Chris' Blog

Today, Aurora and I had a great day full of art and history (and food). 

This morning we drove into the city and went to the  New De Young museum (http://www.deyoungmuseum.org) to see the Hatshepsut exhibit.  When we got there, the lines were long so we toured the sections of the museum on Art in America from colonial times through the twentieth century.  We also browsed through the textiles.

Hatshepsut was an Egyptian queen who became a Pharaoh around 1473 BC when the Pyramids at Giza were already 1000 years old.  The exibit had numerous artifacts from her reign.  Read about her on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut  

Before we left the city we stopped at the Zuni cafe and had a late lunch.

Later we went to the Berkeley Jazz School to see Destani Wolf, a friend of Elena's from Berkeley High school days.  She performed 2 great sets with a Jazz Band.  It's a small venue and it felt very intimate and with all her old friends there, it felt like we were hanging in her living room.

You can keep up with Destani at her MySpace site: www.myspace.com/destaniwolf

On Sunday, Aurora and I connected with our friends Nancy, Lydia, Jeanette, and John.  It was a spectacular day full of the low winter sun in a clear, cloudless sky.

Nancy had organized a day to visit to Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the annual gathering of elephant seals.  We got to the reserve at around 10:30 and arranged for tickets for the 12:15 walk with the docents.  Before we left, Nancy treated us to a wonderful lunch with drinks provided by Jeanette and John. 

At 12:15 we walked out to a staging area where we met up with our docent guide.  Her name was Liz and she is a geologist by trade, but she's been guiding elephant seal tours for about 10 years and knew her subjects well.

We were able to see elephant seals in various social strata, from the young lonely guys, to female harems and their pups, to the highly Territorial bulls who weigh in at up to 5000 pounds.  We stood sometimes as close as 25 feet from the seals.

After the elephant seal tour we drove further down Highway 1 to a winery, Bonny Doon.  We tasted a variety of the wines, mostly very sweet, which is not my style, but it was fun anyway.

We drove home at sunset time and the countryside was beautiful.

Drove from Indeo, Ca to El Paso, TX. 

On the way we got a call from our neighbor and she said that there was a bad storm with thunder and lightning and that power had gone out in our neighborhood.  Of course the computers went of and back on when power was restored, but when she was checking out our house, she found that one of my computers was sounding a load alarm; the data server for the blogs, forums, portals, etc.  I asked her to re-boot the computer and that seemed to fix the problem.  So far so good.

We stopped Quartzite, AZ which is a snowbird town.  It is a town of people who travel and live in RVs and travel south, to a town like Quartzite, for the winter.  These folks mostly travel around and collect things to sell in the flea markets of Quartzite.  One of the main things you see in Quartzite are rocks; lots of rocks. Here's a picture of a rock, that just wouldn't fit in the car.

Some Quartzite links:
http://www.desertusa.com/Cities/az/quartzite.html
http://www.ci.quartzsite.az.us/community_profile.htm 

We ate at a cafe called La Casa and met Rain Golden Bear, the waitress, who said her family called her “Face that rains a lot“.  I suppose she cried a lot as a child.  She had tattooed rain clouds on her temples and she let me take a picture.  Click on the image to see a close up of her tattoo.

We drove on to Phoenix and stopped for gas and that's when I realized that I had lost my cell phone.  We called to the La Casa cafe and Rain said she had my cell phone and would send it to me in Houston and would let me know how much it cost to mail it.  So we She is an angel. 

We drove on, knowing the cell phone was safe and stopped at the Congress Hotel and ate dinner at the Cup Cafe.  Excellent.

Now we're at the La Quinta, but first we tried a cheap hotel called the Lone Star Inn.  I had seen it on the Internet for $40/night.  When we checked into the room, we found roaches crawling on the toilet and that set off Aurora.  We were out and back in the car in a flash and here we are at La Quinta.  $70 and free Internet.

What a day.

Cold rain started out the day, so packing the car in the rain was no fun.  Rain lasted the entire length of the San Joachin valley but the Grapevine was open and dry.  Staying here in Indio (about 80 miles short of Blythe) with free DVD rental and wireless connection in the rooms.  Thus this post.  On to Quartzite, Tucson and El Paso.

I went to Houston last week.  While many families were trying to leave town but instead were stuck in traffic on one of the freeways, I was flying into the path of, at the time, a category 5 hurricane.  Felt like Major Kong riding the bomb down...

 Me as weatherman at the Museum of Natural Science

I had agonized over going to Houston for a day or so and by Wednesday I was sure I should go.  I had spoken to Mother a few times that day and she was adamant about not leaving her home and was discouraging me from coming to “rescue“ her.  Annalee was in Hartford performing in a play so she was unable to get away without disrupting the show. 

On Wednesday afternoon around 4 PM I decided I must go and help Mother evacuate, if it came to that, and all indications were that it would be necessary.  By 7:30 that evening I was at the airport checking in a big duffel bag full of rescue things I've collected from my days with a search and rescue group, the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff...")

