Travels and Images
WEEK 32 2007
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Saturday
- again, mostly errands. Get the oil changed in the Explorer, etc, etc.
Errands around the house as well, it's in need of a lot of cleaning and
restoration.
While down in Ventura I got a call that one of my fish looked ill. It's
just a goldfish, but still it's not something you want to hear. Anyway
my fish sitter bought some drugs and administered them and that fish
looked better when I got home, but still a bit sluggish. But I decided
the tank needed cleaning, and the water needed changing. Boy, was I
right.
The gravel was filthy. The surprising thing isn't that the smaller fish was sick, it was that either was still alive. A couple of hours after cleaning and changing the water they were swimming about happily, almost jumping out of the tank.
A piece of ice fell off the external tank and damaged the belly tiles
on the Endeavour. Not good. NASA has spent years and mucho $$$ on
mitigating this, without much luck.
Friday 10 August
2007
Friday
- I got home not too late last night, and then had insomnia. Bah. I had backed
off on caffeine, just a little glass of Pepsi Max (meh) with dinner
about 7:00pm, just to avoid that. I've been up late several nights in a
row and that seems to be all it takes to mess up my internal clock. I
was home and in bed by 10:30 - wide awake. A little oatmeal, aspirin,
and late night teevee at 2:30am finally let me drift off.
Today was spent running various needed errands in Lancaster - the most
important of which was getting the front wheels of the Explorer
aligned. A $40 task that metamorphed into $180, but I feel better about
it. They were both pretty well out of spec, whether from my little
driving excitement around the 4th or just from time since the last
alignment (never) it's hard to say. It's never understeered at all, at
best it was neutral, generally it was mildly unstable. It was a
bit tricky to drive, one had to watch it every second so as not to
wander of a lane (one should
be watchful at the wheel, but this was excessive) - we'll see if that
has improved. If it has I might take the Probe in for a bit of work.
Thursday
9 August 2007
Thursday
- there was a mild earthquake last night, about 1:00am. It was a 4.5, not bad, but noticeable.
Sure, we all suspected that it was a bad idea to be a red-shirted security guard on Captain Kirk's Enterprise. But now someone has analyzed the mission statistics.
We were right. But, as with any good analysis, we now see some
correlations and trends we may not have originally observed in the raw
data:
Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the
survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship
between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an
alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted
crewmen increases by 84%.
[via Geekpress]
Wednesday 8 August 2007
Wednesday
- Barry Bonds finally did it, during a home stand, breaking Henry
Aaron's record with 756 home runs, last night while I was at the fair.
My
father will be pleased, he's a big
fan. Aaron wasn't there in person (he's rumored to be an "asterisk
man") but he did say some complimentary things on the big diamond
vision screen at the ball park.
Odd phrase of the day:
"Thalweg
migration and head cutting can result from unnatural changes
..."
Wikipedia has a definition
of a thalweg.
Tuesday 7 August 2007
Tuesday
- work.
I went to the Ventura County Fair in the evening and saw the Beach Boys
with some
friends. It was fun, though it's a big of a shock when someone mentions
writing an song in 1963! Forty four year ago. Sheesh. Someone named
John
Stamos was playing the drums for them, they referred to him as "the
part time drummer" and he was apparently a big hearth throb for the
ladies.
I had two middle aged ladies sit (well, they actually sort of danced in place) next to me, a blond and a brunette -
they were very excited by the whole thing. The band played for nearly
two hours, good value for the $8 tickets.
Monday 6 August 2007
Monday
- On the road, back to Ventura. Lot's of time to listen to books on tape again...
Book #52 was A Crack In the Edge of the World*,
by Simon Winchester. An interesting tale of plate tectonics and the
Great San Francisco Earthquake, with a lot of off biographies and
histories thrown in. Recommended. This was an abridged CD set - it was
on sale at B&N for $5.00 - but well done, reasonably self contained
though I have to wonder what was left out. A deeper look a plate
tectonics, from a few hanging references.
Sunday 5 August July 2007
Sunday
- on the road, back to Lancaster. Lots of traffic thought it isn't a
holiday. Odd. Moderately hot in the valley - pushing 100F in spots but never quite breaking into triple digits.
