Ice Skating

The fact that Los Angeles has completely inappropriate weather for winter sports can always be solved with a hefty dose of (possibly imported) fossil fuels. So even though the weather today was a relatively balmy 60 F (that's just over 15C, kids) - cold enough to make Southern Californians moan about the cold, but not even close to making water solidify - we went ice skating.

Or ice hanging onto the edge and falling over. We did one circuit of hanging onto the edge and falling over when Daniel fell over, banged his nose and forehead on the ice, and started bleeding. I lifted him over the fence, so he could walk, and bleed onto the ground and not the ice. This was into someone's birthday party, which meant that they had napkins that could be used to mop up his blood. (I couldn't, because I couldn't get over the wall, and had to shuffle around the edge to meet him). Alex managed to do two more circuits (Dan just watched) - and got good enough to let go of the wall for a few seconds - he adopted a skating system of very rapid, very short steps.

The ice rink was sponsored by Starbucks, and with entry, you got a voucher for a free drink from Starbucks. There was a cafe there, which sold Starbucks stuff, but wasn't a Starbucks, so you couldn't get your free drink from them. It was the Gay Cafe, and was a fundraiser for college scholarships for Californian children of gay parents. That's a genuine California licence plate.


Then we went to the beach:


And on the bumper cars.

The Heating

Today we turned on the heating. It's the 17th of December and for the first time since, well, last winter when we turned it off, we turned on the heating. I had to repeat that, because I want it to be very clear, so you understand the next part.

Susanne said "We need the heating on already. It's freezing cold here."

See what I have to put up with? See how hard it is for me to ever achieve what is expected of me?

Opa's Photo

Opa borrowed my camera to go and take some photos of Route 66. When he gave it back to me, this photo was on it. He isn't forthcoming with the story.

295 miles

295 miles
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Freaks

At least when we'd gone 295 miles on this road, we were almost where we wanted to be.

Great Los Angeles Walk

Los Angeles is known for a few things - one of them is cars. Lots of cars. Walking is rare in LA, because a complete dearth of any kind of planning has led to no centralization at all of anything, so you can't walk from anywhere you want to be to anywhere else you might want to be. And public transport is fairly poor - if you're lucky, there's a bus that goes from where you are to where you want to go. If you're really lucky, there's a subway. I've never been on the subway. Again, it's the fault of the sprawl, there aren't enough people in one place who are trying to get to another place to make it economic to build / run a decent public transport

So, Two years ago, someone called Mike decided to walk along Pico Boulevard. All the way along it. And the next year they decided to walk along Wilshire Boulevard. But they told some friends about it, who told some friends about it, and in the end about 100 people went, and they called it the Great Los Angeles Walk.

And this year they decided to walk along Santa Monica Boulevard. Except Santa Monica Boulevard is only 14 miles long, and that wasn't considered long enough, so they added a bit of Sunset Boulevard, and then a bit more so they could start at Union Station.

So Oma and I drove to Santa Monica, and then caught the bus to Union Station (although there's a subway stop a couple of miles from our house, this was actually quicker).

Susanne wanted to walk some of it, so we had to have a bizarre procedure where she would drive the car to me, I would then drive it forward a mile or two, and then walk back as fast as I could (to about a zillion comments that I was going the wrong way) so as to not violate the integrity of the walk. To preserve my integrity I then carried one of the boys as far as I could.

Daniel walked about three miles, and rode on my shoulders about another mile. He then burst into tears with exhaustion. Alex walked about the last mile with me, and then vomited.

Here's a bunch of people at the start (I was standing in the middle, so I couldn't get everyone, but there were an estimated couple of hundred.)



One advantage of walking is that you see all kinds of things you don't normally notice..






I think about 100 people took a photo of these next two:





Here is me and Opa, at the very end. Opa walked about the last mile, and a mile in the middle.

Granparent Visitation

Oma and Opa are visiting at the moment. Today, they have gone to see the spot where James Dean died, which is a non-descript junction, on a non-descript road, near a non-descript town. And it's not the place where he died any more, because they've moved the road.

Oh, and it's 190 miles away.

Anyway, I know you're all seeking an example of how exasperating it is to have them here, so here we go. Susanne sent them to pick up the boys from school. It's really (really) easy to get to the school from where we live. You walk out of the gate, and there's a school in front of you. But there's a fence, so you turn right, and walk until you reach the gap in the fence - i.e. the gate, and you wait for the boys to appear.

So, this is what they did. But also waiting at the gate was someone else - I think they worked there, but they might have been a mother. And they were African American. The fact that they weren't white is enough to worry the grandparents, but it's hardly surprising, given that 39% of the kids at the school are black (I don't know that off the top of my head, I just looked it up on greatschools.net, if you're interested 29% are white, 26% Hispanic, 9% Asian [which means East Asian, not South Asian, as it does in the UK) and 1% something else. )

In addition, one of the security guards in our complex is black, and female. (I make it sound like there are teams of security guards, there aren't, theirs one at a time). Therefore a black person waiting outside the school was probably some sort of security guard. This person said something to them. We don't know what, probably because they didn't understand, but Opa won't confess to not understanding anything in English - we have argued about both the meaning, and the pronunciation of English words. Whenever Opa finds a word he doesn't know, he displays shock and astonishment - and this happens pretty regularly; in a restaurant yesterday he displayed shock and astonishment that Susanne used the obscure word 'check' when she wanted to pay, rather than saying "Please I want to pay". Whatever it was that the non-white non-security guard said to them, frightened them and made them go away, so that when Susanne came to pick them up with the boys, she found the boys, but no grandparents.

