Andy’s Arcana – The Blog

On a regular basis I manage to do some pretty dumb stuff.  I recount these events so other people don’t make the same mistakes I do, though in most cases, anyone with a little common sense can easily avoid these pitfalls.

I’m not a coffee aficionado.  Requiring coffee every morning is one vice I’ve managed to avoid.  I don’t dislike coffee — a caramel frappuccino and Peet’s caffe mocha are both quite tasty.  Heck, I’ve even been known to drink church coffee.  But boiling water to make coffee is stretching my cooking skills, and I usually don’t have time to stop and pick it up on my way to work.  Those last seven minutes of sleep after hitting the snooze button for the fifth time are the most valuable, and I won’t trade that time in for a quick stop at the local coffee shop.

On those rare days when traffic on the 605 is unusually light and I arrive in the greater Commerce, CA area sooner than usual, I may stop at a Starbucks near the office if I have an extra $4 burning a hole in my pocket.  The problem is, with all the truck traffic on Slauson Avenue, the roads are in pretty bad shape (even after repaving them a year or two ago).  As a result, when the stars align and I actually stop for a cup of coffee, it splashes all over the car as I drive the last couple of miles to the office.  Yes, I get a lid for the cup (I’m not quite that dumb).  But the coffee still splashes out the little sipping hole in the top, and I certainly don’t want to deal with that while I’m still trying to wake up.

My solution for a while was to put the cup in the cupholder in my center console and hold my thumb over the hole in the lid while I drove.  This prevented the splashing, but meant I could have only one hand on the steering wheel while navigating the various potholes, railroad tracks, and other ruts in the road.  Keep in mind, this needs to be done at around 55 miles per hour with 18-wheelers on both sides in very narrow lanes.  I’d be really disappointed if I died in a car crash because of a stupid cup of coffee.

Recently, after spending countless hours studying this situation and engineering several possible solutions, I made another trip to Starbucks.  This time, after picking up the coffee, I asked for a second lid.  The girl behind the counter look at me confused, trying to figure out why anyone would need two lids for one cup.  My brilliant solution was to put the second lid on top of the first, and twist it slightly so the second lid would cover the sipping hole on the first.  When it was time to drink I would simply rotate the top lid to align the two sipping holes, and then turn it back again to close it.  Genius!  Or so I thought…

The girl patiently listened to my entire explanation without changing the expression on her face.  She seemed to be harried and dumbfounded, with just a bit of pity for me thrown in.  Finally she broke her silence, pointed at small clear plastic box on the counter, and said, “Why don’t you use a splash stick?”

I’m not a coffee aficionado.  I don’t know what most of the stuff on the menu is.  And I certainly didn’t know what a splash stick was, but once I figured it out it was as if the clouds opened up and the most ingenious of all inventions was handed to me from above.  It’s a simple green plastic stopper that fits in the sipping hole to keep the coffee from splashing out.  That’s it, but it does the job.  Some people will complain that this is another waste of plastic, but it saves me from wasting cleaning products on my car’s interior.  Others claim that a sticker over the hole works fine, but you need two hands to easily remove the sticker while driving.

I don’t know if the other big coffee chains have a similar device available, but as far as I’m concerned they all should.  That little piece of plastic is enough for me to choose one establishment over another.  But then again, I’m not a coffee aficionado.

Every January, NAMM (the National Association of Music Merchants, but now officially called the “International Music Products Association”) has a big trade show in Anaheim.  This is an opportunity for all the musical instrument manufacturers to show off their latest products and the best technology available for making music.

The Anaheim Convention Center is a short drive down the I-5 freeway from Roland’s headquarters, so it is an especially convenient opportunity for us to showcase our latest toys.  This year we moved our booth (the largest of all the exhibitors at the show) from Hall D to the convention center’s Arena.  I think it worked well because we had the Arena all to ourselves so people could check out the latest gear without the distractions from people banging on drums or wailing on guitars in neighboring booths.

