Halloween? What Halloween?

It's 18:03 PST and it's dark outside, we are stocked with candy, and nobody calls at the door. Where are all the little brats?! Something is not right.

TRASH @West: Recycling

Rotating post.

Copy copy copy

Copying at Postal Annex near Food Maxx (former Food4Less) is $.13 per page, though their old price list said $.10. Across the road, it is still $.10 on a coin machine in Longs Drugs.

The clerk at the Postal Annex became confused when I asked how to make a landscape copy with a reduction.

I love capitalism

You would not believe how cheap light bulbs are these days. Home Depot had 60W bulbs on sale for $.69 for the set of four.

Fall cleanup THIS WEEK

I completely forgot about it, but apparently this week is Fall Cleanup. Neither Delta nor the city informed me about it. So how do my neighbours know about it? A mystery!

Tracy Press blog

Holy Smokes, Batman. Tracy Press Editor starts a blog. And she opens it with plunging into the sordid affair of Valerie Plame and Judith Miller (as seen at Scrappleface, "[meanwhile,] Columnist Robert Novak, who publicly revealed Valerie Wilson's identity, remains at large.")

It is not possible to stay out of politics these days, simply because of a general interest. Any story about the Freeway 130 is going to be political. But one can make a reasonable effort, which is what I'm going to do.

R-maki

I finally found a very strong competitor for Kushi-Tsuru in the Frisco's Japantown: R-maki. It's a relateively small place, located on the pedestrian street (Webster?), on the left side when coming up from the Peace Plaza, across from Sanko's kitchenware store. Tonkatsu Udon combo plus Tonkatsu Salad combo is only $20! And the food was great.

Mitsubishi part 2

Right, I forgot about the Endeavour and the Outlander in the post below (the Rider deserves no mention, because it's just a Dakota). Endeavour is a curious animal. Its ground clearance is greater than the one of Ford Explorer (9.3 vs 8.3 inch). Yet it is considered a not-really-SUV. Why? I'll try to check it out when I go to the dealership to pick up parts.

Mitsubishi parts

I called some parts from the Mitsubishi dealership in Modesto today (mental note - 209-524-3600). There is no closer one. Actually, Mitsubishi from Antioch or Brentwood sends me cupons sometimes, but that is too much out of the way. And Fremont is definitely too far.

They tried to start a dealership in Tracy back in 2004, but it collapsed very quickly. I am not surprised. The company is going through difficult times. The only hot product they sell is the mighty Evo. The new Galant is excellent, but it competes head to head with such all-conquering cars as Accord, and so it is a tough sell. I like the Montero, but generic American buyers thumb their noses at the V-6. They do not have a normal truck on American market (even though LS-300 is just an awesome truck, which I think could do well against Tacoma). So, dealerships have to struggle.

The Modesto dealership are not located in an auto hub, which may help a little. The buyers do not see the competition across the driveway.

Anyway, Noel in Modesto did not even take my credit card number. I forgot when I was treated as a human last time. Try to buy anything with a credit card without an ID these days. You can't.

Good thing I don't own a Subaru or Suzuki. That'd be a trip to the Bay Area for sure.

TRASH @West: Garden Waste

Rotating post.

BTW, I forgot to take out my bins this week. Tsk tsk.

No Butcher Post

I hoped I would make a post about the state of local butchery (which is, by the way, sad: the nearest butcher is now in Ripon). But I returned empty this year, so it was not to be. The deer season for the zone B closes on October 23.

Best of Tracy

I saw a sign today, "Thank you Tracy! for voting our Appartment Complex Best!", on Driftwood appartments at Grant Line. I heard about this before, the voting is run by people from Tracy Press, I believe. I wonder if many people actually vote, or one vote is enough to win.

I have to admit, they did not give Best of Tracy to horrible places like Bruno's, so the result does have some validity. The question is, how much validity. I'll be on lookout for a URL.

Stockton airport wants to turn International

Someone is getting carried away:

Airport Director Barry Rondinella, who came up with the idea for the loan, said the money would be spent to build a terminal and federal inspection station. Although the money will be available later through the Federal Aviation Administration, Rondinella said the money is needed now to entice a Mexican airline — rumored to be Aeromexico — to provide flights between Stockton and destinations in Mexico.

Need I remind readers how the tenure of America West ended in Stockton two years ago? It was a nice service, and it ran at 85% capacity when it was terminated. Now, how exactly is Aeromexico going to make money if America West was unable to fill a CRJ? Cargo? What kind of cargo?

Water pipe can be pulled

This is a kind of post I'd love to add to this blog, because it is highly relevant. Home repair! Water! And we all know what happens with Tracy soils even with minimal water leak. Houses can tilt quite a bit... Anyway, the money quote:

I recently had a plumber come and replace the leaky polybutlyene pipe between my house and the street with non-leaky copper pipe. This fortunately didn't require ripping up the entire driveway but rather digging two holes—one at each connection—and pulling the new pipe between them.

TRASH @West: Recycling

Rotating post.

Anime in Target

Our Target has an Anime section, as I found today. It is somewhat thin, and has no title or sign, but it's there. Titles are mostly predictable: Yu-Gi-Oh (oh horror!), Inuyasha. There is also a Spirited Away for $19.99 (I think I paid $35 for mine, and it was worth it).

