Year End New Puppy

Turned on the TV this morning to see the weather forecast. 5 car commercials in a row with reindeer, Christmas trees, ribbons and smiling children. One spooky one with a Lincoln owner following a wood burning train. Ford must have a hell of a filming budget. VW is larger.

All in all, the German automaker paid over $6 billion in advertising. That's truly an astounding number, especially when you put it into perspective. With that kind of money, you could buy approximately 2,300 Bugatti Chirons -- 1,800 more than what has ever been produced. The next biggest spender was General Motors; they spent a measly $5.7 billion. Collectively, more money was spent on advertising by auto manufactures than ever before.

Turned the TV off and tried the internet for news. SF Gate is always interesting , Maybe there is a rush to died before the end of the year.

My former shipmate was a mix of German Shepard and Akita. We found her in a cardboard box in front of a Staters Brothers in Phelan which is the high desert. We always stopped there to pick up supplies when we went motorcycling in the desert.

DeDe at marina in San Pedro

We named her DeDe for desert dog.

She loved to run on the beach.

At low tide there is a sand bar inside the breakwater at Dana Point across from Baby Beach where several dogs would meet to party.

DeDe running with Buddy

Today is Wednesday mid week between Christmas and New Years and the seventh day for my new puppy. The details are vague but my daughter met someone at a wedding reception that ran a dog clinic.

The next thing I see are text messages of puppies dressed for Christmas.

Then a picture of the real trouble maker.

Monster on left

Toy reindeer

Last Thursday I was supposed to meet my daughter at the dog clinic here in San Pedro but in route I stopped to buy gasoline for my Nissan. I seldom drive, it was raining, the wipers were on plus the headlights and defroster after stopping for a few dollars of gas the engine refused to restart because the battery was low. Well my phone was charged so I texted my daughter and she met me next to the gas station where I had pushed my car.

Out like a light

My grandson was holding the puppy who was crying. It was pouring. raining puppies and cats. We rode back to the marina and my sailboat where I got another battery. We left the puppy with Arlo my grandson and we headed back up to switch batteries.

First car trip to park

Christmas day was a planned adventure to take the puppy for a car trip without any carrier. Plans didn't work out as the mutt wanted to drive and refused to ride shotgun.

Since Sunday he has had three rides in the car and has been to two different parks.

His new name is still being debated. I am so used to calling my old dog butthead or Dede Butt I may just stick with that. The puppy came from SNP/LA.

My son came over to the boat to visit the new puppy. He also brought a new dog bed which was really needed because Butt Head had chewed up most of his makeshift bed.




This was recorded and edited my Dylan. He wants to name the pup "Trails"
While the pup took a nap Dylan and I went out paddling on stand-ups. Later down the line the dog will also be included in family paddling but not now.

Dylan has always been a good at sports: motorcycles, bicycles, surfing, and snowboarding. My learning curve isn't ready for snowboarding but I still can ski. Here his Dylan on Christmas day boarding at Bear.

Random Musings

Winter is a few days away but this morning

was 47 degrees Fahrenheit or 8.3333 Celsius take your pick. The water temperature at my boat is 60 degrees F and though the water is much warmer that the air it does not heat the interior of my cabin. In the past I never thought I would be come an Eskimo and live on an iceberg.



There are ten windows on my Ericson and they don't provide much insulation against the outside air and the wind when it is blowing as it is now. When you live in a building unless it is a tornado or hurricane you can't sense the wind and its direction. On a boat the wind moves you around and if I look around anything hanging will be swinging around. After living here for several years I have become unaware of the movements. Last night my main halyard started to slap and it banged all night long.

If I turn on my idiot box on in the morning the local news is filled with traffic reports and freeway congestion. WTF I ride a bicycle and today I will wait for more sunshine before pedaling. Yesterday afternoon I rode my fake fixie to the market and almost got knocked over by a cross wind. I only watch the weather on TV to look at  the cute weather ladies and weekends KTLA is the best in the west.

Paddling before wind started

My son has always been involved in taking videos and started filming while sitting on his skateboard. Not sure how many cameras he has wasted. His YouTube channel is entertaining and I often read the comments.


