Proposition 99 versus Proposition 98

For the upcoming elections on June 3, statists filed a Proposition 99 with a language to kill Proposition 98, even if it passes. This is the oldest trick in the book. Who do they think we are? Of course I'll vote YES on 98 and NO on 99, even if we don't care much either way, because I resent being played for a fool this way.

As it happens, I know that Caltrans used eminent domain to acquire private property to build the 238 freeway from Irvington to Hayward. Lately under the pressure from envirojerks, they decided to give up on the freeway and there was a discussion what to do with all the land. I would say, BUILD THE GODDAMN FREEWAY, but it's too late. They have destroyed the overpass where 680 turns into the hills two years ago.

So, eminent domain is good when we get roads out of it, and it's bad when the government takes the property from a family and hands it over to a powerful private interest (usually a corruption is involved). The thing about the 98 vs. 99 is that they know how the current law in California is one of the worst in the nation, and that they would still be able to build the I-238 even if they operated under Texas law. So, they know that 98 is likely to pass, and thus the trick. Jeez!

Famous Dave's

Famous Dave's is a newly open place at periphery of the mall, next to Olive Garden. Unanimous verdict of this family: avoid (and we rarely agree on anything). The problem is in the kitchen... I don't know who taught them to cook ribs, but it sure wasn't my aunt. In case you want to see a restaurant serving them as they were meant to be, visit Emille Villa (the nearest one is in Livermore, unfortunately, and I swore undying hatred to them due to their government being a bunch of sick road-destroying jerks, but you're free to patronize them).

Orchard

Orchard is terrific. It's homely, yet I have to say it's a cut above, for example, Denny's or even Lake of Fire (not to knock Lake of Fire, but speaking objectively). In the same time, it's nearly always empty. Score!

I really cannot say anything bad about them, except perhaps that their onion rings were not to my taste: too industrial. I like the kind they serve in Red Robin.

One note, the pancakes there are huge. I expected the same thing they have in IHOP, but had leave some on the place.

Overall, Orchard is my favourte in Tracy, period. It's not as fancy as Magellan, but not as expensive either. It's comfortable and inviting.

Mandarin Villa

Mandarin Villa is another old-time establishement in the Ace plaza (at the crossing of Tracy and Grant Line). It's not an all-out super-duper place like Princess of China in SF, but it's very solid and definitely Chinese. The chou mein, fried rice, and the duck were great. It would've been a shame to live in Tracy for years and not visit Mandarin Villa, but now I may move with clean conscience.

Bird in the Bay

State assembly flier

Politics is bad for blogging, but it's not like anyone reads this anyway. With that said, I received a flier from Cathleen Galgiani, a assemblymember for 17th district. It's vein-popping. Here, I go solely by contents of the flier, without any googling -- to show what I mean by "vein-popping".

AB 186 Rural Crimes Task Force

Not exactly sure why certain LEOs need this special help, sounds like an earmark.

AB 1428 Creating Energy from Poultry Waste

Bald-faced boonghole.

AB 447 College Preparatory Program - AVID

"Organizational and study skills"? What a joke. My daughter did not need any of that. And why is this done at state level? It's a job for the local tutoring club.

AB 1233 Free Homework Help

This is even worse, plus a high-tech boonghole.

AB 203 Mental Health Care

This sounds reasonable -- the only one of the two on the whole flier!

AB 1475 Shutting Down Child Pornography

The blurb is talking about mandatary reporting by "computer technicians". Is there an industry the do-gooders won't destroy in this state?! We have beter things to do than play cops. Sure, we report incidents if we come across that, but do you have any idea how much mandatory reporting costs? This is absolutely outrageous.

And of course this is "for the children". Jeez!

AB 426 Violent and Non-Violent Criminals

This sounds almost reasonable, if only we had money for it. So stop wasting my money on your stupid boongholes and build better prisons, goddamit. Then I might sign up for this bill.

AB 379 Life Imprisonment for Sex Offenders

This is bad primarily because tagging anyone with "sex offender" tag is ridiculousy easy. Also, the voters get fooled way too easily by the rhethoric on this issue. I've read the proposition we had on the ballot in March, it was an absolutely unimaginable Orwellinan nightmare, yet it passed! I'm not for putting more screws to so-called "sex offenders" until the state cleans up its act.

AB 3034 High Speed Rail

This is the mother of all boongholes. It's 50 times more expensive than building a toll-free "I-130" from San Jose to Patterson, for one tenth of its utility. Not on my watch, jerks!

