San Jose Family Shelter

Our CEO wants us to give back to the community since the community has helped support our company for the past 20 years. It's nice to see such a proclamation coming from the CEO of a fairly large company. It's even better when lower levels of mgmt follow through by making sure we can set aside time to do the volunteering. So last Friday I, along with a few others, went to the San Jose Family Shelter.

It's a place where families who have recently lost their homes can stay for 30 days and get help getting back on their feet. The families are assisted with employment, housing, and many other things to help make sure they don't have to go from shelter to shelter. No doubt, a lot of good work goes on there.

We were there to help organize and clean up things with the folks who run the place. My small group was given charge of the food store where tons of canned food, coffee, and other things had been sitting dis-organized. First off, we had to throw away the bad stuff. More interestingly, we threw away the stuff that the shelter just had too much of. Stuff like cranberry jelly, pumkin pie filling, and sweet potatoes. While these canned items could last for years, the head chef just wanted us to throw the stuff away since they would be getting more than enough of it again come November.

Sad, but true...they just had to throw away useable stuff since there was simply no room for it. On the other hand, we kept and re-organized stuff which would come in much better use. Food which could be distributed to families as they leave the shelter was put into another shed. This food would help families start out life again in their new places of residence.

Most interesting of all was the coffee. There were literally 7 garbage bags full of single-pot bags of coffee. Most of it from Starbucks. The whole time while going through these bags we were wondering what the hell the shelter would do with so much coffee. It turns out that coffee is like currency amongst shelters and can be used to trade for other food items. So this shelter had arranged for a local Starbucks owner to donate a box or two of these small bags of coffee for them to use towards other things.

The other thing which shelters need? Meat. Ground meat, Deli meat, you name it, it's what they need most of. While the canned food is great, apparently there isn't enough meat to be used for dinner every night.

So lesson learned: Come Thanksgiving when we all start thinking about donating something to a local shelter, check with them to see if they can use deli meats or anything like that. Coffee also comes in very handy for them. Don't just go out and buy the cheapest cans of food you can find at Costco or Safeway.

Resigned to fate....

You know, I haven't commented on the drama with the Lakers since they lost to the Pistons. But this whole thing with Shaq being traded is really dis-heartening. Eric Neel captured my thoughts pretty well in this article.

I've always liked Shaq more than Kobe. While the argument that the Lakers should get something for Shaq while he's still worth something on the trade market, but you know what? He's still Shaq. It's not worth trading away a franchise. Jerry Buss and Mitch Kupchak are taking this franchise down a path that doesn't make me smile.

I'll always love the Lakers, but this is just making me shake my head even more. I did enough of that during this past season and during the playoffs and being a life-long fan, head-shaking isn't a fun thing.

Call my Agent!

You know, Robert Smith's agent must be on the phone right now negotiating to have "Friday I'm in Love" serve as the theme song for TGI Friday's restaurants. The dude is working it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with The Cure finally making some bank for all the work they've put in over the years. I wrote before about the HP digital printing ad which uses "Pictures of You". I haven't written about the recent covers of Cure songs (although they're pretty bad). The latest tidbit about hearing The Cure in unexpected places?

Nordstrom's

If you've never been to Nordstrom's, you're not missing anything. It's just another posh departmant store with relatively bland, overpriced fashions and relatively bland, over-make-up-ed shoppers. The couple of unique things about the place:

• Shoppers actually buy license plate frames declaring their heart's content with "I'd rather be shopping at Nordstrom's"


• Pianists play live music on weekends to keep people tapping their toes.

So over the long weekend we were at South Coast Plaza down in THE OH-SEE, BITCH! (er, I meant to say Orange County). My mom wants to take a look into Nordie's even though all of us know we're not going to spend a dime in the store (I still can't really grasp the concept of walk-by shopping just to see what's for sale). As soon as we walk past the crowded espresso stand (oh yes, add that to the list of Nordie's specialties - they have espresso stands in the store), I hear the pianist playing a catchy tune.

