December 23, 2007
Jennifer and I went to the Claremont Farmer’s Market. It was a beautiful day. They weather was great. Some areas got into the mid 70’s. After the market we walked around a bit.
Here’s some info on the Claremont Farmer’s Market:
Name: Claremont Farmers & Artisans Market
Day: Sunday
Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Location: Indian Hill and 2nd Street
City: Claremont
County: Los Angeles
Manager: Oscar de Leon
Office Address: 111 S. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711
Phone: (714) 345-3087
Printable Map
Then we headed back to Monrovia and had breakfast at the Peach Cafe with my brother Dan Caballero and our nephew Justin Caballero. We ate on the patio. The Peach Cafe is a pretty good place. It took a while to get seated, about 20min. Which was fine as my Dan was driving over from Whittier. The water the server brought was frozen, I showed it to them and they said they use a fork to poke it….. go figure…. we did have a little sun and it started to melt. The only complaint I had about the food was that the potatoes in the skillet I had did not appear to be cooked, only boiled and then cut up. It would have been nice if they would have been fried, or heated on the “skillet”. The pancakes here are really good. I think they use real buttermilk.
If you want to the Peach Cafe:
Peach Cafe
https://www.thepeachcafe.com/
141 E Colorado Blvd
Monrovia, CA 91016
(626) 599-9092
After breakfast we went to visit my folks, Victor Caballero and Margarita Caballero. We also saw my uncle and his wife. Fernando Caballero and Elva Caballero.
We had a nice visit outside in the patio.
After our visit with my folks we came home and fixed up a few things. I made another attempt to fix the leaking valve going into the new refrigerator we bought from Sears(I’ll have more to say about it in another post).
Before dinner we decided to take a drive up to see the lights in the UHRA(Upper Hastings Ranch Association) lights on the streets. There are so many streets with lights. It is really one of the most organized lighting events around.
Then we went to the Balian home in Altadena, at Mendocino and Altadena. Every year there are so many people driving and walking around this mansion. This year we even saw vendors(3 of them) selling santa hats and various toys. It is really a pretty amazing display of lights.
We then came home and ate a bowl of sourdough clam chowder and salmon(from our Dream Dinners) and a salad.
It was a pretty busy day!
This community event brings bountiful meals and holiday cheer to 3,500 people, many of whom are homeless, senior citizens, alone at the holidays or unable to afford a holiday meal.
“Our supporters bring donated turkeys, hams, side dishes and desserts to the park,” said Marvin Gross, Executive Director of Union Station Foundation. Community members will drop-off home cooked food at Fair Oaks/Del Mar from 9am -12pm.
Volunteers work together to accept drive-up food donations, decorate the park, set-up food stations, and serve more than 3,500 meals. Ten buffet lines, staffed with hundreds of volunteers of all ages, serving food to our homeless and low-income community members. The outdoor dining in the park will seat hundreds, and will have special areas designated for handicapped and senior citizens. In Santa’s Village, children will receive holiday gifts, donated by the Foy Foundation, Children’s Hunger Fund and Platte College.
Call (626) 240-4550 or visit www.unionstationfoundation.org to donate or learn about volunteer opportunities.
###
Union Station Foundation is the largest, most comprehensive social service agency assisting homeless and very low-income people in the Pasadena and West San Gabriel Valley area. Their mission is to offer homeless individuals and families the resources they need to transform their lives and become productive, stable, and self-supporting. Their programs are based on a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every individual and they strive to provide the highest quality of services based on a foundation of respect for all people.
To accomplish their mission, they operate Passageways intake and assessment center, the 56-bed Adult Center, the 50-bed Family Center, Euclid Villa transitional housing apartments, and SOURCES career development program. Their team of skilled professional staff and volunteers provide homeless men, women, and children with the services they need to permanently escape homelessness and achieve self-sufficiency. With the exception of their transitional housing facility, all programs and services are provided free of charge.
| Contact Information |
| Union Station Foundation Dana Bean 626 240 4550 dbean@unionstationfoundation.org www.unionstationfoundation.org |
There’s been a lot of articles on how companies like IMEEM, SpiralFrog, and others are able to make deals with the major distribution labels. From everything I have been reading the labels are requiring a big upfront commitment with cash. This appears to be the only way the record companies will do deals. Money upfront.
I will write more about this in the next few days.
According to the LA Business Journal, Microsoft has been actively taking tips from consumers about illegal copies of software being available from on ebay and Craig’s List.
I have posted requests for software on CraigsList.org and have received several people offering copies. Even after I stated that I am only interested in original software NOT copies.
Sometimes I don’t think people can read. Anyway, apparently Microsoft is hammering down further on the illegal copying of software.
More to follow.
In an interesting move things are moving forward with Live Nation controlling its ticketing and disolving the TicketMaster partnership according to this story in the Wall St. Journal today.
