Hazel Wilma Anderson Wolin, 96, passed away on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004 of natural causes in Elk Grove. Mrs. Wolin was born on July 14, 1907 in Sacramento. Hazel, was the daughter of Lilly Ball and Edward Anderson, granddaughter of William P. and Jennie Ball of Amador County and great-granddaughter of Jennetta Proctor Ball who traveled west to Amador County from Indiana in the 1860s by covered wagon. She was also a sixth generation of John Proctor, a veteran of the American Revolution. William Ball’s brothers were early settlers in Shenandoah Valley, Amador County and were engaged in mining and farming.

Her many childhood memories included riding the Amador stagecoach from Sacramento to Amador County and playing in the water of the Michigan Bar mining ditch on the family’s property. In 1925, Hazel married Ed A. Wolin, a native of Minnesota, in Sacramento County and soon afterward moved to Amador County. For many years she was active in the Grange, the Amador County Fair and Willow Springs Community Club. Her many interests included ceramics, needlework, cooking and canning and spending time with her family at her home along the Cosumnes River.

She is survived by sons and daughters-in-law, Morley L. and Eunice Wolin of Plymouth, William E. and Sylvia Wolin, Robert H. and Thala Wolin all of Jackson; daughter, Beth Van Sickle of Fort Bragg; 17 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchidren. She was preceded in death by her brothers, Archie and Kenneth Anderson of Sacramento. A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. at the Amador County Fairgrounds in Plymouth. Friends and family are welcome to come and bring photos and memories to share. A private family service will be held at the family plot in the Michigan Bar cemetery at a later date. Arrangements are being handled by Daneri Mortuary in Jackson.

Memorial contributions may be made to the American Heart Association, 1212 Robinhood Dr., Ste. 5D, Stockton, 95207. Condolences may be offered to the family at daneri@cdepot.net

Originally published in the Amador County Ledger-Dispatch, 2/20/04

Pete's Comments: Goin' old school California history this week. Really interesting family history here -- California pioneers from the 1860s, and a long history with Amador County (created in 1854), mining, farming, etc. I wonder if Hazel's experience riding the stage from Sactown "up the hill" would have followed the route of present-day CA 16, or perhaps CA 88? Here's a link to some geeky data about the Cosumnes River at Michigan Bar. I'm not sure what "the Grange" is, but I assume it's a farming thing? Also note that Hazel's public service was held at the county fairgrounds -- she must have been quite a fixture in the area!

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Blogs are perfect for this sort of minutiae, aren't they? Yes, it was one whole year ago that I got it in my mind that it was time. After driving my parents' '86 Toyota Van for about two years I happened to be going down to San Diego for a weekend visit and figured that this was as good a weekend as any to "drop off" the van. Mom and Dad said they'd kick down a little change to help out with the down payment (an early graduation present, as it turned out) so I did a final couple of hours of research at Edmunds.com on things like price, negotiating tactics, etc (I'd been doing this kind of research ever since I lost the 626 in the accident). Armed with bits of paper and a calculator, Dad and I drove down to Hine Mazda in Mission Valley (near Qualcomm Stadium). I instantly saw the white 2003 Protegé5 on the lot, saw that it was a 5-speed, saw that it had a sunroof and even a 6-CD player, and saw that the price was quite a bit lower than what my research had to me to stick to in the bargaining process. Enter the salesperson (sorry, don't remember her name). Enter the test drive, which I remember because I missed the exit she asked me to take from the freeway so we took the next exit, but then couldn't turn around for another mile or so. Hehe. As far as test drives go, it was fine though. A quick consult with Dad followed and I told the nice lady, "Ok. I'll take it." No negotiation needed as far as I could tell. The advertised price was really quite fair, and it allows me to splurge for the moonroof deflector and compass/temperature rearview mirror. Heart rate increases as we begin to fill out the paperwork for the loan application and credit check and so forth -- I'm trying to remember if there's anything I'm overlooking vis-a-vis the buying process. Is the price TOO good? Am I inadvertently buying some add-on or other (like body rust protection) that Edmunds warned me about? Nothing comes to mind, so we hand over the paperwork and wait for the manager to come back with the interest rate. 6.x% somethingorother -- because it's the first car I've purchased by myself, he says. Hmm. Oh well. Slight fiddling with the down payment amount to get the monthlies to a good amount. A new person enters the arena while the paperwork is being processed, the guy who talks you through the manual and other little things.