I called Derek and Lisa from Las Vegas and arranged to catch up with them early in the morning for some good coffee.  I also called Bob Webb to let him know I would be in town and he admonished me for coming into town in the face of a dangerous hurricane.  I suppose I didn't really get a sense of danger and Katrina "panic" until, as my airplane flew over the north bound highway 45, I saw the endless trail of red tail lights heading out of town for as far as I could see.  I called it the trail of tears.

I landed about 3:30 in the morning and picked up a rent car that Aurora had arranged for me and then headed south to Bellaire where Mother lives and nearby, Derek and Lisa live.  On the way I stopped at a Walmart, the only store I could find that was open, and bought some supplies.  They were rationing bottled water and only 2 cases per person were allowed.  I wanted to buy some wine to calm our nerves, but in Houston you can't buy alcohol before 7 AM.  Had to put that back.  In general, the food shelves were trashed and mostly empty.

When I arrived at Derek and Lisa's house, Beth was in her truck getting ready to head farther North and Derek met me with a great cup of coffee.  Beth was in a state of despair as her house is in Galveston about 6 blocks from the gulf.  She had, in her truck, some of her prized art pieces and 4 cats.  The rest of her treasure was left behind and it's fate was now in the hands/winds of Rita.  I gave her a hug and she pulled out of the driveway and off into the dark, muggy, Houston morning.

 Derek, boarding up the windows

 How to weather a storm

As daybreak approached, Derek and Lisa proceeded to prepare their house for the worst.  I helped Derek put some plywood up on the front windows while Lisa gathered plants into the garage and collected important papers in case the house and all belongings were lost in the storm.  Around 8:30 AM the phone rang and I answered because Derek and Lisa were busy.  It was Beth calling in a panic and even though she had taken a path out of Houston that should have been relatively clear, she was at a standstill in traffic near Sugarland.  The weight of everything she was experiencing had caught up with her and she was in an awful state of mind.  I talked to her for a while and she seemed to calm down.  A little later, after I left, she returned and decided to stay and weather the oncoming storm at Derek and Lisa's house.

By 9 AM I called Mother and announced that I was in town for a “visit“ and while she was happy to hear my voice, I could sense tension in her voice.  I waited a little while and then went over to “visit“ her.  We talked for a while and I told her of my overnight adventure and then I started discussing the possibility of a necessary evacuation.  She finally, although reluctantly, admitted that she would be willing but doubted that it would be required.  At that point, Thursday morning, Rita was still a category 5 hurricane and still projected to come ashore somewhere near Galveston with winds of 165 miles an hour.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around...

I spent Thursday afternoon, prepping Mother's house.  Gathering potted plants, removing items that might become projectiles in a high wind.  I also went to some of the neighbors who were not leaving and checked on their status and collected their information.  One of the neighbors mentioned a nearby church which was going to act as a backup shelter and I took note about that; just in case.

My general approach was to hold until we could no longer stay safe and to make sure that at any point, we might have enough lead time to evacuate.  The storm was due on Saturday morning and on the news programs we heard story after story of people trying to leave, getting nowhere only to finally turn around and head back home (one of the “jokes“ about the evacuations was to wonder about the asshole at the beginning of the line that was slowing everybody down).  Ben and Judy Rice took back roads to Austin and it took them, I think he said, about 9 or 10 hours (update: 14-15 hours).  Gasoline was also a huge problem and I had an almost full tank of gas (maybe 250 miles worth) but with delays that was doubtful.  Those that persisted seemed to average about 12 to 15 hours to get out of harms way.  I figured we should watch the news and leave no later than Friday, mid-day.

Friday morning's “cone of uncertainty”, which was what they called the range of possible trajectories that the hurricane might take, revealed a slight drift to the East and a weakening of the storm's eye and that trend continued throughout the day, so we never had to make the decision to leave, but it was always a tenuous situation.

As Rita drew near it's path turned more and more to the East and finally came ashore about 3 AM around Port Arthur.  At about 2 AM we started feeling the winds and around 3 AM the power went out in our neighborhood.  I sipped whiskey, watched the trees get thrashed by huge gusts of wind.  Finally around 3:30 I settled into a restless sleep in a house in Houston, Texas with no power AND no air-conditioning...

Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of a house alarm going off because the power was out and the batteries were dying.  One of the neighbors had contacted us the day before from out of town and had asked that I disarm it if it started up; gave me detailed instructions and codes and hints about how to disconnect the batteries.  I'd had perhaps a bit too much bourbon the night before so the alarm was a bit painful; my face was greasy from the lack of air-conditioning and my eyes were puffy from dog allergies so with a startled heart, I got up and dressed quickly to do my part and save the neighbors from this intrusion.  As I approached the front door, the alarm went off and I was in a state of confusion...  windblown and confused.  We finally got power back on after about 28 hours in the post hurricane Texas heat.  What a pleasure to get air-conditioning back on in Houston.

