You'll recall that I sent emails to my elected state officials complaining about the lack of CA budget. I got my first response today.
( Response under cut tag )
So fairly form-letter-ish and pointing the blame to others, which I expected. I'll also note that neither my state Senator nor my Assemblyman has senta response.

I just learned of the existence of CA Route 259. Please explain its seemingly completely illogical existence.

A 4.1 earthquake 10 miles north of Fontana would not cause warehouses to collapse, nor would it even REGISTER to people here is Southern California.

That is all.

I think it's common knowledge that McDonald's was started by the McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, in San Bernardino, CA. They are often credited with bringing assembly-line mentality to a restaurant, and transforming their store to a drive-in to capitalize on the increasing number of teenages at San Bernardino High School that were driving.

About four blocks down the street, Glen Bell had a little hot dog stand called Bell's Drive-In. From this, and from the McDonald brothers, he learned a lot about quick service. Bell decided to take on the McDonald's brothers directly, selling Bell's Drive-In and opening a new store that sold both hot dogs and hamburgers, also in San Bernardino. The whole time, we has captivated by the local Mexican take-out food stores that were in the area. Figuring that tacos were something that the pulbic would buy if served quickly and Americanized, he founded a his first taco store -- Taco Tia. Business was good, but Bell started getting bored. Eventually, Bell would sell Taco Tia when his partners did not want to expand the chain. For what it's worth, Taco Tia is still in operation in San Bernardino, but not a major player in the market.

Glen went on to from his next taco venture -- El Tacos. John Gallardi was commissary manager for El Tacos. Inspired by Bell, and with assistence from Bell and his wife Martha, Gallardi started his own fast service store focusing on hot dogs. The store was called "Der Wienerschnitzel", and it was every bit as successful as El Tacos was at the time, perhaps even more. That company later dropped the "Der" from the name, and Wienerschnitzel today claims to be the world's largest hot dog chain.

Bell was running El Tacos with partners, and really wanted to have a store that was his and his alone. So he sold El Tacos to his partners, and started a new taco store in Downey in 1962. That taco store would be named for himself -- Taco Bell. Yes, *that* Taco Bell. As with Taco Tia and El Tacos, business was very good. Bell wanted to open a store in Bartow, but was very busy in the San Bernardino area. He worked with a young man by the name of Ed Hackbarth to run the Barstow Taco Bell. Ed eventually decided to take matters into his own hands and started his own store called Casa del Taco in 1964. This store later expanded locations and shortened it's name to Del Taco, which is the second largest Mexican/American chain in the US.

Following in the footsteps of Hackbarth and Bell before him, a Del Taco employee in Riverside left to open his own restaurant. Ed Naugle decided to name the place after himself, and Naugles was born in 1970. Naugles expanded to over 200 stores before it was acquired by Del Taco in 1988. Since Naugles was formed from the founder's knowledge of working at Del Taco, it was almost like a corporate family reunion.

According to Taco Bell's web site, Bell tendered his resignation as Chairman of the Board in 1975. In 1978, be sold Taco Bell's 868 units to PepsiCo. Through various spinoffs and renames, Taco Bell is now a brand owned by YUM! Brands, along with Pizza Hut, KFC, A&W All American Food, and Long John Silver's.

So to recap, McDonald's inspired Glen Bell to eventually create Taco Bell. Along the way, he inspired the founders of Wienerschnitzel and Del Taco. From Del Taco's inspiration, Naugles was formed, though it merged back with Del Taco in 1988. Pretty interesting, I think.

This icon was too funny not to share... As seen in im_a_pistol's journal, credited to opiumgaze.


The LA Times sent out an insert with the Sunday paper stating they would be discontinuing their TV Times as part of the Sunday paper, unless you opted in for free. Presumably, the LA Times did some sort of focus group or survey, and found out that most people don't use this paper guide anymore, and the cost of giving it to everyone versus only to those subscribers that want it pushed the decision to drop this by default. My pessimistic nature says that it will be free for now. But it shows how the tide it turning. Gone are the days when you had to have a TV Guide or local paper guide in order to know when anything was on. Enter the days of on-screen guides, PVRs, and Internet based listings.

Ironically, this leads me to a point -- I forgot that "The Amazing Race" was on last night, but thankfully, TiVo has it waiting for me. Oh, and for nyone who likes "Psych", it's been renewed for a second season. And George Duran of "Ham on the Street" made a funny in his blog, as syndicated here on LJ. Sure wish Alton Brown still kept a blog.

Not sure if anyone needs an external USB 2.0 hard drive or not, but here's a fairly good deal for a 160GB -- $57.95 shipped after rebate. Oh, and amazon.com has a sale on Harmony remote controls right now. Go. Get one now. Go on. I'll wait.

