Stan’s Obligatory Blog

So it’s Halloween night. Lucinda and Mommy and Aunt Maggi got dressed up in their costumes and went out with some of the neighborhood kids. They had a good haul. Aunt Maggi even had to come back th the house to get some bigger bags so they could carry all the candy.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I did my usual thing. I set up my telescope in the driveway and handed out candy. This year was good, since Mars is well-placed in the evening right now. I’ve been doing the ‘have some candy and look through the telescope’ thing since 1998, and it’s taken on a life of its own. A lot of the kids and their parents remember me and make a point to stop by our house so they can look.

It was a fun evening for all of us.

Today I went out to Beverly Hills for a safety fair at the weekly farmers’ market. This means to sit at a table, hand out earthquake information, and answer the three big questions that everyone asks:

• When is the Big One going to happen?
  We don’t know
• Is my house near a fault?
  Yes
• Where are there faults around here?
  See those trees over there?

It’s actually kind of fun. Particularly when it’s in Beverly Hills. The town where you see two Rolls-Royces in a driveway, each with “My Other Car is a Rolls-Royce” on the back.

The Beverly Hills Police were there, showing off their rescue vehicle. Since they almost certainly need such a tank-like vehicle on a daily basis. The Fire Department was there with their Urban Search and Rescue vehicle. I didn’t see the Mountain Rescue Team this time, but I’ve seen them before. I bet the city services there are great.

Today is our 17th anniversary. It’s the actual day and everything. So after we dropped Lucinda off at Aunt Maggi’s house, we went up to Long Beach.

On the way, we stopped off at Westminster Mall. Cathy used to work at the Republic Federal Savings branch there, so we wanted to see what had moved in to that space. We were surprised to see that the space looked almost unchanged, even though it is now the ‘City Hall at the Mall’ for the city of Westminster. The vault was even still there. It was a fun little trip down Memory Lane.

After the stop at the mall, we went to the old McDonnell Douglas plant down the street so I could recreate the picture from my going-away party there, back in 1984.

When we got to Long Beach, our plan was to have dinner at Hamburger Henry. While this may seem an odd choice, it has great sentimental value for us. Our wedding was in Long Beach, and Cathy spent most of the evening visiting with relatives and friends there. So she never had a chance to eat her dinner. And when it was all over, she was hungry. So we headed out at 1:00AM looking for something to eat. We ended up at Hamburger Henry.

While we were there, we noticed that a lot of the people there were dressed in costumes. Then we realized that it was the Saturday night before Halloween. In all the wedding planning, that had never occurred to us. And we said that maybe we shouldn’t have changed before going there. We would have fit right in, dressed as a bride and groom.

So we got there, but there was something else there. We asked at some of the neighboring stores, and they told us that Hamburger Henry had been gone for something like eight years. The land was just too valuable to use for just selling hamburgers, so the owner had leased it to a developer and the old place was gone.

We ended up having our burgers at another place nearby. It was still a fun evening. And we got to meet a hot-pink dog while we were there.

Today we took Lucinda down to Orange County so she could spend the night at her Aunt Maggi’s house. On the way, we stopped off in Huntington Beach so we could visit my mother’s grave. When I was a kid, my mother used to talk about how she was looking forward to the day when I was grown and would have grandchildren for her to dote on. Sadly, she never got the chance. She died in 1994, five years before Lucinda was born.

I’ve told Lucinda about her, and since we were going to be passing near the cemetery, we stopped off so that she could meet her other grandma. She said that she felt sad that she never met her grandma. I told her about how excited and happy her grandma would have been if she’d had a chance to meet Lucinda.

Today’s ride was a hilly one. Just the way I like it. In my racing days, I liked riding up hills because it gave me a chance to spank the other riders and show them who’s boss. In those days, it was a Point of Honor to be the first to the top of every hill. Now, I’m no longer the fastest hill climber, but I still like riding up hills anyway. So whenever there’s a hilly ride, I go on it.

Today’s ride was just a big loop through La Cañda and Glendale with some big hills both coming and going. We met at the park in Alhambra.

