DanRochman.com

I’m in Chico, California. A client with their head office here needed some on-site help, so I drove out last night. Around three and one half hours drive from San Francisco, if obeying the letter of the law - although I opted to obey the spirit instead, and made it in an even three.
I left late, avoiding traffic (Bay Area Life Rule - AVOID Traffic Whenever Possible), and didn’t get in until midnight. But then I couldn’t get to sleep for over an hour (Damn you, Cable Television!!), and then got up early, so I ended up feeling tired all day. I got a lot done at the client site (Thank You, Starbucks!!), and it looks like I might even finish up early tomorrow, but by the time I left I was in *serious* need of a nap. I just woke up from that nap, and now I’m in my “mhotel” room (offline - can’t be bothered to regress back to dialup for one blog post, and w.bloggar rules anyhow), and I figured I’d get in a post before going back to bed…

Random Notes on Life in Chico:
- Tectura has an office here, which is mostly a base for some of our online/phone Support people. I got to do lunch today with Lori Symons (who is NOT this Lori Symons), who works out of the Chico office, and whom I interact with as a project/resource manager (being one of the resources she manages). It was really nice, particularly because we’ve never really had a chance to chat face-to-face before.
- A restaurant called “Sin of Cortez” (really) is very near to the client site where I’m working, and their food is really good. I met Lori there for lunch. It’s always a Good Thing to find good places to eat, but even more so in Chico, where the pickings are necessarily slimmer than in (e.g.) San Francisco…
- Lori told me (and others confirmed) that Thursday night is “The Party Night” in Chico, but I have no idea why. It *is* a college town (home of “Chico State“), so it’s probably a lot of fun out there right now, but I’m a tired old loser tonight, and this bed (yes, I’m blogging in bed) is just too comfy right now. I’ll have to discover the wild side of Chico another time… Even though Blackalicious is playing at Chico State somewhere, and there’s a midnight move at the El Rey, and… Okay, I’m pretty tempted. But I just couldn’t deal with being tired again tomorrow.
- The last time I was in Chico (calling on the same client), a bunch of us went for lunch at the Sierra Nevada brewery. Nice place, good beer - the food was good, but not great. But it was good to see the place, and drink some of the local suds right from the source.
- I didn’t get to go to Bidwell Park (the 3rd-largest municipal park in the country!) this trip, but it’s really beautiful, and a must-see if you’re ever in or near Chico.

Other than that, I haven’t been out much in Chico. It’s a small town, with two main streets (Main & Broadway) running parallel to each other (in opposite directions) making up the little “downtown loop“. It’s an interesting mix of “college town” and “semi-rural California town”. Well, maybe not THAT interesting. Nice enough to visit, anyhow - although Em was out here once and felt it was WAY too all-white. That may be, but I suppose that might not bother me as much as it does her (being whiter??). I’m all for diversity, but having places that aren’t diverse is kinda diverse in itself (or am I being perverse?). I mean, I don’t thinks she minds Japan being very all-Japanese, or Norway being VERY all-white. I suspect it’s that Chico (and places like it) aren’t just white, they’re (seemingly) more redneck/conservative white. I try not to equate rural with redneck, although I’m pretty sure I *do* have that tendency, and I know that a pickup truck and a backwards baseball cap (what IS it with those, anyhow??) don’t necessarily mean “Klansman”, but… I can see where Em’s coming from. I just try to assume that the drunk guy in the cowboy hat riding the mechanical bull is a secular humanist vegan libertarian, until I have proof that he isn’t. Might not even be reasonable, but it seems fair and it keeps me sane. Well, less paranoid anyhow.

It’s 11:30 - time to crash (again). Tomorrow I’ll head straight back to SF from the client’s site, and hopefully arrive early and alert enough to go out somewhere, and make up for my very slothful night tonight…

Being a techie type, I feel it is my inalienable right to have an 802.11b wireless LAN in my home. But the Gods of Wireless have been working hard to thwart these plans…

First there was the Panasonic cordless phone that killed all 802.11 traffic within 100 miles every time it went off-hook. Okay. Fine. I wrote the damn thing off (gifted it, actually, to someone without 802.11 aspirations), and bought a set of Vtech cordless phones that didn’t SEEM to have the same problem. Besides, these guys all advertise spread-spectrum this, and collision-avoidance that. Phooey.

For whatever reason, I still can’t get the wireless signal to go from the back of this teensy little apartment to the room in the front. Has a lot to do with the layout, and the ancient plaster walls full of old wood and chicken wire… But still, frustrating. And the wiring in this place (built around the turn of the century) is just too awful to describe adequately here. Electrical is awful - phone wiring didn’t exist AT ALL until I moved in. Had to run my own… I really can’t figure out what all the prior tenants did. Well, those just prior had a single phone line running in through a crack in the “living room” window. Seriously.

