Monday, July 17, 2006
Packing light
After 20 or so years of traveling, I can do 2+ weeks with just a carry-on bag without breaking a sweat. But this guy takes it to a whole new level. I've been on busses with backpackers coming down from a few weeks on the PCT or in Denali NP, and I can't believe he found a ride after a few days.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
He's the pretty one...
From the Guardian's coverage of the G8 meeting
"I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of
the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and
I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia
would do the same," Mr. Bush said.
To that, Mr. Putin replied, "Quite honestly, we certainly would not
want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq."
"I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of
the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and
I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia
would do the same," Mr. Bush said.
To that, Mr. Putin replied, "Quite honestly, we certainly would not
want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq."
Are we diving now?
Since it's a stiffling 102 in Concord, I went out to 72 degree Alameda and visited the USS Hornet. Great view of the city from the flight desk, original Sojus capsule, Apollo capsule, and the Airstream NASA converted into the quarantine pod for the astronauts. Getting up and down all those freaking ladders took almost 4 (interesting) hours.
The engine room was a bit underwhelming--I was looking for something like in Titanic, but unfortunately, they used steam turbines which are a lot smaller and don't have any of these dishy crank shafts.
The funniest moment was when the retired commander who ran the tour rang one of the communication bells in the boiler room:
Female--who's only there for her husband and has watched way too much Das Boot--: "Are we diving now?"
CDR: "Ma'm, this is an aircraft carrier. If it is diving, we are in real trouble."
People on the tour we still breaking out in church giggles when we reached the flight deck 30 minutes later.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Updates
I finally had time to post the pictures from the Sierra and EL AY.
Another link to the greatest explanation of the Boob in Chief in like eh-wah.
Another link to the greatest explanation of the Boob in Chief in like eh-wah.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Independence Day
Hello back from LA. I wasn't looking for it, but I got two cool 4th pictures today.
A patriotic street person on Venice Beach.
A patriotic street person on Venice Beach.
Not Independence Day related, but David might want to apply.
2540 crosses next to Santa Monica Pier.
Monday, June 19, 2006
More on Larry
Since a friend asked me about the Larry Spring pictures below. If you want to know more about his discoveries... He doesn't have a web site as far as I can tell, but his stuff gets quoted all over alternative science sites. Just google for Larry Spring Electromagnetic or Larry Spring Quantum and you'll enter a universe of unconventional thought.
Among the amazing discoveries and proofs:
"At the Borderland Conference, Larry demonstrated this theory by using a parabolic dish lying face up on a table, suspended at the focal point of the dish was a ping pong ball. When Larry dropped other ping pong balls from any angle, THEY ALWAYS TRUCK THE BALL AT THE FOCAL POINT. If the incoming energy had been lines of force or undulating waves, they would have all had different angles of deflection and missed the focal point, I was quite impressed..."
"If it is quantum (a quantity) shaped like a ball, it must have a three dimensional size. This can be readily determined by running the energy through a chicken wire grid like screening gravel."
" The magnetic energy is driven from the transmitting conductor by a magnetic field that is expanding in all directions at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, which is probably about 200,000 times the expansion rate of exploding gunpowder. "
Among the amazing discoveries and proofs:
"At the Borderland Conference, Larry demonstrated this theory by using a parabolic dish lying face up on a table, suspended at the focal point of the dish was a ping pong ball. When Larry dropped other ping pong balls from any angle, THEY ALWAYS TRUCK THE BALL AT THE FOCAL POINT. If the incoming energy had been lines of force or undulating waves, they would have all had different angles of deflection and missed the focal point, I was quite impressed..."
"If it is quantum (a quantity) shaped like a ball, it must have a three dimensional size. This can be readily determined by running the energy through a chicken wire grid like screening gravel."
" The magnetic energy is driven from the transmitting conductor by a magnetic field that is expanding in all directions at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, which is probably about 200,000 times the expansion rate of exploding gunpowder. "
Why Fußball Beats Football
I could talk aesthetics, more fluid play, no endless commercial breaks, or that 95% of humanity can't be wrong. But it's really all about the fans: Could you imagine this at a NFL game?