After circling the block a couple of times, she found them by a different school gate.

But it's not all bad. Opa has finally acquired a credit card, and he is very proud of his move into late 20th century banking practice.

Pledging Allegiance

Yesterday was the Laterne Umzug in Santa Monica, which means 'Lantern Walk' - children walked around a Clover Park, carrying lanterns. I don't quite understand it, but it's a big thing in Germany, apparently. (You can see pictures on Flickr, if you want to get the gist. Not of our Laterne Umzug, but of Laterne Umzugs in general).

We bumped into Karin there, who was off to the Mar Vista Neighhborhood Council meeting, to talk about the joys of having a charter school in their neighborhood - for which she would be given two minutes. She was a little nervous, and so I said I'd go with her for moral support. She was very grateful for my altruistic gesture, which wasn't altruistic at all. I'm going to do a similar thing next month at Westchester Neighborhood Council, and had no idea what to say, or how it worked.

Anyway, I got there before her (I was on my bike, she had to go home first) in time for the Pledge of Allegiance. I'd never done the pledge of allegiance before, but I knew it was coming so I'd read about it on Wikipedia.

First, I wasn't sure if, as a foreigner, I was supposed to pledge allegiance - I mean, it wasn't strictly true. Given a war between the US and the UK, I guess I'd be on the UK's side (unless I was stuck in America, in which case I'd pledge allegiance to anything they wanted me to pledge allegiance to, rather than be stuck in Guantanamo Bay). I wondered if I should cross my fingers or something.

Second, although I knew the words (because, as I've said, I looked it up on Wikipedia) I didn't know that there was a rhythm to it, which everyone else knew. I imagined it would be a sort of drone, something like when we had to recite the Lord's Prayer at school. ('Cos of the separation of church and state, the boys don't learn things like the Lord's Prayer at school - which makes me worry about what will happen when they meet vampires). The rhythm goes kind of:

i PLEdge allEGiance to the flag [slight pause] of the UNIted states of AMERICA [pause] AND to the rePUBLIC for which it STANDS ....

So I didn't need to worry about crossing my fingers or anything, 'cos I was completely out of synch and just mumbled along.

I asked the boys about it this morning on the way to school, and they could recite it, and had the right rhythm. So, thankfully, it looks like they will be able to visit their father in PoW camp.

Hue Test

I'm pretty colour unaware. Sometimes people have asked if I'm colourblind. It's not that I can't see colours, it's just that I'm not really interested in them. I don't really mind what colour stuff is, and I don't notice. Sitting here, for example, I couldn't tell you what colour our bedroom is. I'd guess it's yellow, 'cos the room I'm in is a bedroom in our apartment, and it's yellow. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was red.

Hang on, I'll go and look.

Gosh, it's a kind of slightly rusty, mellowed orange. That's fairly close.

It's lucky I don't care about what colour things are, 'cos Susanne cares a lot, and if I cared, we'd have to fight about it all the time. She claims that there is a colour called 'English Red', and often seeks things out in that colour. If there was such a colour as English Red I, being English, would know about it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. But that's the point of a blog, isn't it. I mean, no one would sit there politely and listen while I spout this crap. And, on reflection, it's possible that no one is still reading.

I came across a Hue Test the other day, which tests your 'Color IQ' - that is your ability to distinguish between different, but similar colours. I scored 12 (which means 12 errors), but it didn't really give much information about what that meant, relative to anyone else, except to say that people of my age and sex have scored between 0 and 1999. If you do it, let me know in the comments what you get.

Winning / Losing

Today (Saturday) was Fitness and Health day at school. So being the involved parents that we are, we went and were involved. In particular we bought school bags, school sweat pants (as we call them here, but that sounds grim, doesn't it), school bags, school shirts and school jumpers. I wasn't allowed to buy school blankets. Susanne said that they were the wrong colour. Or something.

There was, as there tends to be at these things, a raffle. I used to be one of those people who say that they never win anything at raffles and similar things. I've discovered that the way to win things at raffles and the like is to buy a lot of tickets. Being the socialists Obama supporters that we are (or would be, if we were allowed to vote, or donate, or anything) we think that taxes should be higher, and education funded better. So instead, we buy a lot of raffle tickets.

So we won a Hannah Montana frisbee. I'd just found someone to give that too when we were offered a plastic golf caddy for kids instead, complete with a 'gold club' and 'golf ball'; the club looked like a plastic stick, about a foot long, and the ball looked like a table tennis ball. We managed to get rid of that too - the boy we gave it to was very pleased. Then we won a recycled basket ball (the basket ball wasn't recycled, it was made of recycled stuff). Then we wone the grand prize - a Wii Fit. And finally, two Washington Mutual water bottles. (There were about 50 WaMu [as we say] water bottles, which is probably related to the fact that Washignton Mutual are one of the plethora of banks that have collapsed.)

Wii Fits, you might not know, are pretty hard to get hold of in the US. (Conspiracy theorists say that they are sent to Europe, because of the exchange rate). Amazon currently says:

"Wii Fit" purchase limit policy
As you may know, the Nintendo "Wii Fit" is in great demand, and there are shortages of this product across the U.S. In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase a "Wii Fit," we are limiting the total number of "Wii Fits" that can be purchased. As a result, each household may only purchase one Nintendo "Wii Fit" unit total.

Which would be more relevant if they actually had any in stock. But they haven't. So we are one of the privileged few to get our hands on one. And we made a profit on the raffle.