The next 3 days were spent cleaning up the debris from around the house and replacing all the things I had put away.  I also took the opportunity to fix up some things in Mother's house and to visit friends.  One afternoon I spent with Elena and Tyler, Leila and Carter at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  After the normal tour through the main museum, we went through the Cockrel Butterfly Exhibit, and saw an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon.  What fun.

 Elena, Tyler, Leila, Carter at the Museum of Natural Science

Mother and I had a lot of time to reminisce about our family adventures in Laredo and Australia and she told many stories about her childhood memories.

A few nights I had dinner with friends.  Derek was “frying chickens in the barnyard!“ or was it turkey burgers?  Derek and I played some music to fend off the hurricane spirits and one night we watched the first episode of Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary.

On Sunday night I visited Bob Webb and saw how he was going to weather the storm.  He had created a sheltered zone in the middle of his house and because plywood was in short supply he had to use piece of art he had painted onto a sheet of plywood.

 Bob and his art shelter.

On Tuesday evening I flew back to the cool of the Bay Area, glad to be back and glad that the hurricane was not as devastating to Houston as it might have been.  My heart goes out to those in and around Port Arthur as Rita was indeed still at category 3 when it made landfall there.

The way I hear it, there are perhaps more hurricanes due this season...  I suspect "We'll Meet Again".

Wackydoodle...

So the days in Montana were mostly cloudy.  The image of the dome shows what it looked like.  The temperatures rarely got out of the 60s in the daytime and dropped as low as the 30s at night.  Usually we're trying to stay cool in 80 degree days.

As a result we fished a lot.  Here are some fish we caught in the front pond.  Most we threw back, but we decided to keep a couple of the big ones for dinner.  They were good tasting.

The last night was good for stargazing through the telescope so Dan and I stayed up until about midnight and saw about a dozen Messier objects (The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects cataloged by Charles Messier in his catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters first published in 1774. The original motivation behind the catalog was that Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets. He therefore compiled a list of these objects).

On the last day, our departure day, Dan had an 8am flight so we got up at 5am and drove to Bozeman.  Dan got to his flight in good time and I had time to kill while I waited for my 1pm flight.  I decided to check out the Museum of the Rockies at the University in Bozemen (Home of the Bobcats).  It is an excellent museum.  I recommend it if anyone gets up there.

 Triceratops as big as an elephant.

Today we woke up to heavily overcast skies.  It started raining about mid-day and let up around 8. Dan and I decided to drive down to Yellowstone.

We headed South to Mammoth Hot Springs and then headed east to Tower Falls, and then up to the highest place we could drive which was the Mount Washburn trail head.  We hiked up the trail a bit and decided that being on top of an exposed mountain top was probably not the best idea in a rain storm.  So we hiked back down and stopped at Tower Falls and the Calcite Springs overlook and headed back to Dennis'.  The cloud cover was too heavy so there was no opportunity for stargazing or even watching foe Perseid meteors so we called it an early evening.  Hopefully this weather will blow through and tomorrow will be a better day for fishing and stargazing.

 Tower Falls

 Calcite Springs

 Dan Fishing in 6 Mile Creek behind the main house.

Yesterday I flew to Montana to stay at Dennis'.  I woke up late at 5am (after a 3 hour nap) and raced through the house gathering all the items I thought I had together and tried to make the 6am flight.  Aurora and I finally made it to the airport at 5:45, but the lady at the ticket counter said, "Too Late".  So she fixed me up with a 7:15 flight that made my connection in Seattle and all was well so I went and got in line at the security check and got over my heart attack.

Arrived in Bozeman and met up with Dan and we drove to Livingston and shopped for liquor, groceries, and fishing flies. Drove on out to Dennis' and by then it was cocktail hour.  After a couple of stout Martinis we prepped up some seafood (crab legs) and brocoli and as we were finishing dinner the "day" caught up with me and I went to lay down for a rest.

At midnight I woke up in total darkness wondering where the hell I was.  After a few moments I realized that I was in bed in Montana with all my clothes on.  So I stumbled downstairs and made my way outside to see a few early Persied meteors then went back to bed.

This morning, after breakfast, Dan and I went fishing in the creek behind the cabin and I had a few stikes and had not caught anything.  Dan and I were leapfrogging each other up the creek and as I moved up about 30 yards beyong the main house, I saw a bear in the brush across the creek.  It was black and had the biggest square head I've ever seen on a bear.  Based on its color I suppose it was a black bear, but because this is Grizzly country, I decided not to take any chances and backed down the creek.

This bear sighting shook me up, so I want over to the front lake and fished there, in the open, where I could see any approaching bear.  Caught 2 nice cutthroat trout.

This eveing Dan and I looked out for Persieds, but didn't see very many.  The sky is fairly hazy and seeing isn't very good.  It is about 2am Friday morning and sky looks like it is closing in...

Ah well, we'll try again tomorrow.

 One of the Cutthroat trout I caught today.