Monday, May 29, 2006
The other Ft. Bragg
A bit more out there: Not only do they sell Bettie Paige's understuff, someone even reinvented quantum physics in a run down shop front. And he looks like Dr. Emmett Brown.
Seal pics
Look Cat, that's how seals look on the camera we talked about...
And more of the coast: lighthouse, abolone divers, cormorans...
North Coast
A long weekend in Mendocino County. Unbelieveably pretty, but unfortionately, so yuppiefied that Doug Sahm would have to blow his mind morning, noon and night.
The only house listing for less than 7 figures. ;)
I created quite a scene when this ad made me laugh so hard that I spewed my cafe espresso across main street. At least someone is still stoned--I am just not sure if it's the dog or the owners. Even Schlapp is a better guard dog; and he gives Pluto a run for the money.
The only house listing for less than 7 figures. ;)
Standing a mile in the Bay
I didn't know Berkeley had a 3/4 mile fishing pier. Apart from Angel Island, definitely the best view of the city.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Why Germans drive me nuts...
Today's front page article in a large German newspaper talks about the fact that the predictions for economic growth this year were almost doubled yesterday, employment is up sharply, the federal reserve bank made a few dozen billion euros in profits, tax revenue is up by a large percentage, and government dept is going down faster than expected.
It's headline? "Stronger than expected economic growth might create problems for government."
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL??????????? I grew up there, but occasionally their mindset just baffles me.
It's headline? "Stronger than expected economic growth might create problems for government."
WHAT THE FUCKING HELL??????????? I grew up there, but occasionally their mindset just baffles me.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Sailin' and Datin'
In the morning I took a cool kick-the-fenders sailing cruise from Alameda to Angel Island and back. In the afternoon, I had a blind date.
I learned three things
(1) The new Hunter 36 is amazingly easy to sail: only 5 lines, autopilot, jib furling, flaking mainsail.... Much easier than the 1850s Boston cutter I was on last time. You can even turn it on a dime on your own
(2) Cherry soda and malt whiskey is weird but not bad.
(3) Women become incoherent after 3 Bailey's Comets.
I learned three things
(1) The new Hunter 36 is amazingly easy to sail: only 5 lines, autopilot, jib furling, flaking mainsail.... Much easier than the 1850s Boston cutter I was on last time. You can even turn it on a dime on your own
(2) Cherry soda and malt whiskey is weird but not bad.
(3) Women become incoherent after 3 Bailey's Comets.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Friday, April 07, 2006
The Horse Trailer
It's raining again in the East Bay. Apparently 2006 is the wettest year since Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered California. Yesterday, the snow on Mammoth passed 600 inches or 15 meters...
So, on with the story:
"Do you have a US drivers license?" "Not yet" "... Anyway..., we need you on the Hivemobile, can you fly to Orlando on Saturday?" That was just about how my first business trip for the Hive started. For the next 4 years, enough of them followed that I am still drawing on my frequent flyer miles six years later. In some months, I flew home, threw my clothes into the washer, repacked and was off again.
This first trip stuck in my mind, though, both because of the emergency landing in St. Louis, and for my first exposure to the Hivemobile.
The Hivemobile came into being during the run up to the three year delayed new version of the Hive's main--at at that time only--product: Hive 2.0. It was pushing past the envelope of what development tools and hardware allowed at the time. And, in mission speak, it was to change the world, revolutionize all aspects of human life, and bring fame and prosperity to anyone at the Hive. Our only fear was that even after favorable reviews, many hundreds or millions of dollars, a tour of our CEO through the most prestigious institutions of science and learning, and all kinds of email and PR initiatives, some students or potential customers would somehow miss it and be left in archaic darkness.
Also, technology companies had to be creative, think out of the box, and change the paradigm in everything they did. So while we didn't quite reached the level of inspiration that make CueCat a household name, something needed to be done!!!
Taking a clue from the Weinermobile, the marketing director decided that we needed a mobile demo station that could bring Hive 2.0 to the people. Since the Hive was nothing if not energetic, a 40 foot horse trailer and a pickup truck were shortly procured, test driven on the corn field studded plains, painted, outfitted with 12000 pounds of furnishings and computers, and sent off on its inaugural journey. The fact that the Australian driver ripped off a few struts that were a bit too close to the ground driving it from the baptism ceremony in the company parking didn't give anyone pause. Neither did the fact that shortly afterwards he discovered that he could break the trucks rear window by taking a sharp right turn. As we found out later, the outfitting had raised the weight of the trailer to a point where it was too close to the ground, tilted the truck backward enough that the front of the trailer hit trucks back window during sharp turns, and busted tires whenever driving over a curb.
