The Overflow Pictures

As mentioned in my previous post, here's the overflow pictures!!!



I think this is my favorite shot of the Disney Concert Hall.

Parking under the Disney Concert Hall like that reminded me of the time my boy and I saw the Counting Crows with the Philharmonic there. Good times.

But It Ended All Too Soon

Day two of jury duty ended up being the last day of jury duty. Kind of a bummer, but hey what can you do???

I really liked the deal I had going, the judge wanted us there at 10:30, lunch from noon until 1:30, and wrap up by 4:00. Better than the 7:30 I had to be there yesterday. Not to mention the commute, even when fully jammed, is still a lot quicker than my normal drive. If I'd been there any longer, I was going to check into getting the court provided Metro pass.

Well, I got there today and the prosecutor finishes his questioning of the jury panelists, and picks who he doesn't like. I was the first. Bad move for his case, I feel, but his loss. Of course, I was juror #1, so I was pretty much first for everything. Anyway, JUROR DISMISSED!!!


It was for a murder one case, with a female defendant. And a claw hammer. Wow. One has to imagine that there was likely some domestic violence in the background, and from the bit they let on about that was the case. As well as there being drugs and alcohol involved.

Anyway, I was out of there less than an hour after I got there, and it seemed a shame to waste the trip, so I walked ALL OVER, taking shots whilst I walked.

I had a few shots from yesterday that I'd selected that didn't fit, and some today too. I'm thinking of an overflow post.

I'm also thinking of a post of nothing but the Disney Concert Hall.

For the first time, there was actually a lot of smoke in the skies, giving some of my shots an orange cast.

The Westin Bonaventure is another of my all time favorite downtown structures, I took several shots of it, inside and out and from the wonderful glass elevators. Possibly a post of just it, too.

The Other Side of the Bench

The last several months I've become rather familiar with going to court. Today I began a completely different experience, something new for me. I've been called in for jury duty!!!

Much of the first part of the day was taken up with orientation in a room full of probably more than 100 potential jurors. After that, I had plenty of time to read most all of the paper, do the crossword and sudoku puzzles, and listen to my MP3 player. I still have the music I loaded on it for the Florida trip, and was amused to hear that Jay-Z's "99 Problems" and The Beatles' "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" were in the mix, both of which have tales of the legal system in them. Who knows, I may have Skynard's "Four Walls of Rainford" on there, too!!!

Halfway through the day I was called to be in a case screening panel. I'm under orders not to discuss any details of the case, so you'll have to wait until after for any of that (if indeed I am inclined to post about it... but it sounds fascinating, so I likely will), but there is a 1 1/2 hour lunch break, and I had my camera with me, so I got to take a bunch of pictures of downtown from a pedestrian perspective!!! Cool!!!

I took a BUNCH of the Disney Concert Hall. Only a couple are represented here.

One of the pictures had the fountains outside the DWP building. The cool thing about it is that it has a parking structure underneath it!!!



The whole downtown area seems big on fountains...

This is the first time that I've actually made it to jury service, since I now work for a real company that pays for my time while I serve!!!

Likely more to come!!!

Into the Fire

Fires raging in the southland today. The biggest, most news making one in Malibu. Didn't all that burn down just five years or so back??? Funny thing, though, they keep going on about the hurricane force winds whipping up these fires, but its near perfect calm just a few miles away at my home.

Janis has been running like a Timex. The last major thing I had to do was to put in a starter, just a couple of days after I bought it. I did the brakes a few weeks ago, and it had gotten a flat a couple of weeks ago when my wife was driving it, right near home. I went ahead and bought a full new set of tires after that (no small amount of money, once you add in disposal, mounting and balancing, and road hazard insurance) as well as bought a lifetime alignment. I also picked up an outside passenger's side mirror and a new block of window switches at the junkyard's 1/2 price day. I had a problem with the transmission not wanting to upshift a week ago. I suspected a vacuum modulator problem or line going to it, and the first thing I found googling it said exactly that. Easily fixed problem. Still not a speed demon, but gets great mileage.

Friday morning, I head out to go to work and warm up the glow plugs and start it up as normal. She runs for a couple seconds, then stalls. Hmmm, that's strange, she never stalls. I go to crank her again, and I can hear the starter engage and try and turn the engine, but it doesn't go. Hmmm. I give up and drive the Storm.

I have a couple theories at this point as to what could have happened. The one I hoped for was that the engine got on a compression stroke and the starter didn't have quite enough to kick it past there. I'd had that problem on the Maverick before. The next, slightly less desirable possibility was that the starter just gave out. It has starter history. The last option in my head was that the timing chain jumped or broke. If that happened, it could be a semi simple fix on up to catastrophic failure, with valves bouncing off pistons and such.


