Sunset Bike Rides

Sunset bike rides around the neighborhood are our new favorite thing to do in LA.

California Apple Country

HUELL HOWSER. The voice and personality of California's Gold. His thick Tennessee drawl brings light to California's treasures, from the Giant Sequoia's to the Salton Sea to Slab City. If you're retired and own an RV, chances are you're a big Huell fan.

Typical Huell Howser Show
1. Interview some random person at the site. Ask them what they think about this place. If they have kids, even better!
2. Interview a local member of the historical society. Tell us why this place is significant to California.
3. Finish with a few thousand exclamations of "this i-uz tha most BE-YOU-ti-FUL place eye hay-ve e-ver seen!"

It's a winning formula. Sure, the accent can get a little grating, but what makes the show so great is that Huell really introduces a lot of places you might not know about without some local knowledge. Lisa's Dad and I love it.

It was thanks to Huell that Lisa's Dad invited us to take a trip up to Oak Glen, a town of apple and pumpkin farms in the San Bernardino mountains. Huell made his way here last year, Lisa's Dad caught the show, the rest is history. We were there to celebrate Lisa's Mom's birthday and enjoy some of the Fall foliage.

First Stop: Riley Farms. Home of Revolutionary War re-enactments, "Press your own cider", Hay Rides, and a lot of people for "Yes On Prop 8". Who's ready for a picture dump??! Here you go:







Lisa and Fall leaves





Hayride to the trees


Yes on Prop 8. On every street, in every bakery, at every store... Nothing like getting out to the country to realize that LA doesn't speak for the whole of California. Drivers to the farm were greeted by a large sign that read "Yes on Prop 8: Because Marriage is older and wiser than Hollywood." Or something like that.


An awesome family band. I love love me some banjo.


Cooking with fire. I'm a fan.


Press your own cider. Takes about 100 apples to fill a gallon jug.






1932 Ford on a 1946 Frame. Runs great!


How about them apples?


Waiting in line for a donut? How 'bout them apples?


Talk about comparing Apples to Apples...


Now, finding a place to eat in Oak Glen is not very hard, mostly because there aren't that many places. Everyone ends up here, at Apple Annie's.


Apple Annie's


Andy: "So is this the good stuff?"
Server: "At least you didn't call it apple juice."


What better way to celebrate "Happy Birthday" than with some apple pie smothered by a gigantic scoop of vanilla. Mind you, this is a single serving.


Three Generations of Wonderful Women


And we did finally get some apple flavored donuts. Lisa brought home a bag of donut mix, made from the apple pulp left over after they're juiced.


Some savvy entrepreneur picked a winning name for this joint.


The Funks


For just a quick day-trip drive our day turned out to be a great escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. I was glad we got to celebrate Janeen's Birthday, and it was so fun to catch up with Maggie and Bill. Lisa and I haven't been able to get out as much with my student project in full force, but we can't wait for Thanksgiving and Christmas to catch up with family again. And thanks to you, Huell Howser, for sharing California's Gold with us. Oak Glen California was "be-YOU-ti-ful."

"Cuz this is Thriller, Thriller night!"

Michael Jackson may be the King of Pop, but this kid is the king of the acapella tributes. The singer recreated the song by dividing it into 64 solo tracks, filmed it, and put it together for one awesome Halloween treat.

Doom and Gloom in Silicon Valley

If you're wondering what the business world has to say about the capital market meltdown take a look at this slide show Sequoia Capital put out last week to their portfolio managers. Sequoia is a Silicon Valley venture capital giant with its hands in all sorts of tech companies and their message to the managers of their companies is clear...

Buckle down for a long haul.

Their recommendations include:
Use zero-based budgeting approach
Make cuts
Review salaries
Employ heavily commissioned sales structure (i.e. no free rides)
Spend every dollar as if it's your last

This could all be self-fullfilling prophecy; you expect a bank to be in crisis so everyone takes their money out so they ARE in crisis; so maybe their making a bad situation WORSE by panicking. Anyways, here's the slide show.

CEO_ALL_HANDS_10-7-08_FINAL - Get more Business Documents

Why kill a perfectly good working relationship with a performance review?

In case you missed it, there was a terrific article in Monday's Wall Street Journal by Sam Culbert, one of my professors at UCLA. Culbert takes issue with the current status quo at most corporations - the annual performance review.

Per Culbert "The alleged primary purpose of performance reviews is to enlighten subordinates about what they should be doing better or differently." Instead, the review has turned into a form of "intimidation aimed at preserving the boss's authority and power advantage. Such intimidation is unnecessary, though: The boss has the power with or without the performance review."

Culbert lists 7 reasons why performance reviews fail, a couple of my favorites are:
The mind-sets held by the two participants in a performance review work at cross-purposes

"The boss is thinking about missed opportunities, skill limitations and relationships that could use enhancing, while the subordinate wants to put a best foot forward believing he or she is negotiating pay."

Performance doesn't determine pay

"I believe pay is primarily determined by market forces, with most jobs placed in a pay range prior to an employee's hiring."

Culbert recommends previews instead. Bosses should be focused on good communication and coaching their employees. If there is any new information being shared at a performance review, any surprises, then you've failed to communicate in the day-to-day. The hope is that a boss is focused on building up the employee and preparing them for new opportunities.

