Happy New Year.

Onward.

Already 2005 is shaping up nicely. Here’s a short audio interview with William Gibson on IT Conversations, a great source of interesting audio content you can listen to via streaming or by download in a variety of formats.

The story of how Graphic Calculator came to be developed and shipped on the Mac is mindblowing.

It reminds me of two plotlines from the comedy series Seinfeld. In one, George is fired from a job and continues to show up, as though nothing happened. In the other, Kramer starts showing up to a job for which he was never hired.

But how this non-official software product was started, halted, skunkworks-ed, QA’d, usability tested, and localized without ever having been sanctioned or paid for by Apple is a wonderful tale that fits perfectly into the lore of corporate apathy.

This is an excellent narrative of what it takes to go forth and fix a family member’s spyware ridden PC.

Well worth a bookmark.

I love free concerts by Stew:

Stew (Friday Nights at the Getty)

Date: Friday February 18, 2005, 7:30 pm
Location: Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Admission: Free. Reservations available beginning January 20

Stew has been called many things–singer/songwriter, cabaret philosopher, wiseguy troubadour, punk subversive, even the black Burt Bacharach. With his collaborator Heidi Rodewald, their rich arrangements, incisive lyrics and innovative styles take you beyond the standard pop song. Stew and Heidi were recently commissioned by the Public Theater of New York to develop a new work for the stage.

Today Leah started her new gig! Congrats and much love to my dearest Leah!

I’m looking at houses to let today in Moorpark. Wish us luck!

From a wet wet wet San Fernando Valley, I bid you…

ONWARD!

The Moorpark Library is not a hospitable place for internet access.

’nuff said.

however, muchos kudos to the Moorpark It’s a Grind Coffeehouse, for tasty coffee and free 802.11b.

Well, SixApart purchased Danga, same difference. Read about it.

Looks like I chose the right month to come back to do some LiveJournaling.

Honestly, I’m back there because it works, it’s free, and it makes it easy to keep up with some new family and friends.

Otherwise… I have a pile of things to update. Catch-up ball.

Doug Welch plugged my services. Thanks Doug!

Still househunting. Interview Wednesday. Packing last weekend. Things is busy.

Hey man, things are okay.

Oh, and tomorrow is Leah’s Birthday. She’s awesome. She’s my wife!

(crossposted to web405 and websandiego)

This is just barely on-topic.

So these days of still-not-moved in, waiting for my new abode to start, waiting for a new gig to happen, turns out I’ve discovered my new mobile office. It’s not Starbucks (t-mobile doesn’t offer reasonable month-to-month plans), but rather, it’s Burger King. How’d I find out about it? Well, I was doing a little wardriving and noted an AP with the pattern bkNNNNN.burgerking.com where those “N”‘s are numbers (I guess the chain number (primary key)).

Free wireless. I think it’s 802.11b (how can I tell that, anyway?) might be 802.11g.

Today I’ve used two burger kings to do planning, some freelance, and the like all in the comfort of one Burger King on Wilshire and another on Ventura Blvd in Encino.

This is not the cyberpunk world I envisioned, but instant messaging via a global telecommunications network from a fast-food joint is about as close to the future envisioned by Messrs. Bruce Sterling and William Gibson as I could expect.

I love that they did the whole subservientchicken website too. BK is definitely positioning themselves for the cyberpunk set.

And that’s my dispatch from 20 minutes into the future.

Joe

Quote of the day:

An exclamation by David Farragut, an officer in the Union navy in the Civil War. Warned of mines, called torpedoes, in the water ahead, Farragut said, “Damn the torpedoes! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!”

Incredible amounts of rain
Living in Motel in Sherman Oaks
Freelance work
Incredible help from family moving, packing and cleaning Sherman Heights house
Cat boarded with Joe & Meg
Earthly possessions in 25 foot truck
Twenty-five foot truck driven to LA
Twenty-five foot truck driven to Simi Valley
Freelance work
Job interviews
Hiring of day labor (Marcus and Mario) unloading earthly possessions
Earthly possessions in storage in Simi Valley
Staying in motel with many loud, “unique” guests
Job accepted
Job starting Monday
New motel sought for next week
Apartment with less “unique” guests
Truck returned to Thousand Oaks

That’s a partial list. Thanks for your patience and encouragement, everyone!

So now Leah and I are staying in Burbank.

It is with sadness we make note of the passing of Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show for decades.

Despite the fact that this motel allows pets, e.g. Bas, they have no broadband (only dial-up), so I’m composing this offline right now. I’ll post it when i have some bandwidth again.

Tonight is clean-up-my backpack day. And here are some various links I’ve looked up or have been meaning to look at.

First up: www.farrellsusa.com — Farrell’s was a chain at one time of “wacky” ice cream “parlours” — with loud music, fire engine horns, and gut-busting ice cream sundaes. There’s apparently one in Santa Clarita, but it’s far north, near Valencia — I think that’s as far north as Magic Mountain. Not really worth the trip for some ice cream.

Moorpark has it’s own weekly newspaper — www.moorparkacorn.com — it’s a freebie available around Moorpark.

805 Living is another free magazine — 805 is the area code of Ventura County: I think it emcompasses Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Westlake Village and the like. Theoretically, the domain name is www.805living.com.

Last Saturday there was a short article on the front page of the Ventura County Star about Wi-Fi hotspots, the focus was on for-pay hotspots, with little emphasis on free wireless projects or the municipal projects that are happening. What it felt like was that the for-pay wireless access providers are pushing their flacks to get mainstram media to talk about for-pay Wi-Fi to the exclusion of free wireless. That bums me out.

Last great article I read was in the February 2005 issue of Esquire — a great article called Bush, Part Deux: A Strategy for Making Everything Turn Out OK, by Thomas PM Barnett. And no, I didn’t buy it because Scarlett Johansson looks sexy on the cover. I was riding the train to San Diego to go get my truck the day I bought it.

We had been staying at the www.777motorinn.com on Sepulveda. We were not really impressed. Leah says she mentioned the hotel on her blog on Monday. Still, it was a bed to stay in, centrally located, and for that we are thankful. Now, we’re also thankful to be out of that.

And now it’s been another night and it’s morning, I’m preparing to go to work — and now I’m at Burger King #2625 to check email and do some stuff on the fast connection.

I wanted to point out that our cat Bas has been written up very kindly by Meg herself — check out: Bas on her Seafoam journal. Meg goes to UCLA and is married to Joe T, a pal of mine who occasionally graces this blog with silly photoshop stuff.

Oh! I sold some comics last week — people doing searches and finding the comics pages. Two different buyers for a total of $50 of merchandise. That’s most excellent. Now if I can sell the rest of my collected stuff, that’d be great!

Lastly, Leah and I will both be changing our names here soon. We are backed up on bills but cashflow is improving steadily, what will work and comics-sales — but we’ll have many more changes upcoming.

Also, sorry Rudy and Aunt Joan for the problems with the blog format on this page for smaller monitors. I’m aware of the problem, and will address it when I get the chance. Thanks for bearing with me!

Okay, off to work. Thanks for reading!

As of this month, I’ve been blogging 4 years — since February 2001. I’ve had a personal website about 8.

Time flies.