Paper work arrives. $19,254.67. Dotted line is signed upon in eight places.

By this time the car has been backed up to the door and is all sparkly and clean, and the new person goes through the "pre-flight" check, demonstrating the CD player, the mirrors, extracting the jack, etc. Finally, he takes a picture: 

 

Cool.

I say a quick "See ya, and thanks" to Dad, get in, and drive off the lot. Car instantly loses 75% of its value or something like that. ;-)

What to do now? Drive, of course! The very next day I took a 300-mile drive through the desert of eastern San Diego and Riverside counties, all the way to the Salton Sea. That's what I bought the car for, after all. Great sense of freedom after two years of driving a work-a-day bucket of bolts that could go from Point A to Point B just fine, but which couldn't be trusted to go all the way to Point Z. Nearly 20,000 miles later here we are at the first "birthday" of my car. 

Sept. 25, 1924 -- Feb. 12, 2004. Arthur J. "Art" Torosian, 79, of Turlock died Thursday at Emanuel Medical Center. Mr. Torosian was a native and lifelong resident of Turlock. He was a grocery clerk at Rudy's Fine Foods from 1949-1978 and at the Economy Meat Market. He also managed the family ranch, was a Hughson High School graduate, and was a member of Free and Accepted Masons Lodge 395 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5059. He was a Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. He was an avid wood carver and a member of the Tuolumne Wood Carvers Club.

He is survived by his wife, Ruby Torosian of Turlock; children, Terry Dorenzo of Chico and Cheryl Torosian of San Bruno; sister, Rose Narlian of Fresno; and four step-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by one brother and one sister. A funeral will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Allen Mortuary, with burial at Turlock Memorial Park. Visitation from noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday and 8:30 a.m. to noon Wednesday at the mortuary.

Remembrances may be made to Shriners Hospitals for Children, 2425 Stockton Blvd., Sacramento 95817; or the Turlock High School Auditorium Fund, P.O. Box 1458, Turlock 95381.

Originally published in the Modesto Bee, 2/15/03.

Pete's Comments: Wow, almost 50 years as a grocery clerk in the Turlock area; I bet he'd have some stories about the history of the northern San Joaquin Valley. That must have been when grocery clerks were still solidly a middle class job. Interesting that we're now witnessing the potential end of that era here in L.A. A Google search didn't turn up anything on either Rudy's or the Economy Meat Market, but I wonder if Rhonelle's parents remember anything, since Turlock is just down the 99 from their place and they visited weekly (if not more). Also, I wonder if Art's ranch was in eastern Stanislaus County -- his membership in the Toulumne Wood Carvers Club seems to indicate something like that, but maybe he just liked to drive to Toulumne County to be with his pals and a piece of good wood. Both the Masons and the VFW are completely foreign (no pun indended) to my experience because of their generational affiliations. I don't think anyone in my family has ever been in a fraternal organization except for my Dad's stint as a Beta Theta Pi at Lehigh in the early 60s. Nowadays, my image of such organizations comes largely from King of the Hill and I have no idea what the guys actually do in their "meetings." I'm sure they mostly hang out and shoot the breeze, but it seems like a gender division that we no longer value in contemporary society. Or at least we don't express its value in quite the same way. Finally, he'll be buried in the same cemetery as Rhonelle's grandmother.

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Upon receiving another of those wacky spam messages, I decided this time to reply to the sender with questions about the random words and tiny letters.

I spoofed my email address to display my old ITC address. I sure as hell don't want one of legitimate addresses on more spam lists than it already is...

Who knows if Elsa Guerrero is actually the author. Most likely she isn't, and her address is being spoofed, but you never know. 