However, a Wii Fit ain't much use without a Wii to stick it into. And our telly is a bit old and tired, and if it's got a Wii Fit in it, then Susanne won't be able to watch 'Jon and Kate Plus Eight' and we know what a disaster that would be.

So first I went to Consumer Reports to look at tellies. And after contemplating driving to shops and getting harassed by salesemen, I ordered it from Amazon. Another advantage of buying from Amazon is that you don't pay any sales tax, which here is 8.5%. In theory, you should confess to all the stuff you bought from Amazon on your tax return at the end of the year, and pay the tax on it. I confess some of it, 'cos otherwise I think it looks suspicious, but in fact this makes me a weirdo.

Then I went to shops to try to buy a Wii. Wiis have been around for almost two years, and they are still really hard to get hold of. Again, there are conspiracy theories aplenty about this, but we're not going to worry about that. In one shop I went to they said they might have some in a couple of weeks. In the second shop, they told me that they release an advert at midnight on Saturday night. If there are Wiis on it, they will have them in store on Sunday morning. If I wanted one, I should try to arrive at the store half an hour before they opened. If I really wanted one, I should try to arrive at the store an hour before it opened.

If you're going to buy a Wii, you have to get Rock Band. That's almost a law. And a wireless guitar. And probably a charger thing. And whatever extra bits and bobs they try to sell you. (And there's no shortage).

The amount winning the raffle has cost us is now into 4 digits. Dollar digits, which isn't quite so bad though.

Lost has spoiled CSI

I was in a Borders (near Durham, New Hampshire, but that's another story) and the first series of Lost was on sale, very cheap, on DVD. So I bought it, and then over the Summer when CSI wasn't on, we watched it (4 years too late), and became obsessed. So I had to join Netflix so we could get the rest, and make an attempt to catch up with the TV.

Last night, CSI came back. It was all very exciting, and resolved the cliffhanger that ended the last series, Sarah ('the cute one', as we call her. Or I do) came back. It was all very emotional.

But it was also a little dull, and I think that was Lost's fault.

In CSI, you start at A with a bad guy killing (usually) or injuring badly (sometimes). You move to B, with lots of evidence and dubious science and speculation, and move to C, with the bad guy in jail. In Lost, you start somewhere near K, or at least what you believe to be K, but turns out to be S, move and end up and T, which looks like Y, moving via B and F and what really was Y. It's so complicated and mysterious, and most of the time you have no idea what's going on. Things that seemed incidental 12 episodes ago suddenly become profound and important "So was he driving the SUV? Was it them in the bar? It was her? What happened to his wife then?") CSI, by comparison, just seems like Scooby Doo.

Presidential Debate

The Guardian's comment on who is winning, about half way through the first debate between Obama and McCain.

Scorecard so far: Barack Obama is winning if you measure by substantiveness of answers. John McCain is winning if you count number of years spent in a Vietnamese jail.

Lone Ranger Highway

In Lancaster, which is in the North of LA County, there's a road that's been designed to play the Lone Ranger them tune* if you drive on it at 55mph. I only heard about it because the people that live there hate it, and it's being resurfaced. Luckily, thanks to the power of Youtube, you and I can experience it. ('Cos it's 70 miles from here, and I can't be bothered to go there just for that.)

*Or the William Tell Overture, if you are more culturally sophisticated.

The Penny Game

At the boys school, they are having a fundraiser which they call 'The Penny Game'. Each grade gets a jar, and they can put pennies into their jars. Whichever grade has the most pennies wins an ice cream party for the grade, and the school keeps the money, and makes a profit.

So we dutifully emptied the jar that we throw change into and counted out 200 pennies, bagged them and gave them to the boys to take to school.

But this is America, and in true American style it's possible for someone richer and more powerful than you to crush all your hard work, thereby destroying your hopes and dreams. And it's just the same in the penny game. You can add coins and bills of other denominations to the jars that belong to other grades - and these count against that grade. So someone sticking two dollar bills into our (first grade) jars cancels our two sets of 100 pennies. So, along with 100 pennies each, we packed the boys off with four dollar bills each - one each for second, third, fourth and fifth grades. And if they look like they are doing well, there are plenty more where they came from.

Pet Problems

Last weekend the boys and I went to the Fiesta Ballona, a carnival in Culver City, with expensive rides run by grumpy people. We didn't stay long, 'cos the boys were in bad moods, but we did see the Spam Truck. I'm sure there's a joke about getting free Spam, or more Spam, or something, but I can't think of one that's not so obvious that it isn't funny.


Anyway, the boys wanted to have a go on a stall, most of which were extraordinarily expensive and probably brief. The one that wasn't was throwing ping-pong balls into glass jars, 'cos it was a dollar for 7 balls, and it's impossible to win, so we were safe. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible to win, Alex won a goldfish. Which is bad enough, 'cos we've supported the person at the fair who probably doesn't treat his goldfish as well as he might. Plus it means we've got a goldfish, but at least that meant we could leave the fair.

(We had spare ride tickets, so I tried to find an underprivileged looking child to give them to, but every child I saw who looked potentially underprivileged had a $20 free ride bracelet on. Eventually I gave them to an overprivileged looking child, who was just arriving).

So now we have a goldfish, called Cutefish by Alex, who gets naming privileges for winning it (because it's so cute, apparently). Except Daniel calls it Freddy the Fish, much to Alexs chagrin. (When I was young, we had chickens in the garden, and each child was allowed to name one. I name mine 'Zodiac', after the rusting and derelict Ford Zodiac parked at the end of the neighbour's garden, My ever loving sister's decided to call it Sadie, much to my chagrin. So maybe it's genetic).