Saturday I got out there and managed to get the engine to crank backwards a bit, then it cranked fine. Cranked, but didn't start. And something didn't sound quite right. I had my wife crank it while I attempted to observe the cam through the oil fill hole. The cam was turning, but I noticed something else... the valve cover was rising up about an eighth of an inch on every revolution. Ut oh...

Didn't know exactly what I'd find, but I pulled the valve cover off to check into it. Turns out the cam shaft is broken into three sections, as well as the cam shaft pedestal. I'm seeing dollar signs. The cam turns out to be about $150, plus another around $80 for a timing chain and gears. I'm not going to go through all that and not replace the timing chain. Not to mention several other incidentals that would no doubt arise.

I found a guy who has a complete engine in an 81' that was rebuilt around six years ago. $250 complete. Sold!!! But, it's all the way out in Simi Valley, right out near the Malibu fires. It was like a heavy fog out there, and my shirt smells of smoke.

My dad made the observation that I buy more than a few cars and end up putting in new engines within six months. I guess this will be the fourth time I'll have done that, only one of them being planned before the original purchase. If it wasn't for the tires and alignment (and the fact that I rather like this car) I'd probably cut my losses and look for another. Oh well, its been several years since I've done this, it's time.

The Final Sleep Deprivation Post

Finally I'm going to post about our final vacation day. Nearly two months later.


This was the day that I had rescheduled to return the rental car on. The older boy and I got up early and went to Blizzard Beach again. He had kept trying to get the younger boy to check out the kiddy area there, and he wanted to go there that day. We got to go on a lot of slides.

We got the rental car back right on schedule, and headed back to the resort. Next, we headed out to the one Disney theme park that we had not yet been to, Disney MGM Studios.

Of all the theme parks, I think this one was my favorite!!! For one thing, it seems to be a lot smaller than the other three, so it doesn't take near as much walking to get around it.


It has a couple of duplicate rides, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror that we'd been on before at California Adventure, and Star Tours from Disneyland. The Tower of Terror was the first one we went on, it had a fairly short line. We had planned to let the younger wait with one of us while the other went, but he said he wanted to go. He was tall enough, so we let him. He didn't like it so much.

Over in the same area was the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster. We got fast passes for that to come back later.

There was a show featuring Drew Carey that was mostly sound effects that we went to, it was quite amusing. One of the cooler things they have is a live stunt show with lots of horsepower and pyrotechnics. I took quite a bit of video of that, maybe someday I'll post it.


Oh yea, finally bought a spray bottle with a fan for the youngest boy. He had been wanting one for a lot of the trip. They had them for about half as much at the shuttle launch, but they were sold out by the time I discovered this.

One of the other cool rides is one that goes through several scenes from classic movies.

Cool props galore there, too. See the umbrella attached to the light post (featuring an out of camera sprinkler overhead) a la "Singing in the Rain"???

Of course, our fast passes were for pretty far on in the evening. We made our way back to the Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster, and wifey takes the older on it while the younger and I wait. After they get off, the older and I head on. It is nicely themed, you start out in a recording studio with Aerosmith (who the boy kept calling "Arrowhead"), then head out into the alley where a super stretch '59 Caddy limo roller coaster is waiting to take you to the concert. It gets into the launch area, and there are illuminated freeway signs saying traffic is jammed, etc. then it launches. It's supposed to be accompanied with a soundtrack of Aerosmith music, but there was no sound. NICE coaster, though!!! Mostly in the dark, with several inversions. It pulled up to the ride exit area, and the attendant apologized for the lack of sound, do you want to go again??? We all cheered loudly, to which the attendant shushed us and looked worriedly towards the ride loading area. It was quite amusing.

Second time around was even better, with the sound. Very cool that the last ride we went on there we actually got to ride twice!!!

If I Knew Picasso...

"Do you play guitar???" She asked. Probably the fact that I was wearing my guitar print shirt today made her think that. One of the things I like about her, she appreciates all the wild shirts I wear and often comments on them. Sometimes she'll tell me, "I like your shirt!!!" and start laughing. I never know exactly how to take that, so I just thank her and take it as a compliment.



"No", I replied, "but I have a guitar." She laughed, amused, and asked, "What kind of guitar???" "Silver" I replied. I painted it myself." More laughter. "I've learned a few chords, but that's about it."

That was about all the time for discussion we had at that point, but it brought back memories, so when I had a few moments later, I related some more of the story:

Back in my early teen years I picked this guitar up from a friend of my sister for a decent price. It was a cheap Japanese solid body electric, with all the electronics on a chrome plate. Double pick ups and a base that is threaded for a whammy bar. It was wood grained with darkened areas when I got it.

