Friday
- did a good days work, then headed home to Lancaster. It was nicer
weather than Thursday though still in the high 80's - but there was a
breeze and that made it a lot more tolerable. Plus I was working with D,
and he was a trustworthy worker and doing a lot of the stuff I normally
have to do,which made it a bit easier for me. (Plus he bought breakfast
at Grinders in Moorpark.)
It felt weird actually, I kept thinking: "I should climb down that 35' of rock bank to inspect that pipe...no, D already did it."
We knocked off about 5:30pm, so I stopped for dinner at El Pollo Loco, then stopped by REI
in Reseda. No sense in hitting the I-5/I-14/210 interchange at 6:00 on
a Friday. I was looking for some long sleeved shirts, wearable in the
heat and sun, that still looked professional. I found some, but, well,
this was REI: $45.00 for a shirt. I bought one, and I'll see how it works, then if I like it I'll see if I can get some online, cheaper.
Heh. I bought a lifetime membership at REI long ago. How long? Lets
just say that I lost my card and the clerk had to look up my personal
info - and he used my phone number to search their customer database.
After a bit of looking we realized it was in there but with the old 805 area code, not the current 661, which makes it ten years or so.
Seen on the side of my Red Baron Singles Deep Dish Pizzas box: "COOKING INSTRUCTIONS: Cook before eating"
Before. I knew I was doing something wrong - that would explain the smell.
Seagull.
Thursday 4 September
2008
Thursday
- not quite as long a day as Wednesday.
I just noticed that the little weather stickies at the top of the page
are visible, but static, in Kompozer. Weird. I just assumed there'd be a blank
placeholder, but I actually seen little unmoving images in the page
editor - whatever was last in the laptops cache, I suppose.
In other computer news my friend T was able to get the server working.
He couldn't get it to talk to the wireless router, and finally
investigated the settings and discovered that I'd hard wired the LAN IP
address. I'd completely forgotten, it was about a year ago that I
worked on it. Ooops. He changed it to DHCP and everything apparently
works OK now.
Apparently Gov. Palin, McCain's nod for VP, gave a tremendous speech,
and may have saved (or won) McCain's run for the president. I didn't
catch it, but it has the Right cheering and the Left frothing, so it
must have been quite a speech.
Wednesday 3 September 2008
Wednesday
- worked a long day.
I finished Book #44, No Highway*,
by Nevil Shute. Since it involves aircraft structures and aeroelastic
concepts I found it of interest, and the inclusion of nuclear effects in
structures (shades of cold fusion!) a bit off putting. But it's a
classic Shute story, rather British, long and a bit drawn out. If you
like them you like them, otherwise they'd be torture.
Heh. Torture for my brother - they are my tapes and we listened to them
all the way up and down the state, but we didn't finish and I kept them - the story ended
for him at Chapter 9!
Of course, he has seen the movie (I haven't), No Highway in the Sky,
1951, with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Stewart plays the part
of Dr. Theodore Honey, who in Shute's book is, repeatedly, described as
a small ugly man. Stewart was about six foot four, but the movie,
M says, apparently staying close to the book continually refers to him as 'that little
man'. Maybe they used forced perspective, as in the Lord of the Rings
movie?
I can loan M the tapes, but his brand new radio only plays CD's, MP3's and Ipods - not tapes. Too bad.
I suppose I could also loan him the portable tape deck I snagged from my dad, and the fm modulator gizmo...
Tuesday 2 September 2008
Tuesday
- there were a couple of interesting links on the web the other day, I
think I'll post them here for posterity
Apparently the
British are doing sonar scans in the Thames river and finding
thousands of
wrecks. One of the more interesting was the wreck of a sailing ship
from 1665, damaged in an explosives handling accident and sunk (shades
of Port Chicago!).
HMS London
It looks pretty well preserved. My friend Dave pointed out that the
whole thing must be below the current river bottom, in silt, or it
would have rotted out and collapsed under it's own weight long ago.
I can't remember where I found the link.
The other link was found at EagleSpeak, and was an article on monitors.
I read a book
on civil war ironclads a while back, and found the article interesting,
it discusses what happened with the concept after the civil war.
Here is the USS Monterey (built in 1898), off Mare Island. My Dad worked at M.I. at one time, on nuclear submarines. This might predate that by a bit...
Monday 1 September 2008
Monday
- back on the road, down to Lancaster. Mileage down was 22.3mpg,
mileage up was 20.1. I don't really have an explanation for the
difference, except that it was much cooler today, about 85F, instead of
the 103F on Friday. Engine efficiency?
Back down to work tomorrow :-(
Sunday 31 August 2008
Sunday
- shades of Hurricane Gustave: the family oral history has it that an
aunt of mine was born on this date in 1928 under a table in her mothers
home, during a hurricane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The plaster, it
seems, was falling from the ceiling. This seemed at first likely to
have
been the 1928
Okeechobee Hurricane, but the date is wrong, her birth being
too early in the month. It may have been a different hurricane, or
(unnamed) tropical storm.
Hurricane tracks, 1928, (click on image to enlarge).
We had a nice little barbecue, two brothers, one sister, one niece and
my Dad. I did the cooking - generally my brother B does it, but he
was out of town. The hamburgers were a bit crispy, but OK. Hamburgers,
potato salad, watermelon - nothing too fancy.
M's dog,
Duke, hates the barbecue, a black spherical Weber, and growling
furiously had knocked it over earlier in the day. Once there were hot
coals in it he steered clear though - experience, apparently.