I went to the pet shop to buy some goldfish food, where I found that goldfish are 25c each. That's about 13 pence in old money. So we somewhat overpaid for our goldfish, by a factor of about 4.

Anyway, pet trauma number two was that Karenzander the (male) rat had a lump growing on her side. So we took her to the vet, once we found a vet who had sufficient rat expertise. The vet diagnosed a case of 'lump on side' which needed to be sliced off, in an operation. So he was duly booked in to the vets, and had to be taken there at 7:15 on Friday morning, which seemed a little excessively early to me.

The logistics of the day were very complicated, Daniel had a friend around to visit, and Alex was at Ana's house, so the various children had to be taken/fetched, and then we had a vague plan to go out to the Souplantation, so we weren't quite sure how to fit all this in.

But we forgot! This is America! The vets open at 7:30 in the morning, and close at 9pm (on weekdays); 4:30 on Saturday, and 10-4 on Sunday). So we went out, and I went to collect the sick rat from the vets.

Karenzander is now back in the rat house, but we've divided into two so that he doesn't feel obliged to fight with Karen while he recuperates. We are supposed to wash the injury with a hot compress twice a day. That's going to prove an interesting challenge.

A new rat is considerably more expensive than a goldfish - I think they are about $4. So overpaying for the goldfish by a factor of 4 was nothing. It cost $39 to have the vet look at the lump, and tell us that it had a lump, and needed to be hacked out (we knew that), and $265 to actually hack out the lump.

Licking out the bowl

Sometimes I try to pass on my hopes and dreams to the boys. And often it fails. Today was one of those days.

The boys and I made chocolate brownies today (fat free!). Well, we opened a packet from Trader Joe's, stirred in some yogurt (?) and put it in the oven.

When I was little, one of life's most pleasurable pleasures was eating the remnants of cake (or whatever) mixture was left in the bowl and on any implements. It always dismayed me and my siblings if the person doing the creating was too diligent in scraping mixture into the cake tin, so today I was deliberately unconscientious. Even more unconscientious than usual.

I gave the boys spoons (I didn't even make them get their own), and they set about the bowl. Alex had one small sample from the spoon, and said it made his throat hurt. Daniel had two or three, before saying it was too salty for his tongue.

River Inn

In Big Sur, there is a place called the River Inn, which has an inn, a cafe, several shops, a pub, and things like that. It also has the cheapest food we found in Big Sur - a vegetarian burrito for $6 (although I had guacamole in mine, for an extra $1.25, and jalapenos, for an extra 50c, but given that a sandwich anywhere else was $12, it was still cheap).




Anyway, the interesting thing about the River Inn is that they place chairs in the river, so that you can cool your feet whilst eating your (cheap) burrito.

Despite the fact that it was a river, it had pond skaters (or something like that) in it. They had to spend a lot of time skating upstream, and then they would be washed downstream again.

Here are a couple of them, ermmm, cuddling.

Monterey

When we visited Big Sur, we actually stayed in Monterey. We did that because there aren't many places to stay in Big Sur, they are expensive, and they were full anyway. So the Holiday Inn Express it was for us.

Monterey is a fairly touristy kind of place, it has an aquarium, and other things, and the main street for that sort of stuff is called Cannery Row. It's one of these places that used to be full of industrial stuff, and now has been transformed into something that attracts crowds - presumable going through a difficult period in between. I suggested that, given that lots of people went to Monterey for the sake of going to Monterey, we might go and look at it. Susanne said that we were members of the Long Beach Aquarium, and it wasn't like it was in the book anyway, and so there was little point.

One of the many lovable things about Susanne is that she assumes that if she knows something, I must know it too (or almost all of it). For example, I was supposed to know about 'the book', but obviously didn't know quite enough to know that it wasn't like the book.

I enquired further. "The Book" is called Cannery Row, and is by John Steinbeck. It describes the life of Cannery Row (which used to be called Ocean View Drive) where sardines were canned (surprise there) and pressed to make sardine oil, and the workers were largely Asian.

Why we would want to go there if it still was the place where sweating workers processed sardines into cans, I'll never know. But if they weren't there, squeezing sardines, it wasn't worth looking at, apparently.

Look! Cannery Row is on Google Books.

Pacific Coast Highway

The Pacific Coast Highway is about 200 miles of quite impressive scenery (and about 100 miles of dreariness, but we don't photograph that). Here are some pictures.

This is a mountain, and our car (45 mpg on this trip!) (That's US gallons too.)

A beach. There are lots of nice looking beaches along the PCH. One of the reasons they look nice is because there is no one on them, and there is no one on them because there is no way of getting to them. You are discouraged by big fences and signs saying "Private". Sometimes you are discouraged by signs saying "If you climb down here and get stuck, we will want a lot of money to get you out."
Water, hills.
Clouds which were blowing up the mountain from the sea. Obviously you can't see that, 'cos it's a photo.


More sea, more inaccessible coastline.


This might not have been on the PCH, but it was near.

A bridge.

Elephant Seals

We drove back from Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway (that's the PCH to us locals). On the way there are lots of places to stop with interesting things to look at, but when we had 300 miles to drive it had to be pretty interesting.

We drove past one parking lot with a lot of cars in it, and when we were past, we saw that the cars were there because there were elephant seals on the beach. We made a U turn, and went to look at the elephant seals - as did about 50% of the cars that headed in that direction.