Like most people, the spam count in my inbox has increased quite rapidly over the last couple of years, even to address for which I'm exceedingly careful about giving out. Still, I've noticed that there's a lot of really weird spam messages lately, and I'm not just talking about the products being "advertised." No, the actual content of the message is very unusual. For example:

SuperVikagra - Ciaolis
Take it once and it lasts all weekend.
Do not have sex timed to a pill. Choose the moments when you want to have intimacy.
Ciaglis acts quicker (about 20 minutes) and last much longer (about 2-3 days) with NO SIDE EFFf ECT.
The cheapest price!
Gert it now!

rem at http://www.foreveryourhost.com
magnanimous insular aye chutney could bayou buffoon bethought prototypic glimmer robotics heigh geodetic bagel cranston helen discriminate kinetic label chose algebra fiftieth gedanken frictional elaine curtsey fraternal kyle cocky horseshoe hardboard dane aforethought feud draftsperson anus accusation dressy mankind geometrician geigy contextual crosspoint heinz
atone exceed seasonal granary seoul jenny gases bag ecliptic predicate inexperience aitken jose boatman churchgo cockeye demean betide carla mystique afresh chromatography as horatio pediatrician bravery optoacoustic selectmen hate buck operable circumspect passageway ginger dyer cog elena manor comprehensive porcine
fireplace cress mainland oslo patrolmen felicitous grapheme heel microbial old afire benevolent bilateral fund ammo impossible muffle anthropomorphic disembowel ernie oscar dysentery icky collie sculpt paraboloid cohomology next asceticism contempt alton coltsfoot ghastly inequity aldehyde
footstep indoor astral cushman archer infantile hour gamma adrienne headwall pawtucket alway millie silicic conrail corroboree europe odessa briton cagey recalcitrant darius reject rumford

<snip>
First, I can't figure out why the spammer has essentially loaded up the end of the message with a dictionary of random words (there are many more words I've left out). It looks a lot like a <meta keyword> kind of thing you put into web pages, and certainly the random words would be designed to make this particular page show up in a lot of Google searches. Why, though, put them in an e-mail message? It can't be to thwart a junk mail filter, because people put in words they DON'T want to allow (in other words, the words chosen by people are used to filter out spam), and this message ended up happily in Mail.app's Junk folder anyway. In another twist to this idea, take a look at the "dictionary" used in the following message:

Hi. Do you know that you can get pre-appkroved 1.69% mordtgage rate
even with bad crexdit?
Simply follow the link below and we will appbrove your application in several hours. No need to worry!

Approve Me Now!


remve here www.newestthings.biz gzgwmvoae cmvqap bvskpqja byspzdmnz. ytvlpe lujrq- hdpxkish spamvvm, yabyznel xmwop
hydglsvh vevzs xrwhsir ztcheez qerce wkqxz mcpjy matpqsb-
risdosoh zmxvdjyzb esedfz nkhad, assuopbti tqotlwvur ivfbueqzn, whvxyxsdw yqjimybw tcaqen crwgxiygp rqrtr
ymxwpx gyiisbq mlhxffa rdlaam ysgjkt lrcuq lxqiblbz cqhigc
uvaap jvrxshofc svblglel pheaatv- hmdyldrz jackwbbj tipmnhz. zhtvdvv
hypou krmth nunmazops ahywe mlkgce xlnwwk hzqmel vnmga utxihkmjr
qekhyacvw pomja osxdk egafks wcomh foeowduz rckpquc vkgfkui
fswtgir ldhtrh giqroh aqrpnz ihyfgc nlnjlf unzilzli jffwusuhx tfqlwyf. rltkzm knvotbwkh
jjnbniuv tmrrdurs tuoiwcv jlhzq imxtin vcqobsaep jsywhlmcq cxxklm pfxobv lzfqdae titmo
ywoinyoca ehvnvrg rkxkmrne qelciwbqr qndnxnbm oblmeeoo. nbwqg khsxpo ethjq haelalsi
ntnti. hndtu dxdybc. evcei xkzic kpurlggmr mpvbe. zlwrwjahs
ehhty kplga dbtmskdkp azhzbze poreutlbd hyeoqcob- urqnqe poyveqldb eunucin. bimornkut

<snip>

Now, this is just bizarre. It's the same scattershot dictionary thing, but instead of random words we have random letters organized into "words." I've suspected that the random words are actually real words in a language not displayable by my computer. Maybe it's a Unicode thing that my OS X machine doesn't know how to handle? While I can sort of see the point of trying to get people to read the advertising at the top of the message, I utterly fail to comprehend the point of the random words (in the first example) or the random letters (in the second example).

