Travels and Images
WEEK
50 2007
Last
Week-
Sun-
Mon- Tue- Wed-
Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week
Picture of the Week
MAIN
PAGE
First Post,
17 March 2002
|
Five Years
Ago, This Week, 2002 |
Four Years
Ago, This Week, 2003 |
Three
Years Ago, this
week, 2004 |
Two Years
Ago, This Week, 2005 |
A Year Ago,
This Week, 2006
|
Saturday
- back in Lancaster. I took off at 7:00 am, and was at the I-5 by 8:00.
And couldn't get on - they'd closed the ramp. There was a sign, about a
hundred feet from the traffic cones, saying "ramp closed ahead". Morons
- why wasn't that sign twenty miles back?
Anyway, the north exit was open and usable - and I've done this before,
taken the I-5 to Gorman and then to Lancaster, or just got off the
northbound a few miles up and came back south from the open on ramp
there. But today I had a secret weapon:
A TomTom One car GPS!
A friend had bought it for her mother, but it turned out not to be
quite what was wanted (it doesn't do itineraries). She'd gotten it on
Black Friday for half price, and when I heard that it was going to be
returned I couldn't resist offering to buy it. It's pretty cool. I'd
set it up initially and (after a brief hiatus in which I had to recover
from telling it to give directions in Portuguese) liked it.
I used it the other night, returning from dropping off the skater at
his house in northern Ventura, but that was just a trial. It worked,
but it was all major roads and not a real test.
Canyon Country is another matter. It's a maze of city streets and
canyons, and I've gotten lost several times while trying to cross from
the I-5 to the I-14 using Hwy 126. On the map it looks like an easy
shortcut, in practice it's a nightmare. But I just switched on the GPS
(which comes with a cool suction cup gizmo for mounting on your
windshield inside), turned it one, and told it to find home. "Home"
being my friends house in Lancaster (close enough).
A polite British womans' voice told to to drive straight for 2.3 miles
and then turn right. So I did. This continued all the way to the I-5,
the directions being accurate, prompt and timely. What an amazing
device.
Friday 14 December
2007
Friday
- working in the office still.
In the evening we went to a benefit show at the local ice skating rink.
It was fun, the skaters had put a lot of time and energy into their
routines and costumes and I enjoyed it. But it was cold, sitting on metal folding chairs on the ice.
After the show I took one of the skaters home. It was nearly midnight
by the time I got done, so I decided to stay in Oxnard until Saturday
morning....
Thursday
13 December 2007
Thursday
- working in the office. Putting together an inventory for the next batch of inspections.
Wednesday 12 December 2007
Wednesday
- heh. While finishing up work I dropped the expensive Thales
Mobile Mappper CE into about four inches of water. It's rated as shock
proof, and submersible to 1 meter. When I picked it up, seconds later,
water was pouring from inside it. We had to send it back to the factory and get a loaner.
The local shop said it was all corroded on the inside - and that didn't
happen overnight. It sounds like the seals have been bad for awhile,
and condensation has been rotting the circuit board, which probably
explains some of the issues we've been having with it.
Fortunately I was packing up stuff in the car when this happened, done
with the job for now, and getting ready to start on a new batch of
inspections, so it shouldn't hurt the job progress, I need to vet the
work inventory for the next few weeks and that will take a day or two.
Tuesday 11 December 2007
Tuesday
- I need to get a new cell phone. My old XV6600 PDA is on it's last
legs. It dies in the middle of calls, refuses to call out, reboots
regularly or requires rebooting to use. The XV6800 is out, I may check
into getting one of those. And upping the minutes on my plan - I've
spent several hundred dollars in overage fee's in the last few months,
that has to stop.
Monday 10 December 2007
Monday
- back at work. A long commute and traffic was rather terrible
on the 405 and 118. But so it goes.
My cats aversion to
the cold, and their implacable resolve to try
again, just a few minutes later reminds me of an old Robert Heinlein
book, The Door into Summer. The narrator has a problem with
his cat, Petronius the Arbiter. Or possibly with the old farmhouse in
Connecticut he was renting-
"The drawback was that the place had eleven doors to the outside.
Twelve if you counted Pete's door.
..................................................
While still a kitten, all fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a
simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he
was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible
for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards;
regularly that winter Pete would check his door, refuse to go out of it
because of that unpleasant white stuff (Pete was no fool), then badger
me to open a people door.
He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into
summer weather. Each time this meant that I had to go around with him
to each of the eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself
that it was winter out that way, too, and then go on to the next door,
while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each
disappointment.
Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly
forced him outside. When he returned the ice in his pads sounded like
little clogs on the wooden floors and he would glare at me and refuse
to purr until he had chewed it all out...whereupon he would forgive me
until the next time.
"
It's basically a time travel book, and it never occurred to me, until
now, that there being twelve doors was a deliberate choice by the
author.
Hmm, spell check tells me I mis-spelled Connecticut every time. Hmm.
Sunday 9 December 2007
Sunday
- snow on the hills around the valley this morning. But it's bright and
clear now, albeit cold: 33F
when I let the cats out this morning. They didn't stay out long, but
were pestering to be let out again
not much later.
Another
Joke:
A
Mathematician, a Physicist, and an Engineer were sitting on
a park bench when a red ball came to rest in front of them.
The
Mathematician says, "If we measure the diameter of the
ball, we can get it's volume by 4/3pi(d/2)^3..."
The
Physicist chimes in, "...or simply submerse it in water and
measure the volume of water displaced."
The Engineer
looked dumbfounded and said, "Why not just look
it up in the Red Ball Book?"
[via the photo.net
canon forum]
If you aren't into engineering this is probably a bit
mystifying. It's common to refer to books, particularly reference
books, by their covers' distinguishing characteristic. For instance, a 'Green
Book' is A Policy on Geometric Design
of Highways and Streets. In computer graphics the 'Red Book'
is an OpenGL reference. The 'Dragon
Book' is a famous text on compiler design.
The joke is mildly disparaging to the engineer, suggesting
that they put no thought into their work, but rather just read answers
from a reference. Then again, most jokes disparage somebody. Blonds,
dwarfs, engineers - it's all good.
I was helping somebody spec out a laptop - they wanted a reasonably
inexpensive unit, but with enough graphics chops to run some modern
games. No laptop is going to be as powerful as a desktop but we settled
on the Dell
XPS M1330, with an upgraded processor and graphics card as
being good enough.