Over the weekend, I put together a Home Theater PC (aka HTPC).  Basically it is a PC that emulates a TiVo device where you can record your TV programs into a computer hard drive.  Only More!

Mike Green sent a computer that he had retired (PIII-700Mhz, 70G HD, DVD Player) and I added a TV tuner card and video card with video output (to view on a TV) and made the conversion.

The main function is a Personal Video Recorder (PVR).  Like a TiVo device, it can record TV programs, schedule recordings, or record all episodes of a TV series.  There is a service called Zap2It Labs that offers a free download of the programs offered by our local Comcast cable service.  See below for an image of the program guide.  It also refreshes a 14 day listing every morning at 3am.

Additionally it can manage audio and video archives, allows you to set up and listen to Internet radio programs, and to play and rip DVDs.  There are a number of plugins (more...) available which I will eventually figure out how to implement.

I started out by trying Media Center on the Windows Media Center Edition, but, try as I might to load driver after driver, it simply does not support the remote control that came with the PVR card I had (Hauppauge PVR-150).  So I switched over to a free application called GBPVR.  It works quite well and the images you see on in the PVR Gallery are from that application.

I have estimated that I will be able to keep about 6000 songs (our entire CD collection) and about 30 hours of video on the current hard disk, but I can expand that later.  I'll also want to get a DVD burner to archive special videos.

 
Shows the TV Guide listing. Click to see more.

So far so good...

I had a picture book made for Aurora for her birthday.  It was made by Memento Press and while they were a little protective of their binding method they said it was a modified FastBind technique. I collected 20 images and one extra for the cover and included a word document with captions on a CD.  2 day turnaround.  Looks great.

Here are some online pages about do it yourself bookbinding:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/tobycraig/29223.html 
http://www.joannebkaar.com/Bookbinding_/body_bookbinding_.html 

OK, I've been using Skype for a while now and I see only one downside (mentioned later) to using it as a telephone replacement.  I'm eager for all my friends to get on board so I can talk for free.

If you have a computer and an Internet connection, you can upload Skype onto your computer and we can talk for free.  You may need to hook up speakers or a microphone, if you haven't already, but that's pretty easy to do.

I went to Radio Shack and bought a really inexpensive headset with a microphone for less than $3.  I see that there is an online version for about $15, but look for the $3 version.

I have set up the SkypeOut service which allows me to call out from my computer to people who don't yet have Skype so I can talk to them on their regular phones.  It costs me 2.3 cents a minute to use this service to anywhere in the continental US (land lines and mobile phones) and I have to pay in advance (in chunks of 10 Euros, or 25 Euros).  I think that's still a better deal than most folks get on their home phone service.  Overseas calls cost more.  For example, calls to our friend, Zsuzsa, in Hungary, cost about 4.6 cents a minute.  Still a good deal.  Click here to look at the rates. 

Downside: Outgoing (SkypeOut) long distance international calls to cell phones cost substantially more.  A call to Pace's cell phone in Italy cost 33.5 cents a minute.  Not such a good deal.

I have also set up a SkypeIn account.  My number is: 415.578.3309 

Notice I now have a 415 area code .  The SkypeIn account allows my friends to call me at my computer.  And as I AM very often at my computer, you'll be likely to catch me there.  It includes an answering service as well so you can leave me a message that I can hear on my computer.  The SkypeIn service costs me 30 Euros per year or 10 Euros for 3 months (including the voice mail service).  It will cost my friends the same amount they would pay to call my house phone.

I may eventually disconnect my home service and settle on a mobile phone and Skype.  If most of my friends get Skype, then most of my calls will be free.

I recommend that you check it out: www.skype.com

• Talk to me at my computer for free; Skype to Skype: chrisjefferies
• Talk to me at my computer via telephone: 415.578.3309

  Email traffic - showing the patterns of email at Enron (click image)

  Email keywords - showing what subjects were discussed at Enron (click image)

My co-worker, Terence, found this article in the New York Times about a statistical analysis of email traffic at Enron during the time the company was collapsing.  One shows who was talking to whom and another shows, via common key words, what subjects were being discussed.

For example, the first chart shows the linkages between employees based on their email traffic.  In this chart it shows how a new person pops up, who is a focus of a high number of emails, who's email address has changed.  Investigators can use this kind of analysis to find relationships among employees.

In the HR world, the business I'm involved in, there have been discussions of using this kind of email analysis to understand the relationships among employees.  While employees are normally organized around formal, hierarchical departments, it may be possible to understand the informal relationships within an organization and find ways to support naturally occurring collaborative groups.

With this kind of data, it would be interesting to combine this analytical approach with the TouchGraph interactive charts.  See other references on this blog at:

• Touch Graph Browser - http://jumano.com/blogs/chris/archive/2003/09/20/196.aspx
• Mark Lombardi: Global Networks - http://jumano.com/blogs/chris/archive/2004/01/23/580.aspx 
• Mark Lombardi - Cartographies of Capital  - http://jumano.com/blogs/chris/archive/2004/03/05/750.aspx 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/weekinreview/22kola.html?pagewanted=2

Local copy: http://jumano.com/blogs/chris/articles/1923.aspx

Here's my GUID.  I have decided that this number will be MY GUID from here on.

