Pugs ‘N Pals holds an annual Pugtoberfest in Costa Mesa, a fun-filled day of costume contests and pug games. Here are some links to photos and a video from this year’s event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14782153@N04 http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeesha/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandorasparlor http://cbs2.com/video/?id=49923@kcbs.dayport.com More recent pug photos from Flickr Originally uploaded by Up Late Cakes. Originally uploaded by ljc@flickr. And finally . . . A great Flickr set of pug photos. Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Earl Butz – U.S. secretary of agriculture Oral Roberts – preacher Updates Earl Butz – died 2/2/2008, age 98 Oral Roberts – died 12/15/2009, age 91 Read more →
Getting to Know You
My son’s just diagnosed and fixed a problem with my wife’s laptop PC . . . “I should join the Northwood [his high school] Tech Squad,” he says, “with all the guys who tuck their shirts in.” “That reminds me,” my wife says to him. “What clubs are you in at school?” “What clubs am I in?” he says. “How about none?” “You need to be in a club,” she says. I say, “He’s in football and roller hockey.” “He can be in those,” she says, “but he still needs to be in a club so he can get to know people.” For some reason, this launches the boy into a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune . . . “Getting to knooooow yooooou . . .” “Can you look it up,” my wife says, “and see what clubs they have at Northwood?” “No,” I say. “I’m busy.” Which I am. “When… Read more →
EppsNet Labs: VoiceXML RSS Reader
The Big Picture We’re going to build application that takes RSS data — specifically the EppsNet.com feed — as input, and outputs a VXML file that can be read and spoken by a VoiceXML browser. The RSS Source Format The general structure of the EppsNet feed — or any RSS 2.0 feed — looks like this: Each item within the RSS feed has a format that looks (slightly simplified) like this: VXML Output Consult the VoiceXML 2.1 specification for more details, but the output we want will look like this: What this will do when processed by a VoiceXML browser is: Say the title of the RSS feed. Offer the listener a numbered list of post titles to select from. Parse the user’s selection, by either voice or touch-tone input. Read out the selected post summary. Clear the input variable and offer the opportunity to select another item. Generating VoiceXML… Read more →
Be Prepared, but Don’t Overdo It
Since I’m currently unemployed, my friend GL asked me to write something about the job interview process. The problem is, there’s already so much written about the job interview process, it’s hard to think of anything to add. Which brings me to my point: It’s easy to overprepare for interviews. For example, we have a book here that my wife bought called Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions. Two problems: Who has time to prepare answers for 201 interview questions? What if the interviewer asks a question that’s not on the list? Where is your God now? But wait! It gets worse! If you go to Amazon and look up this book, you’ll find a list of similar titles like More Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely Be Asked 301 Smart Answers to Tough… Read more →
This Week in Sports Parents Must Die
My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed): Fellow Freshman parents, Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo: If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name… Read more →
We Get Letters
This is the best email I’ve had all week. Let me preface it by saying that I don’t know the sender, so I changed her name to protect the “innocent.” From: anne sexton [mailto:annie-s@hotmail.com] Subject: Teacher? Only in Southern California could someone so woefully ignorant be a teacher. Your childish clinging to some 1950’s idea of masculinity in order to bolster your own ego is pathetic, and the sad thing is, you’re teaching your son to be equally disrespectful. Wow. Nice parenting. In short, I’m sorry you have a small dick. It doesn’t give you the right to disrespect women. Oh, And GO BEARS, mother fucker. Love, Anne Sexton PhD candidate in English, UC Berkeley (ranked #1 in the world for their English program. Where’s USC ranked?) Sweet! Here’s my reply: Hi Anne – You sound very angry about something but I’m not sure what. I don’t know where the… Read more →
Follow Your Heart
Man died doing what he loved most — Orange County Register He loved being hit by trucks? Read more →
Tricks of the Trade
The Chevron Extra Mile store near us has a Meal Deal where you get a 32-ounce fountain drink and a Johnsonville Brat for $1.99. My son’s looking it over . . . he’d rather have a Smoky Cheddar Dog but that’s not the deal. So he plops a Smoky Cheddar Dog into a bun, completely smothers it in mustard and chili so you can’t tell what’s in there, takes it up to the register with his 32-ounce soda and says, “This is a Meal Deal, right?” “Yace,” says the Indian clerk. As we’re walking out of the store, he says to me, “Tricks of the trade.” Read more →
Advertisement for Myself
I was laid off recently by a mortgage bank here in Southern California. Times are tough in the mortgage business, as you may have heard. First, some tips on how not to do a layoff: Call the layoff a “rightsizing,” which suggests that there was something “wrong” with the people who were let go. (Actually, the company I worked for has already announced another “rightsizing” in which 1,000 more people will be laid off over the next few months. They just can’t get these “rightsizings” right.) Overnight a layoff information packet, including a 20-page severance agreement, to the home of laid-off employees, asking them to sign and return it via the enclosed UPS envelope. Don’t enclose the UPS envelope. The next day, overnight a second packet to employees’ homes, containing the UPS envelope and a letter correcting phone numbers, email addresses and other misinformation in the previous day’s packet. Include… Read more →