These technical difficulties got greatly compounded by the fact that the person who initially planned the trip left without telling her successor that the preliminary list of stops was a superset that still needed to be whittled down by two thirds. Blissfully unaware, the successor proceeded to book every single stop on the original list. So a typical day in the first six months looked like:
-drive from hotel to location at 6am
-wake event sponsor and janitor at 6:30. At least this ensured that we would never be asked back.
-set up and start the generator
-talk to the occasional visitor who mistook us for the Jaegerettes for 6 hours
-pack up
-drive 400 miles to the next location at 45 miles an hour and stop for gas every 150 miles
-check into hotel at 3am and find some parking
rinse, lather, repeat.
Unsurprisingly, the staff consisted of two masochistic drivers and new employees who didn't know better. The Hivemobile had its perks, though. Since my partner would only arrive a day later and we didn't have an event until Monday, I decided to drive the gaudily painted truck from the hotel to Kissimmee and spend the day the day in Disney World. When I pulled up at the end of the long line going into the parking lot, the attendants frantically waved me to pass by the queue and drive into an almost empty lot. Getting out, I discovered that I had ended up in the employee lot with direct access to the park. The truck's psychedelic paint job had obviously convinced the guards that I had to work for the Mouse, saving me an hour and $45.
So, on with the story:
"Do you have a US drivers license?" "Not yet" "... Anyway..., we need you on the Hivemobile, can you fly to Orlando on Saturday?" That was just about how my first business trip for the Hive started. For the next 4 years, enough of them followed that I am still drawing on my frequent flyer miles six years later. In some months, I flew home, threw my clothes into the washer, repacked and was off again.
This first trip stuck in my mind, though, both because of the emergency landing in St. Louis, and for my first exposure to the Hivemobile.
The Hivemobile came into being during the run up to the three year delayed new version of the Hive's main--at at that time only--product: Hive 2.0. It was pushing past the envelope of what development tools and hardware allowed at the time. And, in mission speak, it was to change the world, revolutionize all aspects of human life, and bring fame and prosperity to anyone at the Hive. Our only fear was that even after favorable reviews, many hundreds or millions of dollars, a tour of our CEO through the most prestigious institutions of science and learning, and all kinds of email and PR initiatives, some students or potential customers would somehow miss it and be left in archaic darkness.
Also, technology companies had to be creative, think out of the box, and change the paradigm in everything they did. So while we didn't quite reached the level of inspiration that make CueCat a household name, something needed to be done!!!
Taking a clue from the Weinermobile, the marketing director decided that we needed a mobile demo station that could bring Hive 2.0 to the people. Since the Hive was nothing if not energetic, a 40 foot horse trailer and a pickup truck were shortly procured, test driven on the corn field studded plains, painted, outfitted with 12000 pounds of furnishings and computers, and sent off on its inaugural journey. The fact that the Australian driver ripped off a few struts that were a bit too close to the ground driving it from the baptism ceremony in the company parking didn't give anyone pause. Neither did the fact that shortly afterwards he discovered that he could break the trucks rear window by taking a sharp right turn. As we found out later, the outfitting had raised the weight of the trailer to a point where it was too close to the ground, tilted the truck backward enough that the front of the trailer hit trucks back window during sharp turns, and busted tires whenever driving over a curb.
These technical difficulties got greatly compounded by the fact that the person who initially planned the trip left without telling her successor that the preliminary list of stops was a superset that still needed to be whittled down by two thirds. Blissfully unaware, the successor proceeded to book every single stop on the original list. So a typical day in the first six months looked like:
-drive from hotel to location at 6am
-wake event sponsor and janitor at 6:30. At least this ensured that we would never be asked back.
-set up and start the generator
-talk to the occasional visitor who mistook us for the Jaegerettes for 6 hours
-pack up
-drive 400 miles to the next location at 45 miles an hour and stop for gas every 150 miles
-check into hotel at 3am and find some parking
rinse, lather, repeat.
