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: