Welcome To Los Jon-geles

Ye Olde Official Link Exchange Suggestion Page

2012-02-29T20:45:00.001-08:00

Just post a comment below if you want to suggest an exchange of links. I make no guarantees in regards to acceptance and I'm not going to trade links just to trade links. In general terms, I'm looking for personal blogs centered around Los Angeles or at least a subject (*cough*The Miami Dolphins*cough) that I'm seriously interested in (sorry, this doesn't include any other sports teams, L.A.-based or otherwise). I reserve the right to arbitrarily remove any suggestion (especially ones that I feel are spam) for any reason and at any time.

Except....

2012-02-29T01:44:00.000-08:00

Slowly, but surely, we're getting everything set up here for our new life. Except...
the phone line isn't working. According to what the person I talked to at AT&T, it sounds like the problem is with the external (i.e., the one we wouldn't have to pay for to get fixed) line, but if we have someone come out to fix it and it turns out to be the internal line, we'll have to pay not only for the phone dude fixing it, but just for coming out as well. Oh, and except...
I think we've got my wife's SSI (fancy talk for Social Security Supplemental Income or something like that... they don't pay us anything extra for knowing what the acronym stands for) and Medi-cal. From what I understood, the social worker (or whatever the lady was who we talked to) said that my wife can continue her old Medi-Cal card and won't need a temporary one. However, since we got to the office late (around 4:30 and they closed at 5:00), I might have misunderstood her (understandably) hurried explanation. I'll probably call them Friday to make sure, though. And except...
the gas still seems to be off, but I thought I had gotten it turned on. So another call, this one to Southern Californian Gas or whatever the company is called (friends don't let friends blog late. However, for better or for worse, there isn't a friend available to stop me at the moment). Plus, I've got to call them to see if we qualify (which seems very likely, considering that my wife is getting both SSI and Medi-Cal, and I think she needs only to get one of them for us to do so) for the C.A.R.E. program. No, I don't know what that stands for any more than I know what SSI stands for, but it's basically a need-based discount. Somewhere around 25%, IIRC (that's one acronym I do happen to know what it stands for). Once again, except...
we still haven't had the time to buy a fridge or oven (apartment didn't come with either) and I'll probably have to get new glasses (the current pair are being kept together with tape on one side of the hinges where the screw fell out and the screw holes are messed up even if I knew what happened to the screw- I mean, besides that it got lost) and work shoes. And one last except...
the apartment still needs a few minor repairs. There was supposed to be someone coming over to fix them, but it might be our fault that we weren't here if he had come over. But any way, it's late, my brain isn't exactly firing on all cylinders (or at least fewer than usual), and I've got a lot to do tomorrow.

5 Things I Won't Miss About Salinas...

2012-02-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I could only come up with 3, but I'm pretty sure it was up to 5 a couple of days ago. So I might update the page if I remember the others.

3. Water On, Water Off
Sometimes, I would wonder if manager of our apartments was channeling Mr. Myagi. While not as common as they were when we first moved in, water outages would still occur about once or twice a month- usually just before I was getting ready for work (IOW, just about to take a shower).

2. The Overhang Hangover
The upper level of the apartments had a landing which led to the individual apartments. Some of the children that lived there thought this was the perfect place to ride their bikes and/or big wheels. Some of the tenants underneath (such as myself), however, had a different opinion of the suitability of the landing for such a purpose considering the amount of noise it made.

1. The Crosswalk Of DOOM!

View Larger Map

While it looks quite peaceful on a Google map, the reality was that the crosswalk at Sorrentini and Natividad Avenue was a death trap more often than not. Making it worse were drivers going north and, seeing a red light at East Laurel Drive, would slow down enough that they wouldn't pass the crosswalk soon enough for a pedestrian to cross after them, but go fast enough that he or she couldn't pass in from of them. NEWSFLASH: Yes, there is a reason why the city painted those two white lines crossing from one side of the street to the other side and placed those yellow signs with a black figure that looks suspiciously like someone trying to cross the street.

This Is The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance...

2012-02-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

The day has come... that is, if everything with the moving truck works out as we hope/expect. Problem is, I have a debit card, but no license, and my brother-in-law has a driver's license, but no credit card. Now, if only the rental place will accept a debit card, we should be o.k. Otherwise, I might have to go to the bank, withdraw some money, and hope they accept that instead. While I realize they have to be security conscious about who they rent the trucks out to, I would think we would have enough identification among us to establish our identities. Odd on how the whole move might be jeopardized by such a small detail. And I have no idea what we're going to do if we don't get the van.
The bathroom looks weird in a spartan sort of way. The only things of ours left in at the moment are some soap, a towel, and some toilet paper. There's also a bit of an echo in there now, but we're not planning on taking that with us.
If nothing else, we got rid of a lot of trash. Hopefully, a few prayers and/or some fast talking will be enough to see us through this difficulty. Anyway, my brother-in-law and nephews should be here in a few hours. Que sera, sera.