Lo and behold, it's "Love Song" by The Cure.

WTF?

If you don't know what song I'm talking about, listen to it now.

Ok, so 311 recently did a gawd-awful cover of this wonderful song and that cover is getting a lot of radio-time, but how does a classical pianist chose a relatively depressing song to play on a holiday weekend when people are jazzed up to display their national pride? (smirk).

• Did this pianist hear the song on KROQ before coming into work?


• Did he just love 311's version so much that he had to do his own rendition?


• Did he think Robert Smith is a god and must be worked into the leisurely lives of the insanely wealthy OC'ers shopping at the South Coast Nordie's?


• Did the Robert Smith robot from South Park somehow infiltrate the hallowed riches of THE OH-SEE, BITCH? (er, Orange County)
  

What is going on here??

Whatever the case may be, I need to find an agent who will pimp me and my talents left, right, and center.

Fat and Happy

You know, sometimes the obvious just hits me in the head and yesterday was one of those days. The past week has been quite busy for us, but all of this busy-ness just reminded me of how well off most of us are. Now, I'm not trying to be arrogant when I say that, but just trying to show that we should all be pretty damned grateful for what we've got. Obvious, to be sure, but it just hit me in the head Sunday night again.

Sunday evening ended with my wife and I having a nice little barbecue in our new (still unfinished) backyard. Sitting there watching the smoke rise from the grill, chilling out with some tasteless beer (MGD, if you want to know), really just made the events of the past week come together and help me appreciate all that's been given to us. Just the fact that we're in a position to enjoy a Sunday evening in this way is something we tend to take for granted.

Moreover, the running around we've done for the past week has simply been a demonstration of the basic YUPPIE lifestyle we have. Afterall, we've been running around, not from job-to-job-to-job, but from job-to-lounge-to-dinner-to-friend's place, etc, etc. In essence, our busy schedule is busy simply because we're livin' it up.

So what's my point? Well, for once, I took a moment to think about what's been given to me and my wife. Sure, we've worked for some of it, but in the end, it's all a gift. It's something that we should be thinking about more often. It's generally something we do only a few times a year (Thanksgiving, New Year's, etc), but on a random summer evening, it was nice to sit there and smile in appreciation.

Moreover, it gives me more motivation to work harder on the other projects I'm involved in. Hopefully, they will help people who are less well-off than us. Don't worry, I'm not gonna write about my "benevolance" trip, just wanted to mention a small point of motivation for me.

With that, I'll leave you all with a moment to smile in appreciation of everything that's been given to you. :)

No Selling Involved!

Have you ever been in some store and a random dude comes up to you asking if you work in the area, or work for company X? Well, if you're Indian and live in the South Bay, you're probably quite familiar with this. Usually it's some Indian guy in his late 20's/early 30's asking how your job is. Now, if you're smart, you say as little as possible to the guy and go on with your business of buying of toilet paper or whatever the hell you're at Wal-mart for. Why? Because the brown dude across from you is casing you to see if you're gullible enough to become involved in the most popular "pyramid" scheme this side of Amway.

Now, flashback to two weeks ago. My wife and I were in Wal-mart buying towels or somesuch. A young-ish couple is talking in one of the aisles and the husband asks me if the stuff at Wal-mart is any good and what kinds of things they should buy there. Now, both my wife and I thought this question was kind of odd since even if you're fresh off the H1 plane (which this guy wasn't), you've probably heard of Wal-mart, and if you haven't heard of it, you'd figure out the level of quality at the place - cheap, but good enough to not worry about.

Anyways, we have a short conversation with the couple...turns out they come from Gujarat, the same place my family's from. So we take down phone numbers yada yada. Dude calls me a few days later and it turns out he's doing the Quixtar/BWW pitch on me - without actually naming the company. In retrospect, this is a pretty conniving way to get into someone's ear...strike up a conversation randomly, then call them to hook em in. And you know Quixtar & BWW teach their disciples these tricks of the trade.

