For Example

This is after midnight last night on the Ala Wai. Yawn if you like. If you don't know, there's a one-way street between my apartment building and the Ala Wai canal. I hear this couple having an argument or I guess quarreling on the Ala Wai canal side of the street. However I and the neighborhood only get to hear the female's side of the story because apparently the male half of the couple isn't able to squeeze in a word as she summarily berets her significant other. After this goes on for 20-minutes, I look down from my lanai (balcony) and lo and behold, there's only a girl sitting on her bicycle by herself talking to what I assumed was one of those ear pieces or hands-free devices for a cell phone. Apparently, she's berating somebody on the other end of the cellphone connection. Finally after another full 20-minutes, all quiet. Perhaps, the battery ran out. Dunno.

6am Monday

....8am

Gingerbread Man

How long did it take the TSA to think of using a generic representation of the human body in place of explicit naked photos? I never felt at ease with the TSA's repeated reassurance that  the only person that gets to see the security photos or x-rays whatever the label is a lone screener in a backroom, not because I thought that the screener was a pervert, but because things have a way of getting posted on the Internet without expressed permission from the former owner of those things that get posted on the Internet without prior permission. I'm not claiming anybody's okole is better than the next person, but I still would prefer private parts to remain private. With the older explicit photos, the least the TSA nincompoops could have done was blank out the eyes of the person exposed in the security x-ray, but for reasons all to their own, they didn't.

  

  

If it Bleeds, It Leads

It may be only me, but I can't see the media's obsession with replaying the video of  last week's plane crash at the Reno air show over and over again. Oh, it's not an 'air show.' It's was an 'air race.' Big difference. How many Formula One 'races' went from start to finish without a crash? Sure a race car crash on a road track is less tragic then a plane crash into the ground but it's something that is gonna happen. The Reno plane crash stands out since people in the audience were killed but still why replay the video of it so often. The news hosts are usually talking about the latest developments in the same story, but the video footage is the same. Even military precision flying teams experience plane crashes. It's no secret that the vintage airplanes in air races are like 60-years-old it's a testament to the aerial skills of the pilots and the mechanical ability of the ground crew operating on a shoe string budget that there haven't been more disasters. The distinction is that the media never shows accident free air races.

$64,000 Question

I was at the bank yesterday pushing in a wheel barrel of cash to make a deposit when I happened to notice this sign on the wall. What I don't get is the "Sell" and "Buy" quotations. If you "sell," isn't the exchange rate suppose to be lower than the "buy rate?" I mean you buy at the going rate of the foreign currency and sell at a lost so the bank can make a profit for providing the service. In this situation I interpret "buy" as you buying foreign money from the bank, not the bank "buying" back money from you.

Rolling Out the Red Carpet

If you drove through Waikiki lately you probably noticed that they're busy tearing up the sidewalks and installing new slate tiles for the APEC Summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) 2 months from now. 21 heads of state and dignitaries from the pacific rim member nations will have something nice to walk on. I don't know if the average citizen will be allowed to share the same sidewalk because of security reasons when presidents and prime ministers are strolling around taking in the T&A (teeths n' buttocks) on the beach. I'm sure every APEC nation wanted the summit to be held in their capital, but thanks is due to local boy, President Obama, who scheduled the event here. Somewhat related, they finish paving the roads in Waikiki town even many of the side streets which is nice.

This is an older section of sidewalk with the same slate tiles. That's after they tore out the previous square tiles and re-tiled the sidewalk with slate.

IMHO, not the best wearing material.

Hawaii Five-O Live Season Premier

I haven't been able to find the full replay of last night's 2-hour coverage of Hawaii Five-O season premier's pomp and ceremonies, but the video clip directly below is from the late news. *It takes almost 5-seconds to load up and appear on this page.

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Hawaii Five-O live video stream from Sunset on the Beach Premier, here. The resolution of the stream isn't da best.

