Littering

Oh "CIGGY" from Wisconsin, why do you come to the Golden State to toss your burning cigarette butt out the window? Why don't you go badger someone, and somewhere, else? Especially when I'm listening to Street Hassle on the CD, and I'm just in a mood to give your black Solera a love-tap?

• Not absolutely positive about the automobile model.
• Was not actually listening to Street Hassle, but it WAS Lou.
• License plate may not be correct, but it IS representative.
  
• Badger, get it?

A tip of the fedoda to ACME License Maker!!

No Smoke Yet

UPDATE:

I have spoken to the powers, as it were, that be. The power switch in question has been determined to be defective, and so a new one is being ordered.

I have volunteered the use of my trusty Weller soldering gun when it comes time to do the deed.

Not my home Weller that has needed a new tip for the last 20 years, but my work Weller, the one that hasn't been dropped, AND has a good tip. Although the light doesn't work.

A Solder's Christmas Poem

The title has nothing much to do with this, just another typo on the intarwebs! Click here to see it in situ.

Interesting electrical problem I came across at work.

Someone complained of sparks coming from their computer cart (hold 20 laptops w/chargers).

I didn't do the investigation, I'm just documenting it for you edification.

I observed some arcing on the plug.



Here is the layout of the power distribution system in the cart. Power comes in through the cord, goes through the power switch/circuit breaker, then out to the receptacles in what is probably a spring-grippy sort of thing. I would like to take one apart. The layout looks pretty good.



Let us take a closer look at the power switch. Oh oh!! I don't know where where the sparks were seen, but THIS isn't good! Looks like someone forgot to solder the wires to the power switch/circuit breaker! The wire on the left might even look a little discoloured, or maybe it was tinned, I don't know.



I guess we'll solder the wires to the power switch, and give it the ol' smoke test!

Later!

Poppy!

We went on little trip up to the California State Poppy Reserve yesterday. It's about four hours from San Diego, not counting the odd ill-advised detour. That is, we passed a rental RV from Canada, took a detour designed to save time, and passed the SAME RV in Pasadena.

We also saw a lot of accidents. I swear there were AT LEAST 15 accidents. On the way back, just south of Santa Clarita, there was a semi rig stopped in the middle of the freeway, with a Highway Patrol parked behind him, lights a=blinking! Then we noticed that another Highway Patrol was behind us, do the zig-zag thing, stopping all traffic! So we were that last ones through!

Here is my first picture of the poppy fields.



Seems to be a tuck in the way! Whoops!

Here's a better one.



This is the line waiting to pay their four dollars for parking. You don't NEED to park there, you can park down on the main road, but it's a bit of a walk. Actually, there are plenty of poppies to see without even going into the poppy reserve. The whole valley is covered in them!

We also did a little geocaching, and came down through San Francisquito Canyon, which has a lot of history. We only found two geocaches. One at the Poppy Fields was missing, and two that we walked nearly a mile to get to, looked like might be too physically challenging for us at this time, so we left them for another time.

There are way too many pictures to stick in here, so go over to my zooomr page and take a look at them. I will be working on captions and geotags for a couple of days, I bet! You can leave comments there, if you dare!

Of Tygers and Swings, and Manly Men

A class was in the libery today, composing poems. TWO of the kidlets turned in poems that started, "Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright"!!

Even I recognized THAT! I commented, "Hey, you misspelled 'tiger'"

Alfred Bester wrote "The Stars, My Destination", one of my favorite SF stories. It was originally, so I've heard, titled "Tiger Tiger", for reasons obvious when you see the book cover illustration linked to.

I've read somewhere it might be made into a movie. That would be way cool!

Back in the day (3rd or 4th grade), I tried to pass off Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Swing' as an original poem. Silly me! That was the LAST time I plagiarized anything. At least, before the internet came along!

The Swing
by Robert Louis Stevenson
from A Child's Garden of Verses

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

It is available at Project Gutenberg

THE TYGER

By William Blake
from Poems of William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Also available at Project Gutenberg!

---

On the radio this morning they wuz replaying a bit wherein guys call in and share the most "guy" thing they have ever done. One guy had ridden his motorcycle at high speed down Cajon Pass with a buddy, another had taken a bullet south of the border.

I can't think of anything.

Trees Trimmed

You saw the letter, today they trimmed the trees.

Now we can see the house in back, for the second time in twenty years!



Shooting through the door screen adds a certain air of incompetence, don't you think?

When we moved in, twenty years ago, this palm tree was about waist high. Now it's OUT OF CONTROL! They trimmed the TON of dead fronds off, about five years worth, as I gave up cutting them when the tree grew out of reach of my pole saw. I wish they had cut the darn thing down. It might have made a nice table base! Instead of a rat-ladder!!

Proofreading

One would think a Professional Business would do a better job of proofing their communiqués. It's not like they are writing some crummy blog, they are In Business!