The boys weren't feeling great (they had colds) and refused to get out of the car. I had to tell them that the animals had mouths a little bit like Dr Zoidberg's before they would.




David Attenborough never had the problem of children kicking the fence he was resting his camera on. (Also, I've got no sound on my computer right now, so I've no idea what that sounds like).

Madonna Inn

We went on a trip to Big Sur last week. On the way, we stayed at a place called the Madonna Inn. I thought that that might have something to do with either religion or popular music, but in fact it was founded by someone called Alex Madonna. There's a Google Map with a photo of it here.

Every room in the Madonna Inn is different, and has a theme. Several of them have rock waterfall showers (I still don't really understand what that means). We didn't know what we wanted, so we took pot luck and got the San Francisco room.

I don't know what was San Francisco about it, but it was very red.

The lightswitch was carefully covered with wallpaper, ensuring that the redness wasn't spoiled, and that you couldn't see it.


We had a red leather sofa in our room:


And an ornate metal bed (the boys had a similar metal bed).

The place was vast - it comprised several buildings. Here is Susanne, Alex and Daniel in front of one of them.


And here is another. Notice the stone chimney.


The interiors of everywhere were done out in the same sort of elaborate, opulent style. Here is the pastry shop / cafe (where we had breakfast).

Alex and Daniel's favorite thing was the urinal in the cafe. It was a copper trough, and when it flushed, the water poured over and turned a metal water wheel.


They had a postcard for every room, with a photo of the room. Not that you can really see, but here they are:



And here's Dan standing on a rock. (Notice the pink lamp post).

Computer Problems

The boys have OLPC laptops - laptops designed for children. They are, in many ways, great machines. They are fairly childproof, they don't have a hard disk, so they don't mind being dropped, they are pretty waterproof, there are no sticky out bits to break off and no holes to shove stuff into. They can't get viruses, and if they can, you can wipe the operating system and reinstall with a memory stick, and the whole process takes about 20 minutes. (Obviously, you only use Google Docs and Gmail, so there's no worries about it not saving stuff).

One tiny drawback that they have is that the mouse pad doesn't work if it's even a tiny bit wet - our children aren't bad at washing their hands, but they're not great at drying them, so this is occasionally a problem.

On Sunday we were driving in the car (coming back from Monterey, but that's another blog post). Alex was using his computer (that's another thing about OLPC computers - great battery life) in the car when suddenly, and without warning, he vomited on it, himself, the car, and anything else in the vicinity. We stopped (conveniently he did it just before a car park with bathrooms to aid in cleaning up) and started the clean up process.

We'd finished when we realized we hadn't cleaned his computer. And we couldn't see it. Then Daniel said "My mouse doesn't work on this computer, because it's wet."

Nerdy Hotel Room Joke

404: Hotel room not found error.

ABCHomeStore Review

I ordered new beds for the twins from ABCHomeStore, and I've never experienced such a crappy company.

Beds are fairly big, and fairly heavy, so we couldn't really ask them to be left with a neighbor. They took about 8 days to arrive (fair enough, they had a long way to come), and they rang to make an appointment to deliver. They couldn't do a time when we were in (partly 'cos we were about to go away for a couple of days), and said that they would charge us for storage if we couldn't be in. Eventually we found a time when we could be in, and they could deliver.

They came, and there were three boxes. I thought that was curious, as had ordered four things, so I rang, and was told that it wasn't a problem because the two beds were in one box. I thought it was kind of light, for two beds, but didn't worry.

When I opened the box, lo and behold, there was one bed in there. I rang them up and asked about this. They said that I shouldn't have signed for it if it wasn't complete (I was hardly going to open the boxes first, to check everything was there, and then sign for it). They said that they sent two beds, and it wasn't their fault, and it wasn't their problem, and I should phone the delivery people. They claimed that the delivery people weighed the bed at every stage, so would know if a bed was missing; the delivery people seem to know nothing about this.

As far as the delivery people were concerned they said that they had been asked to deliver three cartons and that they had delivered three cartons, so it wasn't their problem.

As far as ABCHomeStore was concerned, I was lying, so they didn't care.

They claim on their website that "Honesty, integrity, and quality are the values that we've built our business on." Which smells like bullshit to me.

To be expected ...

From the LA Times

Christian biker gang members charged with attempted murder

Police say the charges stem from a fight last week at a Newport Beach bar, and the victims are members of the Hells Angels.

If you're going to call yourself "Hell's Angels" it's only fair to assume that Christians are going to try to kill you.

Reunited

We saw Ana for the first time in a few weeks at a birthday party. We thought that Alex and she would have forgotten about each other (in the way that parents do with their children, although their children aren't usually 6 when that happens). However, she'd been away visiting relatives for a couple of weeks, and apparently hadn't stopped talk about Alex.

Alex was in the play structure, which was, as these things tend to be, very mazelike. They spent a little while pursuing each other, only to pass with mesh in between. Finally, they were reunited in that most romantic of places, the ball pool.

They were very pleased to be back together again.

The birthday party proper happened in a different room. Almost all the children sat on one table together where they ate pizza and cake. Alex and Ana sat on another table, mostly on their own.

Prices of Prius(es)

Conventional wisdom says that the second you drive your new car away from the dealer, its value drops by X (where X is a scarily large number of pounds / dollars / local currency).

According to Wired, that's not true of Prius(es). We could, apparently now sell our fairly new, 1200 or so miles Prius (extra gloat: I think we've filled it up with gas twice) for more than we paid for it.

