Want to see:
- elimination of the concept of carried interest.
- cap on deductions (good idea Mr. Romney)
- higher tax rate for $750k+ group ($250k is too low)
- lower military spending
- no stimulus
- higher rate for dividend and long term gain. 20% seems OK
Concert: Metric 12/9 Fox Pomona
Pretty good show. They played a lot of their 1st album, Fantasies, which was awesome. I’ve been listening to their 2nd album, Synthetica, so forgot how great Fantasies.
One thing that really struck me was that the guitarist is bad-ass talented. He gets lots of time to do some impressive solo work which I’ve never noticed listening to them. That was a little bit eye opening and something to pay attention to going forward.
Last song was an acoustic version of “Gimme Sympathy”. The acoustic version sounded great, never paid much attention to the lyrics before and now that I know lyrically pretty nice. Plus it helped that they gave a little background spiel on the meaning of the song. It’s about pushing past the doubters and just going for. They moved from Canada to LA to try and make it.
One thing I didn’t feel was having their music crescendo-ing and taking me to a new high. A little bit surpised there there wasn’t that over the top feeling.
I listened to Fantasies as I trained for a half-marathon so it’ll always have a place in my memory. Now I’ve got a concert memory to go with it.
Big ups to KCRW for having ticket giveaways for members.
Hike: Echo Mountain Hike
Pretty nice hike even for a warm low 80’s day. About half the trail has
pockets of shade which is nice so it’s not a constant beating from the sun.
The top of the hike has some renmants of this old railway building or
something like that so there’s something to see when you’re up there. Plus
there’s a device to test your echo-ing skills. Plus there’s a picnic area
with tables which is really nice. Too bad we didn’t know about it and
didn’t bring a lunch.
I can see why this is a popular hike.
2.5 one way
Music: 2012 KCRW DJ picks
Taken from the comments:
Tame Impala – Lonerism (Modular) – 10
Michael Kiwanuka – Home Again (Interscope) – 7
Poolside – Pacific Standard Time (Day and Night) – 7
–Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls (ATO) – 6
Cody Chesnutt – Landing On A Hundred (Redeye) – 4
Gary Clark Jr – Blak and Blu (Warner Bros) – 4
–Grizzly Bear – Shields (Warp) – 4
–Lianne La Havas – Is Your Love Big Enough? (Nonesuch) – 4
Beach House – Bloom (Sub Pop) – 3
Chromatics – Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better) – 3
Django Django – Django Django (Ribbon Music) – 3
–Father John Misty – Fear Fun (Sub Pop) – 3
Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes (Warp) – 3
Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE (Def Jam) – 3
–Heartless Bastards – Arrow – (Partisan) – 3
Hiatus Kaiyote – Tawk Tomahawk (Hiatus Kaiyote) – 3
Hot Chip – In Our Heads (Domino) – 3
–Jack White – Blunderbuss (Third Man/Colombia) – 3
–Kendrick Lamar – Good Kid: m.A.A.d. City (Interscope) – 3
Rhye – The Fall (Innovative Leisure) – 3
I know of 7 /20. Not so good, though I’ve never been a fan of Flying Lotus.
MLB: Offseason Boston Red Sox
Who is this GM? dumps a bunch players to Dodgers and then replaces them with shorter but just as bad contracts to Napoli and Victorino.
New server: imeanwebhosting
Took advantage of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal of $19/yr web domain and hosting from imeanwebhosting. Specs aren’t bad for the hosting 2.5GB web space 25GB bandwidth.
Bad news, I forgot to backup my data from the old host and therefore lost everything. sad. All I have left of it is a cached version of what google has stored. Plus I forgot all the plugins I had.
Got to remember to do backups to the cloud for this one.
CodeAcademy: jQuery
Working through the CodeAcademy jQuery lessons. Pretty basic stuff.
After the lessons, I’m going to look into PhoneGap or jQuery Mobile to implement the UI of my app.
Spotify: why require facebook?
Don’t get why in order to use Spotify that I have to log in with my FB account. Not too keen on giving FB more of my information. Shame on you Spotify.
Hike: Temescal Canyon Loop
I really liked the Temescal Canyon Loop in Pacific Palisades. It has a 1000 feet elevation gain and the way I went it was decently steep. It takes about 2.5 hour and pretty easily accessible. To save on parking, just park on the street near the park, there should be plenty.
Also the hike has decent amount of shade but you will still want to take a hat as some places are totally exposed.
Hike: Yosemite Half Dome
Whew, it’s a looooonnnngggg hike. It took my gf and I ~15 hrs. The gf had blisters on her feet/toes so it was hard for her to walk and really hard for her to walk down steps. That was the main reason it took us so long. Plus we took a wrong turn on one of the trails going up so that made us lag along with burning energy.
I felt OK with the hike. I was pretty pumped up going up so adrenaline carried me up. The view from the top of Half Dome is pretty amazing. Wish I could’ve hung out there longer. We started at 7am and didn’t get back until 10pm in the pitch black.
I didn’t think the climbing or coming down the cables was that hard but it was scary for the gf.
Tips for Half Dome:
Carry at least 3 L of water. gf ran out of water and I drank all of min.
Go the long route: take the John Muir Trail.
Don’t bring gloves for the cables, there is a stack of gloves there.
Bring a flashlight in case.