Let us examine this letter:

• What is up with the date? No spaces, two commas? But look, they did it again the second time! At least they get points for consistency!
• Hey, that margin is a little raggedly! Line it up!
• Why is the "v" in "vehicles" capitalized? I would have capitalized the "p" in "property", too.
• I stuck in a couple of commas I thought would be appropriate, but I COULD be wrong.
• I forgot to underline the "am" after the time. It's an abbreviation. There are supposed to be periods. Two of them. At least it wasn't capitalized, as I would have mistakenly done!
• I believe "Allresidents" should be TWO words.
• The capitalization of the initial letter in each word of the closing line seems a bit much.
• "In Advanced"?
  
• While I edited out the address of the residents and the name of the company, I did NOT edit out the name and signature of the sender. There wasn't any...

A DISCLAIMER, SORT OF: I feel I can cast a few stones here, as the misteaks I make in my business communications are rarely as glaringly obvious as these!

Of Spring Weeds and Missing Trees

I was making a snarky comment about dandelions, and I was asked, "Just what IS a weed?"



Well, I looked it up, and the intarwebs consensus seems to be, a weed is a plant growing where it isn't wanted. Well, I've got dandelions in the lawn, I don't much care for THAT, but I guess in this bed of iceplanty things, it's just another flower.

The wife was out and about the other day. When she came home, she mentioned that the big tree was gone. I wasn't paying attention, as I was battle ling creeps on Desktop Tower Defense. When I went off to work the next morning I saw what she was talking about. The big tree IS gone!



Where WAS the Big Tree? Take a gander at this High-Quality Google Maps Street View of the area in question.



Nice lens flare! Hey look, you can see the same camper parked in the same place!

That tree was so big and beautiful. It's too bad they decided to cut it down. But how come I didn't notice it the day they did it?

Four For Friday

Four Things That Went Right Today

Firstly, the Earworm of the Day was the Public Service Announcement the local county television station play.

Here's the first stanza:

There's too many kitties in the cities,
Too many strays in the alleyways
They're on the street with nothing to eat
And they've got nowhere to stay.

Check out the video starting here, navigate your way to the PSA's.

What went right was, I found the lyrics on the net and got the earworm out of my head!

Nextly, someone actually checked out a book I recommended! It was Homer Price, by Robert McCloskey. You remember, Make Way For Ducklings and Blueberries For Sal? I love these books!

Thirdly, I discovered (for the second time, I think) (after digging around with a jeweler's screwdriver) that a tattoo from radiation treatments looks very like an ingrown hair or blackhead through not-very-clean bifocals...or maybe it's just a freckle. Will confirm with the doc in May. Maybe will get a "Don't Panic" tat to conceal it!

And Fourthly, the phone guy hooked our two extensions on "group" so now we can pick up either extension from, well, either extension! It's telephone heaven! And I've got no excuse for not answering the phone...

Later!

A Simple Mind Builds Something That Glows In The Dark

Feeling rather electrical the other day, I finally got around to hooking a LED up to the USB port.

A rather simple project, compared to building a Knight-Kit Star Roamer short-wave receiver (which didn't work...), it only took me an hour to solder the thing together. There are only three parts:

1. Green LED (salvaged from something, no specs)
2. Resister, 220 ohm (Red-Red-Brown-Gold 1/4 watt)
3. Heat shrink tubing
4. Wire, a bit of
5. USB connector and cable (salvaged from Apple mouse)

Wait, that's more than three...

Using my trusty Harbor Freight El Cheapo Brand multimeter (You can build a ECG with one!), I measured the current with the 220 ohm resister as 15 mA (Is that right? Milli amps? Micro amps? I forget!), which seems ok, according to this article it can't exceed 500 mA.

Testing the whole mess was a trial, as I only had one alligator clip to hold things together. I need to rig up a test jig for testing these misc. LEDs I have laying around.

Using some math, I suppose I could have calculated the optimum resister to use, but I felt a headache coming on. After all, the math in this article took me a half-hour to get through my head.

Works great, but I need a white LED to actually do any good, I think.



Why are there two reflections?

Today is Google blackout day, turn out your lights tonight for an hour!

Apple Pie, Baseball, and Lead

Our local television troubleshooter/reporter/lawyer told us a tale about a Little League Park that was closed because of lead pollution. Check it out here.

According to the child interviewed by our intrepid hero, there are only three things to do in Oceanside.

1. Baseball
2. Gangs
3. Stay home and do nothing

How sad is that?

I would recommend this young man develop some hobbies, or maybe even try reading a book.

Seriously, "they" need to either tear this field down, or fix it up. It's an eyesore, a hazard, and a waste of space.

Easter Sunday

Here's a guy in a San Diego Padres cap about to eat a lemon.



Here's a guy in a San Diego Padres cap, who is annoyed about being referred to as a guy in a San Diego Padres cap, eating a lemon.



Here are some Easter cupcakes.



Here are some Easter lizards.



And lastly, here is an Easter Main Street.

