Monday, January 28, 2008

Who You Callin' Chicken, Boy???


While I was out yesterday with my camera to survey the damage that had woken me up, I saw a glorious thing. Chicken Boy!!! I've heard tales of him for years, but I had no idea that he had returned, and so close to my home!!! Good to see you, Chicken boy!!!

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Rude Awakening

What a way to wake up!!! Choppity choppity.... I thought I was back in old Saigon!!!


Such things as this should not happen on a weekend morning. Shocking that the rest of the family was sleeping through it. Oh well, since I wasn't getting any more rest, figured I'd step outside and see if I could see what all was up there. Only one chopper, and instead of the regular circling, it was hovering, being blown up a ways, and returning to where it started. Strange. I could hear emergency vehicles' sirens approaching. Two thoughts of what could have happened, one being that the constant drizzle had destabilized the hillside and a house or two had slid down. The other thought was that someone had attempted to race a Gold Line train at one of the crossings. Since I was up (and none of the local news broadcasts were showing a thing about it) I decided I'd throw on some clothes, grab my camera and see if I could find the source and get some shots in.

By the time I did this, though, Tooth boy woke up. I told him what I was thinking of doing, and before I took off I flipped through the broadcast news again, and there it was.

The third option turned out to be what had happened, though. One of the world famous 110 Freeway exit had claimed another victim. (Image of the car being lifted out courtesy of Fox 11's website)

I stopped by later in the day to survey the damage. Hard to tell exactly what happened, but I think that someone tried to exit without heeding the 5 MPH sign, overshot the exit and fell the thirty or so feet into the Arroyo Seco.

Every so often that happens.

While I was there taking pictures, I heard the brakes of another car locking up, and I was able to get a couple of shots, Ala Mad Max.

He was able to keep from going all the way over, but he was very lucky that there was no one heading onto the freeway!!!

The Tooth Fairy Cometh


Friday was a momentous day. They youngest lost his first tooth!!! He was wiggling it and it came right out!!! It hadn't been loose for that long, either.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Snow Day!!!



I'm still not over this!!! We are in the midst of a storm system here in the southland, unusual that we've actually got weather happening. Funny thing, the talking heads have been saying that it was going to start on Monday, then Tuesday, but it was actually Wednesday before it actually got here. Cut off low, weatherman's woe, I think it was the immortal Dr. George Fischbeck used to say that.



Anyway, I got up a little early this morning on account of all the people who can't drive with a little wetness. It wasn't even raining when I exited the house, the sun was even out. On the way out of the house, I saw this white on the front grass. My first thought, dang, there's a busted drain pipe somewhere and now there's some detergent suds in my yard!!! I took a closer look, and my second thought it was frost. I've seen frost before, I can wrap my mind around frost, and certainly it's cold enough for frost. Still, it didn't look right for that. A closer look, its actually SNOW!!! In L.A.!!! Ha!!! Not a lot of it, but still, the real deal!!! Good thing I was a little ahead of schedule, I ran back in the house, grabbed my camera and told the youngest to get his shoes on, he's gotta see this!!! He scooped some up, and declared, "It's freezing cold!!!" The second picture is after I hit him with a snowball, as you can see it stuck on his shoulder.



Even the car still had some remaining on it, along the wipers and cowl area, and on the back wing.



An interesting footnote: My home is my grandfathers' former home, we bought it from his estate when he passed. My mother grew up here, and back in the 50's it had also snowed here, and she has some old 8mm home movies of them playing in the snow from back then.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Junkyard Gang


Went to the junkyard's half price day over the weekend. I didn't find anything to make the Benz shift right, in fact didn't see but one car that was even similar to mine there. The one that was there was a 240D, and about the most stripped Mercedes I've ever seen. It was manual transmission, no air conditioning, cruise control or power windows. I did, however, find a console with all the window switches in good condition in another (gas powered) Benz. I had not only given up on ever finding one of those, but had even purchased a GM switch panel to put in place of the factory piece.

