December 2008 Archives

Wed 12.31.08 - Alex's Bar all dressed up and ready to go!

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Tues. 12.30.08 - The International Year of Astronomy 2009 - go out and truly watch the night sky. (Video via APOD.)

So here is the yearly list of the cities I have visited for at least a day or stayed the night in, other than my usual round of cities in Los Angeles & Orange counties. The following are in chronological order:

Las Vegas, NV, USA - Punk Rock Bowling 2008!
Encinitas, CA, USA
London, England, UK - Urbanista Diaries (all the way down to London & Oxford 8 cities again)
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Kochi, Kerala, India
Panaji, Goa, India
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Vienna, Austria
London, England, UK
Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
Austin, TX, USA - SXSW 2008
Palm Desert, CA, USA - Easter
Bishop, CA, USA
Mammoth Lakes, CA, USA
Parker, AZ, USA
London, England, UK
Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
Bishop & Lee Vining, CA, USA
Truckee & South Lake Tahoe - Camp Camp 5.0
La Jolla, San Diego, CA, USA
Bishop, CA, USA
Mountain View & Sunnyvale & Cupertino, CA, USA - DjanoCon 1.0
Helsinki & Espo, Finland - Nokia Open Labs 1.0
Bishop, CA, USA
Palm Desert, CA, USA - Thanksgiving

An extra big thank you to Nokia and WOM World for inviting me to participate in the Urbanista Diaries adventure to India and back in February of 2008 and then again for the Nokia Open Labs in Helsinki in September of 2008.

What a delightful traveling year!

Sat 12.27.08 - The Barflies.net post-Xmas White Elephant Party at the Hillskemper Haus.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Much like the famed Humpty Dumpty, the larger extended family appears to have shattered into too many shards to be put back together again. Our family's egg did not fall off of one wall to only to shatter, but many, of which some of the walls and some of the falls were spectacular, like all of 1990, Thanksgiving 1992 or 93, again on Thanksgiving 1994, and then the first weekend of May 2002 was the dilly.

With each fall off of a wall, has come more divisions and separations. More of the family troops have sub-divided into camps. The camps have further sub-divided. A once large, boisterous, albeit dysfunctional Irish-American family is now in silent, walled off pieces.

It is only now that it has become obvious how the events at the birthday dinner on that Saturday in early May 2002 were the final nail in the family togetherness coffin. Even though 97% of us were not involved in the row that bloomed that night, much like a dot of mold on the cheese, it has now spread to almost all of us, even the one's of us who are not at war.

I am tired and sad by all of this. I came home last night and both Tweeted/Jaiku'd that I want to move to another continent. Preferably the London or Helsinki continent.

Yesterday's Christmas dinner was the echos of the evidence of how bad it has gotten. Two of my mom's sister's and their families were in town, but they had Christmas' completely separate from our immediate family and the grandparents who are not involved in the May 2002 event at all. My mom was agitated and our dinner was subdued. I cried as I drove home. Christmas felt like a struggle not a celebration.

I am sad that family members who live on the east coast and I have not seen in years were within 15 miles yesterday yet we did not get together. Sad that one family member who called while we were over at my grandmother's didn't even recognize my mom when she answered the phone, yet invited me to come visit in January.

I know that it is considered natural in modern America that big families don't stay in touch after the grandparents pass on, but all of the grandparents in this case are still alive and so are the step-grandparents. And I know of families in the US and in Ireland that are even bigger than mine and they still get together for Christmas.

Part of me wants to pick a neutral park, sometime next summer, and invite them all over for a family reunion BBQ and include all the Kilroys I can find on the West Coast to diffuse the tensions (really how bad can one behave if Walt's side of the clan comes?). Another part of me wants to write a big letter naming names and calling out bullshit, but that will just inflame the ashes. Another part of me wants to write it all off and be done with it, Hanen family style (Hanen's never ever get together for anything. Well, maybe once a decade in groups of 3s & 4s).

The best black humor part of all of this, is that most of the prime pushers of the egg off the wall of our family and stompers of the egg shells into more shards are nice good family values Republicans. God bless America!

Wed 12.24.08 - Just after a delightfully real Christmas Eve service at St. Mary in Palms church in Culver City.