In case you don't know, a GUID is a Global Unique ID.  We use it for unique identification in progamming data applications.  Whenever you need a unique ID there is a function that you can call that genertates this random number, that supposedly won't come up again for 700 years.  It isn't perfect, but it is pretty unique.

Google definitions for GUID - WikiPedia definition of GUID

In the future, I suspect we'll all have some kind of unique ID and I figure I'll get mine early.

{C7FA509D-40CF-4da3-9FA2-4CBC6B93394E}

Read it and weep!

I was having a conversation with my co-workers yesterday and we were discussing the idea that data, once collected into a database is, by the fact of having been moved from it's source, suspect and potentially out of date.  That's When Chris Buscovich said,

“All data is dead.”

Last Tuesday, I sang backup harmonies with Jimmy and the One O'Clock Boys at the Stork Club in Oakland.  We were the opening act for a group called Jug Free America.  One of the One O'Clock Boys, Jacob Groopman, is a member of Jug Free America.  The Stork Club was kind of a dive, but a few folks showed up and we had a good time.

You can see a few other images here.

The One O'Clock Boys are:

• Jimmy Bruno - Guitar
• Jacob Groopman - Mandolin
• Adrian Bagale - Guitar
• Rich Ferris - Stand up Bass
• Chris Jefferies (honorary One O'Clock Boy) - Vocals & Percussion

I recorded our performance and you can find the tunes below.  They are in MP3 format; about 6 to 7MB each.  I recommend that you download each tune and then listen to them after they are saved locally.

• Tough Luck
• I Won't Go Away
• Sacred Heart
• Steady Rhythm Of Time
• Rub It In
• We Were Blind
• Blue Love
• When The Big One Hit
• Ray Took A Slug In The Leg
• Only A Matter Of Time
• We'll Always Remember Tonight
• Without A Trace

The recordings were made with a Minidisc recorder with the automatic gain control set on.  This unfortunately creates a pumping sound whenever the volume changes quickly so it is a reasonable overview of our performance; just not too clear sometimes.

It was fun...

So I've been very bad about blogging lately. I apologize for that and I promise I'll do better.

The main thing I've been dealing with lately is learning some new computer technologies; well, new to me. I have been primarily a Microsoft Windows person as a software designer of business applications developed with Microsoft technologies (Visual FoxPro database applications and lately ASP.NET/C# web applications) that run on Microsoft operating systems.

This new study is in the area of an alternative operating system known as Linux. Linux comes in many flavors but I am using one called Fedora; and the version is known as Fedora Core 3.

I have 2 older computers thast I have installed with Linux, one is a minimal installation of Linux and is operating as a firewall and the other has the full graphical user interface (GUI) that looks and feels much like the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The results of this can be seen on the new web server I installed on the Fedora based computer at: http://www.sparticles.net. It explains a little about the setup I'm working with.

What's interesting, I think, is that this setup is running on older computers, PII and earlier, that were headed for the garage (or worse) and they are running on totally free software. I've installed a blog, a wiki, and a database to store all the content and all are open source.

There's no magic about this stuff, it has a pretty large large learning curve and the development environments don't seem to be as sophisticated as those available on Windows. But it has come a long way and deserves some of my attention to keep up with this new appraoch to software development known as 'Open Source'.

Last night Aurora and I went to see Joni Mitchell.  She’s was speaking at the Commonwealth Club a few blocks from where I work. The event was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of Earth Day.  We were surprised to see our friend, Nancy Carroll, atending with a friend of hers.

Instead of being a straight interview, it started out with Joni talking about her world view and how she thinks we, as humans, have gone wrong.  At first, she seemed to be a little overwhelmed with the 'big ideas' and with the depth of the subject, but she had some notes to keep her on track and had apparently given considerable thought about what she wanted to say.  Her first statement:

“To love nature in this time is to be in terrible pain.“

She described a poignant display of our world condition as seen on the side of the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles where there is a ticker or continuous counter that shows the growing world population juxtaposed with the number of trees being cut down.

She thinks it all went wrong with Plato and western 'logic' or intellect and the focus on western justice which lacks sense.  On a poster board, she drew a diagram with a large circle marking North, South, East, and West.  These points represented:

• North as intellect
• South as feeling
• East as clarity
• West as sense

She thinks that we, in the west, have focused too much on intellect and clarity and have lost our ability to feel and sense.  Because we seem to focus too much on intellect and clarity we are, as a result, working with 'half a deck'.  What was needed, she said, is a balance and called this balance the “Apple mind“.

She draws her world view from various philosophies including Buddhism, Jungian theory, Nietzsche, and Native American culture.