AB 381 MediCal Fraud and Identity Theft

I suppose this is not too bad.

AB 660 Railroad Crossing Funding

I'm not quite sure how much grade separation we need, and what issues here are. This seems like a niche issue.

Conclusion

I would be happier to leave this state if New Mexico were any better. Unfortunately, I suspect it's not. They have just approved a salest tax increase to build a spaceport. On third thought, at least the spaceport tax expires.

And most importantly, where is activity to restore freedom to California? Are you doing anything to strike down the ridiculous ban on .50 caliber rifles, assemblymember Galgiani?

High-speed DSL along Grant Line

Couple of wheeks ago telephone technicians installed new cabinets along Grant Line. Some of them draw power and have active cooling, so they have more than just traditional patch panels inside. I bet we're seeng an implementation of Project Pronto at last.

As we all know, DSL's performance drops off dramatically with increased distance from CO. Since local wires get aggregated at neighbourhood patch panels, an easy solution is to install forward nodes at these panels and connect them to CO with fiber. This is much cheaper than FTTC, let alone FTTP, yet reaps most of the benefits. Such deployment was called Project Pronto in PacBell.

When I moved to Tracy, only DSL was available, and it was a horrible torture. Not only the speed was poor (about 368 kbit/s), but the reliability was bad as well. Failures clearly corellated to hot weather, so I suspect some line-conditioning equipment was on its last legs. PacBell ASI rolled the truck a few time, took their measurements, admitted that the line sucked and that they capture the noice, and then did nothing.

I asked them if they had a Pronto terminal in the neighbourhood, and if yes, could they switch me over. They said "no". Therey was no other choice but to suck it up.

As soon as Comcast started offering the cable Internet, I switched, and it was a relatively smooth sailing so far. They did have outages, but not many, and but never longer than one day. Anyway, when I called to terminate my account, the call center girl said, "No, wait a moment, we have a remote terminal in your area, would you want to switch?" Of course by that time I already had cable service, and since PacBell wronged me by not fixing the obvious problem with the line, I insisted that we terminate the DSL.

But that was then. This is now. I am moving to Albuquerque, but you stay in Tracy. Should you get your Internet from former PacBell with the newfanged short-loop DSL?

If I was doing it now, I would give it a try. AT&T owns bother PacBell and Comcast these days, so it's one mega-monopoly now. There's going to be little difference between the two going forward. So it's just the price vs. the speed.

One word of warning though. Many people think that the availability of DSL should be better than cable, because telcos are supposedly reliable and cable is run by a bunch of dorks. I would say, not so. As I mentioned before, I have never been without a cable for more than a day in Tracy, or 4 days in Fremont (back in bad old days of pre-DOCSIS modems and TCI Inc. -- not even @Home). It have however been without a PacBell phone service for 10 days, due to technician making a wrong connection in the local patch panel, and them not bothering to fix it. So no, there's no reliability advantage. In fact, since cable is all-passive from their node to your premises, and Pronto-style DSL isn't, the cable might have it better. So look at prices with that in mind.

It's so sad that DirecWAY is not competitive in suburban setting.

Word of Mouth

I went to Hairtage, the barber shop which I typically visit unless it's Sunday or Monday. The owner told me that he mostly gets customers through the word of mouth, and he would only be willing to hire an assistant from Tracy because of that. The expectation is, an outsider would not bring in customers. It sounds strange to me, because I found the shop from the telephone book. It's not like we have an excess of barbers in Tracy. There's Al's near the Blockbuster on 11th, which belongs to the former assistant in Hairtage, who started the new business last summer or so, but that's about it. So, if one wants to go to a barber, there's no need to ask friends and family.

And the haircut? I'm not completely happy, but it's better than other places. I guess at my age, I have to get more engaged with the barber. I cannot ask "just give it a go with #5" and be done anymore -- too much baldness.

Crash at Altamont pass

Here's another attempt at citizen journalism. This one is marginally less pathetic than the first, but still... I did not understand what the heck has happened, because I was driving. Lots of debris in the road, however.


One bizarre thing was how someone decided to take off the accident scene in a burning vehicle. I don't understand just what he (or she) was thinking.


She didn't get far: near the illegal truck pad the bumper melted and fell off, which was a signal to pull over (you can almost make out the bumper laying on the road in the picture above).