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Sales tax has never been pleasant, especially in the Los Angeles area. Recently sales tax has been hiked up and it’s just ridiculous now. Here’s an overview:

In 2008, the California state sales tax was 7.25%. The state allows counties and cities to add their own sales tax on top of that if needed. So Los Angeles county has had a 1% sales tax on top of that, making it 8.25% for a long time. This was what I was used to.

April 2009, the state raised the state sales tax by 1% to deal with the economic problems our state has. Thus the state tax became 8.25% and Los Angeles county 9.25%. This increase is expected to last until 2012. This is just the beginning. I live in El Monte, which is a city within Los Angeles county, and they passed their own sales tax increase to deal with their own budget deficit problems. This added .5% on top of it all taking it to 9.75%.

But wait there’s more. Voters in Los Angeles county agreed to a transportation and traffic relief improvement measure that would increase sales tax by another .5%. This went into effect July 1. This increase will last a whopping 30 years for all the huge projects. So to sum it all up: California 8.25%, Los Angeles County 9.75%, El Monte 10.25%.

My solution: pay for Amazon Prime ($79 annually for free 2 day shipping) and buy whatever I can from Amazon. I’ve bought quite a few things already and I think what I saved on tax already paid for the Prime. I know this is the exact opposite of what California needs, but they should know that raising taxes is not the solution here.

I get possums around the house time to time. I think maybe because I have an outdoor fish pond they are attracted to it. Fortunately for us, my dog is a hunting dog by nature and tends to chase and sometimes kill any small animal that intrudes. The unfortunate part is the possums are nocturnal so they show up at night and my dog finds them and barks at them constantly. This makes sleeping difficult. This happened a couple nights ago. I had to go outside and see what was going on. The dog and the possum were faced to faced barking and hissing at each other. I guess Happy (my dog’s name) was reluctant to attack it, so they were just having a shouting match. I took a water hose and sprayed the possum so that it would run. Of course once it let down its defense and turned away, my dog took it down. At least I thought so. It was no where to be found the next day. Either it faked death and ran away or Happy “disposed” of it somehow. Hope he didn’t eat it.

Little things about Macs, bug the hell out of me. You can’t right click a file and cut, and then go to another location and paste it. They want you do copy, paste and delete the original; or open both source and target folders and click and drag; or do a crazy click and drag navigation through finder. The silly thing is the Cut option is there in Edit, it’s just grayed out. Do not understand!! This is on top of the unzipping behavior that bugs the crap out of me too. By default double clicking a zip just unzips it in that location. I’d like to extract it to a location without having to move the zip first. It’s just annoying. I always find myself working around or doing things the way they want me to. Damn communists.

I was an early adopter of the DVD format thanks to some promotional offers from now defunct online stores. I’ve always had an appreciation for movies and had owned a few VHS tapes during a time when most people just rented. I quickly ramped up my movie purchases with the DVD format and next thing I knew I was at 400+ titles. I had to have bookshelves installed in my room to store them. People questioned: why I needed to buy so many? How many do I even watch more than once? Why don’t you just download/rent them?

Well, at first it was the idea of owning my favorite movies so I can watch them whenever. Then it became more a hobby of just collecting movies I liked for any reason. “This one had great gunfights.” “This one has great surround sound.” “I love this actress.” Why didn’t I just pirate like everyone else? Well I have an appreciation for quality and I didn’t want to sacrifice video or sound by downloading a divx video. Then when Blu-ray emerged as the HD format winner, I started questioning why I do this when it becomes obsolete. I started getting rid of my DVDs and getting them on Blu-ray, but this time I halted before it got out of hand. I started to think back how many times I had re-bought the same movie over and over. Terminator 2, Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition, Terminator 2 Extreme Edition. I wasn’t about to do this over again. And it is happening again with Blu-ray: Terminator 2, Terminator 2 Skynet Edition… As a collector you want the best version of the format, and the studios keep milking us for it.

So I’ve decided the movie industry can suck it. As much as I enjoy the HD format, I can live without it. As much as I love having physical cases sitting on my shelf of all my favorite movies, I can live without spending the cash and real estate. It’s so much more convenient to have all your movies in a digital format on your hard drive. Especially with tools like XBMC and the skinning designs of Aeon, this makes it even more enjoyable. But of course this suggests an unethical acquisition of the movies. I still watch movies in the theaters and pay the ridiculous inflated price of a movie ticket. I still will buy a Blu-ray disc once in awhile for a movie I really love. But for the most part I’ll just download avi’s like everyone else.

Last night went to Nobu for early valentine’s dinner. It’s an upscale sushi fusion place in Malibu. My girlfriend has been there once before and wanted to go again. It’s easily the most expensive place I’ve gone to personally, but also the most delicious.