Her talk was interlaced with anecdotes about her recording career, Larry Klein,  and "Iron Eyes" Cody (who is known as the Tear Indian in the famous Earth Day ad from 1971).  She was asked to read a letter, purported to be from Chief Seattle, which is included in the liner notes of her most recent album, The Beginning Of Survival.

Some other interesting things we learned about Joni:

• She thinks of herself primarily as a painter
• She started smoking when she was nine years old and would ride her bicycle out into the country and spend quite time, enjoying nature and her little bag of tobacco.
• She was asked who she was interested in musically and she said responded without hesitation, “No one!“
• She doesn't listen to music very much and has very esoteric tastes; needs a high level of originality...  There was a term she used that I can't recall now. (Update 04.25.2005: Nancy Carroll has reminded me; Joni said she needed a “high degree of divinity and originality“ in the music she listens to.)

Some other interesting links:

Interview by Elvis Costello from the November 2005 Vanity Fair magazine:
http://www.jmdl.com/library/print.cfm?id=1182

Discussion, from ’97 about one of my favorite songs, Sweet Bird:
http://www.jmdl.com/th-sweetbird.cfm

They recorded the talk and I think you might be able to catch it at this location:
http://www.commonwealthclub.org/broadcast/index.html

My friend, Ray Lear, sent me an image of Berkeley from space and I recalled that there is a web server called www.terraserver-usa.com.  Click on the image to see an image I downloaded from the web of our house on Stanford Avenue in Kensington just North of Berkeley.  You can zoom out and see the surrounding area on this page.

Here are some other locations you might want to visit.  See if you can guess where they are.

Here's a site found by my friend, David Anderson, that lets you search for words within various State Of The Union speeches.

http://www.style.org/stateoftheunion

Christine Rosen talks about what she calls Egocasting.  It's a play on the concept of selective consumption of various media like what an iPod, or TiVo might provide.  I'm clearly on the egocasting track and I like it, but she makes some good points against this attitude.

Excerpt:

“What is true of the television set is also true of its most important accessory, the device that forever altered our viewing habits, transformed television programming itself, and, more broadly, redefined our expectations of mastery over our everyday technologies: the remote control. The creation and near-universal adoption of the remote control arguably marks the beginning of the era of the personalization of technology. The remote control shifted power to the individual, and the technologies that have embraced this principle in its wake—the Walkman, the Video Cassette Recorder, Digital Video Recorders such as TiVo, and portable music devices like the iPod—have created a world where the individual’s control over the content, style, and timing of what he consumes is nearly absolute. Retailers and purveyors of entertainment increasingly know our buying history and the vagaries of our unique tastes. As consumers, we expect our television, our music, our movies, and our books “on demand.” We have created and embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences.”

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/7/rosen.htm

Here's a silly one that Lisa found.  See if you can challenge the chicken to do things...

• hop,
• moon walk,
• do the funky chicken,
• skip,
• YMCA dance
• hokey pokey, anyone?

I think it's a commercial setup from Burger King, but have fun anyway.

http://www.subserviantchicken.com

Yesterday I had a followup appointment with the oral surgeon that performed the gum surgery on me back in January.  He poked around a bit and seemed pleased with his work and said that the bad tooth looked like it was firming up since the surgery.  The problem with the loose tooth is that there is bone loss around the root, so it doesn't have much to hang on to.  The consensus from my oral surgeon and my dentist is that I may have the tooth for perhaps up to 5 more years, but I will not grow old with this tooth.

Today, I had my bi-annual cleaning with my longtime dentist, Dr. Myung Sook Son.

Here's what she looks like when she gets serious with me.

She's always cheerful and does a terrific job with my teeth.  Today she gave me a Novocaine shot that did not even hint at being painful.

Once Myung finishes with the heavy picking, and cavitroning (a cavitron is a dental tool that uses high frequency ultrasonic waves to clean teeth) and scrapping, she hands me over to Lillian Hickethier who polishes my pearly whites.

Last night we had a gathering of the Yerba Buena Social Club.  It was Fat Tuesday and so we met at Nancy's for some New Orleans styled fare, which included sausage, Louisiana beer (Abita Purple Haze Raspberry & Abita Turbodog), and dry fried chicken and salad.  It was finished off with some home made pralines and sherbet ice cream. 

After dinner, with our Mardi Gras beads jingling, we went down the street to a lecture presented by the SF Historical Society about the Architecture of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  It started a little late and began a bit slow, but once the presenter, David Parry, picked up the pace with slides from his extensive collection of post cards it was fascinating.  One of the interesting images depicted the "Aeroscope", a ride that consisted of a small two-story structure mounted on the end of a 280 foot swing-arm. It was designed and built by Joseph Strauss, the designer and builder of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had a unique method of counter-balancing the people on the ride by displacing the weight of each rider by sensing the weight and then dumping an equivalent weight in water.

Yet another fun evening.  Here are some pictures I took.