I haven’t had a chance to check out the rest of the show yet, but here are a few pictures I took of the Roland booth before the show started and after it opened yesterday (January 14th) for the first day.

The Entrance to the Arena (and the Roland display)

Before the display opened

Digital pianos display

TD-12KX V-Drums

People checking out the latest keyboards

Outside the Presentation Theater

The stage inside the Presentation Theater

The Info Counter

View of the Roland Display from Above

The sales area

After seeing this commercial on TV a few times, I’m convinced it’s one of the lamest ever.  The first ten seconds have to be some of the worst dialog I’ve heard in a long time.  And the actors do nothing to help either.  I seriously doubt they intended to make the guy seem like a creepy serial killer, and the woman the most paranoid/clingy (literally!) girlfriend in history.

I don’t know much about jewelry, so what they’re selling may be great, but I’m certainly not motivated to buy it after watching the ad.  Since I like to give credit where credit is due, we have Stern Advertising to thank for this commercial.

Kay Jewelers has thrown down the gauntlet on bad TV spots.  Are you out there, Carl’s Jr?  I expect you to rise to the challenge and respond with something even worse.  I know you have it in you.

If you’ve been a fan of the Angels since the 1980’s you probably already know this story.  If not, this should give you an idea why today’s Angels win is especially significant.

1986 is probably the first “bad year” I can remember.  Among other things, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a few minutes after liftoff, the first of my grandparents died, and the Angels were one pitch away from going to their first ever World Series — but they didn’t make it.

The California Angels won the AL West and the Boston Red Sox won the AL East.  They were playing in the American League Championship Series, where the team to win four out of seven games moves on to the World Series.  On October 12th, the Angels had already won 3 games and were winning 5-2 in the ninth inning with one out.  The Red Sox hit a home run to close the gap to 5-4.  The Angels got the second out and then brought in their closer, Donnie Moore, to get the final out of the game.  He had two strikes on Dave Henderson.  Stadium security and Anaheim police on horseback stretched up and down the foul lines to prevent the 64,000+ fans from rushing the field when their team won.

But Donnie Moore couldn’t get the third strike, a fly ball, or a grounder to an infielder.  Instead, Henderson hit a two run homer that gave the Red Sox a 6-5 lead.  The Angels came back to tie up the game in the bottom of the ninth, but the Red Sox eventually won in extra innings.

I was in high school at the time, less than ten miles from Anaheim Stadium.  I remember how stunned the other students were the day after that loss.  Even the school’s principal, during the morning announcements over the PA system, urged everyone to hold their heads up high and cheer the team onto victory in the games that followed.  But it wasn’t to be.  The Red Sox won the next two games to eliminate the Angels.

The dark ages followed as the Angels wouldn’t be in the postseason for another 16 years.  Donnie Moore was routinely booed by fans and he killed himself a couple of years later.  Disney made Angels in the Outfield in 1994, capitalizing on the team’s losing reputation.  And in 1995 the Angels had a 10 game lead in the middle of August but they lost that lead in an incredible meltdown.

Much was redeemed when the Angels finally won the World Series in 2002, but the rivalry with the Red Sox was reignited when the Angels faced them in the American League Division Series in 2004.  Boston won all three of those games (though we now know that several Red Sox players were on steroids).  Again in 2007, the Angels lost three straight to the Red Sox.

The two teams faced each other in the playoffs yet again in 2008.  The Angels had won 100 games during the regular season that year and they beat the Red Sox eight out of nine times, so they surely could beat them in the postseason.  But the Angels lost the first two games of the playoffs at home.  They won the third game in Boston in extra innings, making it their first win against Boston in the postseason since that fateful 1986 matchup, but they couldn’t win another game and the Red Sox eliminated the Angels once more.

At the end of the 2009 season, the Angels won the AL West, and the Red Sox got to the postseason by winning the wild card spot.  For the third straight year (and the fourth year in the past six) the Angels would have to face the Red Sox in the ALDS.  But this year was different as the Angels won the first game at home, marking their first postseason home victory over the Red Sox since 1986.  The Angels proved it wasn’t a fluke by also winning game two.