We started out going north, passing the Rose Bowl and JPL before the first hill, up to Verdugo Blvd. Then we went down into Montrose and Glendale. At the bottom of that hill, we took a left and headed up Mountain Ave. This is a nice, steep climb. The top part has been closed to cars for almost a year, but the sign today said it was open again. Still, it was a nice ride, since there isn’t much traffic up there.

Coming down the other side, we took some side streets to get back to Chevy Chase at the top of the hill between La Cañda and Glendale. Then we went up and over again to come down off the hill back in Pasadena and the Rose Bowl. From there, we went south and then turned up Glenoaks, which was another nice climb up, and then we turned and came down San Rafael, passing the old Seismology Lab that Charles Richter set up back in the 1930s.

At the bottom of the hill, we went south a bit and came back into South Pasadena. We stopped for a snack at Busters, right next to the train station. Then it was time for the ride home. We went back up past the Rose Bowl and then took Windsor Road up to Altadena Drive. Then we went across Altadena and down back to Victory Park and we were done.

47 miles
cycling

Lucinda’s school had a Halloween Carnival on Friday evening. Each class had a booth with carnival-type games for the kids to play. Of course, the whole thing was to raise money for the school.

Lucinda and Mommy dressed up in their costumes. Mom is small enough to get her costumes in the children’s section, so they went shopping for them together.

When we got to the school, it was pandemonium. Just the way it’s supposed to be at these things. We found one of the other kids from her class and his family, and we all went around and watched the kids play the games.

We had to do a shift at Lucinda’s class’ booth. When we did this, she decided that she wanted to do it. So we showed her how, and she ran the game for all the other kids. She was really quite good at it. And we didn’t have to do it. So everyone was happy.

It’s our 17th anniversary. Wait - no, it’s not. That’s not until next Saturday. But Lucinda is going to her aunt’s house for the weekend, so we decided to do our official big night out tonight so she could come along. She wanted to go to “the restaurant with the moving floor” - L.A. Prime at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Doesn’t everyone let their six-year-old choose how they are going to celebrate their anniversary?

So we made a reservation and headed down there. We’ve gone there for New Year’s Eve before, but I think this was the first time we’d gotten there before dark. Just outside on the street we saw the remnants of a day of filming. There was a rack of odd-looking mopeds and lots of strange-looking potted plants on the sidewalk. The hotel people told us that it was for “Mission: Impossible III”. Since I doubt we’ll see that, we will probably never know if they were right or not.

Once we got inside, we headed for the restaurant. As always, the food and service were superb. The view was only so-so this time, since it was a foggy evening in L.A. But Lucinda still had a fun time going around looking out the windows. And after dinner we all headed to the revolving lounge to look at the moving floor.

Overall, it was a fun evening

Route map and photo locations

Today I got to play ride leader for the Sunday bike ride. I made up a route to go to the Hollywood Hills and pass by the former T. Marvin Hatley Estate. T. Marvin Hatley was a composer, and he did the music for a lot of movies from about 1930 to about 1950, and he wrote the Laurel and Hardy theme song. His house had a very large sign painted on the front wall that said, “The T. Marvin Hatley Estate”.

We started out taking the direct route west on Orange Grove, Colorado, and Yosemite across Eagle Rock. Then we turned and went down Eagle Rock Blvd. That was where we saw the church sign asking if we wanted to spend eternity “smoking or non-smoking”.

Turning off on Fletcher, we crossed the L.A. River into Los Feliz. A quick bit on Rowena and St. George brought us to Franklin Ave and the Shakespeare Bridge.

Continuing west on Franklin, we passed the über-creepy Scientology Celebrity Center and moved on into the center of Hollywood. There, we took a right on Cahuenga and headed up into the pass. The road was right next to the Hollywood Freeway, and it was loud, but there was very little traffic on the road with us, so it was all right.

At the top of the pass, we turned off and crossed the bridge to get to Mulholland Drive. From there, there are two ways to climb the hill. Mulholland is a long and gradual climb, and Woodrow Wilson is two steep sections with a flat bit in between. The general consenus is that Mulholland is the easier way to go. So we took a right there and headed up Woodrow Wilson.

