Saturday, September 22, 2007

The 10. The 101. The 17. The 51. The 202. The 60.

I live in Phoenix. This city is now an outlying suburb of Los Angeles. Now people have been saying that for years, but we now have verifiable proof. Over the past year or so the TV and radio folks have taken to referring to highways by "the" followed by the number. I remember visiting my wife-to-be's family in Pomona 20 years ago and remarking how strange it sounded. To get to Disneyland: "Take the 10 west to the 57..." Now every traffic reporter in town talks about 10, the 17, and on and on. So how long before we take the Camelback to the Pima Road?
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Thursday, August 9, 2007

Advertsing

Ha! I'm really pimping now! Tossed some Adsense ads into the mix.

By the way, I got my certificates for shooting lessons (see first post). My brother and I will be making a trip to Vegas and later to Pahrump probably next year.

I have a strange love-hate relationship with advertising. I remember being in junior high and if I had some time to kill in the library I'd read Advertising Age. I subscribe to their daily newsletter to this day. What I notice these days is where they have their annual party. Cannes! When lots of money changes hands, there's always some that shakes off. Advertising and sales are naturally at the top of that heap. I sometimes wonder if I'm in the right business.

I remember griping about ads when I was a kid. My dad, a magazine writer, editor, and later publisher, pointed out that advertising paid for my groceries. He also mentioned Packard automobiles. According to him, Packard was the best manufacturer of the best cars. Everybody knew they made the best cars. So they took a decision to stop advertising. Not long after that, there were no more Packards. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and see no reference to the story. But there may be something to it. When I've fact-checked the old man on other topics, he usually does pretty well.

Mad Men



I've gotten hooked on the AMC TV show Mad Men. Now I've got my wife watching it.

The ironic thing about all this? I Tivo it and fast-forward through the ads. And when I read AdAge online, I filter the ads using a Firefox plugin called Adblock.

If you haven't watched Mad Men yet, I recommend it. If nothing else, it's a good TV date show. The lead character, Don Draper is a New York advertising executive who's in free-fall and hasn't noticed yet. It's 1958 or 1959. Reader's Digest has just published an article linking cigarettes and cancer. He has a wife and kids in the suburbs, a girlfriend in the city, and now appears to be chasing a department store owner's daughter who has taken operation of the store over from her father. He's a first-class jerk, and yet for some reason we care what happens to him. I foresee numerous dramatic meltdowns.
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Friday, August 3, 2007

Why I Am A Fan Of Harry Potter



  1. He is a member of a misunderstood and often feared minority.
  2. He rarely goes anywhere unarmed (J.K. Rowling uses the term).
  3. He puts his friends first.

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Saturday, July 14, 2007

First Post: Pimp My Blog!

I've been meaning to start this blog for a while anyway. But I've been pushed over the edge. I can't help myself. I'm a gun nut and now, a link whore. At the bottom of this post I take up Ignatius Piazza on this offer. If you don't know what Front Sight is, there are thirty-some links that will tell you everything you need to know about it. It's for real.

Front Sight is an interesting concept. It combines a high-end firearms training facility and shooting range with a real estate development. Weird? If you don't play golf, a house on a golf course is pretty weird too, except we're used to the idea. I'd love to see a similar development in Phoenix near or adjacent to Ben Avery Shooting Facility. That range was once so far out in the sticks coyotes had to hitch-hike to it. It now has houses all around it. The picture from Google Earth is at least a year old. The red tile roofs are now south of Carefree Highway.


*Sigh*

While I'm plugging Ignatius Piazza, I may as well pimp out my own site. My brother Jeff and I run (direct? coordinate?) The Firearms Coalition which is a resource for grassroots Second Amendment activists. My original intent with this blog was to talk about stuff that I don't ordinarily talk on the Net about — my profession as an IT architect, business, politics culture — all this stuff that's not appropritate for The Firearms Coalition. Hence the "Off-Topic" title. But Ignatius's deal was too sweet. Couldn't pass it up. I'd have put the links up on The Firearms Coalition but my brother beat me to it and I figured it'd be less than kosher for us both to put the same links up twice.

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