"Substituting performance previews for performance reviews promotes straight-talk relationships for people who are up to it. It welds fates together because the discussion will be about what the boss-subordinate team accomplishes together, which I believe is the valid unit to hold accountable."

Read the article by clicking here.

And here's a 4 minute interview of Culbert on the subject of the article.

F-22 v. F-35 - How do they compare?

I've been working on an F-22 aircraft subsystem for the past few years and I often get asked "how does the new F-35 compare with the F-22?"

This question has been gaining importance over the last bit as the Air Force is under stress to retire the F-15c program and needs replacement planes. Should the Air Force move up the acquisition schedule for the F-35 (not ready until 2013) or should they buy F-22s?

To answer that question a group at the Air Force Association (an Air Force advocacy group) put together a slide show comparing the aircraft side-by-side. Their conclusion, it'd be cheaper to just buy F-22s, plus F-22s are a WAY MORE AWESOME plane.

Check out the presentation for yourself, it has some really great info about each aircraft (click here).

Some of the key comparisons: F-22 is faster, more maneuverable, flies higher, carries more weapons, has a greater target area... F-35 advantage is it has a shorter take-off requirement.

Next question.

Things to do in LA: Little Tokyo

I hear it all the time in the press- LA is a culture-void urban sprawl city full of self-aggrandizing waiter-slash-actors-slash-debutantes who exploit each other while fake-baking their tans and eating sushi. And to that I have to say, Yeah, but we've got good sushi.

And for those who live outside that whole Hollywood scene there's a whole lot more to see and do and experience. For instance, Little Tokyo.

Little Tokyo is a neighborhood near Alameda and First Street in Downtown LA. Within a few blocks you can find countless sushi restaurants, the Japanese-American Cultural Center, the Japanese Village, and the Geffen Contemporary Museum at the MOCA.

Lisa and I made it down there on Saturday for some lunch and a visit to the Geffen MOCA. And Guess what- the traffic wasn't so bad. Parking was pretty darn easy. There were lots of big sidewalks to get around and take in the ambiance. Plenty of signs up in a language I can't read and restaurants galore. And the restaurants only have chopsticks - how's that for culture?! Okay, so they'll give you a fork if you ask for it, but still- chopsticks!


First Street, Little Tokyo

Although Little Tokyo is more than one street, First Street is a great place to start. You can walk from the Village to the Cultural Center to the Geffen MOCA in minutes without fear of getting run over by a city bus.


Mural, Little Tokyo



Japanese Village Plaza

The Japanese Village Plaza provides a walkway away from the city streets. The first time I came here was at night and I thought I had walked into some secret city within a city. It's lit up with Japanese Lanterns and a few of the restaurants stay open late. During the day there's a lot more people here. While we were here on Saturday a group of teens were here dressed up as their favorite Japanese comic characters for what looked like a birthday party. They looked like they wanted people to take pictures of them really bad so I decided to not post any out of principle. That'd be way too LA.


Japanese Lanterns



Cuban food in Little Tokyo

And as strange as it sounds, there's a popular Cuban restaurant right here in the heart of Little Tokyo. I've even here, good Cuban sandwiches.


Joy Mart, Restaurant in the Japanese Village

We stopped for lunch here at Joy Mart. I hear this place has great sushi, although I'm not a sushi eater myself. In fact, I just don't do fish period. I know, I know, I need to get over that, I'm working on it.


+1 loves some wholesome food



I'm getting pretty good with chopsticks



Lunch at Joy Mart



Really big birdhouse??



+1 in the Japanese Village



Enjoying frozen yogurt and mochii in front of the Japanese-American Cultural Center

For dessert we decided to skip the Pinkberry and headed into an Italian frozen yogurt shop which, surprise, turned out to be a Pinkberry copy in disguise. Seriously, the interior was a perfect match, even the layout of the toppings was identical. Since when does Italian frozen yogurt come in acai berry flavor (a Brazilian fruit) with mochii (something like a Japanese marshmallow).


Former location of a Buddhist Temple (since moved)



Geffen Contemporary

Hiding back here in an unassuming building, is the Geffen Contemporary museum. The exhibit right now is split between the museum's private collection of conceptual art from California and the Kippenberger exhibit that's showing at the other MOCA exhibit as well.

If you're not familiar with conceptual art then you should go check out the exhibit for yourself before I sway your judgment either way. If you already know, then you'll understand if I don't immediately laud applause to the different exhibits. Point of view exercises aside, a lot of this stuff is really devoid of meaning to a broad audience. I guess I just couldn't connect the dots to my own life experience. And I don't like images of naked people; call me archaic but I feel like the emphasis on sex life in modern art in suffocating the human experience. I like to believe we're more than just animal impulses.

But don't let me sour you on the Geffen! It's worth checking out, a real asset to the city.


Geffen Contemporary



Conceptual Art in California



Inside the Geffen



Reading Room

...and I loved the reading room. What a fun spot to relax in during your visit to the museum.


Cool bike rack

...and a bike rack designed to look like a bike chain, I love it!


Is that black Jesus?


Saturday's outing turned out to be a fun escape from my never-ending school projects and work-stress. We ended up grabbing lunch, walking around, and getting a tour of the Geffen museum all in just three hours. Not bad for a city with no soul.