Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I had to take a little trip to the USGS office in Menlo Park for a two-day meeting. The topic was the Volcano Hazards Program’s web site and how they are going to host it. They knew that I’d done some research on how to handle large surges of web traffic after earthquakes.

The trip up was easy enough. I was up at 00-dark-hundred and went to the airport in Burbank. While waiting for the shuttle bus, I was treated to the sight of dawn breaking in the east. The flight up to San Jose was short, and when I got there, I saw a limo driver holding a sign with my name on it. That’s the first time that’s ever happened. They had sent him to pick me up and take me to the office.

When I got to the office we all took our places at the conference table. And we stayed there. All day. They had lunch sent in so we would have no reason to leave the room. Yikes.

At the end of the day, I took Caltrain up to San Francisco to have dinner with an old friend. Jim and his wife Heather are both people I knew back when we lived in Texas. And it turned out that they met because of me. So I went to the city to meet him for dinner. The train ride was pretty nice. The last time I rode Caltrain was in ‘93, and it was a wretched rough ride. But now they’ve put in new concrete ties and welded rail, so it’s a lot better. And the train up to the city was an express, so it only stopped a few times along the way. I was impressed.

When I got there, Jim was at the station. We walked a few blocks and just randomly picked an Italian restaurant. It was good. We each got a small pizza, and we traded half so we could try the different flavors.

After dinner, I had to head back. The train back was a bit slower, since it stopped at every station.

The next morning, I got up and decided to walk to the office. There were other people from the meeting staying at the same place, and they offered me a ride, but I thought that the walk would be entertaining. I saw the Animal Art Gallery, with dog photographs by ‘the dogumentarian‘. I saw seagulls perching on top of the train station. And I saw an intersection where the city provided orange caution flags for pedestrians to use while crossing the street. The light poles on each side had tubes welded to them to serve as flag holders.

When I got to the office, I saw the “I’m Out of Estrogen – And I Have a Gun” bumper sticker. Then I got a cup of tea and went in for the day’s meeting. Being that it was Valentine’s Day, we had a little plate of Hershey’s Kisses and heart-shaped Dove chocolates on the conference table right next to the speaker phone.

At then end of the day, SuperShuttle took me back to the airport. They got me there early enough that I was able to switch to an earlier flight. But I had a little trouble finding the proper gate, since the video screen for departures had a Windows error message box on it.

I got home about 8:00 on Wednesday night. Total time away from home: 38 hours. I’m an incredibly bad traveler.

We went and had dinner with my aunt and uncle and cousins this evening for Chinese New Year. After dinner, Lucinda wanted to go into one of the stores there. It was filled with Hello Kitty and Monokuro Boo and lots of other things I’d never seen before.

But a couple of items made me stop in my tracks and say, “?” The first had Betty Boop and said, “You Will Be Relieved When You Can See Your Favorites”. And of course, my favorite was the scissors with “Welcome to Pig Pig Family” on them. Offhand, I’d guess these are just more examples of Engrish.

So today I saw this article about how people who did a lot of aerobics back in the ’80s are all suffering from various overuse injuries caused by all the jumping and such. That’s kind of sad. I worked as an aerobics instructor from 1987 to 1991, and I thought it was great fun. I did classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work. It was my ‘hobby job’. But I only did two classes a week. So I didn’t overdo it. On the weekends, I rode my bike, so I was getting a lot of exercise back then, but not that much of it was involving jumping and running.

Anyway, I thought this was kind of a sad article. We’re all getting old:

Whatever Happened to Jane Fonda in Tights?

Besides, I’ll always have fond memories of aerobics, since that’s where I met my wife. Cathy and I both had the same favorite instructor, so that’s how we met.

I just finished reading Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit. This is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. A lot of the characters in it could have stepped out of a John Waters movie, but they are all real people. And of course there is vomit. Not a lot of vomit, but some. ‘Reversal of fortune’, or ‘urges contrary to swallowing’, as they call it.

There’s also a lot of talk about different strategies and techniques of speed-eating, and the author even tries is a little towards the end. His descriptions of how it felt during and especially after a contest are a thing of beauty.

Anyway, if you’re like me and think this sort of thing is funny, this is a must-read.

A few weeks ago we bought a new vibrator at Babeland. We were looking for something with good power that’s also portable. The Silk Touch Egg fit the bill. It’s powerful and portable.

There is an old engineering proverb that says, “Faster, Better, Cheaper — choose two of the above”. There are tradeoffs to everything. In this case, the motor goes like Gangbusters for about 10 minutes and then it starts to stumble. The little AAA batteries just don’t last long enough.

I checked the Energizer web site. They have data sheets on their different batteries. For the AAA Energizers, the data sheet shows that the total capacity of the battery depends strongly on the discharge rate. At 25mA draw, you can get 1,200mAh out of it, but at 400mA you only get about 400mAh. So I hooked up my little multimeter to it. Turns out my meter only reads current up to 250mA, because it pegged immediately. So we know the current draw is over 250mA. And this definitely puts the batteries into the ’short-life’ range. And according to the graphs on the second page, at that level of discharge, we should see the voltage start to drop in a fraction of an hour, which was what we saw.