Now, if you haven't heard of Quixtar, give 'em a hit and make 'em feel good about themselves. It's basically an online merchant, but instead of selling goods themselves, they line up gullible people to sell the stuff for them. Of course, as the pitch goes, there's no selling involved, no marketing involved, nothing involved except a few hours a week. Why anyone would want to buy the products from Quixtar, I don't know. They seem to sell the same stuff as Amazon, Wal-mart, and "finer department stores".

So when I'm talking to this guy, I know he's casing me for this shit, but I'm piqued because apparently he and his wife are a tag team. He wants to come by our house with his wife and "talk for 15-20 minutes". In my senseless state, I said, sure, come by Monday night.

Bad Move.

They come and talk our heads off for an hour and a half! The whole time I wasn't so concerned with Quixtar, but with the selling skills of these people. To be honest, they weren't very good. It's a barely worthwhile scheme to begin with, but these two would hardly be able to sell me fertilizer for my new backyard.

Anyways, I've now got this folder of marketing material sitting on my dining room table. And I've gotta see this guy again to give it back to him. How annoying.

Lesson for all you kids: When in Wal-mart, keep to yourself, lest THEY reel you in.

Lesson for all you wanna be (non)sales people: Hook up with Quixtar so you too can learn how to talk to people with a sorry sales pitch.

Question for the floor: Why the hell are so many random Indian techies involved in this shit? For every Indian that started up a dot-com, there's gotta be 20 of these fools pacing the aisles of your local convenience store.

Anyone out there got a Quixtar story of their own? Been pitched by these guys? Are YOU one of these guys? As my homie Fabolous would say "Holla back youngin" I wanna hear more.

Let Freedom Reign!

As I was listing to NPR this morning I was surprised to hear that Iraq's PM Allawi had been given the reigns of Iraq a couple of days before the original Jun 30th deadline. Well, this is great news that they finally have formal control of the country and that the handover occurred without a huge wave of more violence. I can only smirk at the sort of PR the Bush admin gets out of this, but I won't really comment on that since I don't want to be too cynical about this event. I'm sure the memo from Condi to Bush will be featured prominently in the re-election campaign and in W's presidential library. But that's his right.

In any case, I've read a couple of good articles in The Economist regarding the challenges which PM Allawi faces now that he's running the country. If you have subscription access to it, here's a rather detailed article and here's another shorter free article which summarizes based on today's news.

The good thing about these articles is that they aren't too cynical or unduly-optimistic about what needs to happen in Iraq. As usual, The Economist points out the facts and leaves you with an "oookaayyy, so then?" feeling. You can decide if that's a good or bad thing :)

The basics of these articles: Most Iraqis believe they can cope without too much help from coalition forces. However, Allawi has a lot of work to do around security and proving to Iraqis that they indeed live in a better place than before with Saddam in power. Allawi has very little in the way of resources to enable this security so he'll be relying on American bankrolling to be successful. Coalition forces have operational control, however Allawi directs the overall military strategy. Not sure how that will play out or what it means to Allawi if he doesn't have operational control. Also, Western Contractors have a lot of say in the way Iraq unfolds since they are being paid to secure strategic sites and maintain oil pipelines, etc. Additionally, these folks are not subject to Iraqi law. None of this is really new. I think we've all known that a lot of work has to be done in Iraq, but these articles definitely help provide some more detail into just what has to happen and some of the hurdles in the way of accomplishing those things.

So take it how you want it. There's much to be cynical about, but there's also much to be hopeful about. This doesn't change my opinion about where W should be headed after November 9th, but that's a whole other story.

Domesticated....

So can I just say that buying a home means there's no going back to being cool? Man, my ass is so domesticated! We're getting our backyard done right now with concrete, etc. Normally, a backyard isn't something I think too much about. We used to rent a big home before and we didn't give a damn about the backyard until we wanted to BBQ. Now? I'm coming home from work everyday and checking on progress. That's the first thing I do! Help!

Recycle MuthaF...er!!!

