Anyway, the Wind Blows

Crystalline Suspension

Escaping the Labyrinth

“Oh, yeah, I need steam.”
—Peter Gabriel

A Bridge Too Far

One day when I get one a them newfangled self-driving automobiles, I’ll be able to sit in the passenger seat and take semidecent pictures while I tool along down the highway. Till then, as I change lanes with my cell phone in one hand and my camera in the other, you get pictures like this.

This is the new San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Well, it’s half of the bridge. CalTrans is replacing the half that stretches from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland, the cantilever half that almost dumped a section into the San Francisco Bay during the World Series earthquake back in ’89. That section got fixed ages ago, but CalTrans wants a more modern bridge.

What you see is mostly the old bridge, which I think is beautiful, but I have a funny aesthetic. Everyone still drives on the old bridge for now.

If you look closely under the deck of the old bridge, you’ll see the new bridge creeping along from shore (on the left) toward the island. Major budget arguments have raged in Sacramento over whether it’s worth putting up a more expensive but iconic suspension span, or whether they should just have a glorified freeway onramp that leads as far as Yerba Buena, at which point drivers will enter the majestic suspension bridge that stretches from there to the city by the Golden Gate.

Apparently so far the budget is covering the freeway onramp.

I’ve seen it from closer up, but it’s hard to squeeze off shots from the old Bay Bridge. (It’s hard enough to catch a glimpse, since the new roadway is at a lower level than the old.) This is from the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, which starts at San Quentin Prison and rises, and falls, and rises, and falls, over to the East Bay. I could be remembering wrong, but I think there was a Sacramento budget battle over that one too. Something about whether the state could afford a span high enough for freighters to pass under, or couldn’t afford it, or could afford it, or couldn’t afford it.

Ah, legislators.

The Road Is Long

It’s late, and I have to get up early, with a lot to do and miles to go before I sleep. So no long comments tonight. But enjoy the pictures!



Coming down off the Grapevine hill (look it up under “Commander Cody”) into California’s Central Valley. It was a beautiful day to be out driving. A little warm, and I got a trucker suntan with the driver’s side window down.



I have a sad feeling about what’s going to happen to these cows. You can’t read a cow’s palm, but if you could, I think their lifelines would be showing up short.

Check out the concertina wire on the fence around the cows, to make sure none of them try to scale the fence and get out.



At least one person out there knows what this picture is and why I took it (again). Do you?



Grist for a modern-day Don Quixote (look it up under “Borges”).



No concertina wire here, just a good-looking fence. Remember back when I used to make an effort, and edit these shots properly before posting them, for maximum photographic effect? Think of this one as a do-it-yourself project.





Some institutions of higher learning get ivory towers. Stanford’s is made of brick.



Another shot I really should dip a couple times in some Photoshop lacquer to make the whites really white and the letters on the sign pop. Whatever with that.

Stanford has established a reserve for academics, much as in southern Africa you’ll find reserves for springbok and kudu herds. I think this is part of a genetic engineering project, where they’re trying to get engineering majors who are more photogenetic, but I don’t see the local paper often enough to keep up with all these things.

Never mind. I did it myself.

The Day the Sun Stood Still II

Yup, it’s been a busy season, but I still hate to miss an astronomical event:

That’s the sun going down behind the Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach, on the summer solstice, taken from Seapoint in Huntington Beach, where the angle on that single day makes for a perfect lineup of sun with bridge.

Last year when I went out to take that picture Ma Nature provided a thick overcast, so there was no bridge on the horizon, and no clear sunset.

This year I hustled down there to grab the shot and arrived almost too late. It’s important when communing with nature that you pick a place where there’s good parking and you won’t have to stand around for 15 minutes waiting for Nature to get going with the show. If I’d had an extra 15 minutes, I would have taken a panorama, but I was still hiking over to my usual spot when the sun impatiently dropped anyhow, rather rudely not waiting till I was in position.

I squeezed off the last shots my batteries would allow, and I finished a roll of film too, and then, show over, I hustled back to the car. With 12 minutes still on the parking meter, I backed out and drove over to Main Street for a pretzel.

Happy Solstice!

When the Revolution Comes

“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical.”
—George W. Bush, June 20, 2007

I don’t know whether I even agree with such a simple reduction, but now that the President has had a change of heart, we should be able to get the last of the U.S. troops home by the end of summer.

