Memento Mori

I have long loved this website despite its relative simplicity which is part of its charm. The ominous skull with black background is not only cool-looking but is in keeping with the long tradition since ancient times of "Memento mori" which means "remember your death". HERE as well as below this pasted webpage is a link to the original page which you must visit in order to gain the benefit of the website's key feature which I won't give away so that you must check it out for yourself.

Mori     Mori displays streaming seismographic data measured continuously from a site near the Hayward Fault above University of California at Berkeley. The earthquake detector is a Streckeisen STS-1 seismometer that measures vertical ground velocity. Data is collected by the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and relayed to a server in the Alpha Lab. Your display is delayed 30 seconds due to frame buffering at the detector. Enjoy....   Details   Enter"

LINK TO MEMENTO MORI WEBSITE

Pisgah Crater Revisited & Roasted

As some of you may recall about a month ago there was a bit of an online ruckus raised over an allegation by somebody on the internet who goes by the name of Dutchsinse who claimed there had been a volcanic eruption at Pisgah Crater in the Mojave Desert. I covered this in my Pisgah Crater Truth 2011 column here last month. Based upon a little research I conducted Dutchsinse is not merely a paranoid fool all worked up into hysteria about on-going conspiracies and  future catastrophes but is a charlatan. To the rescue enters the fray a particularly ruthlessly smart-aleck actor named David Acton who has deliciously spoofed  Dutchsinse and created this gem of send-up satire:



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Picture of the Day - The Adder Anvil

Today the North County was visited once again by a surge of monsoonal moisture that generated numerous cumulonimbus build-ups throughout the area in an arc from the north to the east to the southeast of Paso Robles, CA. Southern California and to a lesser degree Northern California experienced numerous severe-warned thunderstorms. Three firefighters working the Hurricane Fire Complex on the Los Padres National Forest were struck by lightning today and airlifted to the hospital. Below is one such cumulonimbus that never achieved thunderstorm status but did manage to get my attention for it's viper-shaped anvil cloud.
This photo was taken from 16th Street in Paso Robles looking north. 

Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved.

Random Musings of a Ramblin' Fool XXXIV

I thank all of you who have visited this blog of late. This space has been visited more lately than at any previous time in its history going back to 2008. Apparently I'm getting better at this blogging thing. Part of it is I am getting better at picking topics that interest people and I am using more embed codes.

Back To School

I have resumed my coursework at Cuesta College North County Campus as of three weeks ago. I am working on maintaining my current 4.0 GPA and from the looks of things I have a reasonable opportunity to accomplish that objective. I am taking a 3-unit Economics class, a 3-unit American History class, and a 4-unit Spanish class. Last week I aced the first unit test in that Spanish class.

Houston, We Have a Problem

The Bureau of Automotive Repair  agreed to retire my 1994 Chevy S-10 Pickup as part of its CAP  vehicle retirement program and pay me $1,500 for it. Unfortunately, my pickup refused to start near the end of its time with me. It was not an issue with my battery or ignition system. It appeared instead to be caused by my key-triggered ignition security system locking up the ignition system as if the security key were not inserted in its place although it was inserted. My friend Mike arranged to have a friend of his install a remote starter in the old girl and get her back on the road for one final short drive to the state-approved dismantler just north of Paso Robles. Once that installation was accomplished we fired her up and she ran just fine for a pickup running with Cylinder #1 dead in the water and only God knows what else wrong with her as a result of driving around with that bad cylinder for the past year or so and holding back on much needed preventative maintenance for even longer due to my ongoing poverty. I proceeded to drive her up to the facility with mom following me given I was driving without insurance for that vehicle given I had transferred my policy over to me car since I was getting rid of the truck. Once there I was informed I needed the registration for my truck despite the fact it could only have been approved for the retirement program were it already registered. Anywho, I drove home and retrieved the document and headed back up there and successfully completed the transaction earning $1,500. I then proceeded to walk the four miles home to my house having no ride and feeling a primal urge to take a long victory march after all I had been through with that truck the past few to several years. It felt melancholy dropping the old girl off and walking away and leaving her in the parking lot. I do miss the old girl but not the problems associated with owning and operating her in more recent years.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my car finally went out on me week before last with the complete failure of that erratic torque converter clutch solenoid in my transmission. I hope to get a certain fellow who was highly recommended to me to help me with it. He is investigating whether this repair is within his ability to fix. In the meantime I am unable to go to work and getting to and from school is a bit of an inconvenience although I have now learned the transit system route and schedule here in Paso Robles between the train station and my college campus. I worked up the courage this morning to drive my car to school just to see if it was actually continuing to malfunction again like it did two weeks ago. On the drive home it conked on me again. I'm glad I tried it though on the outside chance the problem had fixed itself or at least lessened of its own accord. When my car, which is has an automatic transmission,  goes bad now it basically keeps slipping into neutral without my shifting gears whenever I slow to a stop or significantly slow down. This is a problem anywhere but particularly in busy intersections. When it happens I can't get it to slip back into gear without shutting down the car and waiting a few minutes before turning it on again. By the way, guess what is going to eat up most if not all that $1,500 from the sale of my old pickup? Now you see it, now you don't!

