participant. We're planning on testing out the new Pretty Good Privacy encryption (version 5.0) and PGP Fone, a program which allows people to hold free encrypted phone conversations via the Internet. We'll start testing next week, and I'll let you know how it goes.
May 4, 1998
I was just re-reading some of my Opinion pieces and stumbled across my March 1, 1997 editorial called, "A New Hope." It's all about Apple and the Macintosh, and it concludes with my prediction that by March 1998 Macs would be running about twice as fast as anything Intel could bring to the market. If you've already seen Apple's snail ad or fireman ad, you probably know what's coming next. Either way, please forgive this momentary, rather gauche, display of emotion: I told you so!Spent a good few hours today getting the runaround from Kragen Auto Parts. All we wanted was a battery for a '63 Volkswagen Beetle, but I'll be darned if anybody had one in stock. That's no big deal except when we called, they said they did. We visited three separate Kragen stores, and not once did they have in stock what they claimed to have when we talked with them on the phone.
Major league thunderstorm rolled through the Bay Area this afternoon. I don't recall ever hearing thunderclaps that loud, and the hail storm was something to watch too. I even heard a rumor of a tornado, but that's probably a little exaggerated for around here. We mostly just do earthquakes. [Update: It was a tornado, and it took the roof off a church in Sunnyvale.]
Shaved some of my beard last night. Erin talked me into doing a long sideburn kinda thing which, while a novelty, looks incredibly silly to me. It makes me feel like I should be down at some coffee joint drinking a cup of joe and discussing philosophy. I'm liking the goatee action, however, and after a couple days of the long 'burns to appease the Erin-meister, I'll shave those off and be in fine form.
May 3, 1998
I don't think I've slept less in years. Good Lord this harkens back to college, when Dave and I also stayed up way too late. While we didn't get around to every item on the "to do" list during his visit, that just gives us stuff for next time. Among the things we did accomplish, however, was the very important computer-to-keyboard MIDI set up, an arrangement I'll be looking to make liberal use of as soon as I get MOTU's Digital Performer software later this month.Warning! Rant follows: Is it possible to have a moratorium on negative political campaign advertising? Please? At least in California, all that would really mean is that multi-millionaire gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi would just shut up for a change. I know next to nothing about the man or his politics, but already I'm prepared to investigate starting an "Anybody But Checchi" committee thanks to round after round of his negative attack ads. I don't know who I'll end up voting for, but it won't be him.
Unless there's a sudden outpouring of support, I'm planning on taking down the Investment section of the web site and replacing it with something more readers will look at more often. I'll move the investment stuff over into the Opinions area so that the people may continue to enjoy the fruits of my financial wisdom (such as it is). In its place will be a new section called Quotes.
May 1, 1998
As always when Dave visits, it's been an action-packed day. We shipped my new, non-functioning monitor back to the mail order house where I got it. The whopping $75 shipping cost pretty much wipes out any savings I had by doing this deal mail order in the first place, so I suppose that's a lesson for somebody somewhere.Later in the afternoon, Dave and I headed over to the local CompUSA where their new Apple "store-within-a-store" concept is taking shape. There were a number of good Mac game titles on sale for $10, including Doom, Doom II, Descent, Prime Target, and Damage Incorporated. I don't know if all CompUSAs are running these specials, but gamers might want to check it out.
Dave and I also set up a LocalTalk network between the Mac IIci, the Power Mac 7500 and the HP LaserJet 4MP printer. Let me just say that this was the easiest networking job in the world, and that I pity the poor souls who have to deal with the Windows-world headaches. I don't even have all the appropriate system-level file sharing software installed, and both machines can print without any problems.
