Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today we took a trip to the O.C. so that Lucinda could visit with Grandma and Grandpa. It’s also a chance for us to get out and do some non-kid stuff for an afternoon. So we went to see “Finding Neverland“. It was good and entertaining, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that we got to go out and be a ‘couple’ again, rather than having to be parents. So after the movie, we were faced with the usual problem we have when we go there. What is there to do around here? So we did the thing that they have in abundance there. We went shopping! Of course, all the places look the same. Just big faceless malls. But who can argue that tattooing hasn’t hit the mainstream when we walked into a mall in Orange County and saw a billboard with a prominent tattoo theme?

Our tattoo artist friend Shannon had her fortieth birthday party this evening. It was at a little tapas restaurant in Old Town Pasadena. As one might expect, it drew an eclectic collection of characters. It was a fun time. They had a flamenco show there, and they made a point of dragging everyone who was having a birthday up on the stage to participate.

Also, quite unwittingly, I took one photo that was kind of funky and arty and quite the sort of thing that I’d like to be able to do. It was an accident, but here it is.

Today I did the Foothill Club ride, which was from Arcadia to Griffith Park and back. I met Gene at 7:30 and we rode down to Live Oak Park in Temple City because we were supposed to meet Newton there, but when we got there, there was no sign of him. So we headed up to Arcadia to meet the rest of the group.

We got started on the real ride at 8:30, and we headed out across Pasadena and Eagle Rock. We took Colorado Blvd across Eagle Rock, which is the shortest route, but not really the most pleasant route. But it wasn’t too bad.

When we got into Glendale, the street was being torn up for repaving, so we took a little detour to avoid the bad street. When we crossed the Verdugo Wash, we noticed that there were little periodic waves in the water coming down the wash. This looked odd, but I’m sure there is a good reason for it.

Today’s flat tire went to Jerry. He’s now the latest addition to the Flat Tire Gallery.

When we got to Griffith Park, we went the back way up around the Zoo to the golf course. We stopped for a snack at the golf course coffee shop. Not bad, but the services was slow. We were there for almost an hour.

Leaving the park, we took Los Feliz Blvd back. We stopped off at the Costco there to see the site of the big train wreck that happened last week. They had cleaned up most of it, but there were still train parts around in the parking lot, and the damaged Union Pacific engine was still there.

Finally, we headed home on Colorado and Orange Grove. It was a pleasant ride.

52 miles.

Technorati tags: cycling

We took Lucinda down to Caltech this afternoon for one of the “Saturdays at 2:00” kids’ programs. Today’s show was Lazer Vaudeville, which was an amusing mishmash of juggling, light shows and a little bit of acrobatics. It was very entertaining, although Lucinda was a little bit scared at the beginning when Alonzo the fluorescent dragon came out on the stage to introduce the show. Still, she had a fun time, so it was all right.

Working in the earthquake business, my office is like a lightning rod for cranks. There are many, many well-meaning people out there who all think they have solved the problem of earthquake prediction.

Yet another of these well-meaning people has been contacting our office recently. So we invited him in in the hope that just having a chance to explain himself to an audience might help him to feel that he was being listened to.

Of course, his presentation was very much classic pseudoscience. He had data in the form of millivolt-range measurements of voltages in the earth. From this, he made the conceptual leap to assuming that the slight differences he was measuring were somehow related to earthquakes. As one of his handouts said:

It has been shown that large earthquakes can be detected months in advance. This was demonstrated by Chinese scientists in the Beijing Seismological Bureau in 1976

Actually, so such thing has ever been demonstrated, yet he acted like this was a well-established fact.

To be sure, there is actually some serious research in the area of measuring electrical properties of the Earth related to earthquakes, but it’s thus far not produced any dramatic results. In particular, Dr. Anthony Frasier-Smith is considered to be the foremost expert on electromagnetic phenomena associated with earthquakes. But when we mentioned his name, our guest said that Frasier-Smith had already dismissed his ideas. Then he did the classic crank thing of invoking Galileo.

Never a dull day at my office.

I see that both Karl Elvis and Laura Lemay are doing the Technorati tags thing on their blogs. Sensing a bandwagon, I thought I should find out more about this. Turns out that I’m already in it, and never knew it. My blog categories are all automagically turned into tags when I post. As an example, look at stuff tagged as ‘life in l.a.‘ and there we are.

