Travels and Images
WEEK 7 2003
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Picture of the Week
Lancaster
Weather
Saturday 15
February 2003
Saturday - not a lot going on. Wrestled with my Dad's
wireless and finally managed to get it going, by sheer cussedness, if not
by raw skill and intelligence. Basically the Linksys router and card are
not well supported by WinXP, and the manual and the firmware were wrong.
I had imagined Linksys as the BMW or Mercedes of wireless, but the lousy
documentation and software now prompts me to recommend Netgear instead.
Friday 14 February
2003
Friday - a half day at work, and then off to my Dad's for
the weekend. Not a lot to say really. The weather was moderate - some interesting
fog and lighting going through the Tehachapi mountains, but rather dull on
the 99 and 5 freeways. Lots of trucks - possibly they were held up by the
bad weather earlier in the week and thus were out in force on this particular
friday. So it goes.
I actually saw a polite trucker. Another truck had decided to pass him on a hill.
The passing truck was at the start going perhaps a half mile an hour faster,
and cars were starting to collect behind him. Then, as the hill continued,
he wasn't passing at all. After several minutes of this the trucker in the right lane
tapped his brakes, slowed down a bit, and let him
- and the fifty or so automobiles he was (illegally) blocking,
pass by. In nearly twenty years of monthly commutes up and down the state I've
seen this happen twice.
Gas was up to $2.20 a gallon on the Interstate 5.
Thursday 13
February 2003
Thursday - the rain has stopped. More may be on the way
for the weekend, but who knows? Lots of mud in my street - the water level
was perhaps six or seven inches, just over the curb, judging from the detritus.
If you go to northern California, there are numerous small towns that are
occasionally flooded by the Eel river, or Russian river. You can stand on
a main street in one of these towns and look upwards twenty feet to the high water mark sign!
I am told that yesterday's animal centric post suggests a second career for me as a writer for Animal Planet or something. Interesting idea.
Dinner was at The Texas Cattle Company. A lot of the clientele were youngish couples with children. As my friend S observed: "They have to go out tonight, tomorrow night all their baby sitters will be out to dinner..." Good point.
If you take your cat in for a "Line Cut" ( fur shaved off the tummy to avoid snarls ) and the dog groomer hears "Lion Cut" the results will probably look something like this. Heh.
Oh yes, someone did bring in some nice chocolate cake...yummmm....I was hoping that would happen.
Wednesday
12 February 2003
Wednesday - not a lot to say. Working as usual. It rained
like crazy all day - as constant as I've ever seen it here. I left a half
hour early as there were reports (wrongly) of 3" of water on the roadways.
But there was a great deal of traffic - apparently Interstate 5 was closed
for a while, due to the weather, and the overflow directed through the 14
freeway and Lancaster.
Someone else saw the coyotes about, and noted how well they blend into the
brush. Good for them, hard on their prey. There were also sightings of seagulls,
who love the rain on the dry lake bed, as it caused the brine shrimp to do
their thing. I didn't see them (the seagull's) myself, but the normally dry
lake bed is indeed awash. How seagull's, a hundred miles away know about
it, in advance, is a good question...
There are also bobcats on base, a whole family. A month or so ago my brother,
walking out of his office one evening, ran across a family of them. He gave
them, as the base press advised, a wide berth.
Tuesday 11
February 2003
Tuesday - hand therapy, and then work. I brought in
donuts yesterday, for no particular reason, and was hoping that someone
else brought something today. Sometimes that happens - a sort of
chain of free food for a few days. No luck today however.
It was raining this morning. It wasn't supposed to rain until
Wednesday. Peculiar. Obviously they could see that storm on satellite
and radar - how hard could it be to to calculate the speed? Oh well,
it's nice to have some moisture in town for a change.
Coming in to work I saw another coyote, and was struck by how well
their coloration matches the local brush - sort of a dingy brown and
yellow that's perfect camouflage. he didn't seem to mind the rain.
One of the cats learned to "meow" the other day. Oh, he would squeak
and make the odd noise, but not an under control 'Hey, this is me talking"
sort of sound. Now he can, at the age of two and a half.
Monday
10 February 2003
Monday - worked. The weather is
changing, we may be getting a storm by midweek, maybe a little
precipitation. Not a lot else to say...
My brother emailed me that comet NEAT is
visible, so called because it was discovered by the NEAT program. Well, it would be
visible, if it wasn't overcast. Oh well.
Sunday 9 February 2003
Sunday - not a whole lot to say. Worked
on the computers, worked in the yard. I received a new weed whacker for
Christmas, and it was great. I had no conception of puny my old
battery powered unit had gotten, until I used that puppy. Hoo-Yaa!
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: "Just Sit Right Back
And You'll Hear a Tale-
A Tale of a Fateful Trip...
That Started in this Desert Field,
Aboard this tiny ship."
Honestly, I have no idea why there is a steel boat sitting in a field
in the the desert outside Tehachapi. It's been there for years.
The vandalism is actually rather recent.
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