Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few days ago, I got a reminder email from the Academy Museum that the “Cyberpunk” exhibit was closing Sunday. I hadn’t even heard about this, so I decided I needed to go see this. So I made arrangements with my friend John to go see it on Friday.

The “Cyberpunk” exhibit was smaller than I’d hoped, but still very good. There was a video presentation with clips from films from “Tron” to “Ex Machina” to the present day. Then, in the second floor gallery, they had some artifacts, with a phone booth from “Blade Runner”, a costume from “Tron”, concept art drawings and props from several movies. All in all, it was entertaining.

And when we came out of the second floor gallery, we saw that the big 50th anniversary exhibit about “Jaws” was next door. So we went to see that. There were a lot of original props from the movie, and video presentations about topics from making the film, including some Super-8 film clips taken on the set. One piece was about John Williams and the music. They had a little keyboard with keys that lit up as cues so you could play the shark music right there. There was also a montage of clips from many, many films and TV shows with a “…gonna need a bigger…” scenes. Which gives an idea of the cultural impact of the movie.

Overall, it was a fun afternoon.

There’s a vent for the bathroom ceiling fan that somehow got stuck open some months ago. Lately, I’ve been hearing bird noises coming out of the fan when it’s not running, and today I saw the bird. I guess this means they built a nest in there, so I probably won’t be running the fan until the baby birds grow up and fly away. And then I guess I should close the little flap.

Being retired, we have been spending a lot of time at our house at Lake Arrowhead. We’ve been going up there during the week all year. But this time, we were up in the mountains on Tuesday evening when I got a message from Lulu that there was a fire starting near home. She sent me a picture of flames visible over Pasadena High School, which is just a few blocks from our house. An hour later, the evacuation order came in. We were already evacuated, but that was just happenstance, and we were sort of trapped there, unable to even know what was happening.

The next day, Lulu was able to get back into the neighborhood to see what had happened. As it turned out, three houses on our block burned, as well as our next-door neighbor’s garage. We came back on Thursday to pick up some supplies from the house, since we weren’t there when the evacuation order came through. So we had to come back to get all the items we would have grabbed on the way out the door. Our house smelled very smoky, and there was water and dirt on the laundry room floor from the firefighters dousing the back of our house to prevent it from catching fire while the neighbors’ garage burned.

I came back again on Sunday the 12th to try and piece the broken gate back together. It’s pretty far gone, but I figured I could patch it up enough to be functional for a little while. Still, I cant complain, since I built that gate a bit over 20 years ago.

We came back from the mountain on the 16th and started some cleanup inside the house. We wiped down the walls in the living room, dining room, and hallway. We also damp-mopped all the wood and linoleum floors. And finally, we washed all the towels and bedding in the house. All of those things brought the smoke smell (relatively) under control.

I like to think we have interesting adventures living here, but this is definitely in the category of adventures we’d probably not miss if it hadn’t happened.

It’s not generally well-known that we have the Wende Museum in Culver City, which is a museum dedicated to the history of the Cold War. And because of the Wende Museum, we have the largest piece of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany. It’s on Wilshire Blvd, across the street from Hancock Park and the tar pits, and it’s just a few blocks from Park La Brea and the Jessica Cafe inside.

The day started out cold, but it warmed up nicely. So it was a good day for riding.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

I should start posting stuff here again. Otherwise, I won’t have anything to put in the Christmas letter..

Today’s bike ride was another visit to the Whittier Greenway Trail. It’s a pleasant ride, and we’ve done it before. And I took no pictures at all today.

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

I was outside this evening firing up the barbecue, and I saw this little hummingbird coming around to the feeder. There are usually a lot of hummingbirds around here, but this is the first time I’ve seen one this color.

Last summer, I was very pleased to see when the Earthquake Notification Service passed 150,000 subscribers. On average about 30-50 people sign up for it every day, and more after each large earthquake. And this week’s M7.2 Baja California earthquake pushed it over the top to more than 200,000 subscribers.

The earthquake also set a new record for the amount of mail sent in one day. The previous record of 2,326,000 messages was set after the M8.8 Chile earthquake in February. But this earthquake blew right past that record with 4,508,522 messages sent. And it would have been more if the database problems hadn’t slowed the system to a crawl. At the end of the first day, there were over 600,000 messages waiting to be sent, and over 500 earthquakes waiting to be processed.

Fortunately, I’ve found a workaround to keep the system from getting slow while processing large numbers of earthquakes, and I’m working on a re-architecture of the database to be able to handle heavier loads in the future.

Christmas came, and Lucinda got a Wii. And she also got a few other things, but that was the big one. Thanks to Uncle Larry and Aunt Francesca for braving the crowds to find it and buy it for her. And we also had a nice dinner and visited with the family. So overall, it was a fun time.

Pictures are here.

This afternoon, we all went over to West Hollywood to see “What Would Jesus Buy?” at the Sunset 5. I think that this may be the first time we’ve taken Lucinda to see and art-house movie, and it turned out to be quite a little adventure.

The film follows Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping when he and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir go on a nationwide tour to try to stop the commercialization of Christmas and to raise awareness of the costs of our consumer culture. They visited the Mall of America, Disneyland, and lots of places in between, preaching the gospel of anti-consumerism. It was hilarious.

For a special treat, the director was there to answer questions after the film. The film was produced by Morgan Spurlock, who did “Supersize Me”, and this film is done in a similar style, with Reverend Billy and the choir doing guerilla ‘interventions’ at big-box stores and malls. He uses his bullhorn to preach of the coming ‘Shopocalypse’. They also performed exorcisms of credit cards to drive out the demons of debt. Overall, it was a fun time, even though Lucinda was the only child in the audience.