Katrina and Sam invited Erika and Thomas who invited me. I am glad I went.

Tues 12.23.08 - The day in between storms.

I have read up and checked out the Google AppEngine in a cursory fashion a couple of times in the last few months, even to the point of signing up for an invite before it was publicly open and downloading the SDK. But life and work and play were too busy, so I didn't have time to really delve into GAE with any intent and real application.

Until today. Last Friday night, a much admired friend passed away in a car accident and on Sunday I was asked if I would develop a memorial web application for friends, family, and colleagues to post photos and stories up. I said yes and ran through my head quickly all the possible ways we could do it. Given the resources at hand it seemed that PHP, be it hand rolled or Cake PHP would be the only approach to take given the time & server constraints. Yikes.

I really struggle with PHP, I dislike all the verbage, punctuation, and braces. When I am able to make a whole app work in it, I am vastly relieved. But most of the time the butt kicking that PHP delivers is greater than my feelings of accomplishment.

One of the things that I do adore about Python and Ruby is that they both are lean and make sense. There is not butt kicking, only happy writing, testing and deploying. Except most host servers don't like one to run a good Python or Ruby framework such as Django or Ruby on Rails. So if a client or friend already has a server and a domain and wants to move forward fast, much of the time Django and Ruby on Rails gets ruled out. Thus, the evils of PHP reassert themselves.

After sending most of yesterday and this morning debating of how I should plan and construct the memorial site, a meteor of insight flashed through my head... Google App Engine.

GAE is free (for now), uses Python and Django (happy days!!!!), it has great tutorials on top of all the Google resources. No reinventing the wheels with PHP and/or Cake PHP.

So this afternoon I started experimenting with GAE and discovered very quickly that between its webapp extension and the images/Picasa API that I would be able to develop the whole memorial application with very little fuss and stress.

Here is a quote from an email that I sent to the folks organizing the memorial:

Google AppEngine is a dreamy love bug of a dev environment, I may have to marry it. PHP is formally now dead to me. Normally 6 hours into a dev project I am not happy but really really really really really frustrated and writing snarky twitters about how much I *hate* PHP. But no... Love love love love the Google.

Google, thank you for making my life easier today when I would rather be crying than developing.

Sun 12.21.08 - Today is the shortest day of the year, the start of winter, and starting tomorrow the light wins.

Sorry for the lack of words here the last few days, I have had a very stressful last week in work world, I have been fighting a cold for a good week and a half that has decided to revisit with a vengeance this weekend, and last but not least - after a delightful Friday of celebrating Thomas' joining the Land of the Free & Brave - yesterday I received a phone call that a friend who I have greatly admired for years was killed in a car accident on Friday. Thus, the last 24 hours has been very sad on top of tired & sick.

I truly hope that the light starts to shine tomorrow and into the next year.

Fri 12.19.08 - View from the Los Angeles Convention Center looking out over the Nokia Theatre and the new development.

Fri 12.19.08 - A certain Thomas became a true hyphenated German-American this afternoon, or as he put it, a "Germerican".

Thurs 12.18.08 - The rain stopped sometime last night and I woke up to clear, sunny skies and snow low on all the mountains and local hills! Very exciting! The last time I have seen snow this low on the Irvine & Orange hills was in Nov. 2004 the day before Erika & I went to Ireland.

I couldn't just stay home in Seal Beach and natter way on images and slideshows on my computer, no, I had to go out at lunch time and drive up Santiago Canyon Road to take in the low snow line myself before it all melts away.

Truly a lovely day.

Wed 12.17.08 - Driving home in the rain from a lunch meet up with George and Ankita Kelly.

Tues 12.16.08 - Today around 5pm, my brother Joe called to let me know that he had been laid off from his job of 16 years. He was laughing and I was frankly relieved. He went straight from his college internship into his job which over the last 16 years had morphed into a senior VP position at the company.

In those 16 years, he had not worked for any other company. He had the same set of bosses and over time became more stressed and weighed down even though he appeared to have it all.

Over the years, a few of us in our family encouraged him to look into other opportunities, to try other jobs and/or companies. But Joe is loyal and to his employer he was very loyal.

