Blog Master G

Coinstar rules. Before getting dinner at Burritoville in San Anselmo tonight, Jen and I stopped by our local Mollie Stone’s to cash out a bag (my green purse, actually) of coins I’ve had since college. I had previously separated out just about all the quarters for laundry usage. But even after that, we had a hell of a lot more cash than I realized. I had guessed we’d have about 5 or 6 bucks’ worth. Boy, was I ever off. Here’s the final tally:

Quarters: 3
Dimes: 327
Nickels: 225
Pennies: 1,582
Total: $60.52
*Processing Fee: $5.39
Total Payout: $55.13

Not too shabby for a purse-full of pennies, eh? Don’t take your spare change for granted. It could buy you dinner some day.

*Coinstar charges 8.9 cents on the dollar.

United Press International: Saddam compares Bush to Mongol invader

Hmm…and? I don’t condone Saddam or his actions, but he may be onto something here.

On Saturday Jen and I plan to participate in the International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism!) peace march in San Francisco. It’s been a while since we’ve participated in any kind of demonstration, so I’m looking forward to it. We’ll definitely be taking the ferry from Larkspur, so as not to have to deal with traffic and parking.

The SF Bay Guardian has more coverage on Jaime Kibben, my uncle’s colleague who was killed in the car crash in Jerusalem. My uncle was also in the car and is still recovering from injuries. He can’t fly, so he’ll soon begin a trans-Atlantic journey by boat.

Recently, while cleaning out the garage of Nana‘s house, I came across a buried treasure: 7 rolls of undeveloped film. Earlier this week I sent all the rolls into Ofoto for processing. The first 5 are now available. It’s so cool to revisit the past — and see photos that have never before been seen — by anyone. I’m not going to share them all here, but I’ve selected some great highlights. So fasten your seatbelts and hold on as I take you back to 1992.

• The gang at Waterworld USA
• Me and my then-girlfriend Angela (hey, she was a 15-year-old hottie, huh?)
• Me diving (do I look hot in Speedos or what?)
• Another one of me diving (I can’t get enough of those mid-air Speedos!)
• My Mom in 1992
• My bro-bro Pete Dog
• Me on my 15th birthday
• Me, Pete Dog, Nana
• Me and Pete Dog
• My late step-grandfather Alan
• Me and Pete Dog gettin’ wild with fireworks
• Mom and Nana
• Marching band Gabe

I love it. Stay tuned for more of those gems…

Here’s a great headline you don’t see every day:

Zoo penguins intent on futile ‘migration’ / S.F. flock swims round and round in pool

The first few paragraphs are so good I just have to include them here:

Brainwashed by six newcomers from Ohio, 46 penguins at the San Francisco Zoo have abandoned their burrows and embarked on a great migration — except their pool is not exactly the coast of South America and there’s really nowhere for them to go.

“We’ve lost complete control,” said Jane Tollini, their mystified keeper. “It’s a free-for-all in here. After 18 years of doing this job, these birds are making mincemeat of me.”

They’ve all been swimming since Christmas Eve, whirling around the pool like tuxedos in a washing machine. No one knows why they started or when they’ll stop. All they know is that the zoo’s Penguin Island has turned into a very chaotic place.

“Round and round they go,” Tollini said. “They almost make me dizzy.”

I love it. Thanks for the link, Dad!

Tuesday night after dining at Pasta Pomodoro with Jen and Dad at the new and impressive Bay Street Emeryville mall, we hit the AMC Theatre for a showing of the eccentric, erotic, entertaining musical Chicago, starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere.

The film was excellent. It brilliantly wove together the 1920s cabaret song and dance — illusory and real — with the story of fame-obsessed Roxie Hart, accused of murdering her beau. The transposition of reality with Roxie’s dreamworld was seamless. The film also excellently portrayed how he who controls the media (Gere’s character) controls public opinion: That which we see in the media isn’t necessarily the real story; rather, it is one crafted by those who woo the press.

It’s incredibly difficult to describe this film, but suffice it to say that it will leave you on the edge of your seat. Even the darkest scenes in the movie are shot with song-and-dance backdrops that will make you want to dance around the aisles.

The UK’s Times Online has an excellent commentary about how America’s gone mad. It covers a lot of the standard stuff — American people who supposedly support a war against Iraq, the biased media portrayal, Bush’s and his Cabinet’s intimate connection with the oil industry — as well as the good point that Bush has succeeded in manipulating the media and the American people into shifting blame of 9/11 from Osama to Hussein. Here’s an excerpt from the commentary that I like (which touches on Bush’s inability to see the Grey in anything):

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

Come on Bush, why do you want to kill people? I know it’s the oil and that Saddam tried to kill your Daddy, but why don’t you concentrate on the fact that the American economy sucks, the jobless rate is quite high, and you keep making the rich richer with your absurd tax cuts that don’t help the middle class or the poor. Oh yeah, and all the while, none of us can breathe because you won’t force carmakers to make vehicles more environmentally friendly.

(Thanks, Shannon, for the link.)

I implemented a number of new site features today. The newest section on the site is the guestbook, where you can peruse entries or add your own. Please feel free to leave a mesage.

The next cool thing I’ve done is implemented a dynamic site navigation, which will make the addition of future content sections quite easy. What does that mean, you ask? Rather than having to create a use case for each content area of my site to make that link bold and non-clickable depending on which area of my site you’re viewing, I am now pulling all the category names dynamically from my database and automatically bolding and making non-clickable the name of the site category you’re viewing. So rather than modifying a huge page of conditionals every time I want to add a new content area to the site, I simply add a row to the database, assign it an ordinal (to determine the display order), then tell my navigation template that there’s a new categoryID to include in the site. And the logic does the rest while navigating throughout the site. Fun stuff.

The final tweaks I launched today are dynamic title bar display and some slight changes to the subhead of various content areas (for example, my contact page no longer says “the contact of Gabe” but “how to contact Gabe”).

Subtle changes, yes, but fun for me. Enjoy!

One of the new and exciting things about moving to the city will be applying for the elusive residential parking sticker. Our new apartment sits in the J Spot. After going through all kinds of hoops like updating our DMV records and providing proof of residence (if we actually get a copy of our new lease that we were promised), we will then be able to apply for the coveted Residential Parking Permit — J style.

After all, my fiancee is Jennie from the block, so it’s only fitting that we gots to have the J sticker.