Tuesday's Edition

 I was heading to Makapuu via the scenic coastline route pass Hanauma Bay and this car in front, er the line of cars in front, because of the lead car, driver and passengers probably so preoccupied sight seeing that they failed to notice that they holding up everybody behind. Didn't look like a tourist rental car even. More probably a resident giving mainland friends a guided tour. Well after a while it gets a bit annoying. I mean hey how about pulling over and letting the convoy behind through. Idiot. I usually have a huge tolerance for slow moving traffic as well as waiting in a slow moving line at a checkout counter. I figure you live longer that way. When I reached Sandy Beach I decided to pull over to the side of the road and spot the leader of the pack a lap lead before I continued on my own way. The air was clear and I could see Molokai island (middle right of pic above). If you squint real hard, to the left of Molokai, in the middle of the pic, you'll be able to make out the outline of southern California or is it Maui.

The US Postal Service is making the news again. If you haven't heard there'll be a 120,000 worker layoff. Well, after losing $9 billion so far this year. In addition to being in the red to the tune of something like $8 billion last year, the sentimental value of postal workers have long worn off and if they go the way of the Pony Express so be it. I suppose it wouldn't be the same situation if the economy was up and the rest of the nation was doing well financially. But that's not the reality. If the USPS had the gumption to keep up with the times they could have cornered the deliveries for the Internet marketplace. Virtually everybody orders items from the Internet, but the postal workers were too against having to lug middle-size or hand truck large-size packages instead of the less heavy letters to the mailboxes. Why would they when they get paid the same for what would amounts to less work. Well, now we don't need them. As a cost cutting measure, no more Saturday delivery is in the works. It's also been rumored that mail will be delivered Mon-Wed-Fri instead of the usual 5 days a week schedule.

Last week I paypal-ed $20 to Honolulu Weekly, a weekly alternative newspaper. Honolulu Weekly was about to go belly up and they put out a plea to the public for contributions to keep them in operation. I haven't read an edition for a few years now. The Free paper gets dropped off at random newstands around town. When Honolulu Weekly first got started Honolulu was a 2 major newspaper town, now there's only one major daily. However, Honolulu Weekly doesn't seem to want to keep up with the times either. The eclectic articles that they primarily focus on are not eclectic anymore based on standards of stories that you can get daily doses of on the Internet and are available to read on many personal blogs for that matter. Ever seen the type of topics we post, in muse, in rant, or in rave, on personal blogs get printed in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser or the monthly Honolulu Magazine. Now, meeting a weekly deadline on a consistent basis year after year is not an easy thing to do, and it does demand a genuine passion to hang in there. As a business, there's not much money in it either for the publisher or the motley crew staff. My thoughts are that if Honolulu Weekly does not shift their advertising from print to their webpage, currently their sole revenue generating base because of the weekly's free subscription, Honolulu Weekly will end up obsolete for the same reason that most newspaper went under.

Two Trips

You probably know this for yourself,  but if you didn't, it's a halogen bulb shown a mm less than actual size for my desk lamp. Need I mention a halogen bulb that burnt out. The problem with getting a replacement bulb is that they you have to bring the old bulb in with you to the store otherwise the bulbs all appear the same size on the rack by memory. Then you see the "pin gauge" printed on the package. Different wattage, and I don't mean 60-watts versus 20-watts, but between a 25-watts and a 20-watts have different pin widths.

Ready Mix

I'm glad that I wasn't following behind when this concrete truck tipped over on the freeway today dumping its load of ready mix. The sight of fresh concrete is always nostalgic to me from working in the construction trade. The sight, I say. Troweling the concrete is a totally different fun thing altogether. I sincerely feel for the firefighters shoveling the concrete off the freeway. After a few shovelfuls things tend to get heavier and that's no matter whether the slump is liquidy or on the dry side. Plus, they have to do it before the the concrete starts to set up while the asphalt temperature hovers near 100 degrees. Obviously, this is not the kind of work the firefighters originally signed up for. Asides from concrete spills, I'm seeing a few paint spills left on the roadways around town from contractors that neglected to clean up their masterpieces.

