Monthly Archives: October 2006

Become an IT Professional in just 3 months!

The UT is reporting that MicroSkills, a San Diego “certification mill” has closed abrubtly, leaving students out thousands.

Students stunned as school closes

I used to pass by the MicroSkills campus (located in a strip mall on Miramar Road) every day. Mostly I noticed that they seemed to play a lot of hackey-sack in the parking lot.

The funny thing is they are still running their commercials on TV – “Start a lucrative career in IT! Become a certified IT Professional in just 3 months!”. The problem is that the cost of that cert is about the same as the cost of your average 4-year degree at a CSU school!  Never mind that you can get a Microsoft Cert for the cost of a couple thick books and the 400 dollar fee for the exam.

Shadow Glen Knolls at Aviara Mist Ridge

One of my favorite things about Southern California is the ersatz names that tract home developments are given. One day, you have a scrub-covered patch of dirt in the middle of nowhere, the next day, you have “Sierra Hills at Meadow Glen”. Never mind that they paved over the hills to make the guardhouse at the gates, or that the closest thing to a “meadow glen” is your 40 square foot patch of backyard.

Via Curbed LA, here’s your Guide to Suburban Subdivision Naming !

I-Tastic

Local Robber Barron / DotCom magnate Felix Tibs has relaunched seminal I-Business Portal Eyunta.com in a big way!   Not only that, but he’s also joined the ranks of eleven billion pre-teens with a Myspace page!  Don’t forget to add him as a friend!

LA Weekly Detour

This weekend I headed up to Los Angeles for the LA Weekly Detour Street Festival. Saw a bunch of bands including Beck and Queens of the Stone Age.

Check out the pics and enjoy the bullet points below!

Highlights include:

  • Paying 30% over face value on tickets for processing fees, reservation fees, and a $2.50 charge to email the tickets.
  • Riding the LA Metro from Long Beach to Downtown LA via Compton,Watts, and Slauson district. That is one big-ass ghetto! Cholos were throwing signs at the train as we rode past. We were joined by some actual gangsters on the way home.
  • The youngsters are sporting some seriously ridiculous 80’s gear these days. Leggings, hotpants, vests, spray-painted gold shoes? One chick was looking straight off the set of Little House on the Prairie. I don’t understand the steez… what is it supposed to be? I could bust out my Bad Boy Club jams and OP shirt with my gradient-tinted aviator glasses… would that be cool?
  • Beck had a video of the entire band playing.. as puppets. That was cool. Did you know Beck also has songs that aren’t just incoherent gibberish?
  • I was surprised at the number of people making phone calls and texting during a rock show. Best was the hipster doofus with the crackberry… can’t afford anything but thrift store clothes yet he’s rocking the $70/month service plan?
  • Queens of the Stone age put on a good set. Also saw a band called Nortec Collective which was cool trippy techno. Their stage show consisted of three guys with laptops. What were they working so hard on up there… checking their email?
  • It’s really get hard to get drunk on $6 beers… next time we’re bringing some tequila.
  • Hyperactive waitresses before coffee are not funny.
  • After not hearing it for easily 5 years, I heard Extreme’s `More Than Words` twice in two days!

Movie Reviews

Idea blantantly stolen from Elias Vict:

Soylent Green
In the future, the teeming masses live in crowded, filthy squalor – but with swanky 70’s hair!

Amazingly enough this movie is still fun to watch even 30+ years later. Compared to the typical modern sci-fi flick, the pacing is a bit slow and the acting a bit hammy, but there is a lot of depth hidden in the background. The best part of this movie is that food is a central character – lettuce, tomatoes, and beef are rare, coveted items in a world where people live on wafers of “Soylent Red”. My guess – this thing will be remade at some point.

A History of Violence
Mild mannered Viggo Mortensen is not just a family man, he’s a made man!

This is a David Cronenberg movie, but it’s not nearly as weird as what you’d expect from the guy who did Dead Ringers. I liked this movie – it’s a very straightforward examination of the terrible things people do to each other – but most netflix and IMDB reviewers hated it. It’s not for the squeamish, that’s for sure.