So, bein’ a geek, I started thinking about rigging up a bigger battery pack for it. The simplest thing to do would have been to put an external battery pack on it and just use the existing control. But the control has five pulsed modes that we’re not interested in. We just want the continuous mode. And the speed control is a little thumbwheel that’s kind of hard to use. So I figured I could just build my own speed control unit and attach that to a battery pack.

So I borrowed Lucinda’s Snap Circuits set for testing. I set up a basic NPN transistor circuit to control the motor speed. I experimented with different components. Then I got some actual components from my electronics junk box, just wiring everything together with alligator clips on the floor. After a few tries, I settled on a basic configuration. The transistor I used for the main speed control is a bit oversized for this. It’s rated at something like 40W, and this circuit is only dealing with about 1-2W. But that’s all right. It was just sitting in my junk box.

I had a little Radio Shack ‘project box’, so I used that for the case. I had to buy a volume control and knob, a diode, an LED for a power indicator, as well as a tiny little circuit board to mount stuff on. Then I had to cut the circuit board down to get it to fit into the box. Everything was so packed in that I had to put electrical tape on all the connectors to keep things from shorting out. But in the end, I got it to fit. The batteries are just mounted on a little piece of plywood. I’ll get a digital camera case or something like that for them to live in.

Power comes from either a D-cell three-pack, or from a 5VDC power supply that I found in my junk box. So it can run with or without an outlet. And either way, it’s pretty powerful.

Last year, Cathy found a little article in the Auto Club magazine about a school near San Francisco that trains guide dogs for the blind. It said that they had an open house that we could visit. She loves dogs, and she wanted to take a trip up there to go to it. I thought that surely in a city the size of Los Angeles, there must be something comparable. So I went looking, and found Guide Dogs of America. It’s in Sylmar in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley.

They have a graduation and open house every three months there, so we made plans to go to one. And today was the day.

The graduation involved the class of dogs that are being given to their new masters, as well as the people who fostered the dogs as puppies. The puppy raisers do the basic training and socialization of the dogs, and then some specialized trainers teach the dog how to be a guide dog before they are matched up with blind people in need of dogs. It’s a pretty amazing process, and it was very obvious that the blind people were very happy to have the dogs to help them. Apparently, the entire service is free to the blind, and it’s largely supported by donations and volunteers.

We got to meet a lot of dogs in training. The foster families are encouraged to bring them to events like these so that they can get used to the environment. We also got some information about possibly having them do a presentation at Lucinda’s school, and also how to sign up to foster a puppy. We may or may not do that soon, but we probably will some day.

Route map and photo locations

Today I took a sightseeing bike ride to go visit some Americana. There were three targets for the day: The 1953 McDonald’s, the “Close to You” and “Only Just Begun” apartments, and Johnie’s Broiler, all in beautiful Downey, California. It was a cool day, but forecast to warm up nicely. A perfect winter’s day in SoCal.

I started out heading south, through San Marino and San Gabriel. I rode down through Whittier Narrows and then turned south again on Rosemead. Then I just went straight, all the way to Downey.

At one light, there was a very shiny tanker truck in front of me, so I took my picture reflected in it. Then I continued on to the where Rosemead turned in to Lakewood, and the 1953 McDonald’s. We’d visited there before, so I didn’t go inside to see the Ray Kroc museum this time.

Continuing on down Lakewood, I took a right on 5th St. That was where I saw a house undergoing a fairly drastic remodel. Only the front wall was still standing. Then I rode a short distance farther and found the “Close to You” and “Only Just Begun” apartment buildings. They are a pair, right across the street from each other, and they were bought by Karen and Richard Carpenter with their earnings from their first big hit songs, back in 1970.

I went a bit farther on 5th St to get to Firestone Blvd and Johnie’s Broiler. This is a 1950s Googie-style coffee shop that was being used as a used-car lot promising “BAJO MILLAGE” cars. It was also being considered for historic status. Apparently, the owners weren’t too happy about this, because they hired a bulldozer to start knocking it down without a permit. So the building is still half-standing, but in ruins.

Leaving Johnie’s, I backtracked to get to Paramount Blvd and headed north. At Mines Ave, I went right and went back to Rosemead. That was where I saw it. Shangri-L… Oh. It said Shangri Lodge. Never mind. The place was kind of scary, with bars and bulletproof glass around the manager’s office.

I took a left on Beverly to take the scenic route back up through Montebello. That was where I saw yet another abandoned couch for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

At San Gabriel Blvd, I turned left, and immediately heard that telltale hissing sound. I had a flat. Since I was riding alone, I had to take the obligatory picture Myspace-style, with the camera held at arm’s length. I put on a spare tire, and continued on.

I went up Walnut Grove to get back up to San Gabriel, and then went west a bit on Longden to get back to Del Mar. Then it was straight up through San Marino and back to the park.

It was a pleasant ride.

Addendum: I fixed my flat tire this evening. I was riding my old racing bike today. So I was riding Old School. This is the first time in three years that I’ve fixed a sew-up tire. I’m out of practice. I used to do this all the time and didn’t think anything of it. But it was hard.