So a follow on to my recycle at home thing...here at work we've got recylce bins everywhere you turn. I'm surprised they haven't put bins in the bathroom stalls. But I think the overabundance of these things has lead to negative returns.

When I first started here, we had different bins for paper, plastic, aluminum. Heck, we've got special bins for batteries and acheivement certificates too! I guess that was too complicated for us lame brains so they simplified it to recycle and trash. The battery bin is still in the copy room, but I don't know who uses it. And achievement certs? Bathroom stalls.

Anyways, the problem here is that the trash bins have taken mini-sizing to the extreme. It's one thing to put recycle bins right next to the trash and make the trash bin a little smaller than the recycle bin. It's another to ask 20 people in a conferance room to push their lunch boxes through a trash opening the size of a postage stamp. Suffice it to say, bins overflow, and conference rooms got stank. I feel sorry for the custodial staff since they have to deal with this stuff after everyone's gone.

Of course, since I'm a perfect citizen, I take my trash to another bin that actually has space. Unless it's on the other side of the building :P

Recylcing and the art of exceedingly small trash cans

You know the best way to get someone to recycle? Provide a trash recepticle which is way too small to fit trash AND recycle-able goods. And provide a recycle container which is god awful huge.

Never mind the fact that one could simply fill the recycle bin with trash. Let's assume the parties involved are "good citizens" and willing to do their parts to help reduce landfill trash.

So now that we live in our own home, we have to pay for garbage service. San Jose city provides various sizes of trash cans - the larger the can, the more we pay. I understand the basic logic: The more trash you have, the more it costs in terms of landfill space, etc. And, of course, the extra cost is passed on to homeowners. Makes sense.

I've always been one to recycle when (easily) possible. When the recycle bin isn't presented to me alongside the trash bin, I'll look around, but if I don't find the recycle bin close by, that Coke can goes in the trash. Of course, since I'm now paying for every bit of stuff that goes into the trash bin, I think twice about whether that bit of stuff is actually trash or recycleable. On top of that, our recycle container is 3 times larger than the trash container SJ City gave to us. I could get a larger trash container, but I'd have to pay double. So not only is SJ City passing landfill costs onto the homeowner, they're encouraging homeowners (in a round about way) to recycle more and trash less.

Suffice it to say, I'm now a huge recycle freak. I've put a separate recycle bin under our kitchen sink so we think twice before throwing items directly into the trash. And you know what? We're managing to fill that sucker up more than the trash!

Now, I just need to start my compost bin and buy a hybrid car and I'll be thoroughly green...should I start wearing hemp clothing and get some birkenstocks too?

Jumping the Shark

I was telling a friend a few weeks ago that Crunk has jumped the shark. The day before I had seen the preview for the Olsen Twins' movie "New York Minute" and the background song was "Shake it Like a Saltshaker" by the Yin Yang Twins. Let me tell you that I was thoroughly disturbed watching the Olsen twins (and Eugene Levy) running around while the baseline of "Saltshaker" was playing. Certainly not a sight I had imagined while bumpin that track on my stereo.

But let's chalk that one up to wierd and unecessary combinations where marketing people try to bring in a wider audience. Another example of that is the use of 50 Cent's "In the Club" as the background music for the preview of Harrison Ford's Hollywood Homicide. Needless to say, Harrison is the last person I'd expect at a club bobbing his head to 50. But I digress...

The next and perhaps more convincing argument that Crunk has jumped the shark? MSNBC writing a story on how Cunk is like Punk Rock. It's always fun reading something that's trying to explain and define a cultural/street phenomenom in terms that the average white joe blow can understand. Here's to journalistic integrity!

Personally Crunk's jumping the shark makes no difference in my life. Lil Jon is always a fun guy to listen to hollering on a track ("WHHHHHHHHHAT?!?!") and basslines can always make some bones shiver. Jumping the Shark in this case just means there's some odd juxtapositions going on with the growing popularity. I don't think it means the quality of the music is going down-hill. As long as those qualities are around it's "OOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKKKAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!"