Of course, putting tag links on posts is a bit of a problem. I tried editing some posts and inserting the links by hand, but that’s kind of a pain. Ideally, there should be some Wordpress plugin that just makes a footer on each post with links to the tags based on the categories of the post. But if such a beast exists, I haven’t found it yet. And I don’t feel like hacking Wordpress right now to add it myself. So this will likely remain a problem for a while.

And there you have it.

Lucinda asked to go up on the roof today. Doesn’t everyone let their five-year-olds go up on the roof? So we went up together. And since we were going up, I brought my tools along. The city had moved our electric service to a new pole, and the service wire was hanging a little low, so I figured I could just move the clamp up on the pipe thingy to get the wire off the gutter.

So there you have it. An idyllic day having quality time with our child up on the roof of our house…

Technorati tags: home repair | kids

It was another perfect day here in Southern California, and perfect for riding. Today’s ride was a relatively flat one. We headed east a bit and then south through Temple City. That was where Jason got the obligatory flat tire. It’s just not a complete bike ride unless someone gets a flat.

After the flat, we soldiered on. We had to take a little detour because part of the usual route is under water due to the recent rains. So we went a different way, passing “Nice Guy Tattoo”. Then we got on the Rio Hondo bike path and headed south.

When we got to Whittier Narrows, we got off the bike path and started back north through Rosemead. This is where we passed the Green Acres Lodge, which is the convalescent hospital where Curly Howard died.

Continuing north, we passed through San Gabriel and San Marino, and finally back into Pasadena. Our snack stop was at Il Fornaio in Old Town.

After a brief rest, we took the Prospect Ave route around the Rose Bowl, and then Arroyo up into Altadena. We got on to Altadena Drive for the long downhill back to the park. That was where we passed the ‘Walsh house‘ from “Beverly Hills 90210″. Then we came down the hill and we were done.

It was a fun time. 40 miles.

Technorati tags: cycling

And it’s not just on my license plate.

After the ride today, I noticed a small aneurism on my front tire. So I headed out to the bike shop and got a replacement. I also got four new brake pads. They are Clark’s CP200 for the front and CP202 for the back. Steve at Open Road recommended having softer ones on the back. So now I’m ready for tomorrow’s ride.

Today I did ride in the Hollywood Hills with Gene. It was Sunset Plaza, which is a place I used to ride a lot back in the late ’80s, when Cathy and I lived in Hollywood. So today I brought Gene over to see how much fun the hills can be.

We started out with the usual ride across Eagle Rock. Gene declined to go up the terrifyingly steep hill, but we still went past it just to look. Then we headed across the L.A. River into Los Feliz. We crossed the Shakespeare Bridge, and then headed south into Hollywood. We took Fountain Ave across Hollywood, which was the epitome of the gritty urban cycling experience. We even passed L. Ron Hubbard Way, which the L.A. City Council renamed for the late charlatan some years ago.

We then went into West Hollywood, and then up onto the Sunset Strip. We saw the restaurant from the final scene of “Annie Hall”. Riding a bike down the Sunset Strip always seems a bit odd to me, and it’s really not a lot of fun. There is a lot of traffic, and the road is kind of rough. But all was forgiven when we turned on Sunset Plaza and headed up the hill.

The funny thing about bike riding in Hollywood is that it gets really quiet and pleasant as soon as you go up a hill. Once we turned off Sunset, it was very nice. Just a quiet winding street with lots of very large houses perched on the hillside. There was one house in particular that was really impressive. It was huge, and it just dominated the hill. Anyway, it was a nice ride up the hill there, and from the crest, we got a nice view of Century City and the winter smog.

From the top of the hill on Sunset Plaza, we headed down into Laurel Canyon, passing near Wonderland Ave, which was the scene of the Wonderland Murders. Then we crossed over Laurel Canyon, passing by Houdini’s old house and headed up Willow Glen Rd, which climbs up the side of Laurel Canyon to Mt. Olympus and then down into Nichols Canyon.

When we got down into Nichols Canyon, we took a left and went up Nichols Canyon Rd, which brought us up another big hill, ultimately coming out on Mulholland Drive. From there, we headed east, taking the long downhill into Cahuenga Pass, and then down into Burbank. We had a short stop at Priscilla’s for a drink, and then we headed home.

