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Photo Blort! – A Week And A Half

Friends,

I’ve been away from this thing for a little while, but busy. Busy annoying the entire state—from north to south. There’s photographic evidence…

Some sort of lovely picture...Went to San Francisco the weekend before last and you’ll be pleased to hear that some of the streets are still steep. They haven’t leveled the place out since you’ve last been there, so I’m sure that’s a disappointment, but we managed to get a room at this fancypants place…

Some sort of lovely picture... It’s one of those joints that has a restaurant on the top floor that has a pretty decent view. Let’s say that the hotel was called Mark-something-something. What would you call the place on top? Anybody?

Some sort of lovely picture... Some residents of San Francisco like to lay about, of course. You’ve certainly heard of the problems with immigrants there who do nothing but live off the largess of the state. It’s a sanctuary city, after all…

Some sort of lovely picture... Then, of course, we happened upon Bay Area dorks. It’s a little scary to see, especially if they get too close. Wouldn’t want that stuff to rub off on you…

dorks! After the dorks, I was hoping that we could find a way to get rid of them. Nothing much more diabolical than a jellyfish sting, don’t you think?

jellyfish. are they fish? …or maybe your random sardine swarm…

spinning …or since the locals are summoning my little puppy dog, maybe a nice dog bite!

lola On the third of July, my little town held a little parade to celebrate the day after the third of July. [rant mode engaged] The parade was organized by people who thought that a commemoration of America’s independence would be inconvenient to church goers on Sunday. That, or they may not know how to work a calendar. There are adult education classes for that. [/end rant]

honor guard Another thing that happened on the third was a barbecue at my Mom’s friend’s husband’s house. Mom’s friend’s son brought his pet opossum to the barbecue. Naturally. Not weird at all. Stop looking at me like that.

pet opossum No, really. Perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. Move along people.

Your pal,

-bob

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Tech Blort: In The Future, Things Will Occur Tomorrow!

Friends,

It’s time to throw a bunch of random bits together and call it a legitimate post. I know you’re excited about this, so let’s not delay one more second…

  • Stuntbook! – A couple of years ago, my dear friend was told by the geniuses at the Apple Store Genius Bar that the hard drive in her Powerbook was toast. Beyond repair. Nothing they could do but try to salvage as much data off of the thing as possible. “Horrors!” she thought, and wondered what to do. The geniuses suggested that the best course of action would be to buy a new, faster Macbook. So she did.

    Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. She offered the dead computer to me. “If you can fix it, it’s yours.” I issued two commands (guess what they were for ten bonus points and a chance at the lightning round!) and restored the existing hard drive in about an hour. Didn’t really matter though, since I’d already purchased a great big new hard drive. Installation took an hour or so, migrating the everything from the poor little iBook took half the night, sharing a year of photographs with the big machine took half a day. This brings us much closer to podcastville.

  • Entourage stinks – Let’s say that you were going to use Microsoft Entourage 2008 to read your mail on an Exchange server. And let’s also assume that had to synchronize somewhere around 8,000 messages over a T1 line. How long should that take? A half hour? Maybe one whole hour? Try twenty hours. Cripes.
  • Too bright! – Some people say that staring at a bright screen late at night disrupts your sleep rhythms and causes other weird health problems, like vampirism and unnatural attraction to exposed lightbulbs. F.Lux is a little utility for Mac, Windows and Linux to automatically dim and change the color temperature of your display during evening hours. I’ve installed it, but I haven’t had it running long enough to see if it works. If you have, please drop a note in the comments.
  • Google Maps for Android now includes transit times – Why do I care? I’m going on a little vacation this weekend and have opted to not rent a car. This very act makes me kinda nervous (because, you know, no car), but I’m going to try to rely on public transportation. Maybe Google can help me get around. Maybe it’s all still in beta. Sigh.

Back in a couple days,

– bob

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Somebody Got A Campaign Contribution…

 

Friends,

California State Senator Curren Price has put forward a bill to allow the DMV to study the emerging technology of digital electronic license plates. The technology being developed by a company in the Bay Area (without an actual working product or website that I could find—see: flags, red) called Smart Plate, would appear as a normal plate while the vehicle is in motion, but display ads while at a stop for over four seconds. That, or display Amber Alerts and other information that the DMV thinks you need to see.

To suggest that Senator Price is a brain-dead jackinape for even considering this idea dishonors those currently in a vegetative state. Can anyone seriously contend that an ad revenue stream can compensate for the loss of life caused by distracted drivers and fellow travelers driven to distraction in the first place? That the vehicle tracking mechanisms required to make this scheme work wouldn’t infringe on a driver’s privacy? That they couldn’t easily be hacked to display someone else’s number…

Hey, maybe they’re onto something.

– bob

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An Amateur Audiologist’s Lament

Friends,

Now that you’ve been enjoying the World Cup for about a week, I presume that you’ve been caught up in all of the Vuvuzela hysteria. Are the plastic trumpets too annoying? Should they be banned? Are they simply part of African culture?