When we got to the top of the hill, we stopped to catch our breath, and I had a look to see if I could remember which house was the former T. Marvin Hatley Estate. Since Mr. Hatley died in 1986, I figured that the new owners of the house would have probably removed the painted sign on the wall. In the end, I think I identified the house, but being that this was the first time I’d been up there in 15 years, my memory was a bit fuzzy. And being cross-eyed and seeing stars from the hill climb probably didn’t help.

A left turn on Mulholland took us back down to Cahuenga Pass. Along the way, we passed the Hollywood Bowl overlook, and we also got to dimly see the Hollywood sign through the fog. Then we crossed the bridge over the freeway. That was where I saw the signal-box graffiti about “So many things, too little poetry”.

Next, we headed up Wonder View toward Lake Hollywood. This is another stiff climb, but it’s worth it to avoid having to ride any more on Cahuenga. It’s quiet, and there is very little traffic. Also, at the top of the hill we got to see the bright-orange house. You don’t see one of those every day.

Heading down into Burbank, we passed Warner Bros and the somewhat shabby-looking Starlet Apartments. Then we stopped at Priscilla’s for a bagel and orange juice. They have very good fresh-squeezed orange juice there. And it’s definitely worth the extra $0.25 to get the large size. If they offered a “Super Size” I’d even get that.

After our snack stop, we came home by the standard route across Glenoaks and up Verdugo to La Cañada. Then down Descanso and Chevy Chase and back into Pasadena on Woodbury Road. Finally, we went down New York Drive and came back to the park.

49 miles.
cycling

Today we went to two kids’ birthday parties, back-to-back.

The first party was a Michael’s in Glendale. The kids all made a tic-tac-toe set, which involved much painting and gluing and pizza and cake. It looked like they had fun.

After that, it was on to the Glendale Galleria and Build-A-Bear. This is apparently quite the sensation with the young kids these days.

When we got there, they were just getting started. Each kid had a $20 budget to work with. They all started out picking out their animals. They have rows of bins with unstuffed animals ready to be picked. Lucinda picked out the rabbit, which turned out to be $20 for the animal alone. So we were on the hook for any accessories. And with racks of stuffed-animal clothing, shoes, hats and even little “Livestrong” bracelets for the bears, there were guaranteed to be accessories. A whole store full of accessories. Oh, the humanity…

They actually did a very good job with the birthday party. They had the kids singing songs while they stuffed the animals. They had them pick out little hearts to put inside the animals. They did everything to keep the kids entertained and engaged through the whole process. I guess that’s what we’re really paying for here.

Anyway, the kids had a good time. And as we were leaving, I noticed that the mall had thoughtfully provided an AED unit just outside Build-A-Bear, perfect for parents when they realize they just spent $50 on a stuffed animal.

After that, we all went to dinner at Islands. The kids had one large table, and the adults got two small tables. And cake was had by all.

Today was the big push to finish the window-removal project. Cathy got a piece of paneling on Friday, so I cut the old paneling around the window to make a smooth edge. Then I cut the new paneling to fit the opening and nailed it up. The final bit was to put some caulking in the cracks around the edge to fill the gaps. And now it is ready to paint.

Just saw this on Susie Bright today:

susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/10/food_sex_and_mu.html

And just to make it complete, have a look at:

www.cookingforengineers.com

I gotta go eat now…

Since we went on the Tour of Laurel and Hardy last weekend, I was reading a bit about them today, and I ran across this:

“Trivia: The composer of the famous Laurel and Hardy theme song was T. Marvin Hatley.”

Years ago, I used to ride a lot in the Hollywood Hills. I would go down Mulholland Drive to Cahuenga Pass and then make a loop by going up Woodrow Wilson Drive. This was a steep hill, and by the time I got to the top, I was usually seeing stars. And at the top, there was a house with a wall in front with large letters spelling out “The T. Marvin Hatley Estate”. For fifteen years, I’ve wondered who T. Marvin Hatley was, and now I know. Here is his biography from imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0368943/

Of course this means another bike ride. I need to go back there and do the climb up Woodrow Wilson to see his house again, even though it probably doesn’t have the letters on the wall any more.