Excerpts

I've never issued an apology for not posting for a while, and well, this won't mark the inaugural day for it either mainly because every time that I've read an apology on another blog myself, I thought the act of posting it was ridiculous. If you want to apology, then impale yourself by sitting on a sharp stick. Now that's an apology in my book. Anything less misses the bullseye. Anyways, I haven't been overly busy in the real world, but in the digital world, I've been my usual participating in a number of forums that I'm a member of. By "member," that ranges from lurkers to multi-daily posters. I'm more of the later. After you multiply numerous posts on the various forums, it's midnight. That's largely due to proof reading and fact checking to pass the scrutiny of peer review as well as the peanut gallery. There's no equivalent to a spell check for the proper nuts and bolts with technical and mechanical topics. You might start off with two forums than overnight the subscriptions multiply in number. Over population.

There's a forum for every type of subject and its subcategories to satisfy the needs of all stripes of aficionados and enthusiasts. Dyson® vacuum cleaners as a random example. Car stereos aka boom boxes. How to sit on sharp sticks. Just checking if you were paying attention. If you have an interest, perhaps you should share your knowledge and experience with the forum members. More often than not they'll walk you through things and nuances that you weren't even aware existed on the particular topic. What this has to do with the price of tea is that if I compiled all the text I've written on my itinerary of forums per week it would amount to five times the things I wrote here on a good week.

Was it on another blog or on mines? I forget already, but we were discussing the rightful frequency of posting. Weekly? Five days a week? Every day for the next 20-years. Now, that's a worthy goal. I've been blogging daily for the past 19-years and 10-months, just 2-months left to go. Just talking to myself. Moving on, directly below is a photo I plagiarized from a blog that I use to follow which started in 1998. All text those days. I think I started reading it in 2000. I don't visit the blog much anymore because the author has written several science fiction books, successful at that, and all he talks about is the world of science fiction, which is not my cup of tea. Oh, the author won't miss me very much, since he receives 70,000 unique readers per day. In any event, I think his writing is easy to read, excerpt below, even for a seemingly mundane subject matter.

In case you ever wondered what a walnut fruit looks like before it’s husked, shelled and turned into pies and such, here you go. This picture is from a young tree in our backyard that is producing fruit for the first time and as such I was deeply confused as to what sort of thing it might be, but as it turns out the Internets had the answer. Oh, Internets. You always have everything.

And lest you think that having thousands of visitors and a hundred comments per day is all there is to a popular blog ....

The site has also been around long enough that it has its own community of people, evident in the comments section, where there is (as Mad magazine would put it) “the usual gang of idiots” who talk amongst each other on a usual basis. The composition of that gang changes slowly over the years — people come and go, depending on their own interests, time commitments and whether I’ve pissed them off sufficiently that they decide to stop talking to me and others — but overall there’s a day-to-day consistency which for me as the proprietor is both nice and useful.

As I’ve also noted before, maintaining the site turns out to be a lot of work, and there are days when.... Running a site that gets as many visitors as this site does turns out to be an actual job, whether it was originally meant to be or not. But what I get in return is usually worth it. So this remains the place I am most online, and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Then there is a former chef living in Paris. I don't even delve in the finer points of gastronomy. However, I like his insightful quips on french WTF's, er, "Why The French...." do this, "Why The French...." do that. There are better examples, but these were from recent posts.

When I moved to France, one of the first things a friend said to me was “David, you need to get a good tire-bouchon.” Seeing as an unusually large number of wine bottles were being opened on a regular basis all around me, and seeing the recycling bin on my street was constantly overflowing, it seemed he was right: one does need a decent tire-bouchon (cork-puller) if one is going to live in France.