Thankfully, German geeks have stepped up to help. Via , a German “hacker” (*cough*) has isolated the frequencies occupied by the Vuvuzela on television broadcasts and has devised a scheme to clamp down on those frequencies in real time. While this gives one a quieter game, I’m not sure I’d want it. My ears had been stuffed up for a couple weeks, finally clearing last evening and this morning I’ve realized that this world is a very noisy place.

I’ll give the Vuvuzelas another chance during today’s South Africa vs. Uruguay game. If it doesn’t work out though, I might be inclined to hang some ugly audio equipment on the teevee in the breakroom.

– bob

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Happy Birthday, Deniglefritz!

Action shot!
File photo: The birthday girl enjoying a brisk afternoon.

Friends,

Today is my sister’s birthday and to celebrate, I will share with you a new feature we’ve been working on up here in our Secret Alpine Laboratory. We call it Song to Text© and it’s sure to revolutionize the internet. All I have to do is sing a few lyrics of a song and they show up here as text. For instance…

Happy birthday to you,
happy birthday to you…
Happy birthday, dear Denise!
Happy birthday to you!

Pretty amazing, don’t you think?

– bob

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A Jaunty Little Election Guide**

 

Friends,

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing their sweet song, and candidates will finally end their ad buys. Yes, it’s California Statewide Direct Primary Election Day! As a service to you, the voter who hasn’t voted yet, I offer analysis of the propositions from The Best Political Team on this Blog™. Like to hear it? Well here it goes…

  • Prop 13 – Limits on Property Tax Assessment. Siesmic Retrofitting of Existing Buildings: First off, no, this isn’t that Prop 13. This one fixes a loophole in the tax code that currently allows property value reassessment if you do something crazy like enhance the structure of your building so it doesn’t fall down in an earthquake. My question is, which tax assessors were doing this in the first place? (see: tar, feathers) We’re suggesting you vote for this.
  • Prop 14 – Increases Right to Participate In Primary Elections: In what seems like a good idea on first blush, Proposition 14 was essentially a sop to Abel Maldonado to secure his vote on last year’s budget. The legislature really don’t like it because they claim it diminishes the role of traditional party structures in the state. I’m not sure that’s not an idea worth pursuing, but I’m also not sure that the legislature hasn’t poisoned this thing before placing it on the ballot. Arnold is for it, all of the parties are against it. We’re guardedly suggesting a vote in favor.
  • Prop 15 – California Fair Elections Act: If you were looking for a reason to throw out the initiative process, this proposition might be a leading exhibit in your case. It’s narrowly focused on a problem nobody knew we had, it’s artfully worded to draw a yes vote even though that might not be a good idea, and it plays on anti-politician sentiment. If nothing else, we think it’s too cynical to be worthy of your consideration.
  • Prop 16 – Imposes New Two-thirds Voter Approval Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers: This is also known as the Pacific Gas & Electric Self-Preservation Act. PG&E is interested in making it harder for municipalities to start their own public electric companies and who can blame them? Well, everybody. Their ads for this make happy noises about consumer choice and reigning in government spending. What we all know is that two-thirds approval is an awfully high bar to set. They want this too badly, outspending the opposition by over 400-to-1. Because of the insidiousness of their motives, and that this is going to amend the California Constitution, we’re strongly urging a no vote.
  • Prop 17 – Allows Auto Insurance Companies to Base Their Prices in Part On a Driver’s History of Insurance Coverage: Mercury Insurance would like for you to overturn existing law so that they can charge higher rates to first-time policy holders or those with lapsed coverage. Pretty neat, huh? We don’t think so either.

Well, that’s it for the guide. We’d like for you to go out and vote today. I mean, how can you pass on sticking one of these jokers with the worst job in the country:

 

Accepted Prop. 34 Spending Limits Candidate Name Party
* Richard William Aguirre Democratic
  S. Deacon Alexander Green
* Stewart A. Alexander Peace & Freedom
* Carlos Alvarez Peace & Freedom
  Mohammad Arif Peace & Freedom
  Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Democratic
* Bill Chambers Republican
* Lowell Darling Democratic
* Vibert Greene Democratic
* Douglas R. Hughes Republican
* Ken J. Miller Republican
* Lawrence “Larry” Naritelli Republican
* Robert C. Newman II Republican
* Chelene Nightingale American Independent
* Dale F. Ogden Libertarian
* Charles “Chuck” Pineda, Jr. Democratic
  Steve Poizner Republican
* Markham Robinson American Independent
  Peter Schurman Democratic
* Joe Symmon Democratic
  David Tully-Smith Republican
* Laura Wells Green
  Meg Whitman Republican

 

Your pal,

– bob

** WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: It looks like we’re batting 1.000 this cycle with all of the propositions we supported going on to victory and those we didn’t, going down to defeat. Thanks for doing exactly what we called for, California! Now, about that million dollar check you were going to send our way…

*** WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE II: According to the Secretary of State, only 16.5% of registered voters in Riverside County made the effort yesterday. To say that’s a pathetic turnout is a little like saying BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an “oopsie,” or that King Kong was a monkey who was irritated by aircraft. Dear 83.5% of Riverside County voters who opted out yesterday, you stink.

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Your Humble Car Service

What might have been.