The Santa Ana winds have picked up over the weekend, resulting in me being down for the count on Sunday with an allergy/sinus headache. Took one of my "good" pills this morning, and that seemed to help. I can't take these at night because they make me jittery and therefore I can't sleep. Of course, I already couldn't sleep last night because of said headache, so I'm in a world of hurt today.

I did pick up The Death of Superman, World Without Superman, and The Return of Superman this weekend. Never read any of these stories, and thought I should finally get to them. I also picked up Dan Meltzer's The Millionaires and The Zero Game in hardcover for $3.33 each. Wasn't so fortunate on the pricing for Shadow of the Giant, which I am SO looking forward to reading.

Uhm, yeah. I suppose I should get lunch, since it's now 1 pm.

EDIT: Had I just waited for one more song to go through on the XM Radio, I would have said I was listening to Baha Men - Who Let the Dogs Out? *snerk*

If there is an earthquake is SoCal in the next hour, it's my wife's fault. The cat decided she wanted attention NOW. Jen, in petting her, said "Are you okay? Are we going to have an earthquake?"

It's 9:34 PST. Weather.com is reporting that it's 99 degrees, but feels like 97. Wunderground.org says it's 100 degrees. My weather station says it's 95.2 degrees.

So yeah, it's hot.

...and if you haven't read Infinite Crisis or known what happened, well, tough. No cut tag for you!

Okay wait a second. So E2 Superman, E2 Lois, E3 Alex Luthor, and Superboy Prime were in this pocket for 20 years, or some undetermined number of years in DC time. And the whole time, they never changed clothing. I mean, we didnt see a washing machine or anything, and we have to assume there were things like refrigerators and toilets and washing machiines and all, but c'mon! E2 Supes had to have put on a few pounds in that 20 years, and Superboy Prime surely would have grown a bit having been a teen when trapped in this bubble. Ya know what I'm saying?


Now, moving on to the LA transit side of the story, I have this from Kent Shocknek's blog

Southern California is determined to end decades of being a punchline in other cities, where mass-transit is more established. Let's check the progress....

This week, the MTA has been debating what colors to call various rail lines... again. (Last time, everybody got angry.)

The Expo Line doesn't have a color: it's the Expo Line, remember? -- Some people want aqua. Not everybody. It's a real broohaha. Just one thing. There IS no Expo Line. It doesn't exist. It's L.A.'s invisible train line. Seems curious, to fight over what to call it.

The Red Line does exist. For some reason, there are two of them. They want to rename one, Purple.

Board member Bernie Parks doesn't like red, because of gang connotations... or maybe communists. Black and brown are out, to avoid race issues. Green's safe: no martians.

If all this confuses you, don't worry. Down the track: the MTA may switch from colors to numbers and letters, anyway.

So time is running out for those other cities to joke. At best, they have only 10 --or 30-- years left.

Seems there is a suspicious package at the LA Central Library. Fifth Street is completely shut down starting at Olive. Grand is shut down at Hope Place to at least Sixth. Many official looking vehicles in front of Library, including two ladder fire trucks, two regular fire trucks, and one paramedic vehicle. However, none of the firemen seems to be rushing around, so I doubt anything like a fire is happening.

They just backed up a van to the front of the Library, and the people put on flak jackets.

14:14 -- Firefighters from one truck are taking their hose towards the building. Slowly. Almost casually. Again, no one seems to be "rushing" so it doesn't seem to be an immediately pressing issue. I also only see one ladder company now, and three fire engines.
15:08 -- Our building people just confirmed via email that this is a suspicious package, and that the bomb squad is on site.
15:17 -- They are wrapping up the fire hoses, so I guess this is over. There is nothing to see here. Move along.

Link to location

I need to keep a digital camera at work...

( Then our building people sent this email )

( Another building email -- 15:08 )

Went after dinner last night to pick up the new Billy Joel "12 Gardens LIVE" from Best Buy, who matches Target's price of $13.98. Jen was with, and she stuck the first CD in the player as soon as we got in the car. Prelude/Angry Young Man started, and I made a comment along the line of "You know, I feel like driving now." "Go ahead."

To save your web pages, I'll put the map behind a cut. The colors mentioned below relate to the map... ( Here be a map (95.36 kb) )

So we started at Central Ave in Montclair (white star), and took I-10 West (Red) to CA-57 South (Blue) to CA-91 West (light green) to I-110 North (lavendar). I swung by the old apartment in Pasadena (AKA the Ewok Village), at which point we changed CDs. Then, back on the freeways, with a long stretch on I-210 East (brown) to I-15 South (orange) to CA-60 West (light blue) to CA-83 AKA Euclid Ave North (drak green) to Route 66 AKA Foothill Blvd West to Central Ave South (pink), past where started, and then home.

Got it timed perfectly to park in our driveway just as the last song finished playing.