Luckily a few days before the IndyMac start date my current employer called me back and offered. I probably could have used the IndyMac offer as leverage but I didn’t want to push my luck. I really wanted the job.

Fast forward to last month - the mortgage industry is in total meltdown. IndyMac Bank announced layoffs of 3,400 people….and that’s BEFORE the federal government took them over! It’s possible I would have had enough seniority by now to survive the cuts but I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that. With the raises and profit sharing I’ve gotten I probably make more now than I would be at IndyMac anyway. I guess I do make the right choice sometimes.

We’re driving up the hill/mountain to get to the observatory, which is on top of Mount Hollywood. It’s about 20 minutes from dusk. We’re tooling along chatting with the windows up and stereo on, about to make a left up a switchback turn to go higher up. All of a sudden there’s a pedestrian woman in front of me looking to my left. There ain’t shit over there but trees so I’m transfixed on her malfunction. The girl sitting next to me her mouth drops open. Turns out there’s a minivan flipping end over end down a 250 foot hillside that is at least 45 degree banking. SHIT! Brakes to the floor. The fan lands right in front of me, rear wheels on the road, front wheels facing up the hillside. The front is completely crushed. Anybody still in front has to be toast.

This is right up the street from Griffith Park so there are a fair amount of people a bit down the hill. I pull over, we bolt over to the car. Three of us pull off what is left of the sliding door on the minivan. The driver is alive but pinned under the windshield. We’re telling him to stay still but he’s afraid. He manages to pull himself out of his seatbelt from under the windshield down to the rear seat where we don’t let him move.

At this point I’m still don’t know how he got to where he landed. I look up the hill and it’s got to be nearly 80 yards of thigh high grass to the road he drove off. The last 20 yards are about 60% grade. Apparently he came around the corner too fast and went off. If he had not hit the tree right at the road edge he would landed on us. In the end we survived. The night wasn’t clear enough for the observatory but we hit up The Griffin and Bigfoot Lounge afterward for drinks. Well, drink as in singular for me. I was driving.

- After I’ve told this story a few times it will have grown to include the van was on fire, his passenger was pregnant and we delivered the baby before getting them out whereupon the van exploded.

I’m too far away from forested areas to worry about fires and too far away from ‘tha hood’ to worry about riots. Therefore my taxes are paid in the form of earthquakes. After ten years of living in L.A. I finally experienced an earthquake large enough to feel. The Northridge quake was four years before I arrived. About six years ago there was a very mild one in the early morning. I slept through it all and I’m a light sleeper so that tells you how insignificant it was. Two years ago there was one around 4pm on a work day. It happened to be raining that day and since my office is window-less I just assumed it was thunder.

Last week we had 5.4 on the Richter scale. I was sitting at my desk and it shook for 15-20 seconds. To be honest I wasn’t scared at all. It actually felt pretty cool. I’m told there’s nothing to worry about until things start falling off the walls, although most people use something called Quake wax to prevent that from happening.

Hopefully the Tax man won’t return for another ten years at least. As for now I feel proud that I’ve done my duty as a good citizen of California but for the record, as a native Atlantan I feared tornadoes much more than I do earthquakes. On average they do more damage and are much more frequent.

So today I’m trying to get on and it’s fairly crowded. This is L.A. at 7:40AM. In the lane to my left is a Crotchety Old Dude (COD). There is a little space ahead of COD so I try to move ahead a bit and work into that space. COD is determined not to be the guy I get in front of if it’s the last thing he does in life. I’m like dude, it’s 7:40AM. You just got up. Is your whole day already so in the shitter than you can’t just be nice and let a brotha in? For me, once I’ve showered 5AM and 5PM are the same. I’m wide awake and cheery as I’m gonna get. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Apparently the 0.0000000762 seconds COD is gonna lose by letting me in will cause him to miss an important business deal…or the senior citizen breakfast buffet at Denny’s. I dunno.

I’m now about 20 yards from the end of the ramp and 40 yards from the next on ramp where a cop is ticketing people who run the one car at a time light. COD still won’t let me in. I break into “I’m your worst nightmare….a nigga with a car” mode, act like I don’t see COD and wedge my hooptie up in the spot just in front of COD. Homeboy is PISSSED! He lays on the horn and waves his fist at me like I almost took him out. It was only close at all cuz he was riding my ass like Willie Shoemaker on Secretariat.

I hold up my middle finger, wave it back and forth, twist it around for about 15-20 seconds to make sure COD realizes I’m not just adjusting my mirror. It’s a middle finger….and it’s for him.

COD gets off at the next exit but not before he pulls alongside and gives me the finger back.

Are you that guy? Are you COD? Cuz I got somethin FA YO ASS!

I fire up Google for some help and see that both Sveasoft and DD-WRT have fallen out of favor with the open source software community. They’re both trying to make money off the software now. I decided to take a flyer and install Tomato v. 1.19. Tomato is an open source version of the Linksys software. So far it’s working great and it has some cool graphs. I’m going to play around with the Wi-Fi stuff to see if I can increase the coverage area to the other end of the apt.

My vote for Barack Obama was actually a vote against Hillary Clinton. Overall he is too liberal for me. Why can’t we have a candidate or a party that’s middle of the road? Very few political issues are black and white. Almost everything is actually shades of gray.

• I’m a proud Military brat (vehemently)
• I’m Pro-choice (vehemently)
• I’m Pro death penalty (vehemently)
• I’m generally anti-union
• I mostly support gun rights (but no automatics or semi-automatics if there are kits to convert to fully automatic. I insist on background checks for purchasing guns and support closing the loophole that allows you to buy them at gun shows w/o a check.
• I’m against raising the capital gains tax.
• I support limited Affirmative Action, with the understanding that it guarantees equal opportunity, not equal result. I used to be against it.
• I’m against “gay marriage” (but knock yourselves out with the civil union thing)
• I’m against amnesty for illegal aliens.
• I’m against the Iraq war, because I don’t think the solution is a military one. Let the Iraqi’s fend for themselves. If they step outside their borders wipe them off the earth.
• I’m against ‘no child left behind’ - dumbed down the curriculum too much for students that weren’t behind. Some people were meant to fail.
• I’m against any global warming treaty crap that doesn’t involve China and India. If there is any man-made damage they’re the ones doing it. When I was in school they were telling us another ice age was coming. What happened to that? What makes us we’re any smarter now? The weather people can’t tell us what temperature will be next weekend. You really think they can tell you what it will be like 100 years from now?
• I think the Patriot Act is too broad. Elliot Spitzer got caught using Patriot Act wire taps. How is him boning some bimbo a national security issue?
• I’m for stem cell research. How else are we going to cure cancer and the common cold?
• I support a “flat tax” with very little deductions.
• I oppose privatizing Social Security.

Who the heck am I supposed to vote for?

Goooooo Dawgs! Sic’em!