Earthquake

We had a proper earthquake. It was centered in Chino Hills, which is about 30 miles West of here, and had a magnitude 5.8. For comparison, 5.8 is the strength of the aftershocks in the recent Chinese earthquake, and we don't need to worry about buildings falling down until it's above 7. (And the Richter scale is a log scale, so 7 is about 20 times stronger than 5.8). It's described as moderately strong.

At first I thought that someone was moving very heavy furniture around, and then I realised that furniture doesn't come that heavy. Then I realized it was an earthquake, and forgot what I was supposed to do (climb under your desk is the usual answer, but under my desk is such a collection of wires, computer, and general crap, that might be more dangerous).

The internet response was impressively fast, the map on the USGS website was updated within about 1 minute of it ending. Google Blog Search had found blogs that mentioned it within 20 minutes, the LA Times had a story within an hour, with photos.

Cellphones stopped working, I guess because everyone in the universe tried to use it, but I called S on the landline, and that worked fine.

I haven't heard of any injuries, except that the sister of someone who works here, who lives in Chino Hills, had a cabinet of china fall over.

[Update #1: It was only 5.4, not 5.8].

[Update #2: The boys were bowling at the time, and they didn't notice. I asked them if it made their bowling balls go the wrong way. They said that their balls went the wrong way without an earthquake]

Health and Safety

For reasons to boring to explain here, I'm staying at Essex University, in the 'de luxe' student accommodation. De luxe means, in this case, that one still has a plastic impermeable mattress, pillow and duvet, and electric storage heaters, with a control knob that goes from 'random' to 'not labelled' - combined with the quality of the bedding, means that one wakes up most nights either in a pool of sweat, or shivering. However, luxury means that we have an en suite bathroom and shower, ensuring that the pervasive dampness never quite leaves the room. Any mention of any of this in front of anyone who is staying in the regular (tourist class? economy?) causes howls of derision, and makes them throw things. So I'd better stop.

The kitchen is festooned with more health and safety type notices than I've ever seen, anywhere. We are warned not to:

• Warm baby food in the microwave (or if we do, we are to stir it extremely well), warm liquids in the microwave only in unsealed containers, and to beware of superheated water from the microwave. (That's on a sticker on the wall).
• On the microwave itself we are told that we are to ensure it is kept in a dry, grease free room (so our bedrooms are out).
• We are not to dry clothes on the heaters - or indeed place anything within 8 inches of the heaters. And to be generally careful with them.
  
• The blinds, most of which are over the counters, have string control things to open and close them. We are not to allow children to play with them. (There's one of those warnings on every blind).
  
• We are not to leave chip pans unattended (can we leave anything else unattended?) We are supplied with kitchen implements, and they do not actually include a chip pan (or a toaster, but that's another blog).
  
• If we do leave a chip pan unattended, and it catches fire we are to put it out with the fire blanket. And then not touch if for 30 minutes.
• We are not to put broken crockery in the bin (the people who empty the bin might cut themselves on it, and then we may be liable for their injuries, we are told).
• There is currently a 'danger: wet floor' sign on the door of the kitchen, because the floor was mopped three days ago (which made it wet) and the sign has not yet been removed.
• If we do ignore all these signs and require urgent first aid, an ambulance, the fire brigade or anything else like that, we can dial ext. 2222.
• But if we ignore all the signs and require first aid that isn't urgent, we dial 2225. So when bleeding I need to make an estimate of the time it will take before I expire, and then judge which number to call. But what if my definition of non-urgent is 30 minutes to exsanguination, and theirs is one hour. Will they be liable? Will I? Who are 'they' anyway?
• On the front door, we are told that smoking is permitted in the flat. Luckily for us, elsewhere we are told that smoking is not permitted.

Barracudas? Pah,

After a long hard day at the coal face of drug dependence research, I was in the bar and rewarding myself with a mojito. Someone said “I’m going to go and look at the sharks before I go to bed.”

Oh for flip’s sake. I’ve been worrying about barracudas which can (at most!) chow down on a finger or two of mine, and it turns out that swimming in the same water as me were sharks, which (if the movies are to be believed, and I’m not sure they ever lie) would bite me in half, swallow the lower half and let the upper half get washed up on a beach somewhere.

So I went to look at the sharks. It turns out that they shine a light onto the water, which has two effects: First, it attracts fish, so the sharks come and eat the fish (you’d think that would put some evolutionary pressure on the fish to go somewhere else – maybe in a few hundred generations they will). The second effect is that people can see the sharks. Now, I’m no ichthyologist, but there were four or five big fish shaped things in the water, one of them was very dark grey, and the others were sort of pale gray, and they were swimming about in what I would have guessed was a shark like fashion. They were four or five feet long, and wouldn’t have been able to bite me in half, which was something of a relief. Although I suspect that they would have been able to bite off my whole hand, rather than a finger or two.

Biting Barracudas

I'm in Puerto Rico, at a conference. Work extraordinarily hard - I presented my poster from 8 to 10 this morning, and have just come back from a presentation, and it's now 9:20. To reward myself for working so hard, I went for a swim in the sea today.

Someone (wearing goggles) swam to me, and said "Do you know what barracudas look like?" As I didn't have access to Wikipedia at the time, I had to admit that I didn't.

He said that he might have seen a barracuda, but he wasn't sure. And he thought that barracudas didn't bite. Although he wasn't sure about things that weren't barracudas, but looked like them. And now I've read the Wikipedia entry, I know that if they do bite, the worst they will do is take off a finger or two. So it's back in the sea for me tomorrow.

