Pleasanton Web Design

My son recently found $85 of Christmas money that he had lost. What was his immediate reaction? He wanted to buy a sword. My nephew had gone to Chinatown with his dad a couple of weeks before and they supposedly saw a sword there for sale for $20.

I’d been through Chinatown a few times, but never really stopped to look into the shops, so I figured a sword for sale was kind of an oddity and, if they had a sword for $20 it was probably already sold. He was all excited though, so he, my daughter and I jumped on BART and headed over to San Francisco.

Once in SF it was only about a mile walk from the BART station to Chinatown. We just bumped into Grant street and followed it uphill until we saw the ornate Chinatown welcome gate. I figured we’d walk around looking into stores for an hour, then head back. Well, about 5 minutes into our Chinatown tour we hit this store -

From SF Gate:

Jefer Trading Co.: If you’re finding yourself in need of a sword, Jefer Trading Co. is the place to shop. A wall of swords encased in dragon-head sheaths is at the ready. The shop also offers marble chess sets, wall hangings, and other knickknacks. 535 Grant Ave., (415) 397-8791.

Yes, a wall full of swords indeed. He purchased a set of 3, with display stand, for $30, plus a commando murder knife for $25, and had money to spare. We did a bit more shopping, my daughter buying some cool knickknacks for cheap, and then we were out of there.

So if you come visit us, there is a slight chance you’ll get your head chopped off. Probably not though.

Don’t mess with my nephew and son.

Or at least their sales, customer care, and technical support do. Wasted 2 hrs talking to 10 confused offshore phone people and am exactly where I started. Stuck with a non-working part.

With 5 kids in tow I had the chance to finally try out the Pizza place across the street -

Garlex Pizza and Ribs
4301 Valley Ave Ste A
Pleasanton, CA 94566-5544
(925) 484-4540

Going in I was surprised by the interior. It looked like an old place from the outside so I expected a more of an old, homey feel. The interior was pretty plain, stark and small. Looking over the counter I could see that the dining area was only a small fraction of the total floorspace, giving the impression that the business was a front for some kind of illegal activity. It looked clean though, except for the flies.

The three pre-teen boys sat together at a table, and when I tried to sit at an adjacent table I was politely asked to sit somewhere else (so I couldn’t hear what they were talking about). My daughter and the younger brother of one of the other boys sat next to the TV, which was playing a made-for-TV movie on Action 36. It starred Meridith Baxter-Birney as the mother of a kidnapped girl. I sat down next to them, and this time wasn’t asked to move.

The pizza was OK and they gave us two larges for the price of a large and a small, ensuring me a lunch of reheated pizza for the next week.

One of my son’s friends, who I’ll call destructo-boy, started banging his soda can violently on the table for no apparent reason, causing the manager to come out and tell him to knock it off. Other than that (and the flies) our experience at Garlex was a positve one!

Check this freakin’ site out – www.Oculart.com. I’m having a nightmare in the daytime!

Synchronicity. Or if you aren’t a Police fan, but have seen the cult classic Repo Man - Plate 0′ Shrimp. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe some aging hep-cat named the latest Google update after the geriatric rock super-star, Mick Jagger. Or maybe it is just a coincidence that the Stones’ 40th Anniversary and release of a new album coincides with a major Google Update.

Whatever. The point is that I finally lost my undisputed number one position for the keyphrase “Fremont Web Design.” I don’t dare check my other page one phrases like “Hayward Web Design” or “Union City Web Design” as they have tended to go up and down the SERPS anyway. I do get a bit of business from those listings though, and it looks like the movement may mean I’ll have to get back to work on some SEO. Dang.

I hate Bill Gates because he is ultimately responsible for the WMV video file type. I was messing around with some old videos I captured from VHS a few years ago. They were all in AVI format, so too big to put on the Web. I was looking for a way to compress them, preferably to MPEG format and found Windows Movie Maker on my computer. It came with Windows XP, so I assumed it was lame and had never tried it.

Well it looked good to start with. It was similar to Adobe Premiere, which I’ve used before, but a lot easier to work with. Everything looked good until time to save to a video file, and the only option was WMV. Only readable by Windows Media Player as far as I know. Mr. Monopoly, Bill Gates, forcing me to force my visitors to use his Media Player.

So the videos were edited and up, and it was time to test them on my other computers. Except for my Mac, which doesn’t have the Windows Media Player installed. All that was left was to bring the videos up on my kids’ computer, which I did only to find fluorescent green freakishness. A quick search for another WMV file confirmed that my video card cannot properly render that file type. Another search for troubleshooting on the subject told me that the problem was due to updated graphics card drivers, and you’re supposed to roll back your drivers to the previous version to solve the problem. Cool, I’ll just put some text under the video links that say “To properly view this video, please roll back your graphics card driver to the previous version.”

Thanks again Bill Gates.

Doing laundry has never been so exciting! I was carrying my basket o’ dirty clothes to the laundry room this morning when I heard a man yelling. I assumed it was the typical angry white man yelling at his wife. I was half right. By the time I had stepped into the laundry room a woman was complaining to the weekend manager and maintenance man that the “gentleman” unloading his clothes from the drier had just yelled at her and got in her face about somebody taking someone elses laundry out of the drier or washer. In fact I think she claimed that he had threatened her. I didn’t really catch the whole thing, because also in the laundry room was a very attractive young woman I had never seen before. She looked kind of like Sinead O’conner in her heyday, with the very short hair. Might have been in chemo though. Anyway, she had just sent her son out of the room because of the disturbance.

So I looked over at the angry man, and he is none other than my downstairs neighbor, who we’ll call old polyester pear-body angry man. The man that returns my “good morning” with not even a grunt. He leaves the room, followed shortly by the target of his anger and I am left to converse with Sinead. But a few sentences later enters a large blonde man wearing a shiny white sweat outfit. If you’ve seen Spinal Tap, picture a big 6′ 4″ version of their manager, complete with 70′s style feathered hair with the center-part. And sure enough, in a very agited british accent he asks me if I’ve seen the “old fucker” that threatened his fiance. I say yes, and in a very hostile and threatening manner he asks “was it you?” Of course I answer no, Sinead backs me up and he leaves rather quickly, a bit embarrassed, I think, for his false accusation. I know that any time I act out of anger I am wrong and embarrassed. Good thing to avoid.

Later, when I’m getting my laundry out of the drier I see Sinead again, only this time she’s wearing a necklace with very large brown wooden beads. It reminds me of the time I was flying on business and half of the flight turned out to be some kind of cult from oregon. They were all wearing necklaces with big brown wooden beads, only they also had a picture of some guy attached to the front. One of them asked me if I could move so they could all sit together. Something about them bugged me, so I said no. I think they probably spent a little too much time together anyway.