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Travels and Images

WEEK 33 2003

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Saturday 16 August 2003

Saturday - Sgt. Stryker has an interesting post about the east coast blackout.

Like most Californians I suspect, I am enjoying a bit schadenfreude about the whole thing, and feeling as much compassion for the right coast folk as they expressed for us here on the left coast a couple of years ago. So there.

Do they have an action hero there to run for governor or something? Sylvester Stallone or someone?

(Note: Slightly revised on Monday, 18 August, as parts were missing. D*** Composer. I "upgraded" to NS7.1 lately and have been having troubles aplenty.)

Friday 15 August 2003

Friday - I am thinking that I need a pictures page here. One that has thumbnails of the 'Pictures of the Month', thus enabling easy reference back.

You see, a friend entered me in the photography contest at the county fair. I had a neat shot of a seagull and it seemed a shoo-in for a blue ribbon. Or possibly green. Red? Honorable mention, at the very least. Anyway, I couldn't find it. Well, I did, but now I'm not sure that the picture I found was MY picture - what if it was really one of the Olympus Camedia sample pictures and not the picture I took on the whale watching trip from Oxnard? How embarrassing it would be to enter some corporations' picture and getting caught. Imagine the humiliation, being hauled up before the picture judges for...picture plagiarism, or whatever the crime is.

Imagine the punishments? Being forced to use a disposable camera. Being forced to watch the cloggers. Being forced to be a picture judge at a country fair. The mind boggles, reels, swaps to disk....

I used another picture instead, this one:

trinity church, stratform on avon, and barge

Trinity Church, across the river, in Stratford-on-Avon.

Thursday 14 August 2003

Thursday - company and dinner at Steer-and-Stein. 20 ounces of Steinfest lager. Not too much to say now, and really just too tired to say that.

Wednesday 13 August 2003

Wednesday - took 'em both today - and passed. I suppose I am now a unix god. Small g. What else? Beautiful night sky on the way home after the twelve hour day - drove slow so I could keep the windows rolled down. The rising moon was lighting up the clouds all around the antelope valley, but clear sky was directly above, with the brilliant stars of Scorpio gleaming to the south. Waning Moon, Waxing Mars. Treated myself to a Newcastle under the new patio, watching for a while, but it's bed for me now.

From Lileks, at Backfence (not Bleat), on clowns at kid's birthday parties:

...you never know how kids will react to a clown. Some scream and start digging frantically in the earth hoping they'll pop out in some clown-free hemisphere; some say oh, good, Clown, and then decide to kick him in the shins when he does not produce hamburgers and Happy Meals. Some children just shut down, unable to process two completely dichotomous thoughts:
• Mommy and Daddy love me.

• Yet they have invited this thing to my party.

The child of a friend of mine turned six yesterday, so it seemed somehow appropriate.

Tuesday 12 August 2003

Tuesday - took one of the exams, passed it. Two to go by Friday...

Monday 11 August 2003

Monday - lots of studying for the system exams, so not a lot to say.

We have some high clouds again, so no real chance of seeing Mars tonight. I did look at it the other day in the 10" dobsonian - the disk is bigger than I have ever seen it, and, perhaps I'm kidding myself here, I might even have seen some surface features. That telescope has a pretty bad primary mirror, so I can't be sure.

Sunday 10 August 2003

Sunday - went down to LA for the Taiko Drum event. Actually it's sort of a Japanese-American event at the cultural center down there, and it was a lot of fun. The drummers look like they really enjoy themselves - it's a lot of work, but they really pound on those drums, large and small, and it's well work visiting!

Two years ago the drummers were shaded by a canopy, and the audience fried. Last year the audience had the canopy, and the performers fried. This year we all had canopies, and we were all a lot happier!

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Here is a nice shot of a Joshua Tree, with the snow covered San Angeles in the background.

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