I was going to paint my bedroom. Like most teens, I wanted to paint it black. Of course, my parents weren't too thrilled at this prospect, fearing that it would be like a cave (ummm, part of the attraction!!!) and that it would take a dozen coats of paint to ever cover over it. Then, one of my dad's friends told him, "No problems painting over black paint, one coat of silver covers right over it!!!" Hmmmm, silver... Kinda like the sound of that even better!!! So, silver it was painted, with a black ceiling. I drove a few nails into the wall to hang the guitar on at about a 30° angle, and disassembled it and painted the body and neck the same silver as the walls. While I never became a guitar virtuoso, I had a cool wall hanging.

As an epilogue, years later, after I had moved out, my parents repainted the room. Turns out the only thing harder than painting over black paint is painting over silver paint!!!

Looking a Free Lunch in the Mouth

For the last few weeks, I've managed to eat free at my work for one day each week. As I've said before, they take care of us there!!! Three weeks ago there was a lunch and learn on biofuels, that I had made mention of earlier. While it was interesting, I really learned more about our marketing department than about biofuels. Of course, I already knew quite a bit about that. This week they've had a series of them on finances, of which I attended the Tuesday one on wealth accumulation. Very educational. However, the one I'm going to focus on is the one from last week.




One of the supervisors from my area is leaving to another department. Towards the beginning of the week they came around telling everyone in the department that they didn't need to bring or buy a lunch on Thursday, because they were going to provide a lunch to thank us all for our hard work, and to say bye to the departing. Cool!!!

A little side note: Just a few days before this, I was telling my oldest boy that third shift is the best when it comes to eating. If you want some kind of breakfast food, just show up a little early and eat before you start. A lot of people do. First break for us is at 11:15, and at that time they are getting ready for lunch. There are usually a little bit of breakfast foods left there if you're in the mood for that, but my personal favorite is the pizza, fresh out of the oven. Best possible break schedule to me!!!

Thursday rolls around. At break time, they've got the food being laid out for our lunch feast in the quad. There's a couple of three foot sandwiches, and a few huge pizzas. Yum!!! Since it was already there, I grabbed a couple of slices of pizza for break. It was great. The cafeteria worker who was overseeing it told us that there was more in the kitchen, and they would be bringing more out at each break. Good deal, we were all a bit concerned about there being any left when our lunch time rolled around.

As the first and second shift guys come back from lunch, they're raving about how good the food is. Lunch time rolls around. We head out there, and there are no sandwiches left, and no drinks. There's still pizza, but its luke warm. The cafeteria worker brought out some more sodas and waters and iced teas, but not a lot. Strangely enough, some people started complaining. One of the supervisors stuck his head out and asked how things were. The girl next to me rolled her eyes at him. He didn't stay much longer. The supervisor who is leaving came out a bit later. One of the guys told him he felt like a red headed step child. Another guy gave up on the leftover pizza and went to the cafeteria and got a tuna fish sandwich. I told him he had to cut it up in tiny pieces and share with everyone. He was asking if anyone wanted any more soda, and was pouring it into the cap of the bottle to pass around. Most everyone ate some pizza. It was a lot better when it was warm, but it was still OK. I was amazed how much complaining was going on over a free lunch!!!

San Pedro Revisited

Yea, Blogger now automatically saves your drafts my ass!!! Just a second of the power flickering off and and half an hour of composition is gone. Know what, don't even put that up if it doesn't really work. And don't get me started on this bill of goods APC UPS backup that I bought. Would have done better wiping my ass with a $50 bill.

Well, my third time going to court didn't work out as I would have liked, but it could be worse. I'm fairly confident that I'll still get paid. The driver of the other vehicle actually had the decency to show up, and the judge granted the motion to vacate judgement. However, the actual owner wasn't there, and the judge continued the case until yet another later date so they could also appear. Sheesh, enough is enough, already!!!

However, it was a gorgeous day out today, and I took my camera with me. It was supposed to be storming today, but as usual the weathermen don't know.



It was the first time in quite a while that I've actually gotten out with my camera, and it was a lot of fun!!!



I wandered around Port of Call for about an hour. It was near deserted at that hour of the morning, with most all of the businesses closed still.

After that I headed down to the end of the land to Angel's Gate Park, where the Point Fermin lighthouse is located.



As I wandered through there, I met a couple of interesting people. One lady had retired from the movie business, where she was the on-site account person. Fascinating tales.



After that, I walked down a ways, and met a couple who told me that there was a large bird perched at the top of a tree. I took several shots, I think it was an osprey. Heading back from that I met another lady who told me that there were blue whales between where we were and Catalina island. She pointed them out to me, and let me use her high powered binoculars. I stayed there for probably more than an hour, watching them surface, breach, and dive. Amazing. She told me that she is a whale census taker for the state. Fascinating. She had great long range vision.


I got a couple of shots of the whales spouting, but none that are that great. We both agreed, we will be getting ourselves digital SLR cameras with big lenses for Christmas!!!