Unsurprisingly, the staff consisted of two masochistic drivers and new employees who didn't know better. The Hivemobile had its perks, though. Since my partner would only arrive a day later and we didn't have an event until Monday, I decided to drive the gaudily painted truck from the hotel to Kissimmee and spend the day the day in Disney World. When I pulled up at the end of the long line going into the parking lot, the attendants frantically waved me to pass by the queue and drive into an almost empty lot. Getting out, I discovered that I had ended up in the employee lot with direct access to the park. The truck's psychedelic paint job had obviously convinced the guards that I had to work for the Mouse, saving me an hour and $45.
The MISSION
mis·sion
Pronunciation: 'mi-shon
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, Medieval Latin, & Latin; New Latin mission-, missio religious mission, from Medieval Latin, task assigned, from Latin, act of sending, from mittere to send
...
2 a : a ministry commissioned by a religious organization to propagate its faith or carry on humanitarian work
I think one of the keys to understanding computer companies in the 1990s is that it wasn't just a job, or a business plan, but that 99% of the ones involved were on a mission. And this mission wasn't just to provide shareholder value, or putting out a good product--all of that was boring and "old economy"--but the fanatical believe that they were going to revolutionize the world, change every paradigm and delivering humanity from the Dark Ages.
1996 was still before the Internet craze hit fully and my co-manager who left for AllPosters.com six weeks before the .com crash told me that being able to order posters off the Web would "totally revolutionize people's lives, change the way people communicate, and generate a lively community of on-line poster buyers"--Unfortunately, this type of rhetoric was about par for the course for the .com evangelists that bombarded the hive with business plans and partnership offers in between 1999 and 2001.
Nevertheless, the sense of the "we have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we are wearing sunglasses" mission was strong and apart from helping to put up with the long hours, the salaries and the insane workload, it also tended to inoculate anybody who was part of the revolution from criticism and occasionally common sense. Funnily enough, the movie to best encapsulate the spirit--and the missteps--of the mission movement is Blues Brothers rather than Revenge of the Nerds. Although the typical nerd is much more likely to pick The Holy Grail, because in it everyone was crazy--while the unwashed masses WHO DIDN'T GET IT were the other 99% of society.
A few of the funnier cases of delusion that I remember were: The Horse Trailer, How We Invented SPAM, and Why Won't Bill Gates Talk To Me? -- We'll get to them in the next few posts.
Pronunciation: 'mi-shon
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, Medieval Latin, & Latin; New Latin mission-, missio religious mission, from Medieval Latin, task assigned, from Latin, act of sending, from mittere to send
...
2 a : a ministry commissioned by a religious organization to propagate its faith or carry on humanitarian work
I think one of the keys to understanding computer companies in the 1990s is that it wasn't just a job, or a business plan, but that 99% of the ones involved were on a mission. And this mission wasn't just to provide shareholder value, or putting out a good product--all of that was boring and "old economy"--but the fanatical believe that they were going to revolutionize the world, change every paradigm and delivering humanity from the Dark Ages.
1996 was still before the Internet craze hit fully and my co-manager who left for AllPosters.com six weeks before the .com crash told me that being able to order posters off the Web would "totally revolutionize people's lives, change the way people communicate, and generate a lively community of on-line poster buyers"--Unfortunately, this type of rhetoric was about par for the course for the .com evangelists that bombarded the hive with business plans and partnership offers in between 1999 and 2001.
Nevertheless, the sense of the "we have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we are wearing sunglasses" mission was strong and apart from helping to put up with the long hours, the salaries and the insane workload, it also tended to inoculate anybody who was part of the revolution from criticism and occasionally common sense. Funnily enough, the movie to best encapsulate the spirit--and the missteps--of the mission movement is Blues Brothers rather than Revenge of the Nerds. Although the typical nerd is much more likely to pick The Holy Grail, because in it everyone was crazy--while the unwashed masses WHO DIDN'T GET IT were the other 99% of society.
A few of the funnier cases of delusion that I remember were: The Horse Trailer, How We Invented SPAM, and Why Won't Bill Gates Talk To Me? -- We'll get to them in the next few posts.
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