42 miles
cycling

Tonight we went over to West Hollywood to see Varla Jean Merman’s latest show, “Varla Jean Merman is Anatomically Incorrect”. The show was at Ultra Suede, which gave us a strange sense of deja vu, since we went there to see a comic cabaret show with the Amazing Pink Things back in 1987. But the inside had been completely redone, and looked totally different.

We met another couple in line who were also big Varla fans, so we joined up to take one of the tables right up by the stage. They have been going to see Varla for longer than we have, and they even visited Jeffery in New Orleans, which puts them easily in the Varla-inner-circle. We were suitably in awe.

When the show started, Varla came out in fine form. She sang and danced, and also had video to go with the song. She sang “Tequila Make My Clothes Fall Off”, which was done with the special Varla touch.

The theme of the show was the human body and all its parts. Varla did a parody of “Hair” about feet. That was pretty hilarious.

The old-time Varla fans also got to enjoy a couple of her classics. She sang “Talk to the Genitals” as part of the show, and also did her “Schoolhouse Rock” medley as an encore. That was a treat, even though she didn’t do “Dream a Little Dream of Cheese” and eat the Cheez-Wiz.

The finale for the show found Varla in a giant squirrel costume and holding a pair of giant acorns. The song was about how memories are like nuts that we squirrel away in our heads. It was deliciously goofy and very funny.

After the show, Varla was selling her new video collection, so we got a copy, and she signed it for us. Overall, it was a very fun evening.

Today I was walking across campus to go to a meeting, and I found a chunk of dry ice on the sidewalk. There is a guy who delivers it to Chemistry on Tuesdays and Fridays, and sometimes pieces break off when he’s unloading it. They’re usually just little chips, but sometimes there are bigger pieces. One of the things I find tremendously amusing about working on the Caltech campus is that finding dry ice on the sidewalk is not all that unusual. And when I find a bigger piece, I pick it up to bring home, so Lucinda and I can play with it.

So today I found a piece that was almost the size of a brick. I got excited and picked it up. I put it in my bag. Then I realized that I was on my way to a meeting, so I couldn’t take it home. There was no way to keep it cold until it was time to go home. So, what to do?

In the end, I dropped it in one of the fountains just to watch it bubble. It was amusing in a geeky sort of way.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job, and not just because I can find dry ice on the sidewalk?

Today’s bike ride was a sightseeing trip to see the “Bubbles” art installation in Silver Lake. Sadly, we managed to miss it. I wasn’t paying attention at the right moment, and we rode right by it. When I realized we’d ridden past it, I looked at my clock, and it was still before 10:00, so it wasn’t open anyway. So we missed it. D’oh!

We started out from Victory Park under gloomy skies. It was damp and threatening to rain. Gene decided not to do the ride today because he thought we’d get rained on. But the rest of us soldiered on. We headed west and north, up to La Cañada, and then took Chevy Chase up and over the hill in to Glendale. Along the way, I saw a storefront for a soon-to-be-opened cafe. The sign was kind of funny, since I’d never seen graffiti-style Armenian writing before. But I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s in Glendale.

Then something happened that nobody quite understood, and we found ourselves on San Fernando Road. But that was all right. We just took a right on Fletcher and got back on track. Crossing the L.A. River, we entered Silver Lake. We took Silver Lake Blvd past the reservoir and down the hill, passing by the Bubbles installation. And when I realized we’d passed it, I also realized we were too early for it anyway, so we just continued on.

Riding through Koreatown and Hancock Park, we came out at 2nd and Larchmont, right across from Snow White’s Wishing Well. Then we turned and rode up Larchmont to Noah’s Bagels.

While we were having our bagels, someone said, “Where’s Ben?” That was when I noticed that he was sitting on the sidewalk behind the table next to ours. He was fixing a flat. So I leapt up and grabbed my camera to get a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

After the snack stop, we rode east a bit on Melrose, passing the big front gate at Paramount Pictures. Then we turned and rode up Wilton. Along the way, we passed a bunch of abandoned couches, but I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to capture them. Then we turned right on Franklin to start the ride home.

On Franklin, there was an airstream trailer that was covered in graffiti. It looked pretty odd, so I took a picture of it. Then we rode across the Shakespeare Bridge and then over to Rowena Ave to get back to Fletcher.

Going through Atwater Village, I noticed that the muffler man had been redecorated. The took the Santa hat off him, and he was repainted with hearts. I’ll try and get a picture the next time we go by there.

The route home was up Eagle Rock Blvd and then east across Highland Park. I saw a couch there, and this time I was able to get a picture, so at least I didn’t come home empty-handed. Then we turned left on Ave 64 for a final climb up Burleigh to La Loma. That was where I saw the house that looked like a giant pagoda. It was pretty funny, so I took a picture of it.

After all that, we just took Orange Grove home across Pasadena. When we got back to the park, it was pretty early, so I rode out to Sierra Madre and back for no particular reason. Then, when I got home, my odometer said 49.3, so I rode around the block just to put it over 50. We didn’t get rained on, so it was a nice ride.

50 miles
cycling