The series moved to Boston for game three, one day short of the 23rd anniversary of the 1986 game.  Boston brought Dave Henderson on the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.  The Red Sox scored first, led the Angels the entire game, and were ahead 6-4 going into the ninth inning.  Boston closer (and arrogant a-hole) Jonathan Papelbon was pitching and got the first two Angels out.  With no one on base he was one strike away from finishing the game when the Angels’ Erik Aybar hit a single.  Papelbon was again one strike away from a Red Sox victory when he walked Chone Figgins.  He then had two strikes on Bobby Abreu, who hit a double off the left field wall to score Aybar from second, cutting the Red Sox lead to one run.  With first base open, the Red Sox intentionally walked Torri Hunter.  Vladimir Guerrero showed that was a mistake by lining Papelbon’s first pitch into center field, scoring two runs for the Angels and giving them a 7-6 lead.  The Red Sox weren’t able to score in the bottom of the ninth inning and they were eliminated by the Angels in a three-game sweep!

The ghosts of 1986 have finally been vanquished.  With a World Series victory in 2002, and an ALDS victory over the Red Sox in 2009, there are no curses or hexes or any other sort of baseball voodoo left to haunt the Angels.  The sportswriters and media, with their east coast bias, have to acknowledge that the Angels are for real and can’t be dismissed.

Angels fans everywhere can sleep well tonight.

Over the last few weeks I’ve spent a good amount of time at Long Beach Memorial Hospital with my dad.  My experiences at Long Beach have always been good, and this time has not been an exception.  But during my time visiting this hospital I’ve learned a few tips and tricks that all patients (and their visiting family) should know.

• All the fast food restaurants within walking distance are towards the southwest, on the corner of Willow and Long Beach Boulevard.  There you’ll find, among others, Subway, Burger King, McDonald’s, El Pollo Loco, Carl’s Jr., Pollo Campero, Taco Bell, Papa John’s pizza, a couple of drug stores, and an Albertsons.
• If it’s fine dining you’re looking for, Bob’s Big Boy is 1.4 miles away to the east on Willow.
• The 20 ounce bottles of soda in the vending machines throughout the hospital cost $1.75.  The same bottles inside the cafeteria on the first floor cost only $1.50.
• The cafeteria, which is open until 3AM, accepts cash and debit cards, but not credit cards.
• The TV’s in the rooms get their feeds from DirecTV, so a variety of channels are available, including Discovery, AMC, CNN, Cartoon Network, TNT, and Fox Sports West.  Here’s a chart suitable for posting on the patient’s wall showing the channel numbers.
• The TV remote controls in most of the rooms are lame.  They have a single button you press to go to the next channel, so if you accidentally go past your channel, you have to keep pushing the button until you cycle all the way around to it again.  This can be solved by bringing in an inexpensive universal remote so you can go forward and back in the channels, enter a channel number directly, and do other things you can’t with the hospital remote like mute the sound and access the TV menu to turn the closed captioning on and off.  Radio Shack has a Philips model for $15 that works well (two AAA batteries not included).
• The phones in the rooms only allow local calls to the 562 area code, which sucks if you live just across the border in the OC’s 714 area code.  If you’re nice to the nurses, however, they can tell you a special 4-digit sequence you can enter in the phone before you dial that will let you call outside the 562 area code for free.
• Parking is $5 per day, but you can get a 5-day pass for $20 and a 10-day pass for $30 which allow you to enter and exit the lot as many times as you like per day.  Don’t try exiting the parking lot with one of these passes, and then give it to someone else to exit for free.  Their system can detect if you try to use the pass to leave the parking lot twice without using the pass to enter the second time.
• Seniors can get a parking pass for $25 that’s good for an entire year, so like a teenager finding an adult to buy him beer, you need to find a senior to buy you a parking pass.
• Patients can order food off the children’s menu, which is often better than the selections on the adult menu.
• There is free WiFi available throughout the hospital.  The wireless network is called “Hotspot”, but it is unencrypted so be sure to use the secure (https) versions of websites if you want to access anything private, such as your E-mail or banking.  They use a SonicWall NSA firewall and block a few sites, but most sites and web services are available, including company VPNs.
• If there are certain nurses you really like, you can talk to the nursing coordinator to request them.
• There are computers available for patients to use in some parts of the hospital (such as the rehab wing) for checking E-mail or just killing time on the Internet.
• Ask a nurse or doctor that you want your chart to indicate you have “hospital privileges” so the patient is free to roam wherever they like, including to the cafeteria.
• Want a private room but don’t want to pay for it?  Just claim that you’re infected with MRSA and you’ll get an isolation room all to yourself at no additional charge.