Map of the Exposition:
http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppie/map/map-biggest.gif

San Francisco Museum and Historical Society

John Miller was in town for a few days; since Sunday; and he flew back to LA this evening.  He was attending the VSLive technical conference at Moscone West.  A few days before he came, he discovered a guitar from his parent's house which turned out to be a Gibson LG-0.  He brought it along and here's a picture of it:

LG-0s aren't great guitars and they were made to bring the Gibson brand to those who wanted to have a 'Gibson' branded guitar.  They were originally sold for about $85.  My mom bought my Dad a Gibson LG-0 around 1963.  We still have it and it is at our farm near Brenham, Texas.

Here's a great site found by my friend Brooks Harris.  It's called the Eye of Science and it features microscopic photography.

http://www.eyeofscience.de/eos2/index2.html 

Here's a gallery site that hosts many of the Eye of Science images: http://db2.photoresearchers.com/cgi-bin/query.cgi?&api=MEC001 

On January 3rd we had breakfast at the Congress Hotel and hit the road hoping to make it back to our home near Berkeley by midnight.  The day was full of desert storms, flash flooding and road spray kicked up by 18 wheelers.  As we approached the Grapevine on Interstate 5 north of LA we were stopped by snow in the mountains.  The only road left open to us was 14 to Palmdale and it was bumper to bumper through a mountain pass.  After fighting the snow we got tired and decided to stop in a motel and found a Holiday Inn.

Of course it has a shower head:

Next morning we drove through Tehachapi pass and made it home around sunset.

The RNC is re-uniting the BC04 team for their assault on Social Security. Right-wing groups are raising an estimated $100 million dollars for the campaign. There has been a war declared upon Social Security.

Let's stop this fraud. BlogPAC is joining the battle -- and we hope that all of you join us. BlogPAC is a collection of Democratic bloggers and blog readers.

On Friday afternoon I had gum surgery primarily to fix a bad tooth and to fix potential problems with other teeth.  I took 2 mg of a tranquilizer called Lorazepam about an hour before the surgery.  It was still an excruciating experience.  The worst part was the Novocaine shots into the roof of my mouth and the cutting and scrapping sounds were horrible in spite of being completely numbed. 

This weekend was spent sleeping, watching TV, browsing the web and eating soft mushy foods. And Vicodin!

Stitches will be removed in about a week.

No fun.

On our return trip from Texas we stayed at the Congress Hotel.  We've stopped and eaten there before, but this was the 1st time to stay over night.  It's an old hotel, smells a bit moldy and has some historic connection to the notorious gangster John Dillinger who was caught in Tucson.  No TVs in the rooms and NO INTERNET connections.  They do have a worksation in the hallway so you can check your webmail from there.

Here's what the shower head looks like at the Congress:

On December 27th, around 2pm, Aurora and I left Houston for our annual Big Bend experience.  This year promised to be different because our usual camping spot was off limits due to new ownership of the land.

We made it to Marathon at about 10:30 and stopped briefly to see if Jim Flowers (or any of our acquaintances) might be at the Gage bar, but he had moved on and so did we.  We got to the Stillwell Store at about midnight.  We found Jim setting out a bedroll in the back of his beamer station wagon, and a note to the camp of Brooks and Karen.  We went over to the camp and found a warm campfire that Brooks had left for us.  It was about 35 degrees and the sky was clearing.

Next morning we met Karen and had coffee and apple bread and decided to venture down to Andy Currie's Open Sky Café property at the end of the road around the closed international bridge at La Linda.  First we met with Fred who I had spoken to the previous day.  He recommended the sand flats near the spot where the river rafters put in and take out of the Rio Grande.  He also mentioned that we might consider the area near the north end of the, now closed, Heath Canyon airplane landing strip.  We checked out the sand flats and found very limited conditions for our style of camping so we went to check out the air strip.  On the way we ran into Andy at the Open Sky café and he also recommended the landing strip. 

The landing strip at Heath Canyon must be a challenge to pilots because it rises perhaps 100 feet over the length of the take off and then finds a 1000' cliff just after the end.

Nevertheless, we didn't think the runway option was very good for us either.  There was no vegetation, no trees or anything to cut the wind if a northern came up.  So we decided to return to the Stillwell's property.

On the way back to Stillwell's, we decided to check in to the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area.  It is state property used for regulated hunting.  It was the 28th and the current hunt was a youth hunt ending on the 29th.  We checked out the WMA headquarters and found no one there, but as we were leaving, we ran into Tom Van Zandt.  He was quite helpful and told us which permits we needed and where we could get them.  According to Tom we needed to go to the True Value hardware store in Alpine (about 80 miles one way).  As I described that we wanted to camp at Fish Camp 1, 2 and that we wanted to stay over New Year's eve he asked if we were the folks who used to camp at Adam's ranch and shot off fireworks on New Year's eve.  I confessed proudly that our reputation preceded us.  He said that there was no problem with us camping in the WMA but that due to the surplus rainfall the grass was very high and that the fire danger was high and we should NOT shoot off our fireworks.  I said no problem and he said jokingly, “but, if you do, shoot them over Mexico”.

