Project Insomnia

We're in SoCal this weekend for a couple of social activities with friends we hardly ever get to see. So of course, that means I've been called upon to do emergency work. It never fails somehow--whenever I'm away from home, be it Southern California, Florida, or Victoria BC, that's when all hell breaks loose.
So I'm in the (rather depressing) business center of the (otherwise rather nice) Anabella Hotel in Anaheim working. Wheeeee...

SFGate is running a Wall Street Journal piece titled "Couples in U.S. used to marry early and informally".

[T]he state of marriage in early America: no license, witness, ceremony, often not even a magistrate. Some couples wanted a blessing from church or state, but common-law marriages, men and women behaving as spouses without a formal contract, were both legal and respectable. An 1843 Indiana marriage law stated, "No particular form of ceremony shall be necessary, except that the parties shall declare ... that they take each other as husband and wife."

Hardly as "enduring" as say, slavery or hunger or abject poverty. Maybe those should be protected too.

Thanks to Valerie for pointing me to The Racial Slur Database, which as you might guess is a massive compendium of words and phrases used to describe people of various ethnicities around the world. Sort by epithet or target. Fun for the whole family!

The ACME License Maker is kind of like the DMV's old plates.ca.gov site before they changed it to make it less usable. You can put in any valid combination of letters for all 50 US states and some Canadian provinces. Here's mine.

"Jesus, rumor has it, didn't die for sin. He died for enlightenment. He didn't die so people would walk around all day in ugly nail necklaces thinking about bloody violent death, swapping quote cards and thinking they know something of the divine. He died to indicate humanity's need to purge itself of hate, war, violence and ego -- you know, all those things now performed in his name. Right, Dubya?" -- Mark Morford

Rita J. Rich has posted a new photo album of Harlee the dog. They're very cute. Very.

When exactly do we get to have a dog?

Yahoo News is running a Wall Street Journal story stating that refund checks will be coming soon on the music industry price-fixing suit.

More than three million music consumers in 40 states will begin receiving refund checks starting Friday from the settlement of a lawsuit against the five major music companies and three music retailers, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday.
The $13.86 checks represent individual shares of a $67.4 million settlement in a class-action antitrust lawsuit that alleged the music companies and retail chains including Trans World Entertainment Corp., MTS Inc.'s Tower Records, and Musicland Stores Corp. illegally conspired to inflate CD, cassette and record prices.

$27.72 (one check for Jen, one for me) is nothing to sneeze at. With the Do-Not-Call story below, that's two bits of anti-evil corporation news in one day... cool.

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that the National Do-Not-Call list seems to be working very well. In fact, 25% of survey respondents reported no unsolicited sales calls at all since the list took effect last October. I would be in that 25% and am rather amazed--it seemed so unlikely that this would pass judicial scrutiny, and now it's actually working.

Three noteworthy articles today:

• Glenn Dickey argues persuasively for an MLB salary cap.


• Henry Schulman reports from the Giants' spring training home in Scottsdale, AZ, where pitchers and catchers have now reported.


• Finally, SF Chronicle staff writers provide updates on the BALCO story, including a possible further connection to Giants star Barry Bonds.

Bonds has repeatedly insisted he's clean. I really hope he's telling the truth.

MacMerc has posted surefire instructions for picking a winning Pepsi bottle every time.

"We want to turn the clock back,'' said Mathew Stover, who is representing Campaign for California Families, a Sacramento organization that supported Proposition 22, the initiative voters passed in 2000 that bars same-sex marriages.
Nobody reading this should be at all surprised that I'm totally in favor of marriage for all couples, regardless of orientation. I don't live in San Francisco but I'm reasonably proud to be living nearby.

No, I'm not hiring—I do need help though. I've been tasked to create a Web site featuring a rather large photo and media collection. Obviously I would like to do it using some kind of back-end database solution, rather than coding a ton of static HTML, but I have very little experience in these matters.
What are some possibilities for setting up this site?

The whackjobs (in a good way!) at Venis Productions brilliantly melded a classic "Peanuts" scene with OutKast's hit "Hey Ya" and posted it to the Web.
Predictably, the news was spread far and wide, resulting in a) tons of mirrors, and b) a Cease and Desist from United Features Syndicate.
Venis took down their copy of the QuickTime clip and most mirrors have by now gone down as well. A case could probably be made that this is parody, generally protected by the First Amendment.
With that in mind, I saved the file when it was first made available, and have now uploaded it to my Web server for your enjoyment. Please be gentle!
Hey Ya, Charlie Brown [8MB QuickTime]

I know I haven't put up the next part of the cruise write-up. No excuses, but I hope to have it up within the next couple of days.