Birthday Fun

Alex on Ferrris Wheel (excited)
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Freaks

You know how, when your offspring have a birthday party, and like 40 children (plus adult hangers on) come. And because you've got a digital camera, taking photos is free. So you take about 300. And then, even though you pare that down to about 30 (plus a couple of videos) it's still for too much effort to put them on your blog. So you don't bother, you just put them on Flickr and tell people to go and look at them there?

Well, that's exactly what happened to me. And here they are.

I'm voting Republican

Well, actually I'm not. I'm not voting anything (in this country), 'cos I'm just a resident alien. But here's a video I liked anyway:

(Almost) Celebrity Spotting

Lots of people around here spot celebrities. These are frequently people I've never heard of, and sometimes I've heard of them but wouldn't recognize them if I saw them. (I saw someone who looked a bit like Oliver Stone once, but there are probably lots of people who look a bit like Oliver Stone).

Anyway, apart from that, we've never had a verified celebrity sighting. But yesterday Susanne went on the Culver City Art Walk, and was standing next to someone who was standing next to Tobey Maguire. Except she didn't notice, and when she was told, didn't know who Tobey Maguire was.

Boat Ride

We 'won' some tickets for a boat ride in the school silent auction (won in the sense that we paid $20 for them, which was more than anyone else was willing to pay) but they would have cost $30 if we'd paid with cold hard cash, so in one sense of the word bargain, they were a bargain.

The ride was on the Ocean Racer, in Redondo Beach. Last time we went to Redondo Beach the Ocean Racer wasn't racing, it was going very slowly, with black smoke coming out of its exhausts. But this time it seemed to be at least moving without creating excessive pollution.

While we were racing on the ocean, we saw things like dolphins and seals and pelicans diving in the water and stuff. When we saw dolphins and seals everyone did everything they could to take photos of dolphins (particularly dolphins) and seals. They didn't try to watch the dolphins and seals, they just tried to take photos to show that they'd watched the dolphins and seals. I was exactly the same, but at least I thought about it more than they did. (I like to think).

Photographing dolphins that are jumping out of the water is kind of tricky. Mostly because if you wait for a dolphin to jump out of the water and then try to take a photo, it's usually back in the water. So you need to take photos of where dolphins might be, and hope that they are, when the crappy digital camera that you have actually gets around to taking the photo. I have 119 shots of splashes and waves and things that might be dolphins' noses, or might be shadows. And one photo of jumping dolphins, which is here:


No one bothers to take photos of pelicans. We were pretty blase about pelicans.

Geeky Goodness

After quite a lot of fiddling, a lot of reading of random web pages, and a reasonable amount of swearing, my little computer project is finished.

Here's a photo of my computer. It's got two monitors (which is slightly geeky). However, look closely and you'll notice that the monitor on the left is running Ubuntu, and the monitor on the right is running Windows XP. The computer boots into Ubuntu, and then I used VirtualBox to set up a virtual machine which runs Windows XP.

Prii

We've been thinking of buying a second car, 'cos I'm fat and lazy. Well, because sometimes it would be quite handy, and with Summer vacations coming up, it would be very handy.

So, being the eco-warrior types that we are (at least the type of eco-warrior who buys a new car, rather than riding a bike made from bamboo, which isn't all that much of an eco-warrior) we want to buy a Toyota Prius.

So, we read lots of stuff about how to handle car dealers, and the difference between sticker price and invoice price and the other price that I've forgotten the name of, and how to haggle, and stuff like that, and went to the Toyota dealers. "Hello" we said "we'd like to buy a Prius".

"We haven't got any" they said.

It turns out that there's a national drought of Priuses. No one has any. Anywhere. They're all kind of vague about when they're getting any, and what model and color they will be (they come in packages, called 1 through 6, except that 3 and 4 don't exist in California).

Haggling is completely ineffective. If you don't buy their Prius, they don't care, because someone else will. I went to one dealer on Sunday, and they had no Priuses (Prii?), except for a 3 year old second hand one, for $25,000 (when a new one costs £28,000 this didn't seem like a great deal). Because I spoke nicely to the salesman, he rang me on Monday afternoon to say that five Priuses had just arrived. I went there at about 6:00, and there were two left that hadn't been sold, and it looked like one was about to be. They were talking about raising the price above the recommended price (the 'sticker price').

We've paid $1000 deposit at Santa Monica Toyota, to be given first refusal (well, first in front of everyone else) on cars that arrive. On Monday, a boat full of Priuses will leave Japan, and the dealer will find out what models are coming, and they'll arrive in 2-4 weeks. (Except for a few years ago, when a boat full or Priuses crashed into a boat full of BMWs, and they both sank). We can say we want one, and then when they arrive, we'll have 48 hours to show them the money, otherwise they'll sell it to someone else.

Sadly, they don't make them in yellow.

TV Will Eat Itself

The twins watched a bit of Tom and Jerry on the TV yesterday.

"Daddy" they said "Why do Itchy and Scratchy look funny?"

Don't call me a geek, but ...

I've been fiddling with my PC for about 4 days, and finally achieved the desired result.
There's a screen shot on the left. The computer opens into Ubuntu, and then uses VirtualBox to run a version of Windows XP on top of that. Then I use Internet Explorer in that version of XP to log into my PC at work (that's the address that's been blacked out, I don't want you naughty people trying to hack my 'puter), which is running SAS.