Flower Time

We went out to the desert to see the flowers a Sunday week ago. Driving out the 8, then taking the scenic route past Lake Cuyamaca , we observed there was no snow, but the lake was quite a bit higher than it usually is. Hanging a right at nearly-Julian, we headed down the hill, on the 78 through the Banner Grade (Banner on a Motorcycle on Youtube). We followed some motorcycles down. Saw a big guy on a mini-type bike whizzing up the grade, slowly. Seemed like a bad idea.

Nice bike lanes on the ring road in Borrego Springs.

We found our way to the flowers. There were lots of people there.



The rest of the pics are over on the squeakycyclist zooomr page, with appropriate comments. Would that you could look at the big versions!

Looked up the flower identifications at the Desert Plants & Wildflowers section of the DesertsUSA site. Their Desert Wildflower Reports California section is very handy, too!

After talking to a fellow with a VERY large lens, who was very knowledgeable about the flowers, we took off. Deciding to take the freeway back, we drove WAY out of our way to get there, and did. Saw a lady bicyclist, not a tourist, climbing out of the desert on the freeway. It was getting to be dusk, I wonder where she was headed?

Well, that's about the end of the tale. There was probably lots more stuff I can't remember, like the Petco/fish food subplot, and the cash register fiasco therein, but the details are hazy.

Later!

Gone To The Movies

It occured to me the other day that I could count on two hands the movies I have taken one or both of my kids to see, when they wuz kids. So that doesn't count LOTR or Star Wars episodes I & II.

And here they are:

• Return To Oz
• Titanic
• Star Wars (On the big screen!)
• A River Runs Through It
• Searching For Bobby Fischer
• Fantasia
• Jurassic Park
• The Commitments

Stuff

When I got into the libery biz back in the 70s, it was during a expansion of library services. There were classes in library technology at the local Jr.C., people were being hired, books were being bought. It was exciting.

Over the years we have lost staff hours, and there has not been a budget for library books for several years. All over San Diego, new school libraries were built, but staff was cut. With the new wave of budget cuts, I know at least one high school is cutting its librarian. And one middle school.

We are losing our librarian next year.

What does this mean?

It means, everything other than checking out, checking in, and shelving, is not going to happen.

Well, I gotta go to work now.

Later!

Senior Moment

Took me four tries to get the debit card accepted at the grocery store this afternoon.

Seems the trick is to use the DEBIT card, and not the CREDIT card...

Yes, yes, I know the credit card will do debits, but I don't know the PIN "number" (from the Dept. of Redundacy Dept.) right off hand.

Albertsons is reorganizing their store. I'm thinking, the reason I go there is because I know the store. If I have to learn a new store, why don't I switch to a CLOSER store, like Vons, which is about two miles closer. Eh?

And at that I forgot the dry milk...

Messy Books

I'm not sure what the deal is with this, but I ran across this set of pictures of the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository Roosevelt Warehouse from a link on reddit. It looks like they need to fix the roof, or something!

Strange

C. went up to Mass this morning, in itself an exceptional thing. She thought she recognized someone there, a woman we went to high school with. It turned out to BE her. I remember this girl because she talked me into dancing with her at the Senior Picnic, and it was one of only three times I've ever danced in my LIFE, outside of cotillion.

I wonder if I would recognize her, I don't even recognize MYSELF in the mirror!

Rainy Sunday

There's has been a gentle rain falling all afternoon. Mr. Sun was peeking out this morning, but I wasn't fooled, no sir!

We had rolled tacos at Palominos on Convoy for lunch, then went down to Balboa Park to visit the Model Railroad Museum. There has been a lot of new stuff added since I was there last!

I was quite taken with this cabin scene:



There is a little pipe organ inside this church!



After the trains we walked over to the reflecting pond and reflected on the koi.



There was a big black catfish-looking thing in there, a kid said she thought it was a shark.

After looking around the Botanical Building a few minutes, we drove over to Mission Trails Park to see how much water was flowing over the dam.



The water was brown. And a little sudsy.



Matt climbed up on the dam for a better view.



I used the flash and it looks kinda dramatic, don't it?

That's not the moon, it's a water drop. It's raining, remember?

Glory Be!

A bit of good news!

I visited the dentist on a business mission with the latest statement from the dental insurance company. The latest one wherefore they didn't pay. But, the dentist said that the insurance HAS finally paid most of the $1,200 dental bill that has been hanging, HANGING, I SAY, over my head for the last six months! And gave me a receipt (see next paragraph) to prove it!

Only $180.00 for my share, so I slipped 'em twenty bucks today.

C. found a white chocolate heart from Lorie's wedding that I had somehow managed not to eat.



So I ate it.

I was lurking in the garage, looking for an HO scale window, when I discovered a Tamiya Lotus Super Seven plastic model kit. Huh. I VAGUELY remember buying that. So that makes THREE plastic kits I haven't built, the other two being Maschinen Krieger Fledermaus, a Krote, and a Mercenary figure set. Oh, that's FOUR.

I also mowed the weeds today, watered the two marigolds, gave the plumeria a good stare, and surreptitiously trimmed a tree-like bush hanging over the fence a bit.