But circumstances dictated that he was to be let go, and it did not come as a surprise as his position was in limbo due to the credit crunch in that he could not really do his job with the economy at the state it was in.

His employer was honorable about the whole thing. The CEO called and apologized. His boss met with him in person even though their offices are more then 60 miles apart. They gave him a good severance package. He will remain friends with these folks who mentored him all these years.

Why did we go to celebrate at Walt's Wharf tonight? Because now Joe is set free to try other avenues. To stretch. To imagine a new life.

One of the things that I have admired greatly about my brother the last 6-7 years is the the house that he and my dad have built out in Arizona on the Colorado River. My brother has spent most weekends the last 6 years building a house and garage (1200 sq ft of house, and 2400 sq of garage - as it should be). While many folks would come home from an intense job and veg out on the weekends, my brother drove 3.5 hours each way to be creative over time. And the house is beautiful.

I hope that whatever my brother chooses to do with the next few years of his life, that he will figure out how to meld his talent for business, numbers, and negotiating with his wide creative streak that is able to build a house and a sand rail (dune buggy) on the his off time.

Go Joe Go!

Dear Yahoo Executives,

If you are wondering why your company is failing, it is because you don't get the internet.

What were you all thinking last week when you decided to layoff one of the founding employees who is now one of the two most public facing and world popular employees of your most important property?

After this bonehead move of exceedingly bad strategy and timing, everyone involved in the decision to layoff George Oates should be fired asap.

Sincerely, Jenifer Hanen

*******
Update from Tues 12.16.08:

Jeremy and Jeffrey both weigh in on George getting laid off.

Mon 12.15.08 - A short video explaining Scruffy's new rain slicker.

Mon 12.15.08 - Thank You plastic bag masquerading as a rain slicker.

It seems to me that the media (TV, newspapers, radio, the internet, etc.) and several people I know are thoroughly enjoying the current fearmongering fun of "hard times!", "Recession", "Depression".

Everyday I hear radio ads for how to beat the current hard times, all the NPR news presenters are starting their segments by mentioning how rough things are, and in the last month the LA Times has more ads and advertising supplements folded into the paper on a daily basis than there has been in the last five years.

I have friends and family members who can only talk about how "bad" it is. Only problem is that none of these folks have lost their jobs, nor their homes, nor any real lifestyle differences. I called two of them out on it recently, as they were talking about how "hard" it is.

I said, "You are saying that with glee. Are you enjoying this?"

Both were shocked into silence and then kept talking about the doom and gloom.

Yes, people, America is enjoying this. We love our horror. We love our shock. We love our End Times. We love our big budget Hollywood Thrillers and Action flicks. We love our apocalypses. We love prophesying THE END.

Funny thing is that the end never seems to come. Well, except individual death. And the credit card bills keep showing up every month. And once a year, in April, the taxes are due.

As Americans we love fear. FDR told us that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. No, in 2008, there is nothing quite as enjoyable and gleeful as fear itself. Why do we enjoy the fear? Is it a nice break from our optimism?

But hey, the LA Times food section just did a whole Wednesday section on Depression era cooking, shopping, and articles on how to make the food budget stretch.

Back in 1991 - 1993, everyone was really gleeful about the mini-Depression we were going through, esp. here in SoCal where the AeroSpace Industry was collapsing due to the end of the Cold War. In '91-93, the big gleeful fad was Depression era Prairie style dresses, long flowing print dresses with clasps to cinch in the waist. Dang it all if we didn't wait out that recession in Doc Martens, dreadlocks, and flowing flowered dresses.

Be as gleeful or fearful/gleeful as you want about this Recession, but what I want to know is where are all the fun dresses?

Sun 12.14.08 - At Dog Beach about a half hour before sunset.

Sat 12.13.08 - The Derby Dolls just told us, "Don't forget to go home and blog about this tonight!"

Well I'll be able to go to sleep when I get home, because I am moblogging it now.

[/snark]

Sat 12.12.08 - The Derby Dolls LA warm up for their big Saturday night match against an all-star nationwide team (Lil Santa's Helpers).

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 at Dog Beach, Huntington Beach.