In the non-automotive category, I found these guys!!! Most of the cast of The Cat in the Hat, minus Thing 1 and Sally. Interesting, the boy from the story is never named, only spoken in the first person. I've always liked those Things. Funny that SpongeBob was in with these guys. For the wife, I found a really cute denim halter top with a zipper up the front. Once again, everything I brought home got a thorough de-lousing.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Geezers


Last week one of the girls I work with invited me to a get together to celebrate her birthday on Friday. It was going to be at a place near work that I've seen many times but have never been to. Its called Geezers. Perfect place to celebrate a birthday, huh???


There's the Birthday girl!!! Of course, I was on the third shift, and most everyone else who was there were on the first or second shift. Many of them had already come and gone by the time I got there, but there were still a dozen or so. I got to meet a guy I hadn't met before, from the packing department. He recognized me as "the guy with the cool lunch box". Ha!!!

The place was a lot bigger than I had pictured from driving by it. Looked real nice, but it wasn't very crowded at all. Probably they do a lot of lunch business, the area is mostly businesses. I took my camera, but only got three pictures. Good times!!!

Monday, January 07, 2008

Technology Meltdown


This is the tale of my New Years Eve. First thing you should know is that I had to work New Years Eve. There wasn't a lot of work going on, but I had to be there. I made a mistake the previous Friday, but it worked out OK. It was slow on Friday, too, and the supervisors came around asking people if they would like to go home early that day or Monday. I immediately said Monday, my logic being that I would prefer to get a little earlier home on New Year's Eve. Just a little after I'd told them that, I got to having second thoughts. Firstly, I was on the later shift on Monday, and being on the road an hour earlier would mean potentially being more in the midst of traffic. My second thought was that, while it was slow on Friday, it was likely to be even slower on Monday, so they might still send people home early that day, even if they'd left early on Friday too. As I said, it worked out, just a bit after I'd articulated this thinking to one of my co-workers, a supervisor came up to me and told me I was leaving an hour early that day, Friday. OK, all's well that ends well.

When I got home quite early that evening, I put my older boy's computer system upgrades in. For all practical purposes, it's a brand new machine, the only things remaining are the case and the CD and floppy drives. I have to say, it was the easiest computer I've ever built.
As I has predicted, it was even slower on Monday. That worked out as I had hoped it would, too. Actually, even better than I'd planned. A bit after morning break, one of the supervisors told me that I only had to work until the start of my lunch break, something they were doing for all the people with good attendance stats. Whoo hooo!!!

I had been planning on scouring junkyards over the weekend. The Benz is running great, except that the transmission doesn't want to shift right. Since the engine is different than the chassis, I'm looking for what is called a "change over valve" that is proper to the year of the chassis. Since I was done at 1, I called up my dad to see if he wanted to go. We did, to two different yards, but had no luck finding the valve.

When I got home is when the title alluded technology meltdown happened. As I was attempting to get some dinner together, my older boy starts calling out, asking what to do when his screen goes upside down!!! I go out and take a look, and sure enough, his screen is displaying upside down!!! Huh. Flip your monitor over, boy. I have no idea how he did it. I remembered some years ago seeing a little joke program you could send your friends that would do just this when activated, but I couldn't find anything like that. I messed with it for quite a while, then gave up on it for a bit.

My younger boy tells me that his new keyboard "does numbers when you do letters". Huh??? I type a few letters. No problem. He types a few farther to the right, and sure enough, it does numbers. Huh??? I'm thinking that his new keyboard has some crossed wires from the factory, and grab the box out of the trash before it goes any farther. I can't figure it out at this time, and finally sit down to eat.

While I'm eating, I happen to look at the digital photo frame that I gave my wife for Christmas. The front of it looks like it's been scribbled on!!! I'm a little upset by this and ask a bit loudly what happened. My younger boy says, "I'm sorry!" Once again, I ask what he did to it, and he repeats "I'm sorry!" Two or three more times we go through this, and I finally have to explain, "Yea, I got that you're sorry, now WHAT DID YOU DO TO IT???" He tells me that he was drawing on it with his finger. Fortunately, it cleaned off with no negative effects.

On my older boy's machine, my wife had the brilliant idea that, since he's now using XP instead of 2000, he could use the system restore. One day back, and everything is fine. I discovered a bit later that his display driver has a built in rotate function. If I'd known sooner...


Sin City came on at 10:00, and it is one of those movies I'd always kind of wanted to see. I turned it on and laid back on the couch. Twenty minutes later, I was out.


Happy New Year!!!