I was recently conversing with someone about what stuns French people when they come to the United States. Supermarkets are always interesting places to go; last time I took Romain to one in Florida, he came out and said “Pas de stress!” (no stress) because shopping in a French supermarket can be an exercise in frustration. (Which is putting it mildly.)

A Letter from the Publisher

"Thank you for choosing the Honolulu Star-Advertiser as your trusted, comprehensive source of in-depth local news and information.

[However] Beginning Aug. 3, we will be introducing charges for digital subscriptions for those who do not subscribe to the print edition."

President / Publisher
Honolulu Star-Advertiser

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So, let me see if I get this. People who do subscribe to the print edition of Honolulu's only daily newspaper aren't and won't be charged for the digital version. Okay to that. However, does this message mean that non-subscribers won't be allowed to read the online version of the newspaper? The publisher did mention paying does entitle digital subscribers to "premium" content. I surmise this all depends on what's meant by "premium" content or access to it, thereof. Personally I don't see paying to read the digital version online, by the same token, that I don't see paying to watch network tv programs, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. because they make their revenue from the ads that they run, and the advertising rates they charge are based on their viewer ship numbers, for example, me and you. The larger the viewing audience, the more they can charge for a given ad, and that business model has survived as a sound way of doing business with mutual benefits. Paying to have any access at all is downright too proprietary. You might as well pay to read my blog. My 5 loyal regular readers would go somewhere else. Right at the moment, I don't know for certain if the publisher is posting an advance notice that we won't be allowed to read his newspaper online unless we pay for the privilege. Which ain't gonna happen. The me pay part.

Of Pepto Bismol Dreams

In another life, which started two days ago, and ended now, a tummy ache started to feel like a strap around my upper abdomen. Almost as though I had pulled a muscle. It was odd. The pain was a confined to horizontal zone say about 2-inches wide and 8-inches in latitude, but definitely emanating from a rut gut stomach. Anyways, I ended up taking 2 bottles of Pepto Bismol® during a two day episode of high anxiety. Like, it's an ulcer. No, it's not. It is. No, it's not, already. Bartender, pour me another shot of Pepto Bismol®. If it was an ulcer, why would I suddenly feel it all of a sudden instead of it gradually introducing me to its symptoms over a few weeks long period. When the pain subsided it was 50 percent physical relief and 50 percent mental relief, plus now I'm able to start eating my regular foods with my regular size servings. I don't remember eating anything that was possibly spoiled because the foods were fresh from the grocery store so that ruled out food poisoning. The moral is you never know how well you have it until more tragic things intervene. In this particular situation, merely the foreboding sense of tragedy, but still, never want to go through that again.

Then there were the dreams. Some idiot at the Pepto Bismol® factor idea of fun musta been spiking the contents of my pink bottle with hallucinatory magic mushrooms or peyote and on an empty stomach their hallucinatory effects were heightened at night. My memory fails me, but either it was the plumbing sprung a leak under the kitchen sink or the faucet wouldn't shut off and the sink started overflowing like Niagara Falls. Then the living room floor was 2 feet deep in water. I live on the 12th floor but water wasn't draining onto the lanai (balcony) and off the ledge into the Ala Wai canal. Uh-oh, I didn't even check to see if the lanai door was open. In the dream, that is. The water was opaque and a little sudsy on the surface because I was searching in the water for something intangible but couldn't locate it through the lack of visibility. It was a drain plug, that's it. That's what I was searching for. There musta been a drain plug in the middle of the living room floor for just this type of emergency. Pure genius, the unsung architect. Alas, I woke up but the dream did not stop. I was dreaming I woke up in the dream. Now, most of you already know that I suffer from bouts of insomnia, and at nights, an insomnia state can induce similar degrees of temporary madness where the line between the reality of awake and unawake gets murky, but this was an entirely new experience in its own right.

Some New Topics du Jour

More at despair.com.