Fri 12.12.08 - This afternoon at 3:16pm was an extra, extra low tide due to the Full Moon. Usually the low tides are 1 to 3 ft with high tides at 3 to 5 ft, today the low tide was -1.78 ft and the high tide was 7ft! Whole sections of beach that are normally underwater and the domain of surfers, stingrays, and halibut were dry land today. There were tons of baby clams at the surface opening and closing their little shells in wonderment of this air stuff rather than the normal ocean water.

The extra low tide was a blast for the dogs, as they had a lot of flat hard sand to run on. We arrived at 3:10pm and did not depart until sunset around 4:45pm. It was a lot of fun.

I know it is much cooler to be wearing a bluetooth one ear-ed headset these days than a two ear-ed wired headset, but I am currently a HUGE fan of the Nokia hs-43 wired headset and don't even know where my fancy pants expensive bh-602 bluetooth headset is (somewhere in the bowels of my purse).

Since July 1st, those of us who live and drive in California are to have hands-free wireless devices whilst driving. You can talk on your mobile while driving, but you have to have both hands on the wheel and your headset on, not that most SUV drivers obeying the law. We won't talk about the lady with her phone glued to her ear in the GMC Yukon XL who nearly ran me off the road today, no, not at all, we won't talk about her nor bailouts for auto companies that build such behemoths.

No, what we will talk about is cute, small, efficient, good design by forward thinking companies.... Nokia, thanks for two good products that make my life easier.

I like the way that the Nokia BH-602 bluetooth headset will shape to the back of my ear, but I don't like how I can't hear in stereo and when I am walking or out in the big wide public my friend on the other end of the call asks if I am in a wind tunnel. I also have lots of music loaded on the microSD chip both in my N95 and in the Nokia viNe loaner N82 mobiles and it is very hard to listen to music in a one ear-ed bluetooth headset. Also due to having a small ear, the bluetooth headset even when properly shaped to my ear, flops around making it hard to hear.

My N95's wired stereo headset died a bad wire failure death over nearly a year ago, so I had been using the wired headsets from my N80 and N800 to listen to music while exercising and walking the dogs. When the black N82 arrived on my doorstep in early September, I pulled out the included in the box wired headset, the HS-43, with glee to see what it would do.

Over the last couple of months, I have fallen in love with the wired headset that came in the N82's box, to the point that I don't use my bluetooth headset unless I left the wired one at home.

Why do I love the HS-43 wired headset so much? Let me list you the reasons:

1) Wires. Good old fashioned copper covered in plastic & cloth makes for a better sonic / audio experience.

2) Stereo. Hey, novelty! I can hear sound, be it music or spoken voice, in both ears!

3) No need to remember charge the wired headset.

4) Friends and family can hear me speak during a phone call much clearer with the wired headset, even when I am walking along the beach in a stiff breeze. Hello, Seal Way, the killer of all phone calls, you don't kill my calls now.

5) Oooh, baby baby... the best feature of the HS-43 wired stereo headset is the one that seems most bizarre when you first pull it out. It does not look or act like your usual wired headset, as the back/top is not a headband but a 1/4 inch wide black fabric that is about 6 inches long that have two lanyard style clamp/unclamp at each end. Thus, when the danged thing gets all tangled up into a wad of wired hell, you just pull the two clamps apart and YAY the tangles are gone. If you by accident attempt to pull it out of your purse too fast or out from under the dog and you think, "Oh Crap! I have just broke the headset!", oh no you have not, the clamps release and you can pull it out nicely and reclamp it.

Oh, lovely HS-43 Wired Stereo Headset, I <3 you.

Bluetooth, who?

Do you ever find yourself wanting to refer to a big blog post that you spent a great deal of time thinking out, composing, and rewriting? A blog post that your friends remember reading and quote you on, but later when you go to find it to refer to it you can't find it? That it doesn't exist?

This happened to me this today. I wanted to refer to the blog post that I thought I wrote in early October about my very favorable experience with AT&T's customer service, particularly a blog post about how AT&T's Brenda Rangel went out of her way to help me. A blog post I remember writing and publishing. A blog post that doesn't exist, a blog post that I can't find.