The essential question was whether to take the northern route home up Hospital Hill, or the southern route through Eagle Rock. Gene suggested the middle route up Mountain Ave in Glendale. We’ve passed this hill many times on the regular Sunday rides and never gone up it, so I figured it was worth a try. Yow. It turned out to be a much harder climb than I’d anticipated. I finally had to say ‘uncle’ and shift to a lower gear to make the last bit to the top. But the view was nice. The road was closed, since it had some damage from the rains, so it was nice and quiet.

Finally, we headed down the big hill back into Pasadena. It was a fun ride.

54 miles.

Technorati tags: cycling

Todays ride was “Toluca Lake”. We started out going straight west, over the historic Colorado Street Bridge into Eagle Rock and then on into Glendale. Then we went south a bit through the L.A. Equestrian Center and into Burbank. Our snack stop was at Priscilla’s in Burbank. After that, we continued west just a bit into Toluca Lake just to pass by Bob Hope’s old house. Then we came back by Forest Lawn and onto the L.A. River bike path. Apparently, something had happened along the part where the bike path runs along the freeway, as there was a fire truck, an ambulance, and a couple of Highway Patrol cars there. And also, one of the light poles was knocked over. Finally, we headed home through Eagle Rock. When we crossed into South Pasadena, we got a nice view of Mt. Baldy, complete with snow. Overall, it was a very pleasant ride.

43 miles.

Technorati tags: cycling

Today we went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum. This is an exhibit of real bodies, preserved with plastic and on display for us to see in gory detail. It was really quite interesting. Cathy’s friend Cathy from Texas came here for the weekend to see it, and she liked it a lot. So overall, it was an interesting adventure.

A while back, I had the number one match in Google for the phrase “I hate Texas”. That was before I moved our web site to the new domain name. After the move, Google crawled us again, but that page had fallen to #73. But now that we’ve been on our new domain name for over four months, it’s climbing again. Today I see that my page is now up to number 34 in a search for “I hate Texas“. Things are looking up.

As I noted a while back, our house is falling apart. We managed to make it through the torrential rains without too much leakage, and today the roofing guy came out to fix the roof. He put a new roof on the laundry room and put a new crown on top of the house. But when he came down, he said we should have a look at our chimney, as it appears to be falling apart. I went up and took some pictures of the cracks in it. Most likely, they were caused by earthquakes, as our house has experienced several significant earthquakes nearby over the years.

Anyway, I guess we will have to decide if we want to do something about this.

I saw that Ryan at News to Hughes joined up with Google Adsense recently. I serve about four times the traffic of his site, so I thought I’d give it a try. So far, I’ve only put ads on three sets of pages:

http://www.1134.org/stan/dot-com - My gallery of dead dot-com web pages.
http://www.1134.org/stan/tattoo-faq/display.php - The interactive database of tattoo artist reviews
http://www.1134.org/stan/tattoos/gallery - Photo albums of tattoo conventions

These are the pages that people mostly seem to come to from Google searches, so they seemed like good places to try it out. And I see today that I got my first $0.03 from a click-through. Woo-Hoo!

Lucinda lost her first tooth this evening. It’s been loose for a few weeks, and it finally gave up and came out. Lucinda asked Mommy to pull it, and it came right out.

Today we went to the Skeptics Society talk. The speaker was Jared Diamond talking about his new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. We’ve seen him before, and he’s an engaging speaker. I also read his other book, Guns, Germs, and Steel and enjoyed it immensely. From what he said today, it sounds like his new book will be worth a read. Also, he said that the L.A. County Natural History Museum is going to be doing a special exhibit on this topic starting May 1.

It’s been raining for three days straight here, and the lake is back in our yard. Today was the biggest we’ve seen it get in nearly 10 years in this house.

Today we went to the big Body Art Expo at the L.A. County Fairgrounds. As tattoo conventions go, this one is kind of lame in that it’s not put on by tattoo people, but at the same time, all our tattoo friends are usually there. We took Lucinda along, since she said that she wanted to go. We wandered around there and visited with everyone we knew. Lucinda got a little temporary henna tattoo, and we generally had a fun time.

We had an earthquake this morning. M4.4 centered near Fontana. This wasn’t a Big Deal as these things go, but it did make for a busy morning at my office. The non-seismologists at Caltech tend to measure earthquakes by the ‘news truck’ scale, and by that measure, this was only a ‘two truck’ earthquake. Still, it made a traffic spike on the Earthquake Hazards Program web servers, and generally made things busy for a while.