April fools…..

Seth’s Blog: Outrageous!:

This is going to be the biggest April Fool’s day in memory. There will be political fools and satirical fools and just plain goofy fools. I figured I could get a lot of mileage out of inventing the “blog tax” fool, and it would be a good story to tell my grandchildren. But then I realized that if it worked, I’d get all this incredibly angry mail and trackbacks and I’d have to deal with it.

So, alas, no Fools for me. Good luck tomorrow. Be careful out there.

I used to have a lot of fun with April Fools.

over the years, I’ve pretty much stopped it. partly because to do it well, it takes time and energy I haven’t had, but partly, well, partly because….

Seth nails it:

This is going to be the biggest April Fool’s day in memory. There will be political fools and satirical fools and just plain goofy fools. I figured I could get a lot of mileage out of inventing the “blog tax” fool, and it would be a good story to tell my grandchildren. But then I realized that if it worked, I’d get all this incredibly angry mail and trackbacks and I’d have to deal with it.

Partly because to do April fools right, the audience needs a sense of humor. And there are too many of you out there now who don’t, and it’s hard to justify doing it for those that do while having to put up with those that don’t…

So happy april fools, all. Read the golden oldies…

Bill Farr’s 46 days

L.A. Observed: Bill Farr’s 46 days Archives:

The late Bill Farr was an L.A. Times reporter who became nationally known — and an entry in First Amendment and journalism textbooks — when he sat for 46 days in county jail in 1972-73 rather than tell a judge which lawyers had violated a gag order during the notorious Charles Manson murder trial.

 

Since I keep bringing him up, a little history on Bill Farr.

the first car I ever drove had a “Get Farr Out” bumper sticker on it.

okay, I’m back.

disappeared for a couple of days, but I think I’m returning to the real world again. Friday, I drove down behind the Orange Curtain to visit the parents, do some tech support on the computer (the internet connection went dead, thanks to a dead cable between the cable modem and the airport; not something you can remotely fix…), and generally do errands and etc.

As we were watching the Laker/Mavs game (mom has somehow become a basketball fan in the last few years — go figure), I turned to them and said “have you noticed everyone is yellow?”. Their TV had lost a color. So saturday, dad and I ran off to one of the big box stores and replaced their set.

They now have a 32″ Sony Wega HD. While we were there, I replaced their VCR and DVD with a modern unit (which probably still cost less than the cables on the old boxes), since everything was a good five or more years old (the TV was at least 15). Hauled it home, got some neighbors to help us schlep it onto the stand (a Sony 32″ Wega is 165 pounds. Even *I* am not stupid enough to life that on my own any more), and they’re going to call this week and have the cable folks come out and replace the box with an HD box.

the HD was *their* idea, by the way. not mine. Mom’s really looking forward to watching the Lakers in HDTV.

Gah. a basketball fan. Where did I go wrong?

But everyone’s thrilled at the new TV down there.

So anyway, I drove back up Sunday, and I had monday off, because when I set things up, I wasn’t sure if I was coming back sunday night or monday morning. Monday, I got up, intending to finish off a document that was due this week — and promptly fell asleep at the desk. And that’s been the last 36 hours or so. I hit some kind of wall (not flu, not cold, none of that, just — going back to sleep). I was able to nail out that doc today, and finally surfaced again late this afternoon, finally feeling like I’d caught up on sleep. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

Some fun. But mom’s got her email back, and soon will be able to see Kobe’s pores. And the air didn’t suck (so badly) down there…

An interesting side note on Southern Cal. Born and raised down there, I moved to the Bay area in February, 1982 — when I was 23 years old and seven months. I’m now 46 and 8 months old. This means when I am within a few months of having lived in this area longer than in LA (that’ll happen sometime in September). I’m not sure that’s significant, but it’s an interesting milestone. Does it mean I’m now a bay area native? I’m definitely not a SoCal boy any more. the last few trips down, I’ve been sort of exploring the area again, and so little of what was there growing up still is.

And I’m not all that far from having been in the industry for 30 years. I guess I really AM an old phart. My first job: taking fortran code for a Data General machine, and rewriting it to be faster and use less memory.

Another one of those meaningless but interesting dates: looking at my copy of my resume, it hasn’t been updated since 1996. almost ten years out of date.

How time flies when you’re having fun.

In the “I feel old” category…

I’m in southern cal this weekend, visiting the mom and dad. everyone’s doing fine — but mom’s internet connection fell down and wouldn’t get up, and we couldn’t figure out why. the problem, it turned out, was a dead cable between the cable modem and the airport express. Ohwell, can’t reboot that. It also allowed me to tweak a couple of things and update her laptop with iLife ’05.

But driving around the old home town — I went past my high school, which was advertising the 30th anniversary reunion of the class of ’75. My class is 1976. Next year — 30th anniversary.

Can I feel old now?