Some Old Topics du Jour

Four Hawaii Post Offices May Close

Why am I not all sad about this? A few years ago, the post office lost $2 billion, I think 2008. Last year, the post office lost $2 billion per quarter, and a staggering 8.5 billion total for the fiscal 2010 year. All this happening during a down economy. Postmaster General Donahoe said that some 4,500 postal workers may lose their job nationwide from closing 3,653 post offices considered to have the "least amount of foot traffic and retail sales." In recent years, the Postal Service has already reduced its workforce by 130,000 employees. All I can say is the more the merrier. At any rate, that's your humble correspondent's opinion of the night.

Why Balance the Budget .... Just Raise the Dept Ceiling, Again.

I might be imagining this, but Obama appears to be sticking to his guns with the August 2nd showdown with the Republicans. That's on the issue on whether to balance the budget by increasing taxes or balancing the budget by cutting federal programs. Previously, Obama has caved on every major legislation. In fact, a Democrat congressman actually asked Obama whether he's planning to cave in the last minute. To which Obama replied (paraphrasing), "I'm the President. My words carry a lot of influence." Whatever that means. "Change," perhaps.

The Republicans have made a slippery lexicon out of "tax increases." Ending the Bush tax breaks is equivalent to increasing tax rates by their vernacular. Ditto with doing away with existing tax breaks for big industry. While there are a lot of federal programs that should be axed to trim the fat out of the budget, on the other side of the ledger, big industry enjoys lavish tax breaks that otherwise would provide needed revenues (list below from Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont). Not withstanding, will Obama cave at the midnight hour?

What everyone in Washington DC is worried about if a deal can't be negotiated and the nation defaults, is not about all the bad things that will befall the nation's credit rating, etc., but whether the Democrats will be blamed if they happen to be a Democrat, or whether the Republicans will blamed if they're a Republican on the other side of the aisle. I realize Obama wants another 4 years, and if the Democrats are blamed for a default he might not get re-elected via backlash as well as a lot of fellow Democrat congressmen in the same boat who are up for re-election. However the same scenario holds true for Republican congressmen too. We'll see.

Exxon Mobil. $19 billion profits in 2009. $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

Bank of America. $4.4 billion profits in 2010. $1.9 billion tax refund. ($1 trillion in bailout money.)

General Electric. $26 billion profits in the United States. $4.1 billion refund.

Chevron. $10 billion profits in 2009. $19 million refund.

Goldman Sachs. $2.3 billion profits in 2008. 1.1 percent of its income in taxes. (Almost $800 billion in bailout money.)

Citigroup. $4 billion profits in 2010. $0 (zero) federal income taxes. ($2.5 trillion in bailout money.)

ConocoPhillips. $16 billion profits from 2007 through 2009. $451 million in tax breaks during those years.

Carnival Cruise Lines. $11 billion profits in the past five years. 1.1 percent federal income tax rate during those years.

Awaiting Moderation

Blogger was off and on for me tonight. When Blogger started working again, I found 5 comments "awaiting moderation." Dunno what's that's about. I don't enable 'comment moderation,' at all. Anyways, if your name is on the list above, you've won a million dollars as compensation for any inconvenience it might have caused you. Oh, wait those were back in June. So now you don't get a prize at all. But just in the event that you were wondering what happened to those comments after you posted them.

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Now I find spam too....

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Idle Wise

Happy Aloha Friday. Let me double-check, yes it is Friday. Just making sure. Temperatures in New York City hit 104 degrees today. I don't believe Hawaii has ever hit 100 degrees. Rarely do we register in the 90's. Humidity of course increases the "feels like" it's hotter factor. That being said, it's the season of the year to issue a public service bulletin of one of my top pet peeves about owners walking their dogs on the sidewalk in the middle of a hot summer's day. Since like most animals, dogs walk on all four legs, their body is only a foot from the hot pavement. Plus, they don't wear shoes. I live a stone's throw from the ocean and people are always walking barefoot on the sidewalk and across Kalakaua Ave. on the ocean front. It's a sight to see them scampering in their bare feet to a 6 square inch patch of shade because their feet are sizzling. Well, it's the same thing for dogs too while their nincompoop owners have on slippers or shoes. (Shaggy dog below was at a cooler 6pm.)