(Photo by Ken Jarecke, from Gulf War I, found online at deoxy.org)

Soundtrack by The Last Poets

True Love

In the spring, a young man’s fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love

There’s nothing but truth in Tennyson’s lines from “Locksley Hall.”

It’s a while since I read that poem. I can’t remember whether he goes on to describe how, not long after, a young man’s fancy turns to somewhat more lumbering thoughts of heavy construction equipment—big Tonka toys.

But it does seem to be a universal passion of the season.

Over here in Southern California, they’ve been tearing out the road in front of the office for the past week.

We had asked them to put in planters, and gates at the ends of the block, and to turn the pavement into a permanent parking lot for our office. I don’t think that’s the city’s plan, although it would sure make it easier for our forklifts to get across the street when they need to.

But we should at least end up with smoother lanes to drive in.

Purple Passage

I happen to think purple is a silly color for a tree, but the jacarandas all over Long Beach disagree with me. They sure are pretty. They just look like Dr. Seuss colored them, or maybe some kid working with a crayon on a Denny’s placemat.


If you picture these bursting with orange flame, it really makes a powerful image in Bad Religion’s “Los Angeles Is Burning,” which is never far from mind in a season like this.

Genius

I’m only saying:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3249364
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?p=65446&sid=7cef4ad21d9aa4541c0c46155e75f0e4
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-49408.html
http://www.coreyarnold.org/ibook/
http://www.forbrug.dk/presse/nyheder/pressekit/ibookg4/ibook-g4-english/
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/iBook-G4-12-Inch/Bottom-Shield/83/6

I dropped by an Apple Store this morning, and the Apple “Genius” had never heard of an iBook that wouldn’t start for this reason before. He spent about 10 minutes poking around at his screen and came up with nothing, and he even went back into the private service area to see if anyone had ever heard of it. No luck.

Kinda funny, calling him a Genius (TM) when he couldn’t find what a five-minute search on Google for “ibook g4 black screen startup” yields several informative sites for (including one that belongs to Apple itself).

For me, that’s 0 for 2 for the Apple “Geniuses.” I suppose for other people the service works fine.

I get suspicious as soon as I walk in and hear the lite modern music blaring in the “Genius Bar” area. I’m no computer genius, but I do know you can’t diagnose a computer you can’t hear. When you turn it on and listen for the hard disk whirring, for the fan, for the CD reader engaging, you can identify a series of problems to either consider or disregard right away.

Last time I went to the “Genius Bar,” I had a crapped-out Apple hard drive in my machine. The “Genius” couldn’t hear it, let alone identify that this was the sound of a bad hard drive. I ended up taking my machine to CompUSA, where they had no music playing in the service area, but they fixed the machine just fine.

The main difference this time was that I was less shocked at how stupid Apple’s “Geniuses” are, so I stayed much more friendly for the whole performance. As soon as I determined that he was as useless as a switch on a dead circuit, I abandoned his ship and went straight to Plan B.

Thus far I’ve got e-mail recovered and working well, music playing, Web browser bookmarks up and running, database software alive and well. I still have various financial and office software to kick back into gear, but I’m optimistic. Lucky for me, I don’t count on other people to “Genius” me back into business—I keep my own set of backups.

That’s the third significant computer failure in two weeks for me (two were at work; this one is at home), and thank goodness for planning ahead for system failure, because thus far none of them has resulted in a catastrophe. Good and current backups, plus a modicum of skill at coaxing stubborn machinery, has kept us up and running with only minimal downtime and just about zero panic. Each one was on a machine at least two years old. I’d rather see the machines lasting a little longer, but I don’t have time to gripe about that right now—the main thing is that the machinery failures haven’t become huge obstacles, and for that I’m happy and grateful.

I could mutter on about how Steve Jobs’s shoddy manufacturing practices cost me the better part of a beautiful Memorial Day, but I’ve got better ways to spend my time. I’m no “Genius,” but I know the time to forage for moochable barbecues is when the day’s sun starts to edge over into the western part of the sky. I could sit here and check out my image-capture software, but I think I’d rather strap on my bike shoes and go hunt for someone with hot coals.

Happy Memorial Day to all!