Saturday
- up at Dads' place. K and my niece Jessie are visiting as well.
I finished Book #13 - Crusade: Destroyermen, Book II
by Taylor Anderson. It's of the 'military force transported to an
alternate universe' genre. In this case it's an couple of old
'four-stacker' destroyers in the opening days of WWII that gets
transported by a mysterious squall to an alternate universe replete
with friendly 'lemurians' (actually descended from lemurs!), an evil
reptilian race, and a world replete with vicious dinosaurs &
piranha like fish. It's an OK read, and doesn't shy away from the
problems of re-supply, fueling, re-armament that such a vessel would
encounter. Not great reading, but OK.
I haven't read Into The Storm, Book I or Maelstrom, Book III, but will keep my eyes open for them at the various libraries I belong to.
I tried to buy gas at the local Chevron, but their credit card reader
was broken again. Guess I'll stop going there, I'd say the chances or
getting a working pump are now down below 50%. It's bad enough paying
top dollar, but adding the annoyance of having to walk inside to pay
for gas, after standing behind some gap toothed moron buying beer, or a
tattooed punk paying for their smokes in pennies is just too much.
I had enough to get me to Bakersfield, so I bought gas there.
When I got to Dad's I found that my sister K was going to visit. I hadn't seen her in a few months, Thanksgiving perhaps.
Phoebe, soaking up morning sun.
Thursday 2 April
2009
Thursday
- put in a days work, then headed up to Lancaster in the evening. I'd
hoped to leave earlier than I did, but works takes as long as it takes
sometimes.
I found a scared German Shepherd in the channel today. It's 9,000 feet
long, concrete with 6' high walls and he couldn't get out. He was too
frightened to come close so I finally called the local animal control.
He seemed to have a collar and tags, so it was a helpful act, not
certain death. I could see them up the channel corralling him, and I
hope a grateful owner promptly rescued him from doggie lockup.
This is the second dog in about a week. Last week it was a nice
lab/retriever happily trotting down the center of a busy bridge. He
came when called and his owner's number was on his tag, and promptly
picked him up. Apparently 'Blackie'
knows where his owners place of work is, and, when he can get free,
happily trots across town to visit him at the workplace. Amusing, but
dangerous.
Wednesday 1 April 2009
Wednesday
- working in the office, using Manifold to plot up the data. I'm
neither a surveyor or GIS person, so I've warned them that it's a
pretty rough job, but it seems that there is a time crunch and they
needed the plots now. So I did it. Mostly by badgering people (Sergio) who actually know how to use GIS - thank god for cell phones.
Tuesday 31 March 2009
Tuesday
- 'The Natural History of Cars". I wondered about this myself, the other day when I caught most of the movie on teevee. Where are the people? What happened to the people?
Monday 30 March 2009
Monday
- back at work. The 'rash' from last week - poison oak. Arrgghhh. The
guy I'm working with now is from the mitigation office, and he knows
what the bad stuff looks like in early spring, when it mostly just
looks like generic ground foliage. It's not yet red and obvious,
and there are stalks of itchy not-yet-leafed-out stuff about. Yuck.
It's been years - maybe decades - since I had this stuff.
"Hey Steve, you lead."
Too late for me, my hands are pretty blistered from last week. Now I'm wearing gloves and am being more careful.
Wondering about life, the big, unresolved questions? Me too. But now
there is Googlefight!
Sunday 29 March 2009
Sunday
- I drove down to San Pedro for some tutorials in using Manifold.
It's a really cool GIS program, with a large number of buttons that do
various mysterious things.