Warning: This post contains geek content.  If such material makes you uncomfortable, please avert your eyes now.  You have been warned.

This blog and the entire biolchino.com website is hosted on a server that resides in a corner of a spare bedroom in my house.  As such, the computer is running around the clock.  Since the traffic to this site is slightly below what Google gets on a daily basis, the server sits idle a lot of the time.

A couple years ago I looked for something this server could do when it’s not serving up web pages, delivering E-mail, or watching for changes in my cable modem’s IP address.  I considered looking for aliens or trying to discover the largest known prime number, but finally chose the Folding@home project being run out of Stanford University.  This is a distributed computing project where the spare computing cycles from computers around the world are used to simulate the folding of proteins to find potential cures for many common diseases and cancers.  There is so much data to analyze and the computations are so complex that no one computer can do it all, so the project relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteered computers to work on pieces at a time.

My server downloads a chunk of data (called a “work unit”) from Folding@home and crunches the numbers for about 21 hours before sending the results back and requesting another work unit.  This server has a dual core Pentium CPU, so it can process two work units at a time. As of this writing, I have completed 784 work units, which easily puts me in the top 5% of more than 1.2 million other contributors.  You can see my latest statistics on the Folding web site.

Hopefully this simple contribution of some electricity and wear-and-tear on the server will someday lead to a medical discovery that helps in the fight against disease.  I’ll probably never know, but I can sleep just a minuscule bit better at night knowing the computer I have humming away in the other room may be doing some good beyond publishing my random thoughts and musings.  I’ve wondered what it costs to keep this server running 24/7, but that will have to be the subject of another blog post.

My regular rotation of lunch destinations took me to Subway today in Bell Gardens, just a few miles from the office.  Since Subway no longer offers the Tuscan Chicken sandwich, I’ve had to go back to the standard 6″ roast beef.  But that’s not really what this is about.  While there, a family of four came in, ordered their food, and sat down at a table to eat.  Not unusual, but this wasn’t the typical family from East LA.  It was a mom, dad, and two teenage boys.  They were white and I think I overheard them talking in German so I guessed that’s where they were from, but I’m bad at guessing nationalities, so they could have been Cambodian for all I know.

They clearly didn’t live around here.  They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts like they were on vacation.  At one point, the mom stood up and took a picture of the other three eating lunch at the table.  I began to wonder, if they were on vacation, what were they doing here?  Bell Gardens isn’t all bad, but it doesn’t seem like a vacation mecca either.  If they were looking for Disneyland or Universal Studios, they made a seriously wrong turn somewhere along the way.

I was trying to think why a family of four would fly all the way from Europe to visit East LA.  If they did it to visit the Citadel shopping center (you know, the old Firestone factory off the 5 freeway) they could have eaten lunch there.  If they were staying at the Crown Plaza Hotel at the Commerce Casino, they could eat lunch at the sports bar (with their excellent extra-thick potato chips).  If they were hoping to have lunch at the world’s oldest operating McDonald’s, they drove a few miles too far west on Florence Ave.  If they were searching for an authentic Mexican meal, they were in the right neighborhood, but at the wrong restaurant (they should have tried my Italian restaurant across the street).  As far as I know, there are no major parks, historical sites, or other tourist attractions in the area.