Live Nation to Drop TicketMaster for German Rival
By ETHAN SMITH
December 21, 2007; Wall St. journal Page B5
Moving to take control of a key part of its business, concert-promotion
giant Live Nation Inc. said it plans to sell tickets to most of its
events with the help of Germany-based CTS Eventim AG when its agreement
with TicketMaster expires at the end of next year.
The announcement comes four months after TicketMaster said that it and
Live Nation had reached an impasse in talks to extend their 10-year
contract.
Details of the new arrangement have yet to be worked out, but its broad
strokes appear to offer Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Live Nation
important logistical and financial concessions it couldn’t get from
TicketMaster. Under the new agreement, Live Nation’s tickets are to be
sold primarily through LiveNation.com, and Live Nation will have control
over customer data. Live Nation said it also plans to sell tickets to
events being staged by third parties — positioning itself as a direct
competitor to TicketMaster. It also is likely to give up less money in
transaction fees than it does under its deal with TicketMaster, which
typically takes half the “convenience charge” assessed on each ticket sale.
“We will provide the infrastructure and technology required to reshape
how Live Nation consumers access ticket inventory.” CTS Eventim Chief
Executive Officer Klaus-Peter Schulenberg said in a statement.
It is unclear whether service fees are to be levied on tickets sold
under the new Live Nation-CTS Eventim regime, and how any fees would be
divided.
Such issues were the main stumbling block in Live Nation’s talks with
TicketMaster. Live Nation wanted to change the system so that people
attending the company’s events would buy tickets primarily through
LiveNation.com, rather than through TicketMaster’s Web site. Live Nation
also wanted to control data about customers’ buying habits and other
information. TicketMaster didn’t want to cede that control.
The development comes as Live Nation has been trying to reposition
itself as a player with broader ambitions than promoting concerts, which
is minimally profitable. It recently struck a 10-year, $120 million deal
to represent pop star Madonna in nearly every aspect of her professional
life, including sale of recorded music and licensing of her image.
Live Nation has said it plans to sign as many as three dozen other
artists to similarly wide-ranging contracts. It also has acquired
companies that run online fan clubs and manufacture and sell merchandise
such as T-shirts.
Selling tickets is an important piece of what Live Nation Chief
Executive Michael Rapino recently described as a three-year
transformation of his company, whose stock price has sunk since the
October announcement of the Madonna pact, amid broader market problems
and concerns the deal is overpriced. The shares rose 10 cents to $14.12
in 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com1
A couple items I thought I would share about the iPhone after having some friends and people at the office buy them and helping them set them up.
1. There is no voice recognition option. Many users have really become accustomed to using this feature on many other phones. Apparently this will soon be available, but having released a product without this feature was somewhat of a mistake.
2. The screen typing is somewhat difficult to use. I know there are options to adjust, but it is a little frustrating trying to type in a character and the wrong character comes up, the one next to the one you wanted. Maybe in the setup there could be something to help learn from the users point characteristics how to center better.
3. The screen does get dirty easily, looks like it does scratch as well. Apple should have included a couple of those screen guards with the iPhone.
4. Make it available to any carrier’s network.
I love the iPhone, don’t get me wrong.
I am a firm believe in solar power and how solar will become a large part of our energy production in the this country. As more all electric cars start to hit the street, we are going to need more sources of energy for the electric grid. Solar is going to become one of those growing sources.
This week Nanosolar started to roll out their first panels. Nanosolar is backed by Google.
The quote the NYT from CEO Martin Roscheisen is that “with #1-per watt panels, it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”
Here’s some more info from the blog:
Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:
– the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;
– the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;
– the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;
– the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;
– an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.
Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.
As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned:
Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit.
Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today.
Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.
[These are obviously not the first three we ever produced – we have produced loads for testing – but these are the first three of what we consider our commercial panels.]
I think we will be hearing more about Nanosolar. I image that as Google is a big consumer of electricity with their datacenters they will invest in finding more cost effect forms of power. Solar on the buildings in Mountain View and various data centers around the world is going to grow!
I attended the first annual open house in LA for Solar and I was impressed. Sweatwater Digital in the San Fernando Valley was in the process of installing a solar power system comprised of 600 panels. One of the largest in the city.
Word is that Microsoft is preparing to release IE 8 Beta 1 in first half of 2008.
According to the IE blog, IE 8 has been in development for the past year and now renders the Acid2 Face in IE8 standards mode.
This according to Dean Hachamovitch – General Manager – Internet Explorer for Microsoft
https://blogs.msdn.com/ie/
There have been many updates to Windows and IE this past year. It appears that Microsoft is doing everything they can to make Internet Explorer the best product it can be.
I am still open to using IE but have also been using Firefox and the latest beta is impressive. We will see how it shakes down and what program becomes the preferred browser. It’s also interesting to mention Safari as it is now available in version 3 for Mac and Windows.
Today we receive word that the Google – Doubleclick acquisition is has received the green light from the FTC, at least the FTC is not going to attempt to stop it.
This deal earlier this year and several groups attempted to prevent the deal from happening.
At the same time we hear Microsoft and Viacom have signed a $250 million deal.