A funny thing happen on my way home today. As a matter of routine, I always ride down Kalakaua Ave., the main drag in Waikiki, before I turn off onto a side street to circle back home on the city's magnificent Ala Wai canal why with all them abandoned shopping carts and old tires stacked on top of each other below the surface. Kalakaua Ave. had the usual pau hana traffic (finish work). I hear this siren behind me. I was about to turn into the next lane, I was in the middle lane, when I noticed that the lane was empty. So, I stayed in my lane to keep an empty lane empty for the cops to pass. There was this tourist van following behind me, and the driver turns into the empty lane meaning well. But in the same process, his actions road blocks the cops' cars. I thought that was kinda lame too. By 'too," I mean the cops musta wanted to ticket the imbecile. In some instances it's indeed better to stay put.

Another incident in the staying put category happened a few year ago, as in, did I mention it already? Anyways, traffic was at a standstill bumper to bumper on Ala Moana Blvd. right in front of Ala Moana shopping center. You could leave your car and do a few hours of shopping at the mall and you'll still have the same place in the line after you got back. After a while, the lady driver in front of me decides to turn into Ala Moana shopping center albeit requisitioning a one-way exit lane for a personalized entry. Initially it appeared to be an excellent idea. Women are from Macy's. Or something like that. Before I forget to mention it, the exit is only a single lane wide.

No sooner had she turned into the misappropriated lane, two cars in the approaching direction, one behind the other, come speeding at her, and she had to veer sharply onto the sidewalk border. In fact things were happening so fast, that the two approaching cars had to hop the sidewalk on the opposite side of the lane as they zoomed pass by her their wheels in the air. What a display of driving skills. You'd had thought that they were stunt drivers doing dry runs for a live scene later on on the set. You have to imagine that this is all playing out in front of my eyes while I'm sitting in traffic idling away the day which on most occasions is usually a mundane experience.

It turned out that the drivers in the two different vehicles didn't know each other that well. The one behind happened to be chasing down the front driver. So the front driver immediately gets snarled in traffic. The pursing driver steps out of his vehicle, leaves his engine running, and walks over to the lead driver, and then starts punching the lights out of the lead driver. Obviously, there was an argument moments earlier in the parking lot of the shopping mall before the main event. The guy was macho built but he sure didn't carry himself like a punk or appear angry at the world. To spectators, more like taking care of unfinished business. And his opponent, he was trailing way behind on the scorecard to say the least. All he did was cover up and do his best imitation of a punching bag. As soon as traffic cleared an inch, the bruised driver immediately stepped on the gas and high tailed it outta there rather than stand his ground if in fact he knew where it was after the pummeling. The last I seen of the two was the assailant chasing the assailed down Ala Moana Blvd, both of them weaving in and out of traffic.

Eggs and Things

The last time I attempted to balance a carton of eggs on top of the lanai railing, the carton fell over. Onto the lanai floor, not into the street, if that makes any difference .... most of the eggs ended up cracked. That's the reason for the half-dozen carton in tonight's photo. I bought the eggs from a local egg layer. Lately they were running tv commercials and asides from that they have two retail outlets that they sell directly to the public. The store I stopped in is in Kaimuki. Their big sellers are the trays, at around $8.00 each, however, if you buy 2 trays, you get 1 tray of small Grade A eggs for free. Since I was only buying the eggs to take a picture of them on the lanai railing, I bought the dozen carton instead. That's a joke, btw. I was in the Kaimuki area because I had to return an item at City Mill. When the countergirl was ready to refund me in cash, the cash register drawer refused to open for some odd reason. Huge hmmmmm. She had to call somebody else to resolve the issue electronically. Then I got my money.