Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I went riding this evening after work, but there are no pictures. About five miles out, I realized that I’d left the camera on top of the filing cabinet by the back door. D’oh!

I rode down to the Rose Bowl to meet up with some other riders, but on the way there, I saw smoke from a brush fire over the hills behind the Bowl. So as it turned out, Verna was the only one who showed, since the others she had talked to had decided not to go after seeing the smoke. So we rode around a few times. The north end of the loop was kind of smoky, so it wasn’t good for riding hard. We tried going up Lida, but the smoke was thicker up there, so we bailed and headed back. Along the way, we passed another hot-rod mailbox in the neighborhood there. And I was very disappointed that I’d forgotten the camera. So we’ll have to go back to get a picture for my collection.

After a few laps, the smoke was getting thicker, so I bailed and headed home by way of South Pasadena and San Marino. There was no smoke there, and the ride home was fairly pleasant.

So it was an all right ride, but not especially good.

31 miles.
cycling

Automated systems can be pretty stupid sometimes. There is some earthquake activity going on in the Gulf of California right now, and it’s generating a fair number of messages through the Earthquake Notification Service (aka, “My Pet Project“). In the messages, it gives the location of the earthquake relative to some local landmarks and cities in the area. And now I’m getting back nasty messages from various mail systems like this:

This email has violated the RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.
and Quarantine entire message has been taken on 8/4/2009 2:33:29 PM.
Message details:
Sender: ens@usgs.gov;
Recipient: redacted
Subject: 2009-08-03 18:40:50 REVISED: (Mw 6.2) GULF OF CALIFORNIA
29.4 -113.7

Or this:

A message sent from “ens@usgs.gov” to “redacted” with a subject of “2009-08-03 18:40:50 REVISED: (Mw 6.2) GULF OF CALIFORNIA 29.4 -113.7″ has been blocked as it contains profane language.

All this because the earthquake happened to be near the town of Guerrero Negro.

I haven’t seen anything like this since the last time we had a big earthquake near the Virgin Islands.

Last year I went to the Los Angeles County Fair, and at the time, Susan and I hatched plans to enter my perfect blueberry muffins in the fair this year. Susan is out of the picture now, but the fair is coming up. So I decided to still put the plan into action. And I’ve even improved the recipe a bit since last year.

The contest rules don’t specify that the recipe has to be completely original, but I didn’t want to enter a recipe that I didn’t make up myself. The only exception here is the black walnut bread. That’s my grandmother’s recipe. I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but I didn’t make it up, either. The blueberry muffins and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are my recipes that I’ve developed right here in my own kitchen.

I think this will be an interesting adventure.