Finally, one other oddity with these so-called random spams is the odd font changes in the middle of words. For instance "even with bad crexdit?" What is that tiny little x doing in the middle of the word "credit"? Same thing with "SuperVikagra - Ciaolis" in the first example. Why is the tiny k and tiny o included?

As I said, this is weird. I'd love to hear any explanations though. 

UEN, Evelyn Chan-Sheung
November 21, 1919 - February 3, 2004
Born in China, Evelyn grew up in Hong Kong. An excellent student and athlete, she completed four years of college in three years, at Lingnan University and won a fellowship to come to America. After arriving here from Hong Kong on the last boat to leave before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Evelyn earned her B.A. at Rockford College in Illinois where she majored in Journalism and Political Science. She continued her studies at Northwestern University where she received her M.A. in International Relations. While working on her doctorate she met and married Andrew S. Yuen. She was his loyal wife for over 60 years and the devoted mother of five children: Rosalind Clark, Gower Yuen, Linda McCann, Annette Sprenkel, and Deborah La Rosa; the beloved grandmother of Marianne, James, and Jonathan Clark, David and Jeffrey McCann, Daniel and Patricia Sprenkel, and Nina and Andrea La Rosa; and also the proud great-grandmother of Amber, Jessica, and Ariana McCann.

During the cold war Evelyn was a well-known writer and commentator for the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. broadcasting behind the bamboo curtain. She was an avid reader who remained interested in national and international affairs throughout her life. For many years she owned a Chinese Antiques & Gift store in Westport, CT, before retiring and moving to Contra Costa County in 1986. She passed away after a long struggle with heart disease. Her amazing intelligence, strength, and grace will long be remembered. She will be missed forever. Private services and interment are being held at Oakmont Cemetery in Lafayette. Donations may be made to Children's Hospital Foundation, 747- 52nd Street, Oakland, CA 94609.

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle, 2/8/04

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Sorry for the lack of content the last several days. I actually had job stuff to worry about for once. Also, I've spent the last few days giving the Madlife website a new look. Actually quite proud of it...

Expect the resumption of random miscellanea now... 

Max Segal
Died Sunday morning January 11. For more than sixty years he was the beloved husband of Edna who died in 1995. He will be missed by his son Morley and his partner Maurine, and his son Rodney of San Francisco, and his former daughter-in-law Joyce and her husband Larry of Potomac Falls, VA, and his grandchildren Arline and her husband Alex of Sleepy Hollow, NY, Eric and his partner Anne of Arlington MA, and Adam and his wife Kim of Salem, MA. Max had six great grandchildren, Adam and Nate of Sleepy Hollow, NY and Niko, Sky, Alaya and Sadia of Arlington, MA. Max's life spanned most of twentieth century San Francisco. He was born in February 1907 in a tent community of earthquake and fire survivors in Golden Gate Park. He spoke often of attending the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915. He attended the old Bernal Heights Grammar School and Polytechnic High School. He then spent over fifty years in the printing business in San Francisco. As a young man he started as an in-house printer for the National Carbon Company. Later he became familiar with the wider range of printing, working with commercial artists, photographers and advertising agencies as a salesman for the Weiss Printing Company. In 1951 he started is own business "Printing By Segal". Although it was a small business he served a number of San Francisco companies including the then popular Rolley's Sea and Ski. He retired in 1974.

For Max his company was more than a business. It was an opportunity to bring together his artistic ability, his love of words and the English language, and his penchant for "always finding a way to get things done". He also expressed his love of words in the 1940s by writing a "News and Schmooz" column in the style of the late Herb Caen, for The Peninsula B'nai Brith. After retirement he continued to use his printing abilities by gold embossing prayer books for Bar and Bat Mitzvah students at Peninsula Temple Sholom. Though of working class origins Max was a gentleman in the oldest and best sense of the word, a man of "the highest honor, courtesy and morality". This was no more evident than in his last years as he faced blindness (an ironic fate for a printer) and near deafness with courage and an unfailing sense of humor. He will be missed by those who knew him. Funeral Services were held on Friday, January 16th. Donations in Max's name can be made to the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 214 Van Ness Ave., SF., CA 94102.

Published in the San Francisco Chronicle, 2/1/04

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