One interesting item was the Volume 4 of Fruits Basket, which I do not have. The price of $19.99 is hard to beat. However, I am starting to have second thoughts about Furuba. It is charming series, but everything I appreciate about it, happens in the first season. From the midpoint it's all about the problems in the family, and I do not like that aspect of the show.

FoodMaxx accepts credit cards

I only wrote about the former Food4Less not taking credit cards in August [link], and today they do. The store received a new computer system with color displays, with the half of the area used to show ads at the shoppers who try to read smaller line item readouts. But at least they take cards now. I am definitely going to become better disposed to FoodMaxx now.

Roll update

Added:

http://www.topix.net/city/tracy-ca - Automatic aggregator of online media for Tracy, California.

Bow Tie development

I would welcome the development of Bow Tie, but this sounds like a bad idea:

Steve Hartje, chief executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce, thanked the council for the plan and said the project could provide two things the city needs: a gathering place and affordable housing.

Can you spell C-R-I-M-E? This fantasy is really hilarious, too:

While saying that the area would be “a tough site,” Les Serpa, Surland’s chief executive officer, painted a picture of a vibrant nightlife, where young people come out of their apartments and hang out late in streetside shops, sipping lattes.

These "young people" are more likely to share needles and joints, if they come from the affordable housing. In fact, what is the only area of the town where you can see cars with broken windows parked in numbers? Trailer parks at MacArthur? Wrong, guess again. The correct answer is: the downtown area between Central and the Civic Center. And they want more of the same now.

It is a fact that there are very few places (other than bars) in Tracy to go in the evening. The Tracy Bowl is quite awesome at present and I frequent it to play DDR. But the main thing which keeps it such is being out of the way and uncrowded. The other place is Barnes&Noble, which closes early.

Car fire at Altamont

Yesterday, around 11:30 p.m. I saw an older Thunderbird on fire at the Eastbound grade of Altamont pass. It was burning very well. Apparently, it rear-ended a big rig.

TRASH @West: Garden Waste

If you live to the west of Tracy Boulevard, it's garden waste. Otherwise, recycling.

Craiglist

An article about Craigslist appeared in Sacramento Bee. Here's an excerpt:

For example, the Bee provides free ads for certain merchandise under $150 in value but, like all of the dailies listed above, continues to charge premium rates for employment and real-estate ads. A visit to Tribe.net, a Craigslist copycat site funded in part by newspaper chains such as Knight Ridder and The Washington Post Co., vividly illustrates what’s missing from the mainstream approach: The site is riddled with banner ads, and when you click on an item, pop-ups spring forth like Hare Krishnas at the airport.

In a word, Craigslist’s would-be competitors lack Craigness.

“That is a difference people see between Craigslist and virtually every other Internet operator of size, mainly the lack of all the moneymaking opportunities with which most large sites are festooned,” explains Craigslist CEO Buckmaster. “Whereas people notice our site is somehow miraculously free of all those things.”

(From http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2005-10-06/cover.asp)

Preach on, brother. Alas, the closest section of the Craigslist we get in Tracy is Stockton. Naturally, it's a very small section, with little life in it.

TCY Airport

An interesting article appears in Tracy Press today [link]. It says that the airport management appealed to the city for better support, which includes:
- Building a sewer line
- Financing a restaurant
- Financing a runway extension
- Do something about encroachement of residential subdivisions

A restaurant may be a good idea, though it depends on the quality of it. It takes more than a good wish to run something like The Three-Zero Cafe at Half Moon Bay airport. It needs a competent restoranteur, willing to invest into the business and to see it through to success, hiring good people, advertising, and plainly serving good food.

The runway extension is vital, because of one word: jets. That's where the money is. Prices in Oakland and the no-growth policies in Livermore made jets migrate as far out as Sacramento. Tapping into this spigot would be very interesting indeed, and a more assured source of revenue than a restaurant.

The sprawl is worrying because sooner or later a noise lawsuit is inevitable, especially if TCY starts housing jets. This is not anything a little rezoning could not fix, the question is though, if the city is willing to stand up to developers.

Sacramento visit

Being procrastinator I am, I had to visit Sacramento today to get my deer tag. Mail takes 15 business day for processing, and the season in zone B ends on October 23rd, so there's no time for mail-in registration now. Our local license agent is Longs Drugs near (new) Safeway. I got the tag application there, filled it out, and took it to DFG, 3211 S Street, Sacramento. The procedure was remarkably painless. I wish DMV worked as well as DFG in California.

Warehouses at East Grant Line

Developers somehow got into their heads that the area between the East Grant Line and the railroad is a good place to build warehouses. A couple are built recently and no fewer than two are under construction. This does not count the older ones at the corner of MacArthur.

I wonder what they are thinking. The old logistics area to the west is well connected to 205 and 580 by the way of Mountain House avenue. That's fine, that's understandable. But the only way to get in an out of the new area is by MacArthur to the ever-congested 205. I heard a new interchange is planned between MacArthur and Highway 5. This does not help trucks which need to go south. They have to travel through Banta towards Kasson and get on 5 before Dueler.

These warehouses are going to stay empty for a long time, unless the price pressure for leases in the West area gets really unbearable.

TRASH @West: Recycling

East Side of Tracy Blvd: Garden Waste.

Clean air today

It's a marvelously clean air today in Tracy. We can see Sierras. I suppose the autumn winds blew the smog off.