"We accept quality blog that are in English only and please submit titles and descriptions in English only."

2012-02-24T03:47:00.000-08:00

The irony of the above is that it should be :"We accept quality blogs...." Sad to say that's hardly the only "English" error on the blog directory submission page, such as numerous "We not"'s, "All payment is life time inclusion", and "$5.99 (Before Price Up!!!)", And to add insult to injury, this is one of the few directories that I've seen that doesn't offer free submissions (and I have a list of at least 12 that don't,. although a few require reciprocal linking), to which I can only add that I hope their service is better than their language skills.
As for the move, we've run into a bit of a snag. It appears that my brother-in-law's vehicle isn't up to making the trip here and back. I was considering renting a car, having him drive it up here, and then have him drive the van back while one of his sons drives the car back (it's not like all five of us would fit in the van), but, unfortunately, neither of his sons has a driver's license. It looks like we'll have to rent the car, fill the van, and send one of his sons and my wife via bus or train. Adds a bit of cost to the move, but I don't see any viable options out there.

Joining the Technorati:CLAIM TOKEN::AJ75D36UFE2B

2012-02-23T17:26:00.001-08:00

Feb 23, 2012. We could not find the claim token AJ75D36UFE2B in any posts in your feed. Please make sure that you have entered it correctly in a post body and that the token appears in the feed at the URL you have provided us. Once you are sure we should be able to find the claim token, use "Update Site Feed URL" so that we can check again.

Read more: http://technorati.com/account/claim/3057161/#ixzz1nG0Vtsuq

Well, sorry Mr. Sensitive. There. Here it is. Are you happy now?

Yeah, I know: I'm having way too much fun with this.

This brings up the number of blog directories I've submitted this blog to up to six, including BlogHints.com, with whom I'm going to have to remember to resubmit the blog to in a year because that's all the (free) reciprocal listings last. Or maybe not. Who knows what the future holds?
On the plus side, I actually remembered to add the "Labels" to the post BEFORE I published it for once.instead of having to edit it to add them.

The Experiment Was A Success; Status Report At T-minus 2 Days

2012-02-23T02:51:00.001-08:00

I is genius!
On the home front, I still have one (half) bin of garbage to toss out unless we find some more, which I highly doubt. The only things left to pack are pretty much stuff that will have to wait until the last minute (food, dinnerware, the telephone, clock, cables from the TV and computer, etc.). I've taken everything we had hanging on the walls off, but still have some nails in the combination dining room/ kitchen that I'm going to have to wait until we remove the boxes that are piled in front of the window which is under them (the nails, that is). I still have to call to get gas/water/electricity turned on, but, other than that, my day today (the 23rd) should be fairly free. My brother-in-law and a couple of nephews (from my wife's side) should be coming from Los Angeles sometime Friday (night?) to help us get the truck, load it, and move our stuff there and we've already cleared a space for them in the living room for them to sleep. Then the fun begins all over again with unpacking and getting settled in.
My brain, meanwhile, is still in that weirded-out zone between "Wow! Are we finally going to do this?" and "AUUUUUUUUGH! Do we really want to do this?".

EDIT: Just had a scary moment when I heard something fall in the kitchen. Turned out to be just the ironing board which was leaning against the refrigerator sliding down.

A Little Experiment In PINGing The Blo.gs Directory For Blog Updates

2012-02-23T00:56:00.001-08:00

Just registered my blog with Blo.gs and bookmarked the link to ping them when the site is updated. But then I thought, "Hey, let's see if can add a keyword to the link so that I don't have to search through my bookmarks every time I want to do that." So, that' basically what this post is about. When I'm done posting it, I'm going to type in the "pingg" keyword and see what happens.

(What I'd really like to do is to set up the posts so that they automatically send a ping, but I'm not quite sure whether the following code is correct or where I should place it (I'm guessing the HTML, but I don't know whether it matters where in the HTML I place it), so I could use some help on this if there's someone willing to do so. Also, I'm interested in knowing what the "Content-Length" does.

POST / HTTP/1.0
Host: ping.blo.gs
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Length: 394

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<methodCall>
 <methodName>weblogUpdates.extendedPing</methodName>
 <params>
  <param>
   <value>Welcome to Los Jon&#45;geles</value>
  </param>
  <param>
   <value>http://losjongeles.blogspot.com</value>;
  </param>
  <param>
   <value></value>
  </param>
  <param>
   <value>http://feeds.feedburner.com/JongelesJournal</value>;
  </param>
 </params>
</methodCall>

All Work and No Play Makes Jon A Dull Boy...

