Woo hoo for milestones!

May 21, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So this post is the 171st one I'm made this year. If you look at the archives you'll see that this ties 2004 with 2002 for most posts in a year. The key difference, obviously, being that 2004 is a little less than halfway over.

I took 15 minutes or so and wrote a little tool to run a couple stats on the blog. Before this post there were 975 total posts. A rough word count (stripping HTML and then splitting on whitespace) gives me a touch over 105,000 words.

Music: Erik Penny @ the Hotel Cafe

May 21, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Kathy and I will be heading back over to Hollywood tonight to spend a little more time at the Hotel Cafe than we did on Wednesday. Tonight Erik Penny is playing the first show of his new "(mostly) solo" career. Erik always puts on a good show and he's a cool guy on top of that, so I'm sure that'll be a fun time. The plan tonight is to get there early and chill for the rest of the acts on the lineup as well, so I'll be sure to report on that tonight or (most likely) tomorrow.

Looking at the rest of the Hotel's may calendar I see Jim Bianco and Joe Purdy back on stage next Wednesday, in a show I already mentioned I wanted to get out and see. The next day the Hotel brings another hardball lineup, with Gus Black and Julian Coryell. I haven't seen Gus play since the summer and it's been a lot longer than that since I've seen Julian.

The Hotel needs to sell like a monthly pass. I'd be there almost every night.

doh

May 21, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Just came out to the living room to grab some food and there was a police chase on tv. A maroon station wagon was careening through west LA, flying recklessly down city streets. And then all of a sudden it disappears into the parking structure for the Beverly Center. Now reports are really uncertain. Possibly shots fired in the structure, possibly a suspect in custody, possibly just people not knowing what they're talking about.

Traffic in that area is going to be screwed up for hours.

wonders of the internet

May 21, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Slashdot links to a CNN article about grocery delivery services right now, and that got me curious to see if anyone offers the service for 90014, my zipcode. Sure enough, Safeway/Vons does. The delivery charge is $8 for a 4-hour window or $10 for a 2-hour, which I think is really reasonable. You could spend that much right now just driving to the grocery store.

Sometime this year Ralphs is supposed to open a store in the Gas Company Lofts complex at 9th and Flower. This is very cool, and a major development for downtown, but it remains to be seen how this will actually help residents other than those living in the very immediate vicinity of the store. From my apartment the walk to Ralphs will be about .85 miles. That's worlds better than the distances present now, but the question you have to ask is what's the magic distance at which people will make the frequent trips required to do their grocery shopping on foot. Once you're in the car it doesn't really matter whether you're going one mile or ten.

With delivery, though, you can place a big order without worrying about how you're going to get it back home. Sure, it's not convenient for the little trips or the trips to run out and grab a single item, but I could easily see delivery becoming a staple of my grocery shopping process.

Now that's great TV

May 20, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Magilla and I are sitting here watching TV and I've now decided that Globe Trekker is now my favorite show on television (well, at least the television we get... ABC, NBC, Fox, UPN, 6 spanish channels, and two PBS stations).

A little while back I watched Ian Wright explore Norway and learned about people who live off only reindeer meat. Today we're watching Justine Shapiro explore southern Italy. Educational... but more really entertaining. Justine's a funny girl.

I need to pay a little attention to the KCET schedule and see when all this show's on.