I’m at a loss for why someone would travel to Bell Gardens to spend their summer vacation.  If you can think of a reason why, I’d like to know.

This past weekend I was part of my brother’s crew to set up and shoot the fireworks displays for the cities of Norwalk on July 3rd and West Covina on July 4th.  We’ve done these back-to-back shows for a few years now so we almost have it down to a science, but the shows are different every year so setting up is never the same experience twice.

An assembled 3" rack

We got started on the night of July 2nd when we arrived at the Norwalk Civic Center.  Our shooting site was the parking lot behind their library.  We unloaded from the rental truck the wooden racks that are used to hold the guns that shoot the fireworks into the air.  The Norwalk show used all 3″ shells so the racks were all the same.  Our first job was to attach wooden feet to the racks that tie them together in groups and hold them pointing straight up (after all, it’s always important to try not to shoot explosives into nearby crowds).

We spent the rest of that first night going through all the shells for the show.  Each one is marked with a cue number.  That number indicates which rack it needs to be loaded into so it fires at the right time to be synchronized with the music.  We sorted the shells into different groups for each rack, and at the same time attached the e-match (an electric fuse) to each one.

Loading and wiring shells

The crew arrived at the firing site the next morning to load the shells.  Each shell gets carefully loaded into a gun.  The e-match on that shell is then connected to an electronic module.  Up to sixteen shells can be connected to each module.  This is the most time consuming part of the setup, because each of the several hundred shells need to be individually loaded into the correct gun and wired into the module.  In addition, the wires for each shell need to be run through a strain-relief hole in the gun so when the shell lifts off it doesn’t take the electronic module along with it.

The PyroDigital firing board

Once all the shells were loaded we used XLR cables to connect the modules to each other and to the PyroDigital firing board, which is basically a custom computer designed specifically for shooting fireworks.  The firing board has the timeline for the entire show loaded into it so it knows when to shoot each of the shells.  It can also be used to do a continuity check that tests each of the cues to make sure a shell has been correctly wired.  Once this is done, the show is pretty much ready to go.

Foiling the finale racks

The last step is foiling the finale.  Unlike the main body of the show where most of the shells are fired individually, the finale is shot in chains of ten shells each.  When the PyroDigital board fires a cue, a full rack of ten shells that are tied together are fired at once.  A small piece of match (basically just black powder inside of the yellow paper shown in the picture) connects each of the shells in the chain together.  That piece of match can ignite easily, so we cover the finale racks with aluminum foil so any sparks or debris that falls during the show doesn’t light the finale prematurely.  A fireworks show with the finale in the middle is really anticlimactic.

Thanks to the prep work we did the night before and the great crew we had setting up the show, we were ready to go early in the afternoon.  We’re not used to having several hours between the setup and showtime, so it was nice to be able to relax for the afternoon and evening while we watched the crowds gather around the civic center.

First shots fired at Norwalk

At 9:00 it was time for the show.  There was a DJ playing music for the crowd in the park next to city hall and he had the soundtrack for the fireworks show.  The soundtrack has the music on one channel, and a SMPTE track on the other channel.  We had a cable running from the DJ booth to the PyroDigital board so it could receive the SMPTE signal.  Once the DJ starts the music and the board detects the SMTPE time code it knows the show has begun and uses it to keep in sync with the music.  From here on out the board sends an electrical signal to each of the shells at just the right time so it can launch in the air and explode as it was choreographed with the music.  The crowd oohs and ahhs at the colorful display for the duration of the 20-minute long show, and cheers as a couple hundred shells are all fired in a matter of seconds for the grand finale.

The show at Norwalk went well.  A few shells had bad fuses so they didn’t fire, but otherwise everything went as planned.  No fallout came down in the crowd (always a good thing), the finale was loud (thanks to a lot of titanium salute shells), and everyone who came out to see it went home happy.

At this point we got back to work tearing down the show.  All the cables and modules had to be collected, the big wooden racks had to be disassembled and loaded back into the truck, and the remains of the exploded fireworks had to be cleaned up in the parking lot.  One show down, one to go!

