Monthly Archives: February 2019

February 7, 2019 · 21:58

If I Were Her…

On the way home tonight I was deeply saddened to see how far the quality standards for BMW manufacturing have fallen.

A good chunk of my drive home coincided with a similar route by a woman driving a brand new (still has the paper plates!) BMW X6 M. It was deplorable how shoddy the construction was!

First of all, the vehicle was obviously built with no turn signals whatsoever. How can they get away with that? Aren’t there Department of Transportation standards that they have to adhere to?

Apparently not. Block after block she drove, weaving through traffic like Dale Earnhardt at Daytona, and no matter what, those turn signals never blinked.

And that’s not all! Being stuck behind her at a couple of red lights, I was horrified to see that her brand new, shiny, $100,000+ vehicle apparently also came without a gas pedal! The light would turn green and we would just sit there, waiting, going nowhere! She was obviously aware of the problem since she appeared to be texting a BMW service agent about the problem.

It’s sad that such a prestigious, luxury automobile could have such defects. But what other explanation could there possibly be?

Let’s just hope that the airbags aren’t defective when that freakin’ moron with the ten-cent brain driving the $100,000+ SUV wraps it around a bridge abutment…

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Filed under Distracted Driving, Los Angeles

February 6, 2019 · 23:35

It’s Important To Remember

…I’m doing this because it’s fun.

Wait, what?

I’m doing it because I’m neurotic and due to traumatic experiences in my life I’m almost pathologically unable to let go or quit?

Oh.

Well, that explains the lack of fun.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts

February 5, 2019 · 21:41

Headphone Quest – I Think We Have A Winner!

I’ve blathered on a couple of times recently about my quest to find some decent earbuds or headphones. Thanks to a suggestion from my son who was visiting last weekend, I think we have a winner!

He had a really, REALLY good pair of Bluetooth, noise cancelling, over-the-ear, full sized headphones. So I grabbed a pair.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II. Not cheap. Worth. Every. Freakin’. Penny!

They’re light. I’ve been wearing them for three or four hours and except for the amazing sounds filling my head, I can barely tell they’re on. And given that they’re sitting on top of my head and completely covering my ears, they’re not constantly slipping out and changing the sound and having to be pushed back in like most of the earbuds that I’ve tried.

I can see wearing these while I run, as long as it’s not raining. I don’t think they’re built for that.

They’re supposed to last for over 20 hours on a full charge and recharge in under two hours, so that’s not going to be an issue.

They have the Google Assistant built in and a mike so I can take phone calls if I wish on them. Or I can push the button and ask for weather, news, make appointments, set reminders, and so on.

All of that’s nice. But the sound…

OH!

MY!!

GOD!!!

I’ve been at concerts where I was literally in the first dozen rows. Except for those experiences, this is the best I’ve ever heard.

I knew from trying out my son’s pair that I was going to like it. So I’ve hit the “Greatest Hits” list hard.

Hamilton. Brad Paisley. Jethro Tull. Dvorak’s New World Symphony 4th movement. Jean Michel Jarre!

It’s all of the “PLAY IT LOUD!!!” stuff. Jarre’s “Oxygene 11” or “Chronologie 2” or Supertramp’s “Child of Vision” or Paisley’s “Whiskey Lullabye” or Hamilton’s “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.” With these headphones they’ll bring on tears of joy.

As I said, not cheap. (And they’re my first noise cancelling headphones, so it’s still a little odd to not hear the keyboard as I’m typing.) But if you want to listen to music while you work and you need to be wandering around, or you need some really good workout or running headphones (assuming that sweating hard doesn’t kill them – have to watch out for that), these are SPECTACULAR!

Highly recommended. Finest kind.

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Filed under Music, Photography

February 4, 2019 · 20:54

Jewels In The Trees

There’s beauty there. You just need to keep your eyes and heart open to see it.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

February 3, 2019 · 23:44

Regrowth

Back in November, our area of California (among others) burned. The fires came within a half mile of our house.

Now the next part of the cycle comes, with the winter rains and a possible El Nino year dumping higher than normal amounts of rain on California, causing mud slides, flooding, rock slides, and other problems in the burn areas as they’re no longer protected by vegetation.

But it’s amazing how quickly the hills can turn from black to green again.

The contrast can be stark and vivid. Parts of the hillsides can still be black as night, burnt, and charred, while patches or even whole mountainsides are an almost iridescent green.

These pictures, taken along the 101 Freeway between Camarillo and Woodland Hills (my son was driving, so I got to take pictures yesterday) show other damage such as this, where rock slides have caused temporary barriers to be put up and lanes closed.

I don’t know what causes this phenomenon where the new growth is in a mottled or spider-web like pattern across the blackened hillside. You can see the burnt bushes and trees everywhere, but the green undergrowth along the ground has started to be re-established.

Just a few hundred yards way, the entire hillside is iridescent green, with the black stumps of the bushes sticking up through it.

This is how the cycle continues. As green as it is now, this brush will grow up and over the summer will spend nine months turning brown and highly flammable.

This might go on for ten years or more, the brush and weeds growing thicker during the winter months, green for a few weeks, and then drying up and turning brown in April and May, finally baking itself into tinder by July.

It’s the same with all of these trees – most of them will grow back and become lush again, just waiting for the next brush fired to come through, when they’ll turning into flaming torches, their leaves and branches burning, breaking, and being blown for miles in the high winds, starting new spot fires ahead of the main fire, spreading it faster than a person can run.

That’s the cycle – burn, regrow, dry out, burn again.

Welcome to California. We don’t know what will try to kill you this year – the earthquakes, the fires, the floods, or the mudslides.

Down here in the lower elevations, it’s unlikely to be a blizzard or hurricane.

But wait for it. That could be coming soon as the climate changes unpredictably.

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Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

February 2, 2019 · 23:40

El Nino

I don’t know if this has officially been declared an “El Nino” year by the National Weather Service (or whoever’s in charge of such things) but it sure feels that way to those of us getting drenched.

In an “El Nino” year, there’s a warm patch of Pacific Ocean water that forms around Christmas time (which has something to do with the name – google it) and the end result is an unusually wet winter in California. We get these “atmospheric rivers” that start funneling huge, wet, relatively warm storms onto the California coast, one after the other for days, one onslaught after another.

Whether official or not, this is what we get:

(I wasn’t driving, thanks!)

At this particular moment, the weather radar looked like:

(Image from Wunderground, despite their competitor’s ad, which I find somewhat hilarious and ironic and just a bit creepy.)

It’s quiet now, mostly, but there’s a lot of unstable air behind these fronts, and another couple of fronts to follow about every eighteen hours, so tomorrow and Monday look soggy as well.

While this might be beneficial in terms of alleviating our constant water shortages and drought in California and the Southwest states, it’s not so good in terms of the flash flooding and mudslides.

Welcome to California! If one thing doesn’t kill you, it’s opposite thing will!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Video, Weather

February 1, 2019 · 23:55

No Context For You – February 01st

No matter what you think this might be, it’s not. I’m pretty sure of that.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. While that’s one of my all-time favorite films, I don’t think there are any days in the last couple of weeks that I would want to live over and over and over. While we’ve come out the other end in pretty good shape, the journey to get here has sort of sucked.

But February’s going to be better!

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Filed under Entertainment, Family, Photography