Church!

Ok, so my plan to post comments about more serious topics ain't really happening. That's not to say I've stopped thinking about the current situation in Iraq or the electoral frenzy in India. For the time being, can I just sit back relax in the glow? The glow of recent Staples Center sideline sightings? Can I just say how pleased I was during the recent Lakers-Spurs playoff game? Of course, the Lakers came storming back to win the series, but the cherry on top? Not one, but two, count 'em two P-I-M-Pees: Snoop Dogg and Bishop Magic Don Juan. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Being away from LA breaks my heart sometimes, but catching that sight on TV definitely brought me back to an LA state of mind.

Unfortunately, I can't find a pic of Bishop Magic Don Juan from the game, but hopefully this will be enough to give you a grasp of the stunning nature of seeing this guy on the sidelines. How can you not sit up and smile at him?

Smile for the Camera

So how you like me now? The folks at Google have certainly done a nice job with the new templates. I can't seem to get the in-house commenting system to work though, so until then, HaloScan still prevails.

UPDATE: Ok, so the in-house commenting thing works only for new posts. No problem with that so bu-bye haloscan.

More about the new templates: The way in which Blogger is now organizing posting should actually help get more (and better) search results on the various search engines. Each posting now has its own HTML page rather than a single HTML page per month, etc. Hopefully this means that the search engines find more pages to index and that the results lead to the specific posting with the keywords. Anyways, hope you're done blinking you eyes and the shiny new exterior of this blog.

On the Pedestal

In my last post I mentioned America standing on a pedestal. I should say that I'm all for standing proud on a pedestal and bragging about one's greatness. When one has a great accomplishment, a true champion will brag all he can about it (some more loudly than others). But when it's a false accomplishment, the person trying to stand on the pedestal should expect to be spit upon and moreover, should not ignore the spitters. To put an analogy to this, I'll use the NBA playoffs, since they're consuming my evenings right now.

A false accomplishment is hitting a game tying shot in the 2nd quarter of a first playoff game. Trying to stand on a pedestal after that is screaming and hollering to the crowd to show how much heart you have. This is something a true champion would never do, it's something a kid would do. It's something that Steve Francis did against the Lakers in a game that his team ended up losing. Steve, sit your ass down. Oops, you're already doing that since your team got knocked out of the playoffs last week. Now, a true champion is someone gets up on the pedestal once something great has been done. Michael Jordan did this as he pushed Bryon Russell aside for a game-winning (and 6th championship-winning) shot against the Jazz.

Now, I'm not saying that basketball shots are mark of a champion in the world at large, but the attitude is something to note. Right now, I believe that the Bush admin is prematurely getting up on the pedestal without much to show for. A "mission accomplished" speech? That's like a 1st quarter layup. Sit down son. Capturing Saddam? That's like a hard dunk near the end of the 2nd quarter. Nice make kid, but get back on D. Finding your own soldiers abusing prisoners in the same way that Saddam's regime did. That's like Hakeem Olajuwan constantly blocking a young Shaq in the 95 NBA Finals. Humiliating. Sit the fuck down and come back when you've won something.

At this point, we should all be showing the same humility when it comes to Iraq. Until we can go back and learn a few lessons, we have anything to stand up for. No matter how you want to relate other good events in the world (eg, Libya's turn-around) to our actions in Iraq, we have nothing to smile about when we can't even entrust our soldiers to respect the people they are supposedly liberating. Yes, a few bad apples have stained thousands of good people struggling to secure Iraq, but what's done is done. Morever, it seems like the chain of command is in willful bliss while they dance around on a shaky pedestal.