A group of 16 4" guns

We drove to West Covina that night and set up the racks on the grass field at Edgewood Middle School.  The West Covina show is different from the Norwalk show so the racks had to be assembled and arranged differently.  Also, because of the larger fallout area we could include 4″ shells in addition to the 3″ shells.  The larger area also allowed us to angle some of the racks so the fireworks fill more of the sky.  We worked well into the early morning hours getting the physical labor done while it was cool outside.

The crew returned the morning of the 4th to load the West Covina show.  There were more shells to load in this show, and we had one less person, so it took a few hours more to get everything ready.  Still, we had a couple hours to rest and eat dinner before the 9PM show.

Remains of a 4" gun after detonation

Like Norwalk, West Covina had a great show.  It even got written up on the front page of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.  We did have one mishap, however — one of the 4″ shells detonated in the bottom of the gun, blowing the rack apart and sending shrapnel flying dozens of feet in every direction.  No one was hurt, and my brother was able to bypass that rack so the show could go on.

Apparently that shell was built with a defective timing fuse.  Normally, after a shell is fired by igniting the lift charge, a timing fuse burns for a few seconds while it rises into the air.  The timing fuse then lights the burst charge which explodes in the sky producing the different colorful effects.  In this case, there was no delay in the timing fuse, so the lift charge and burst charge both lit at the same time, causing the shell to explode before it left the gun.  Fortunately this happens rarely, but it does get the adrenaline flowing when you see and feel a bomb go off just a few dozen yards away.

When the show was done it was time to assess the damage and again tear everything down and load it all into the truck.  We got out of there around midnight and began the drive home.  I slept in until around 11AM the next day.

Here are a few pictures I took of the fireworks at both shows.  Click on any of them to see a larger image.

Red burst over the trees

Green ring with long camera exposure

Comets firing at different angles

A "cake" firing amongst the smoke

Finale picture #1

Finale picture #2

Like many people, I gave the website classsmates.com some basic info about me several years ago.  I didn’t pay for any of their services, but I figured it would be useful in case someone needed to get a hold of me or to learn about any upcoming reunions.

Over the past year or so, I’ve reconnected with a ton of people from high school, not through classmates.com, but through Facebook.  And, of course, Facebook is free!  Now everytime I get an advertisement E-mail from classmates.com, I expect them to say they’ve changed their business model and have gone fully ad-supported instead of charging money for features.

But they’re not.  I’m shocked to see that they’re continuing to stick with the status quo, as their value proposition continues to erode.  If I’m looking for an old classmate, I certainly don’t go to classmates.com to find them — I go to Facebook, and more often than not I find them there.

Will classmates.com ever get it?  At this point I don’t think it matters because it’s too late, as illustrated in this entertaining (as always) news brief in The Onion: Classmates.com Employees Don’t Have Heart To Tell CEO About Facebook

If you’ve ever used a TiVo, you know the 30 second skip feature is a huge time saver.  With it, you can watch an hour-long show in under 45 minutes (I can knock out an episode of American Idol in about 20 minutes).  If, like me, you got accustomed to a TiVo and then began using DirecTV’s proprietary DVR, you were disappointed with their 30 second “slip” feature.  It’s just a glorified fast forward!

I’m sure they designed it this way so TV networks wouldn’t accuse them of helping viewers avoid commercials.  I don’t care about DirecTV’s politics — I just want the box to work for me, not for the broadcasters.  I still somehow see all the latest advertisements.

A couple of days ago I discovered how to fix DirecTV’s DVR to make the slip button work like TiVo’s skip feature.  This is a must for all DVR owners.  Here’s how to do it:

1. Start with an updated DVR.  This usually happens automatically.
2. Go to Menu | Search for Shows | Keyword.
3. Type in “30SKIP” in the search area and hit “Continue”.
4. You won’t see anything on the screen, but you can now exit out of the menus.
5. Go to a recording, hit play, and try out the old SLIP button.
6. If you want to go back for some reason, do the same thing as above but type “30SLIP” instead.