Summer 2011 Gem Faire is History

I helped my friend Dave in his booth at this past weekend's Gem Faire at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, CA. The show itself was predictably slow for a beautiful Labor Day holiday weekend along the Central Coast of California where many folks would rather be at the beach or otherwise outside in the sunshine. As usual Dave's booth rocked and rolled all through the show to the chagrin of some of the other dealers for whom we felt sympathy. This show had even fewer "rock" dealers than it had just a year ago which meant Dave had virtually no competition as most of the other dealers sell cheap beads and/or jewelry findings or finished jewelery of all grades as well as other odds and ends. Dave does sell beads but he sells mostly beads made of real stone that is of good or better quality which is reflected in its price which a lot of Gem Faire customers are not willing to pay as they have become jaded by all the cheap worthless crap sold in mind numbing quantity at these shows.

Next Up.... 20th Annual Rockhound Roundup This Weekend!

This coming weekend the Santa Lucia Rockhounds will host their 20th Annual Rockhound Roundup gem and mineral show at Pioneer Park and the Pioneer Museum just south of the Mid State Fairgrounds in Paso Robles, CA. Parking and admission are free and I will be there both volunteering for the club to which I'm a member as well as helping my friend Dave in his Rocks & Relics booth.

 North County Lightning

I can't adequately describe in words how much I love lightning. I love thunder, too, but for me it's not the aural effects so much as the visual gratification of seeing such a vivid display of raw energy that lights up my  soul and intellect. This past weekend the North County got a healthy dose of lightning on consecutive nights last Friday and Saturday. Other parts of California got slammed by much worse lightning and with much less rain than we received resulting in a fire siege in Kern County with many tens of thousands of acres burning there right now. I heard thunder just once both nights but the lightning went on for hours both nights.

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My Recollections of 9/11

Ten years ago today was one of those days every American (and many non-Americans as well) can vividly remember where they were and what they were doing when they learned of the attacks. For me that day certainly fits that description. However,  I have since I was a child used notable historical events (particularly disasters) that have occurred during my lifetime as navigational landmarks in my memory marking the way for me whenever I try to remember where I was and what I was doing relative to the closest "event". Certainly 9/11/01 and the 9/11 Attacks  are just about the most memorable of those events and dates but for me probably not more so than 10/17/89 (Loma Prieta Earthquake) and 1/17/94 (Northridge Earthquake).

I woke up late (probably late in the 8AM hour PDT) the morning of September 11, 2001, in Room #3 at the Sonora Gold Lodge in Sonora, CA. I slept in that morning due to exhaustion from the road trip with my mother I was in the midst of which had started a few days earlier. The trip had started out as a get-way to California's Mother Lode Country in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. However, on Day Two or so (which was September 9, 2001) we started the day in Cameron Park, CA, and drove south down Highway 49 intending to spend the night at the aforementioned motel to which we had reservations.  At some point in our drive to that night's destination we became aware of a very dangerous and spectacular Darby Fire raging out of control in the Stanislaus River Canyon. We checked it out the rest of that day and spent the night in Sonora that night and the following night spending September 10, 2001, solely fire-chasing the Darby Fire with me taking ample photos and shooting some video of it from various nearby vantage points.