I saw this today on Len’s blog: This Day in Music

On the day I was born, the #1 song was “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin. On the day I turned 18, it was “You Light Up My Life” by Debbie Boone. And people wonder why I immediately took to punk when I first heard it in 1977…

Today we took Lucinda and her friend Lucy to the California Science Center for the Magic Exhibit.

We saw the ‘disembodied head’ illusion, the ‘heavy crate’ illusion, the ‘levitating chair’ illusion, and a whole host of card tricks. It was a fun time. There are more pictures in Lucinda’s photo album.

Route map and photo locations

Since the weather forecast for Sunday involves rain, I thought that a ride today might be just the thing. Gene and Philippe were game, so we set out from the park at 8:30.

The plan was to do the grand tour of Laurel and Hardy, visiting both their grave sites and the staircase where they filmed “The Music Box“.

We started out going west through Eagle Rock and Glendale. When we got to Burbank, we took some small streets behind IKEA and then got on Burbank Blvd. Crossing the freeway, we turned off onto Victory Blvd. That was where we saw our first T&A. It was T&A Hobby Lobby. We decided that this was in the same class as S&M Liquor, and I may have to start a gallery of funny business names.

Continuing on, we got to Valhalla Memorial Park. I got out my portable GPS unit. I’d written down the coordinates of Ollie’s grave, but it turned out that I’d written them down in decimal degrees, and the GPS unit was displaying degrees, minutes, and seconds. Not having a calculator or the GPS unit manual handy, we were stuck. So I just looked for the low wall and clump of trees I’d seen in the Google Maps satellite view. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at seat-of-the-pants orienteering, and a peek over the wall brought us Ollie’s plaque, placed by his grave by the Sons of the Desert. We paid our respects to Ollie, reflecting on seeing his movies when we were kids, and also about how we was not very old when he died.

When we left, we noticed a set of four adjacent markers for four members of the Stiff family. Talk about having an unfortunate name.

Heading south through North Hollywood and Burbank, we passed the Warner Bros ‘ranch’ where they have their big outdoor sets. Then we went past the main Warner Bros studio and turned on Forest Lawn Dr.

At the main entrance to Forest Lawn, we turned and went up the hill. Just above the church we came to the terraced area where Stanley is buried. We had to walk our bikes up two sets of stairs to find him. We paid our respects to Stan, remarking on how they were among the pioneers of film comedy.

Leaving Forest Lawn, we went up the back side of Mt Hollywood. We rode up the long hill and then down the front side, passing through the Griffith Park tunnel and coming out by the Greek Theater. Continuing down the hill, we came into Silver Lake and Sunset Blvd.

We rode down Sunset, but somehow we missed the turnoff for Vendome St. Before we knew it, we were at Alvarado and we realized that we’d gone too far. Since it was getting late, we didn’t have time to go back, so seeing the stairs will have to wait for another time.

We took Glendale Blvd north to Fletcher, and then took Fletcher to Eagle Rock Blvd. That was where we saw the last bit of T&A. This time it was T&A Seafood.

Going north, we went around Occidental College and then took Meridian St across Eagle Rock. At the end, we took Ave 64 down to York and took a left to go over the bridge to South Pasadena. Then we took Monterey Road across San Marino to Sierra Madre Blvd. Then it was straight north on Sierra Madre back to the park.

52 miles
cycling

I noticed today that I had close to a thousand hits on this one blog picture from last year. So I had a look at the server logs to see how it was being referenced.

Turns out that a Google Image Search for “parallel parking” returns my picture as the #14 result, right on the first page. I’m always glad to make it on to the first page of any search. Besides, I was extremely pleased with the parking job I did that day.

Today I saw a pointer to this:

www.defensetech.org/archives/001862.html

He has some pretty funny security posters there. So of course I have to show my all-time favorite. It’s from McDonnell Douglas, circa 1984. These posters went up on a Monday morning, and by noon they were already disappearing. By the end of their two-week run, there were only a few of them left.

I actually have a whole collection of security posters, mostly from the late ’80s. I made friends with our department secretary at Hughes Aircraft. She gave me the posters when they were going to be thrown out. It’s all part of our collection of Cold War Memorabilia.