-- PS - No offense meant to Hakeem & Shaq in comparing them to recent events in Iraqi prisons. It's just an analogy ;)

Dismay

A blogger I occassionally read has a term for re-building the Arab World - Draining the Swamp. You can read some of his specific posts for his thoughts on this. I'm not going to comment on his thoughts since that's not my point; I'll leave to you to decide if you agree with him or not. Lately however, I just keep finding new reasons for why this is going to be a much much more difficult thing to accomplish (let's assume that it is indeed something we want to accomplish). The latest reason, of course, is the news of degrading torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. President Bush went on Arab TV yesterday condemning this stuff and essentially to try and placate a huge Arab audience and basically tell them, "Hey, we don't stand for this and don't you forget we're in it to win it and improve everybody's lives" Personally, I think Bush really believes in what he says. Whether what he believes is based on any point in reality is another story.

I don't think these abuses are the end-all-be-all, but it's yet another thing to point to and hang your head in shame that we can't do better. So outside of the human rights and the general "oh my god, you can't do that to our fellow humans!" thing, I think the main problem here is that the revelation of all these abuses just makes it sooo much more difficult to stand up on a pedestal and show that We Americans know what's best for for the world and We Americans have a plan to get You there. Bush seems to not want to get off that pedestal and really do anything serious about it. He keeps saying we're making progress, but that's about it. I know that's just his style of speaking, but c'mon...at some point, you've got to offer more than that.

It remains to be seen what actually comes of these prison abuses. We're told that many service-people at the prison are being reprimanded. I don't know what that entails, but I'm sure it's certainly not enough for the Arab audience who watched Bush's interview yesterday. We're being told that Sec. Rumsfeld is on the hot-seat for this as well. Personally, I don't care if the admin finds a fall-guy for this. Afterall, a fall-guy is just the person who's been chosen to take the heat so the rest of the folks can continue on their merry ways. Besides, I don't think Bush will bail on him. If he hasn't bailed on the poster-child for fall-guys, George Tenet, than he's not going to bail on his boy Rummie.

The only type of thing that's going to make difference is a demonstration of what's being done to improve the lives of people in Iraq. I'm really surprised that we don't get more of that news. The media love to show "human" stories when the Olympics come around, why not when it comes to Iraq? You'd think the Admin would be pushing CNN and the like to cover more of that stuff. While we do get some tidbits here and there, they seem more like isolated instances rather than parts of an improving picture. The cynic in me figures it's because there just isn't much good news to report. Who knows, I know I selectively read news and find news which supports my belief that the Admin will implode on itself.

Either way, I'm dismayed.

And with dismay, it's always good to find a good laugh. So here's Jon Stewart's take on this. Have fun.

The Last Straw

So after weeks and weeks of random people begging me to start posting on my blog again, I finally had it yesterday. Someone knocked on my door and when I answered it there was a crowd of bedraggled looking children who told me they wouldn't eat until I posted to my blog! Can you believe it?! The children want me to write! So I decided, I've gotta blog for the children. Do it for the kids man! :)

But seriously, I really got lazy and busy so the blog went to the side while I took care of some things. Let me just say that buying a house is really all-consuming. Not only do you have paperwork, you've got all the HGTV to watch! In the last couple of months I've felt guilty for not writing...not for denying the handful of people who read this stuff, but for not spending time to think about my life and document my thoughts and interesting things around me.

So this past weekend we went to agreat hip-hop show at The Warfield. If you've never checked out the artists on the Quannum record label, now's the time. I got DJ Shadow's Entroducing CD a while back, but that was about it. A few months ago, a friend told me about this rapper named Lyrics Born, but I hadn't heard of his stuff. Well, after checking out this show, I'll be listening to a lot more from all of the artists. They're mainly from the Bay Area (UC Davis, in particular) and the whole label is touring together. The Warfield show was their last on this tour. As you can tell from the samples on their website, it's a wide range of hip-hop, but underground beats to more funky stuff. After just 10 minutes at the venue, I was sold on these guys. Overall, I'd say this was almost as good as the Mos Def/Talib Kweli show we went to last year. Of course DJ Shadow ripped ish up. He not only spun beats the whole show, he had this trippy DVD turntable which let him scratch video in sync with the rest of the beats. We were stunned.

Anyways, check 'em out if you get a chance. If you've been looking for something different, anything from this label should please you.