This is really funny: Hamlet - The Text Adventure

In this roundup of baseball news, it's reported that Joe Angel, whom the Giants let go in November after two seasons in their broadcast booth, has become the lead radio play-by- play man for the Baltimore Orioles.

This will be Angel's third stint with the Orioles. He teamed with current Giants announcer Jon Miller in Baltimore from 1988-90 and in 1992. Angel also has worked as a play-by-play man for the Twins (1984-86), Yankees (1991) and Marlins (1993-2000).

Good riddance.

SF Chronicle sportswriter Glenn Dickey has a brilliant, if unorthodox idea to solve the Bay Area's sports venue problem:

The 49ers are stalled, perhaps permanently, on a new stadium. Because the Raiders seldom sell out, Oakland and Alameda County are losing money. The A's are unhappy with Network Associates Coliseum, remodeled when the Raiders returned. The Giants' revenues have declined sharply because, with the serious dip in the economy, there are far fewer corporate events at the park.

The solution? Make San Francisco the baseball city and Oakland the football venue, by having the A's share SBC Park and the 49ers play in the Coliseum.

The linked article goes into detail about the advantages and disadvantages of this interesting, controversial plan.

Charlie Brown Hey Ya [8MB QuickTime]
(Sadly, the site has been taken down. Watch this space for updates.)

Authorities tried to determine Monday how a sea lion turned up in the San Joaquin Valley -- some 65 miles from the ocean.The animal basked in the sun on the back of a CHP patrol car."We're just trying to find out where this sea lion came from. It doesn't appear to be injured. It just appears to be out on a stroll in the Central Valley for some reason," CHP office Scott Jobinger said. "We're thinking maybe somebody dropped it, but there are also a lot of canals in that area."

We found a hermit crab in Gilroy at the Garlic Festival a couple of years ago. We named him Eric and released him into the Bay.

We arrived at the Long Beach cruise terminal at about 12:20 to find a few hundred people already in line, and apparently embarkation processing had started early as the line was moving steadily into the terminal building. The terminal is housed in the white geodisic dome formerly home to the Spruce Goose, next to the Queen Mary. The ship, Carnival Pride, was docked next to the terminal.
While in line we met Rod and John, who had gotten married just the day before--in fact Rod was carrying the cake topper with him. John kindly took two pictures of us in line while we waited.


After going through a process much like boarding an airplane (i.e. metal detectors and X-ray machines, check-in lines) we had our embarkation photos [sorry, no scan available] taken in a cute "tropical" set--still inside the terminal building. We followed the line upstairs, received our "Sail & Sign" cards [scan coming] (about which more will be said later) and boarded the ship via a long elevated gangway from the dome straight onto Deck 3 (Atlantic). We were met by cruise personnel who handed us a Deck Plan [scan coming] and gave us directions to our stateroom. We'd originally booked a "window cabin", which would have been on Deck 1 (Riviera), but were pleased and surprised to discover upon receipt of our cruise documents that we'd been upgraded to a "verandah stateroom" on Deck 7 (Verandah). We made our way up and aft to our home for the next seven days, cabin #7288. Naturally, I took a few pictures of the cabin and of the view from the verandah.


As our baggage hadn't yet been delivered ("checked bags" are tagged and given to porters before entering the terminal building, then delivered to staterooms) there wasn't much to unpack. We went up to investigate the Mermaid's Grille on Deck 9 (Lido). The Grille is a buffet-style eatery which includes a 24-hour pizza bar, a deli counter, soft-serve ice cream and frozen yogurt, and several general service counters. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and the midnight buffet are all available here, and we had a fair number of meals here during our week aboard ship.
We had pizza and ice cream (vacation!).
The Spa Carnival on Deck 9 forward was offering tours, so we headed over. The spa tour was hosted by one of the spa staff members, and she took Jen and me and a couple of other guests on a tour through each of the treatment rooms. In each, a specialist explained the treatments available in that room--from massages and seaweed wraps to relaxa-pods and fat-burning treatments. Some of the offerings seemed, well, pretty scammy to me, but we ended up booking a facial for Jen and a full-body massage for me.
After the tour we had just enough time to get back to our cabin and grab our life jackets before we had to report to our assembly station for the mandatory lifeboat drill.
When the drill was done, we returned to our cabin to look through the offered shore excursions. The shipboard interactive TV system allowed us to book our excursions right there--very convenient.
At about 4:40, the ship left the dock, accompanied by two Coast Guard and one Long Beach Police launch.