Anyhow, thinking I was too clever by half - too clever maybe even by two-thirds - I bought a Linksys Signal Booster for my Linksys (WAP11) Wireless Access Point. I finally got the thing, and hooked it up (trivial - just a big, powered, 2.4 GHz antenna really), and watched the signal strength DROP. Yes, DROP. From less than five feet away, I see my signal go from (close to) 100% down to 40-50%, and in the far room at the front of the building, where I was getting 5-10% signal (and frequently none at all), I went straight down into “absolutely none at all” territory.

I’m thinking of shutting down all the Vtech units and trying again, just to rule out some kind of “signal escalation” war going on between the WAP and the phones… But this is really annoying.

I will defeat this damn thing. I will defeat this damn thing. I will defeat this damn thing.

Arnon’s right. I *should* update this blog more often. Work has been hectic, but that’s no excuse - the whole point of blogging is that I can post from anywhere there’s (a) a browser, and (b) five minutes of spare time. Right now I’ve got both, but the latter just barely…
I marched in a huge Peace Rally in San Francisco on Sunday - around 200,000 people filled Market Street, and it was depressing and uplifting at the same time. Still, I haven’t done enough on the Activism front, and that has to change… I throw money (gladly!) at the EFF and the ACLU, but I realized being at the rally that you get a certain feeling from direct involvement that you don’t get any other way. And while the pragmatist in me says that activism is about effecting change, and not about the feeling(s) you get from doing so, I also know that there’s something to be said for keeping up morale - my own included.
This weekend is more self-indulgent: planning a trip to Japan!! Em and I have never been, so we’re going. Simple (?) as that. So far my list is short - I want to see a big fish market, stay in a traditional ryokan, spend one night in a capsule hotel, and another night in a love hotel. Oh, and of course I want to see Tetsuo and Godzilla battle it out in the skies above Tokyo… Well, I can dream a little. I’m also excited about all KINDS of toilets I’ve never seen/used before, and the subway system, and cool/weird/yummy food, and gadgets, and onsen (hot springs/baths), and all the mecha-manga-pop culture I can soak up in about a week. We leave March 22nd, so if anyone (Arnon - that’s you, that is) has any coolest-things-to-do-in-Japan tips, or knows anyone who does, please send them this way.
Good night, Tokyo - and don’t eat the yellow protoculture.

ps: Okay, this took more than five minutes. Whatever. And yes, Arnon, you ARE the only person who knows about (much less reads) this site. If you want to drive new readers, feel free - we can inaugurate the DanRochman.com Affiliate Program. If the readership reaches 10, there will DEFINITELY be a party of some sort. Maybe our “First Order of Magnitude” party.

So I tried to update the site to use the 3-column template from Blogstyles, but it blew something up and I got everything but the main “entries” section of the page. Which is pretty nasty… I didn’t have time to troubleshoot it, so I switched back to the default MT templates - but the problem persisted! Now THAT’S weird. I’ve rebuilt the entire site a few times, and double-checked the templates, but no luck so far. Maybe this new entry will put things right. Otherwise I might have to really get my hands dirty. Metaphorically, of course. Sigh.
[Update: This post is up - that DID fix it, somehow! Ahhh.]

Wow - you put up a “vanity domain” and it’s just like old times! Since there’s only one other person reading this site, and his name is Arnon, I figure I should dedicate this entry to you^h^h^h^h him. By the way, I take umbrage at your^h^h^h^h^h his blanket use of the term “vanity domain” - I simply chose danrochman.com because it’s obvious, simple to find (you found it, didn’t you?) and even simpler to remember. It most certainly is NOT clever. I can’t say I’m proud of that, but for some reason I prefer the slurs “unimaginative” or “pragmatic to a fault” over “vain”. Hmmm. On second thought…

Other than that, life rolls on. Lovely Derek and Handsome Tina were here for about a week, and it was lots of fun for all, and there’ll be some stills in the Gallery soon to prove it. But hours after they left I was on my way to Chico, CA (for workworkwork), and spent three long days out there, then spent the weekend doing more workworkwork, and am finally getting a few minutes in before bed to post.

Mack Camera has shipped my digital camera back - I should be able to pick it up at UPS one night this week (after workworkwork)… It’s funny that whenever I *don’t* have it, all I see are photo ops.

The next major site update involves going to a 3-column layout (CSS, no tables), ripping off some of the usual sources (mostly blogstyles.com), and then adding some cool CSS dropdown menus (from gazingus.org). And some behind-the-curtain work to put in a new (OpenBSD) firewall and a secure (SSL) reverse-proxy. No reason, really - I just like to play with those sorts of toys. But all that will have to wait for this weekend.

Now to bed, so I can be up early for - you guessed it - workworkwork.

Cheers, Arnon - you old so-and-so!