We made the drive from the 10 freeway to PCH and drove up that quite a bit before reaching the restaurant. I parked my Hyundai Sonata in between a Mercedes AMG and a Hummer . Got seated at a tiny table next to an attractive couple that were really dressed up. The place was mostly casual so we didn’t dress up. It was her insistence because she was tired of dressing up from all the Dine L.A. fine dining she has been doing lately. I didn’t take any pictures, but I’ll google some to illustrate what we had:
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Imageworks got back to me and stated they had a hold put on hiring, but are keeping me for future consideration. Nuts to that. I had high hopes. That’s the economy for you. There are rumors there may be another wave of layoffs here too. So we’ll see what happens. Til then the hunt continues.

I’ve been working at Broadcom for over two years now as a contractor. They’ve kept me around with no sign of being converted to permanent employee in sight. With the recent economic downturn, even a contract renewal is doubtful. Last week there was a 3% layoff and I saw some of my friends (contractors) leave. I got lucky, but my contract is up for renewal in a month. With that uncertainty of keeping a contracting job, let alone be converted to permanent has got me looking elsewhere for work. I’ve been bored to tears there anyway

Looking to secure myself with a permanent job I been applying and sending out resumes occasionally . Last summer I had a test and interview with the city of Los Angeles, but nothing came of that. I had not much luck since until this week. I sent a resume to Sony Imageworks, they sent me a Linux/scripting test that I finished up and they had me in for an interview on Thursday. Working there would be a dream, but I don’t feel I did that well on the interview so I don’t have high hopes. My Linux and scripting skills are not that strong, considering for the last two years I’ve been doing mundane testing work. I get the feeling they are looking for someone more Linux savvy and more experienced. I also don’t think I answered some of the questions the best way. Crossing my fingers nonetheless.

Last night was the first time I attended a legitimate rock concert. I was at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal for KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas. It was a long show, but I enjoyed it. The line-up and comments as follow:

Vampire Weekend – not too familiar with them except the one song I’ve heard, but they were pretty cool, got the crowd pumped early
Snow Patrol – Another band I only know from one song. They were ok, they had a Coldplay feel to them.
Scott Weiland – When I first read about him, I was like, who? I mean he sounded familiar but I couldn’t guess what band he was from. He’s from Stone Temple Pilots which I would have much preferred because his solo effort was kinda wack. I think he went on talking to much that the cut him off on his last song as they were changing instruments, lol.
Franz Ferdinand – First band to get a major reception from the crowd, and deserving as they totally rocked the house. They were my 2nd favorite performance of the night. I don’t actively listen to them either, but I know the songs from the radio.
Kanye West – Huge surprise considering the event. I heard rumors of a surprise guest. Snow Patrol mentioned the surprise guest. I was guessing No Doubt or maybe Foo Fighters or even Kings of Leon since they gave glow bands with Kings of Leon on it. The crowd was surprised and on their feet as Kanye rolled out. I’m not a huge fan, but it was fun.
Paramore – Many are not fans, but I enjoyed them. They were solid and the girls were jumping and dancing. Don’t mind at all.
Death Cab for Cutie – After the energy of Franz, Kanye, and Paramore, I was a bit disappointed with Death Cab. That is to say, I was never a big fan to begin with, but I’ll say it was second to Scott Weiland for ‘didn’t work for me’.
The Killers – Hell yeah. I liked the Killers before, but I like them even more after seeing how they can rock the house. The crowd was totally into it. I was singing along.
The Cure – I like the Cure and all, but the music is more chilled than the Killers so it was a bit of a bring down. They had a long set too. After hearing the songs I knew, I got out of there.

It was a long night but I enjoyed it. We had decent seats, dead center all the way back, but on a raised platform so we had a good view even sitting. We were seated in a row of entirely chicks, the ones around us being pretty hot/cut, until two moved away when the real people that sit there showed up. One Asian girl was dancing like there was no tomorrow. It started to rain as we left, the only downside to the night… and Scott Weiland (sorry, just not a fan).

Saw this movie yesterday. It’s a Swedish film based on a Swedish book about a boy and his interactions with another child that happens to be a vampire. It’s not your typical vampire movie. It’s incredibly sweet and at the same time dark and unsettling. It’s one of my favorite movies of this year. I was so impressed I watched it again with my girlfriend. She loved it too. I highly recommend it, but it may be hard to find since it’s a foreign independent film. If you know how you can download a screener, otherwise you may have to wait awhile for a DVD release. It’s being remade by Hollywood, so the DVD may not show up until after they release that. But there’s no reason it should be remade, this film is perfect the way it is.