2012-02-22T04:53:00.000-08:00

... so I went ahead and made this "BuddyPoke" image on FaceBook.

I'm not quite sure what my alter-ego's name should be or what superpowers he should have (with a get-up like that, I figure he has to have some), thus the floor is now open for suggestions.

¡Al Diablo Con Tus Camarones!

2012-02-20T21:01:00.001-08:00

For dinner tonight, my wife prepared some camarones diablo (a.k.a. camarones del diablo- no, she didn't use either of those recipes, she's got her own) with just the right kick to them. My older (and only) brother is the one in the family who really enjoys hot foods, but as long as the chilies enhance, rather than overpower, the taste of the food (and it isn't the weather that's turning chili), I'm o.k. with them. Along with that, I finished off some chicken rice soup that she had cooked the day before but reheated earlier today. Mexican-style chicken rice soup, however, is a bit different from American-style. Whereas the latter tends to stick to celery, onions, and carrots, the former takes a more varied approach to vegetable usage. While we didn't have any celery or carrots, my wife did add some potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I think I also remember her using corn (not nibblets, but still on the cob), but I might be confusing it with some beef soup she sometimes makes. Which brings me to the second difference: my wife tends to to cut the vegetables in big, ol' chunks rather than lil' tiny pieces. Finally, it isn't complete without some lemon juice to accompany it (not while it is cooking, but after it is served). I can remember seeing one of my co-workers (at the time) squeezing some lemon juice into his soup and thinking, "You mean you're really going to eat it that way?". Now, oddly enough, I find that most clear soups don't taste right without some lemon And I'm sure there's a moral to that story somewhere.

5 Days To Go... & I Sometimes Wonder Whether We're Throwing Away More Than What We're Keeping

2012-02-20T05:22:00.000-08:00

Beyond that, not much to write about. Just another day of throwing more stuff out and packing. Tomorrow (or, that is, later today) ought to offer a bit more variety, if not excitement. Have to cancel one doctor's appointment for my wife which was supposed to happen in March and confirm a change of service with the phone company. Other than that, it looks like more packing and... well, there doesn't appear to be much left that we're planning on throwing away. Of course, it might well turn out that not everything fits on the truck, but I don't foresee having that problem. On the other hand, most people who that has happened to probably thought the same way ahead of time. So it may well turn into one of those cases of "oops, time to go to plan 'b'"- that is, if there is a plan 'b'.

Trash, Trash, & MORE TRASH!

2012-02-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

I suppose one consequence of moving is that it's forced us to become a little less materialistic as we simply won't have enough room where we're moving to to keep all the stuff we've managed to accumulate here (not to mention that we'd prefer not to move a whole bunch of stuff we no longer want- or at least not enough to pack it up and move it with us. Thus, it seems like every time I've gone to empty the (quite large) bin of garbage into the dumpster, it's only back in the apartment for a few seconds before it's full again. And that's not even including everything that we've given away (such as my *sob* approximately 5000 comic book collection (NOTE: if you ever want to get a huge response to a CraigsList ad, simply add the words "1000's of free comic books" somewhere in the title*]). Even though I posted the ad at about 2:00 a.m., I got about 20 replies within minutes and at least 100 all told, although a few of them were actually interested in the free furniture I was giving away as well)..
Which brings me to a (AFAIK) new proverb: "Man** who want to know how much trash he have should try moving".

* N.B.:It's probably advisable, if not more honest, to first have 1000's of comic books that you're willing to give away though.. Just saying.
** Not trying to be sexist here, it's just that proverbs traditionally begin with "Man". Anyone who wants to spread this proverb and feels more comfortable with using "Person" or even "Woman" has my official permission to do so.

One Week To Go... And Then We're Off To L.A.

2012-02-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

I'm currently on vacation and plan to move with my wife to Los Angeles next week (February 25) to an apartment that's only a couple doors down from where her sister lives. We're pretty much all packed up, but have a few more things that we're still have to get to. I've called the utility companies to shut off service here. Still have to find out which company is supposed to supply gas and electric down there, as well as make an appointment to get internet connected. I'm also still waiting to find out whether I'm going to have a job down there at HomeTown Buffet. I currently work at the one in Salinas and have been with the company for almost 13 years, but evidently, that's not enough to assure me that they're going to let me work there. I'm just going to what I always do, though: the best I can and after that, not worry about it (not that I'm claiming that that's always as easy to do as to say).

Hello, World!

2012-02-09T02:59:00.001-08:00

First post is first posting.