Did I think about writing it to the point of composing it in my head while driving, but never actually wrote it down? Did I talk about writing it to Erika that when I was having problems with AT&T back in September and then this week when the troubles resurfaced she referred to my good experience with Ms. Rangel and suggested that I call her for help, such that I thought I wrote a blog post?

But I can't find the blog post. Not published. Not in draft. Not at all.

This is disturbing.

I truly hate that I can't blog directly from my brain as I think and flesh out ideas as I am driving or falling to sleep or sitting in bed in the morning. Where is my true moblogging interface?

Brain to blog. Until then, I will occasionally experience phantom blog posts.

****

Anywho, since I can't find the post... Brenda Rangel of AT&T's International Data division and Karen Aitken of the Customer Service division both rock hard and should not get laid off. In fact, Brenda should get a raise and a promotion for work ethic, intelligence, and willingness to make a customer's experience better. Karen rocks, too.

Tues. 12.09.08 - View this morning from the parking lot at Buffalo & Broadway in Santa Ana, Ca.

Mon. 12.08.08 - This same holiday seal won for best local lawn holiday ornament last year.

Sun Dec. 7, 2008 - Today my Mom and I took a 3 mile walk from my sister's house in Huntington Beach down the bike trail on the north side of the Santa Ana River, past the OC sewage treatment facility, to the delta where the Santa Ana River meets the Pacific Ocean, where the dividing line is between south Orange County (rich) and North Orange Country (upper middle class to working class). Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in OC is rich, white and Republican.

The day was gorgeous in my eyes: chilly, cloudy, and windy - great walking weather. We saw 5 different species of wintering river/sea ducks in the Santa Ana River: Ruddy Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks, Gadwall, Lesser Scaup, and the glorious Bufflehead. The other delights were pelicans, a great white egret stalking fishy prey, and comorants.

Marvelous.

Sat. Dec. 6, 2008 - On our way back from the Caribbean Christmas concert at CSULB, my Mom noted that tonight's sunset would be good. When we got back, we collected Scruffy and walked over to the beach to see the sunset. We walked up to the top of the winter berm and the sunset was amazing!

Sat 12.06.08 - Or Mom and Scruffy across the cross walk.

Fri 12.05.08 - So starts the Holiday Party Season!

Thurs 12.04.08 - I love to live in older houses. In the last 14 years, I have lived in apartments and houses ranging from the 1860s (with little updates), to 1894 (the best one), to a WWII era former Navy family apt (now), to early Boeing engineer housing (1961). I like the funkiness and lack of sameness that older homes have. I really like the unique features, then un-renovated bits, and the termites.

Not really the last bit about the termites, but I live in SoCal on the edge of a large desert, termites were here before we were. When folks from other places move to the LA area one invariably hears two things, 1) What do you mean we have water problems? Isn't there plenty of rivers around here. [Why yes there are, they are concrete and are lawn runoff, not rain], 2) Why do the ants fly in the spring and early summer? [Uh, those aren't ants, they are termites.]

I have used flea spray to get the termites out of and off my antique furniture and it is surprisingly effective.

Wed 12.03.08 - Hi, my name is Jenifer and I <3 kimchi...

Now that video is all the rage, Flash seems to have been sidelined to banner ads, games, and corporate websites.

I miss the days of silly, homemade, whimsical* Flash animations with very little purpose. While I am not a big fan of all Flash websites in which most of the time I immediately exit, I do like fun Flash.

Where have all the silly Flash animations gone? Are art students and high school students too broke to buy the education version Flash from Adobe and don't have a crack code? Are they too deep into WOW/Wii/XBox/etc and celebrating 4:20 to create their own Flash silliness? Are they too used to the Facebook & MySpace communities to put up their own websites?

Do you have a favorite fun Flash that has been created in the last 2 years?

************

* Let's not even talk about silly, off the wall animated gifs...

Tues 12.02.08 - Today I got so wrapped up in work, good work, fun work, that I didn't take any photos, thus you get Bailey the Snow Dog video (via Mirabilis.ca).

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 in Seal Beach, CA.

Mon Dec 1, 2008 - Or maybe it is a convergence of the crescent moon, Venus, and Jupiter. Regardless the southwestern sky during dusk has been beautiful the last two evenings.