Killer Popcorn
Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit — New York Times, Sept. 5, 2007 If you actually read the story, you see that the man’s doctor says that there “is not a definitive causal link” between popcorn and the man’s health problems. You’ve gotta love the total overreaction to one case where popcorn may have caused a lung problem. The Bush administration had better crack down on this pronto!!! Frankly, I’d rather get a lung disease and die than live in a country where the government tells me I can’t eat popcorn! You can take my popcorn when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands! I’m going to go pop up a batch right now in protest! Have a nice day . . . Read more →
A Waste of a Morning
The California Employment Development Department — aka the unemployment office — scheduled a meeting for me this morning at the Orange County One-Stop job center. I thought it was going to be a one-on-one meeting to discuss appropriate employment opportunities for someone with my outstanding qualifications as a technologist. Instead, I found myself placed in a room full of misfits and losers, none in professional attire, and many of them dressed for a day at the beach — shorts, sandals, Hooters T-shirts — while we listened to a presentation on how to make $50,000 a year selling cars. (“Sounds pretty good,” my son says, and for someone with a junior high school education like him, it probably is.) In the course of the meeting, three people asked to borrow my pen because they didn’t think to bring one. Of course, I was wearing a shirt and tie, so I could… Read more →
Beating the Heat
We’re moving to a new residence next week. The man moving his family into our current home has already transferred the utilities to his name, even though he’s not moving in until Sept. 4. This means I’ll be running the air conditioner the entire Labor Day weekend and he’ll be picking up the tab. Thank you, sir! Read more →
The Hard Way
Death of Esperanza coach brings team together — Orange County Register This couldn’t have been accomplished with a barbeque or a pizza party? Read more →
If the Shoe Fits
I hobbled into a job interview today like a man whose shoes were too small for his feet. No, wait, let me back up a little bit . . . I can never find anything around the house because people keep moving my stuff. Why everyone can’t keep their hands to themselves, I don’t know, but I don’t even try to keep track of things anymore. I just look for something in the last place I put it, and when it’s not there, I ask someone. “Don’t ask me. I didn’t touch it.” So I look some more and it always turns out that my camera is in my son’s room, or my keys are in my wife’s purse, or the important document is in the trash, and everyone still maintains that they have no idea how it got there. Living with people is a mixed blessing, I’ll tell you.… Read more →
Naked People on a Glacier
In this image supplied by Greenpeace, U.S. artist Spencer Tunick and Greenpeace Switzerland present hundreds of naked people to symbolize the vulnerability of glaciers under climate change. Is that what it’s supposed to symbolize? What did it symbolize when he photographed hundreds of naked people in Venezuela, France, Britain, etc., etc., etc. Isn’t anyone else bored out of their minds with this idiot yet? He’s like that miscreant who dresses up Weimaraners, and everyone else who has one limited idea and keeps repeating it over and over and over. I don’t claim to be a great artist, but let me tell you how this glacier shoot should have been done: You put the hundreds of people on the glacier, at which time they discover to their dismay that they’re stuck there like a tongue on a lamppost. You leave them there to slowly starve to death and decompose. It reeks… Read more →
Pug Photos from Flickr
Originally uploaded by Rocktopotomus. This next one is part of a set: Originally uploaded by * katie. Read more →
My Dog Explains His Name
Sometimes when my owner takes me to the dog park, people ask him what my name is. When he says “Lightning,” they laugh, like it’s a joke, a bit of irony, like naming a Great Dane “Tiny.” Look, people, I’m almost 4 years old now, but when I was a puppy, I was really fast — for a pug. That’s why my owners named me Lightning. I’m still fast when I go full speed. I just don’t do it that much anymore. Don’t underestimate the pug. — Lightning Read more →
Life in the OC Photos
Originally uploaded by debaird. I’ve walked by this store dozens of times at the Irvine Spectrum and it never occurred to me that an extreme closeup of the sign would make an interesting photo. I guess that’s why some of us are photographers and some of us are sitting around saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” More like this: The photo is from a Flickr set called .:life in “the oc”:. Read more →
UCLA Coach Makes a Home Visit
The Orange County Register has an update on last week’s arrest of UCLA assistant football coach Eric Scott on suspicion of felony burglary: UCLA officials said Monday that the background check on receivers coach Eric Scott was conducted by the university and not an outside agency, as previously stated. But, again, Athletic Director Dan Guerrero and Coach Karl Dorrell were unaware that Scott had been arrested four times between 1996 and 2005. The Bruins coach, who was arrested for a fifth time last week on a charge of residential burglary, previously had pleaded guilty or was convicted of misdemeanor carrying a concealed weapon in 2005 and misdemeanor disturbing the peace in 2002. OOPSIE! UCLA: University of Coaches Looting Apartments. Coach Scott is on administrative leave at this time. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions regarding his guilt or innocence based strictly on his extensive list of priors. Read more →