What did you do that for? I hear you all ask? Well, I've got a big fat monster of an expensive computer at work, with lots of hard disks, and memory and processors and stuff like that. But sometimes I want to work at home, and I want to use programs (like SAS) that eat lots of memory and hard disk and stuff. So I thought about getting a computer for home that would be able to do that, but instead, I've got Ubuntu running, which is more stable and lightweight than Windows (it can also use more memory than Windows). And I don't need to worry about whether my computer is good enough to run Windows, and all the software.

Then I put a version of Windows on top of that, but because that version of
Windows then runs in something called a virtual machine - which means it's been tricked. It thinks it's running on a computer, but it's not - it's running on a pretend computer, which was set up by Ubuntu (with VirtualBox). That means that I don't need all the crap that you have to have on a Windows computer to make it secure (like antiviruses and firewalls), which slows it down - it can't do virus like stuff, because it has to ask Ubuntu, and Ubuntu won't let it. All that version of Windows has to do is be able to run Internet Explorer, and then it can log into my computer at work, so that I can do things like run programs with lots of data in SAS.

Well, that's part of the reason that I did it. The other part is because I could.

("But Jeremy" I hear you ask "couldn't you have just got internet exploder running in Ubuntu, using Wine, and then Ies4Linux?"
"Good question" I reply. "But the software that needs to be installed to make sure that my link to my work PC is secure won't run happily under Wine (or FireFox for Windows, even)." )

New Cat

We've acquired a new cat. Someone at Corporation of Current Employment has a baby who developed an allergy to the cat, and asked if anyone could adopt it. So, in a moment of rashness, we said we could.

The cat's name is Sweetypie, and (apparently) looks like a Maine Coon. Which means nothing to me (well, it didn't until I Googled it, and now it does).

It's nice when one doesn't have the responsibility of naming cats, and this one is called Sweetypie.

Running out of Mars rocks

Testing the Rover
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Freaks

We went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory open house today. The boys' favorite bit was where they tested a Mars rover type thingy. However, having run out of Mars rocks, they decided to do use a group of small children, all lying in a row.

There were all kinds of other exciting things there, to look at, and knowledgeable people who could talk about them. However, it was all a bit beyond the Dan and Alex, who tended to rapidly get bored (example, when looking at a model of the Cassini space probe: "Daddy, ask the man why the satellite has a long arm". Man:"That's called the magnetometer boom, it's got the magnetometer on the end, and it's long so that it avoids interference from the main satellite when it's measuring variation in Saturn's magnetic field." "Daddy. What the man say?".)

It was also darned hot. (It's always darned hot when we go to Pasadena. The forecast said 18 degrees, but I should have known better than to believe it.) And that puts the boys in a bad mood.

I got over-excited in the shop, and bought the boys model space shuttles and spacement (and models of a thing that's going to be the new shuttle that I've forgotten the name, but it doesn't exist anyway). And sun visors, that say NASA on them. And a JPL hat for me. And a NASA t-shirt. And a mug that says NASA on it (I tried to sneak that into the cupboard, but Susanne heard and said "You'd better not have bought any more darned mugs" even though it's ages since I've bought a mug.) And two pencils for Susanne (it's a bit of a tradition that when we go to places, I buy her a pencil. But I thought it might redeem the mug if I bought her two - one says JPL on it, and the other says NASA).

I wore my 404 t-shirt, because I thought there was a better chance of someone being geeky enough there to get the joke than there would be anywhere else. But if anyone did get the joke, they didn't say anything.

Adventure City

We're planning to have the boys' 6th birthday party at Adventure City, so we thought we'd better go there, to make sure that the boys still liked it. So, last Saturday, off we all trotted to Anaheim (about 45 mins drive south, and the home of Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm) to go there.

Just like last time we went, the Airport Bus ride was the favorite. They went on this ride something like 50 times (I tried to count, but got bored). One of the many mysteries of adventure city is how it makes any money - both times we've been there seems to be almost no one there.



For much of the time, there was no one else on this ride. When the ride stopped, the boys got off and ran to the exit gate. The attendant stood up, walked over and opened the gate. The boys then ran to the other end of the ride, where the entrance was. The attendant walked over, opened it, and the boys got back on the bus. The attendant went and pressed the start button.

After this had happened about three times, everyone just stayed where they were, the boys nodded and the attendant pressed start.

It was also darned hot in Anaheim that day, over 100 degrees (that's hotter on the outside of our bodies than it should be on the inside, to steal a phrase from Karina). There was a rain room, where you could cool off:

The 'rain' was very fine spray, so you had to stay in there for a long time to get really wet. As the day wore on, and it got hotter, some chairs appeared, so the grown ups could sit down there. I drank way too much diet Coke to quench my thirst, and when we got home and went to bed, I spent my time being over-caffeinated and twitching.

Sent to the principal

Daniel was sent to the principal a couple of days ago. Because he looked so cute.

It was twin day at school - the children had to go dressed as a twin, as in dressed the same as someone in their class. This sounds easy for the boys, what with them being twins already, except that they aren't in the same class.

Alex was twins with Ana-Francia:

Daniel was twins with Freeman:

Chaos Gene

Susanne sometimes worries that the boys have some sort of chaos gene. Although where they might have inherited that from is a mystery. The other day she tidied their room, which made a big space in the middle. Just big enough that they could take the mattress off their bed, and put it on the floor. But then they didn't sleep on it.
Alex slept in Daniel's bed, and Daniel slept on the floor, underneath Alex's bed. Which can't have been comfy. We pulled him out when he was asleep and put him on the mattress. He woke up and said "Don't". Then he went back to sleep.