 Jim Flowers on the ridge above Fish Camp 1 & 2.

Later in the afternoon as we checked in at Stillwell's I made a huge mistake.  I told Nanette about our encounter with Tom and how he had joked about the fireworks.  The reason this was a mistake was that Nanette later recounted our impression of Tom back to Tom when he came into the store.  She told Tom she thought it was nice that he was going to let us shoot our fireworks over Mexico and he adamantly denied giving us any permission to shoot fireworks.

Jim and I collected some down and dead mesquite wood from a creek bed on the Stillwell's property with permission from WT.  Ben arrived in the late afternoon on the 28th and we all spent another on the Stillwell property.

On the 29th, Brooks and Karen headed into the Park for some hikes around the perimeter of the Basin and Santa Elena Canyon.  Jim, Aurora and I went to hike into Rio Vista from Beunos Aires and Ben decided to hang in camp and collect wood later that afternoon.  As usual we got a late start on our way to Rio Vista and the day caught up with us about half way between Buenos Aires and Rio Vista.  We did manage to get to an intact stretch of the old river road with a clear view to our old familiar Apache Peak.  Even though we didn't make it, it was fun hiking in the old terrain.

When we got back to the Stillwell camp, we found that Dale, Karen and Canyon and Derek had arrived.  Yet another joyful reunion and we celebrated with drinks and good food.  We had some venison sausage and Derek added some beef and made a wonderful chili.  That night we agreed to try out Fish Camps 1 & 2 again.  Late that night Ben left for Terlingua to catch up with Jeff Grey and tour his property in the Solitario region.

Next morning, the 30th, we broke camp while I went to the Stillwell store and proceeded to deal with the bureaucracy of the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area via a FAX machine.  The Stillwell's had information and phone numbers that let us get our permits via FAX instead of having to go to the True Value Hardware in Alpine.  Finally we got our permits (the wrong kind, as we later found out) and we headed off to the WMA headquarters to the self registration booth.  After filling out yet more forms we started down the road to the fish camps.

The road was much improved from the last time we drove about it 10 years ago and Jim even made it with his new BMW station wagon.  It took us about an hour to make it and felt like an apprehensive homecoming.

We walked down to the river and were getting our bearings (the terrain has changed a lot in the last 10 years) when we heard a vehicle approaching.  It turned out to be 2 rangers from Black Gap (Javier ? and Lynn Shakleford - Lynn is the son of Mackey Shakleford who owns Big Brushy ranch).  They had gotten a message from Stillwell's that Lisa was going to have back surgery the next morning.  As Derek had not even unpacked he took no time to decide to head back to Houston and within about 5 minutes he was off down the “long“ road.  We later heard that he made it back out of Black Gap in about 20 minutes (which had just taken us about an hour to negotiate).  Even later, when we got out of the Big Bend area and my cell phone started picking up messages again, I picked up an instant message from Lisa.  It read: “Lisa is having surgery Friday 8:00 a.m. Will be home next day Sat per second opinion advise, do not rush home...be“

Brooks and Karen stayed with us through dinner and had their Big Bend carne experience and then headed down the long road to pick up Ben in Marfa and then head on to LA for the Rose Bowl.

The next morning we were preparing the morning coffee when we heard a voice from the ridge...  “I'm here“ and we looked up to see Shawn waving in the distance.

The day was spent hanging around camp, gathering wood (easy pickins for a small crew of 7), hiking up to a ridge and generally enjoying the warm sunny day.

That evening we proceeded to have our usual steaks and potatoes feast on our favorite grill and we were just finishing it off when a truck came over the ridge and swooped into the camp.  Turns out it was Tom Van Zandt come to check our “stinkin' badges“ or rather our permits and wanted to see all our drivers licenses to make sure we were who we said we were.  Before we collected our permits and IDs Jim told Shawn to hide in her tent as she had not arranged for a permit.

I asked him if he really needed to do this and he said he was just doing his job and that he would be checking all the campers that evening.  I later checked with some campers at the Stillwell showers who had camped at camp # 22 and they never saw Tom Van Zandt.

After verifying our names on the permit with our IDs, Tom told us that we had recieved the wrong permits (Fishing licenses instead of Mixed Use permits) and that we could stay the evening (how nice of him) but that we would have to go to Alpine to get the correct permits in order to stay another day as we had planned.

Tom told us stories of his exploits with campers; how he often watches them scatter when he arrives.  He said he had supplies (food, water, books, radios - you can't outrun Mr Motorola) to outlast campers who were hiding in the bush.  He told us that Horse Canyon was a major drug route because there were raods on the Mexico side right up to the border.  He said that they had detectors that could sense foot traffic through the area and that someone had been detected just a few days before we arrived.

Tom knew about the Adams ranch deal and about Cemex and the issues surrounding the La Linda bridge.

After about 45 minutes of jawing, he left us to have a quiet New Year's evening.

more to come...