Now it was time to explore the ship: top to bottom, fore to aft. We'd already been to the Mermaid's Grille and Spa Carnival on Deck 9, so we checked out the pools and sports decks. Guest cabins occupy Deck 8 (Panorama) down to Deck 4 (Main), so we went down to Deck 3 (Atlantic). Here and Deck 2 (Promenade) are where the main public areas of the ship are located.
I should add a note at this point about the motion of the ship. I'd been told that on modern (i.e. huge) cruise ships, the motion of the sea is barely noticible. That may be, but I have always been particularly susceptible to motion sickness and didn't want to chance a miserable week, so I received a prescription from my doctor for Scopalamine patches. These look like disc-shaped bandages and adhere to the skin behind the ear, gradually dispensing the medication. I didn't have a problem the entire week, even during the high winds on Saturday.
Anyway, where was I... we checked out the lounges, theaters, bars, and shops on Decks 3 and 2. We did not go into the casino--in fact we stayed out of the casino, except for two quick entrees to use the ATM (wouldn't you know the ATM would be inside the casino) for the entire voyage. I am not a good gambler, and I don't like to lose. The combination makes casinos frustrating, so we agreed to stay out. This led to a few detours over the course of the week, but it wasn't a big deal.
Then it was time for dinner. We had requested and been given the later seating for dinner, in the Normandie Restaurant. I'm not going to be able to recall each of the meals we had here, because quite frankly the Normandie meals were not all that memorable. We were both also disappointed in the wait staff we had been assigned, so after dinner we requested a change of table assignment. This was granted without question.
After dinner we went forward to the Taj Mahal lounge for the Welcome Aboard show, featuring the Cruise Director, Jeff Bronson.
I'm sorry I didn't have video or audio recording capabilities, because you really need to hear how he pronounced his last name. It wasn't just "bronson", it was more like "brrronson!" with a cheezy French accent--and he was as middle-America as they come. It got to be a running gag throughout the cruise.
The Welcome Aboard show consisted of Brrronson picking guests from the audience (we were glad to have selected seats in the balcony) to make fun of on stage. Sorry, but I've never enjoyed this kind of display, and we quickly tired of the show and left.
We checked out a couple of the other lounges--lots of live music, some very good--and made our way up to the Mermaid's Grille for the midnight buffet. I think we actually didn't eat much (this didn't happen again) and just wanted to see what was offered.
Then, as we both had 8:00 AM spa appointments for Monday morning, we went to bed.
Next... Day 1: A Fun Day and Formal Night at Sea

Travel writer Bonnie Wach has a special feature on SFGate today: the ultimate tour for San Francisco virgins. Over seven pages, she covers Chinatown, North Beach, spectacular views, the Wharf, and dining both fine and not so. A complete list of addresses, phone numbers, and linked reviews rounds out the well-written and entertaining piece.
Though we live here in the lovely Bay Area, we haven't spent all that much time in the City--reading this makes me want to take a weekend and explore.

MSN's Slate has archived lots and lots of political cartoons about last week's halftime incident.

CNet News.com is reporting that Apple's iTunes Music Service is selling at least nine tracks of complete silence.

Among the hundreds of thousands of downloadable songs for sale at Apple Computer's online music store are at least nine tracks of silence, a fact that has prompted quite a bit of discussion. The chatter over the inaudible music tracks began this week at Mac enthusiast site As The Apple Turns.

As the site notes, Apple treats the silent songs just like their more musical counterparts. The silent tracks sell for the same 99 cents as other songs, feature free 30-second "previews" and are all wrapped in Apple's usual digital-rights management software to prevent unauthorized copying.

My grandson has learned how to hold and carry the cat. He has also learned how to flush the toilet. I can't help but believe that in the not-too-distant future there will be another lesson in store for him.
(Dave Henry)

(Courtesy Top5)

Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week Matthew Baldwin shows you how to survive the five treacherous worlds of IKEA. Don’t forget your REKYL!

Home again, home again. Full cruise trip report coming very soon, with lots of pictures.