Friends,

My brother Stinko is flying in this morning to Ontario and I’ve signed on to pick him up. Tussling with airport traffic in Ontario seems like a more pleasant proposition than taking in the 110° promised for the Festival of Dirt today. Don’t you think?

– bob

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Battle For The Sexiest Car In The World

Friends,

I may have mentioned a couple days ago that I thought the 1956 Volvo Sport was the Sexiest Car in the World. Clearly some have taken notice, as not two days later, my Miniature Racecar™ decided to stop running while I was down in the land that everyone but festivals and dirt has forgotten. Were the little car’s feelings hurt and do little cars even have feelings? This is surely becoming a sibling rivalry amongst the cast off children of the Ford Motor Corporation.

Will even more mechanical drama present itself if I dare mention the death of Mazda and Volvo’s long lost club-footed aunt Mercury today? Isn’t this just too much to take?

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The Sexiest Car In The World

Volvo 1900 Sport hotness. Friends,

I used to think that the Volvo P1800 was the prettiest car ever built, and when you look at this it’s hard to argue… Volvo P1800 hotness. However, when the Swedes wanted to build their own Corvette, they came to the left coast of America in the mid-1950s and tapped Glasspar to fab up some prototypes. What you see at the top is the product of this weird two-year experiment. It’s gorgeous, it’s terrible, it sounded to the president of Volvo at the time that it was falling apart. It was called the Volvo Sport or the Volvo P 1900 depending on who you ask (on which continent). They made 68 of them (the chassis numbers go up to 67, but they made two number 20s because they’re stark raving loonies) between 1956 and 1957.

I’d like to have one, please. Thank you.

– bob

P.S. And to think, all this started from a poster of Volvo wagons on Jalopnik. The internets are one big rat hole, aren’t they?

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Snow!

Crumbles!

Friends,

Today is the 23rd of May and it’s been snowing here in my delightful Alpine village all day. It snows, it sticks, it melts, it snows some more, repeat. It’s chilly, of course, but it’s absolutely lovely.

The Highway Patrol is requiring chains or snow tires from Pine Cove to Lake Fulmor this afternoon, which seems like an alarmist reaction, but I guess it weeds out the kids on racing slicks? Hard to know.

– bob

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From The Alternative Fuels Desk

Because Oscar Mayer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a.

Friends,

I don’t know what’s going on with the last 1,000 meters of my mountain commute, but after the skaters had cleared out I thought that was it. Not so, dear readers. This morning, I got stuck behind a large truck whose exhaust fumes reeked of bologna. Or, rather, baloney.

This only raises one important question: has the Pacific Slope Tree Company stumbled upon a way to convert deli meat of questionable provenance into fuel for their vehicles? Why are they keeping it such a secret?

Okay, that’s two questions.

– bob

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Dude! It’s Extreme!

Hey! Is that Eli Manning?

Friends,

Just a quick note to remind everybody that California State Highway number 74 is a place for my car to go way too fast and for me to take numerous reckless chances. It is not a place for you to ride a damn skateboard after donning a skydiving outfit with a helmet you ordered from the back of the International Dorkbot catalog. This is especially true if you feel the need to launch this adventure just as I’m careening around a blind right hand turn immediately behind you. Kick as hard as you want, you pathetic extreme sports chimp, but I might have a hard time scrubbing off enough speed in the space allotted next time and I’m not looking forward to explaining how the impression of your pointy white behind in the paper-thin metal on the hood of my tiny racecar got there.

That said, I’m willing to cut you some slack if you wear a jet pack next time.

– bob

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Just Not Very Good At Weather

 

Friends,

You’ll notice that The Idyllwild Weather Clam has settled on a temperature prediction this morning that’s pretty much in line with Accuweather (for once. -ed) and the Town Crier, but Weather Underground has chosen to stray pretty far off the reservation today. It’s difficult to know why, but they tend to march to the beat of a different drummer (that’s racist. – ed). We’ll let you know what happened tomorrow, but as for right now I think we can agree that the science is settled (you’ve all settled on wild guesses? – ed).

– bob

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Meme Alert: California is Greece

Yes, we grow them with the pimentos in, but that won't save us now.
Wait, it’s more than the climate?

Friends,

This internet meme that’s been floating around for two or three weeks is really starting to grate on my last frayed nerve. I get that California is facing a huge budget shortfall and a much larger underfunded pension system, but are we really like Greece? I guess it would be instructive to think about what would happen if either state defaulted on its crushing debt instead of Greece receiving an EU/IMF bailout package and California firing school teachers. It’s possible that Greece could have brought down the Euro as it tumbled off the cliff. Our state, on the other hand (or paw), has been looking for a handout from the Federal government to pay the bills, which to me seems a bit pathetic.

At this point, I suppose I could say that the legislature could suspend Prop 98—the initiative to tie school funding to revenues—until the budget is repaired. Maybe we could scrap our imaginary high-speed choo choo train. I’m sure Union Pacific wouldn’t mind. We could close that $20 billion hole in the General Fund pretty quickly, but we won’t. Yet.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go dunk my head in a bucket of lye.

– bob