I get lots of spam. That was perhaps the best thing about my domain being broken. It cut down the flow of spam for a bit. But now my cosmo.pasadena.ca.us domain is fixed, and the spam is back in force.

This is something funny. Here is a guy who took a bunch of those ‘This Stock is About to EXPLODE!!!” spams and set up something to track the stocks:

www.spamstocktracker.com

I don’t think I need to say that they’ve pretty much all lost…

In other news, I got two new pages for my dead dot-coms gallery today. That brings the total collection up to 385.

Today’s ride was a tourist trip to see a piece of Americana. We rode down to Downey to see the last surviving original McDonald’s restaurant. It is the oldest operating McDonald’s, and it was part of the original chain started by the McDonald brothers before they met Ray Kroc and history was made.

The ride down was pretty straightforward. We went south through San Marino and San Gabriel to Whittier Narrows. From there we got on Rosemead Blvd and took that south all the way to Downey. Along the way, it turned into Lakewood Blvd, and before we knew it, we were there.

The McDonald’s is at the corner of Lakewood and Firestone, at 10207 Lakewood Blvd. The sign out front proclaims, “sold over 500 million”. Heh.

We had a look around the little museum there. We saw the “Order your EXTRA French Fries now!” ad. I guess that was the beginning of “Super Size Me“. We also saw an early picture of Ronald McDonald as portrayed by Willard Scott, who later became famous on The Today Show.

The general consensus was that the history was interesting, but we didn’t want to actually eat at McDonald’s, so we headed back up Lakewood Blvd. That was where Matt got a flat. We stopped on the side of the road, and he put in his spare tube. He pumped up the tire, but when we got on to start riding, it had gone flat again. So we patched the first tube and he put it back in. Then he pumped up the tire and we were on our way.

We rode a bit until we saw a Starbuck’s. We stopped for coffees, juices, and muffins. Then, when we were ready to leave, Matt’s tire was flat again. This time he put in another rider’s spare tube, and we were soon on our way.

Continuing north into Pico Rivera, Matt got one more flat. We stopped on the side of the road and he put in yet another spare tube. Several of the punctures had been on the inside of the tire, which made the rim tape suspect. He cut up an emergency tire boot and put pieces of it over the spoke holes. Then we were on our way again. Matt’s four flat tires were an unprecedented occurrance, so I’ve made a special photo gallery for them in the Flat Tire Gallery.

We took a small detour in Pico Rivera to visit Dork St. Then we got on the San Gabriel River bike path and rode over Whittier Narrows Dam.

Above the dam, we took the cutoff bike path over to Durfee Ave and took that back up into South San Gabriel. Then we took Walnut Grove Ave north up to Las Tunas. Going east a bit, we got on Muscatel Ave and took that until it ended at Duarte Road. A left turn took us into San Marino. We rode a bit up some small streets to get to Huntington Drive. Then we went west to Santa Anita Ave and took that north back into Pasadena, where it became Altadena Drive.

At this point, Jason and I headed east on Sierra Madre and then down to Orange Grove and out to Arcadia. We went to Highland Oaks and then came back by way of Sierra Madre Blvd.

47 miles.
cycling

Last night one of my computers fell over dead. It was a very definite dead-kind of falling over. Sadly, it was the main earthquake detection system for Southern California. Not the sort of thing we want to remain dead for long.

We switched over to the backup system, but I still wanted to get the main machine back up. So I hatched a plan. The problem was the big external RAID disk that died. I managed to ‘borrow’ another one from another machine. So I went in to the office this afternoon.

The old RAID was beeping and had red lights on it. I hooked up the borrowed one and did the setup. Then I started restoring stuff from backups.

When it was all said and done, I’d spent a good part of today working on this. But it’s all right. I like my job. It’s fun. And the occasional crazy day after an earthquake or a computer failure is just an occupational hazard. Although I have to say that a busy day after an earthquake is more exciting. With that there’s more of a sense of something big is happening, whereas a computer failure is more of just a pain. But mostly, I just like the feeling that my job is something that is Useful to Society and also is part of the Advancement of Science.