Saturday Morning Coffee

Pelicans come by here and dive when the mackerel or running here. Seals usually come by in the afternoon. This morning two dolphins came by the boat.

My sailboat is within the inner

harbor about two miles from the opening in the breakwater and the open Pacific.

The morning started off with five dophins but I didn't get the camera out in time. Here are three of them.

South on the Harbor Freeway

Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Classic Wambaugh. If you don't know where Pedro is you are not alone in the geographic department. Many folks don't know where San Pedro is or where the Harbor Freeway (110) actually goes. If you travel north on it you will wind up in Pasadena. Turn and drive south till the end and you either exit on Gaffey or Harbor. The characters in this story are from the Holly Wood Division and part of the action takes place in Wilmington and San Pedro. Wilmington and San Pedro both are located on the Los Angeles Harbor. Anaheim Street runs through Wilmington and several strip or nude bars are located on it between the wrecking yards and that is where the story starts.


View all my reviews

Another SAW BONES Book

Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Again we have another cop trying to screw with the doctor and a staff member who becomes a victim. Her lab doesn't seem a safe place to work. Lucy again tracks down the killer using her UNIX skills and AOL Chat Rooms. Another title for the book could be SAW BONES.


View all my reviews

The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First read of Cornwell. Lots of medical terms describing the forensic work. So similar to all the books about the FBI, CIA etc. The usual dribble about high horsepower cars and the mention of firearms and ammo types. And some super high tech computer program about finger printing. Maybe the standout character was a roll of bright orange duct tape.


View all my reviews

I have been keeping a reading list for each year in my blog and that is probably the only thing kept current as access to the internet is sometimes iffy when you live on a boat. For some unknown reason I started using Goodreads and that allows a cross posting from their site to FaceBook and my blog.

Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Second read of this author and the earlier one was set ahead of this one in time. The Doctors niece Lucy is able to search a six million name data base that is stored on tapes at a data center from a off site terminal using a dial up line and find where files have been altered using the "hex dumps". Earlier Lucy is able to figure out the transmissions between the dumb terminals in the Doctors office mini and the file tampering. A lot of effort was made to build the story and tie in all the murders but the ending seemed to fail in my opinion.


View all my reviews

testing videos

When I was racing speedway I used to blog after every race but then I had a high speed DSL hooked to a land line. Now I am hooked to a dock living on a boat. No more land lines only dock lines. We have free WiFi at the marina but for the most part in the past it has been pretty sketchy. Recently I purchased an Android phone after my iPhone was stolen and the new device it pretty remarkable. This is my first try at posting videos to my blog. A one minute video recording with the phone holds 159 megabytes of data and the ability to upload it varies with the bandwidth of the IP and whether WiFi or 4G is used. I found an editor to reduce the length of the taping and this seems to have a reasonable approach.