From the moment I started my day that morning I was in high gear anticipating that we might tarry another day to watch the fire pending if it really took off again that day or not by late morning. Failing that mom and I intended to head home to Atascadero, CA. I was taking a lot of home video of the fire and had run out video cassettes (no digital for me) so first thing I did after getting out of bed was to head up to East Sonora, CA, to the Walmart there with the intent of purchasing some blank 8mm hi8 video cassettes and picking up coffee for mom on the drive back to the room.

I only got around to the first item on that list because no sooner had I reached the part of the store which featured what I was looking for before I heard some alarming discussions taking place on the store display TV's sitting in the electronics/entertainment section located on the other side of the aisle from where I was standing. One of the talking heads on the TV broadcast I was hearing said something about when people don't care about their own lives as they did in the 1993 Word Trade Center Bombing they can do so much more harm by comparison "as we see here today". My immediate thought was "oh my God, what are they talking about that would make the 1993 WTC Bombing seem tame by comparison"? So I walked around the end of the aisle and into that section of the store and asked the two female clerks what I was hearing. They explained to me (and you have to remember that this was early on and there was much false info and rumor-milling occurring.) that several passenger jetliners had been hijacked and crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City which had subsequently collapsed and another plane had been crashed into The Pentagon and yet had crashed into Camp David (actually it had crashed into a field atop a reclaimed coal mining pit near Shanksville, PA, as a result of the passengers turning on their plane's hijackers whom then ditched the plane in the ground) and that there might be more planes (actually that turned out to be yet another false rumor quite fortunately). All I could muster in response were the sorts of expressions of disbelief one might imagine but I also immediately got technical with the ladies and said the buildings couldn't have completely collapsed but merely collapsed from the points of impact upwards. Boy was I wrong; I did not yet grasp the concept of progressive collapse. The buildings' individual levels were designed to hold up all the weight that was RESTING above them, NOT the weight of everything above them falling down upon them.

I immediately took my blank video cassettes to the check-out line and paid for them and fled back to the motel room to tell mom what had happened as I surmised (correctly) that she had not yet turned on the TV as she would have been showering while awaiting some caffeine from me upon my return. I came in the door and she had already showered and was getting prepared for the day. I told her to sit down on the bed because I had something to tell her. I wanted to badly to turn on the TV right away but knew I had to brief mom  before I did so as otherwise she would be utterly confused by what she was seeing. I then related to her what I had heard at Walmart. She was predictably shocked and then I turned on the TV. The first image I saw was live video feed from a helicopter hovering over the water looking back into Lower Manhattan showing the area draped in a funerary cloth of dust and smoke. As it turned out both towers had collapsed entirely and enveloped the immediate area in dust and smoke as well as fires now raged throughout the rubble of the Twin Towers and in the adjacent buildings. Firefighting resources were stretched thin due to the sheer volume of fire and the access problems created by rubble as well as water supply problems created by the destruction of water pipes when the Twin Towers crashed into the ground.

We then proceeded to have breakfast ("to go" food I picked up in downtown Sonora) there in the motel room in front of the television in stunned horror. Watching the Darby Fire was now no longer a consideration no matter what it did that day which I believe was not all that much as it turned out which means we would have driven home that day regardless. We watched the live coverage on TV for a little while and quickly got caught up on all we had slept through. Most disturbing to me were the jumpers. They showed many still shots and video clips of people plunging to their deaths. Given my issues with heights and falling this above all really got to me. I remember one interviewed witness in particular, a short little white guy who was utterly hysterical who speaking to the cameras described having seen the street outside being littered with "broken bodies" and how "horrible" it was. This turned my stomach even more than all the other stomach-turning details we were seeing and hearing.

We were so captivated by what we were watching on TV that we were torn between staying the day and spending another night just to watch what was going on so we missed nothing during the drive home especially if more attacks were forthcoming which at the time and given the rumor mill seemed quite conceivable. Furthermore, at that time I was living with mom and the house did not have television which meant going home would mean no watching history unfold on television. We discussed all this and elected to head home as that felt the best given how the world as we knew it seemed to be falling apart and if more trouble did happen we wanted to be hunkered down in our bunker. However, we agreed to get a motel room in Atascadero and while sleeping  in our own beds spend our waking hours watching history unfold on TV for as long as it felt right.

The drive home was surreal as we came down out of the foothills of the Sierras and across the San Joaquin Valley and through the interior Coast Ranges and home. We both were driving in our own automobiles (mom in her green Ford Explorer and me in my red Chevy S-10 pickup) and traveled caravan-style with me in the lead. It is ironic how we human beings often notice things only when they disappear but otherwise rarely notice what is there. Here in California we get a lot of contrails from jet aircraft both military and civilian given that so many important air routes pass over our fair state and also given the sheer volume of air traffic traveling to and from California. The sky was disquietingly clear and free of any aircraft nor of the typical contrails streaking this way and that way, nearly always many to be seen at once unless the atmosphere is temporarily hindering their formation as happens but never for long. There was not an airplane of any size or shape or configuration to be seen anywhere the entire drive home. All the while witnessing that bit of oddness our radios were tuned into the live coverage and report upon report, rumor upon rumor kept flooding in, sometimes accurate, sometimes not entirely accurate or altogether false. However, my nation's nerves were shot and hysteria and paranoia were quite understandably rampant.

It felt really good to get home, but no sooner had we gotten home than I drove over to the Rancho T Motel and checked us in and started watching the live coverage on TV with mom soon joining me. We proceeded to live there the rest of that day and late into the evening watching the story unfold live on television. The next day we rented the room again and did so day after day for the next several days until we had been there almost a week. Although we slept at home at night we oft visited the room and made it our 9/11 "crash pad" (no bad pun intended) watching the live television coverage and reading the newspapers. We soon developed a routine of what we ate and where we got it from and became regulars in the neighborhood that week Of course we could have simply stayed home and purchased a television and a cable television contract but the thinking at the time was that we did not want television in our home in general and emotionally it helped to deal with this disaster by staying close to home but not feeling trapped within it so it was nice to have a place to go that was nearby but not home itself. Also, we believed 9/11  would soon pass which it thankfully did. Nothing else of note followed thereafter other than two costly wars, one the following month and one a year and a half later. The funny thing is that ultimately 9/11 blew the doors off our abstinence from television as we soon thereafter purchased a new TV and got cable television reinstalled at the house where it remains to this day.

I could and probably will right a separate essay henceforth on the after-effects of 9/11 on me personally and on my nation and its people and how we all live now and how society changed (and did not change).


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Two More Great Tohoku Tsunami Videos

The past few days I have come across a couple of more incredible videos of the Great Tohoku Tsunami earlier this year which I had not previously viewed. These two are in the same order of magnitude of those in my Top Ten Most Dramatic Tohoku Tsunami Videos column last Spring.


This first video features an impressive tsunami wall getting spectacularly overtopped not once but twice. The wall appears to be about 30-40 feet high putting the tsunami maximum run-up in this located at 50 foot high or more.Watch how rapidly the little harbor fills up in front of the tsunami wall and then pours over it.


This second video shows the tsunami barreling into a town and folks running for their lives as the tsunami nips at their feet. At one point early on one can see an old man fail to make it to safety and get cut off only to have his place of refuge against a wall disappear as the structure whose wall he was taking refuge gets swept away and the old man with it.

Check out two other previous postings I did regarding this and showing more tsunami videos:

Top Ten Most Dramatic Tohoku Tsunami Videos

Dashboard View of Great Tohoku EQ & Tsunami

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And The Winners Are... Sarchasm and Pokemon

The Washington Post invited readers to take any word from the
dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter,
and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the
subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until
you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.

7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the
person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease.

11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these
really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's
like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido : All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when
they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after
you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into
your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in
the fruit you're eating.



The paper also asked readers to supply alternate meanings for common
words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has
gained.

3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.

6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only
a nightgown.

7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been
run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by
proctologists.

13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies
up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by
Jewish men.

This comes courtesy of my friend Lin Kerns.