One comment mentioned Live Stream and being from the old school computer ice age I knew nothing of that but it takes only a few keystrokes to make me another Google knower genius.
Live Stream was pedaling (not a bicycle but selling) a Mevo which after searching I found there was another electronic device I couldn't live without if I had Donald's money.

Somehow we are being buried by all this new technology. This cave-in caused a short circuit in my synaptic vault (probably too much orange juice) and I suddenly remember how to wire up the options on a Ma Bell 201A Modem. Myself and my boss Steve Young were attempting to attach a modem to the RJE terminal we were building. The Pacific Telephone employee dropped it off at our office and gave us the manual which since there wasn't any YouTube available then we had to read it.

We bought ten Potter Line Printers (total POS)

After we got the modem attached we tried to communicate with an IBM mainframe at Long Beach Douglas. After a day of scopes, screwdrivers and wire wrapping tools and some key punching we made contact. The RJE terminal we were building was a knock off of an IBM 2780. Steve had been working on the design for over two years. Stevegot a million shares of stock and I got an option. He was a millionaire on paper that still saved his paper lunch bags and my stock option went up in smoke when the company (Data Computer Systems) went broke after five years.

I installed a system in St. Louis

An RJE terminal (remote job entry) allows a job (computer program) to be transmitted to a large computer where the job is processed on the computer and the results (data) is sent back to the RJE terminal where the information is printed out on paper or punched on cards.

We put all of our electronics including power supplies in Wright Line Cabinets

All that would fit on a finger nail now.

An example of one of our early installations was at a Boeing Factory outside of Philly. The terminal (our CP4) was placed in an Engineering department and it sent data back and forth using a modem to the computer in another building. The factory was making helicopters for Vietnam War. To sign on in today's world you make a few keystrokes and login. Then you punched a sign-in card added your JCL cards and placed them in the hopper on the card reader. You used the telephone to dial the number of the modem at the computer site and after you made a valid connection you pushed the start key on the terminal then you pushed the start key on the card reader. The information on the punched cards were then sent to the computer to be processed. After batch processing the process was reserved.

This is very similar to our CP4

Things have changed since that time when we needed to use a moving van to install one of our systems which included the card reader/punch, processor and line printer. More that once I did installs where there were not any elevators or the moving van gone stuck in a snow storm.

We used Honeywell printers and reader/punch

Somewhere is my daughters garage there are some pictures of our CP4 and the project that didn't make me rich.

Ups and Downs

Ramping up daily

When you live in a house your sidewalk usually does not move and your driveway may be on a slant but it stays that way day to day.  If you live on a mooring you go up and down with the tides so the changes appear relative. If you live on a dock as I do which floats in place tied to a piling you go up and down but inside the boat everything remains the same.

piling at high tide

So the docks go up with the tide and back down again but the land stays put. The gangway between the docks and the shore slides on a large steel roller as the water rise or lower. The angle of the gangway can change dramatically and at very low tides or swing tides the hike up can be a workout.

In fact I have seen older seniors unable to go up the hill. Using a dock cart with a good load of two deep cycle batteries might required and extra hand to help or a motor. Walking up the ramp at real low tides wearing cycling shoes with cleats could kill you. I use three different styles of cleats, one is for old style platform pedals that have toe clips, one is for newer Shimano Dur-Ace and my Fixie use Time pedals.

6 inches more at it will flood

This week we are having King Tides which are extremes compared to the normal spring tides. The calendar is about to change in about a week making it officially winter. The spring tides occur twice a month and the reference is to the spring action of the tides not the seasons of the year.

Please don't step on me

For some tides and ocean waves can me a baffling mystery. Many moons ago we were driving up the coast from Santa Monica to Lake Cachuma to go water skiing. Little did we know that you couldn't ski there. On the way up I got in to an argument with Carson about the waves. He said the waves were caused by the tides and said "No, it the wind". Carson probably grew up with Dorthy in Kansas where I grew up by the beach.

Old Man's at high tide

The tides makes the wave take different shapes at the sea bottom changes with the depth. If you have every surfed a rocky beach the walk in at low tide can be a real pain.

Cabrillo Beach

Last month when we had a Super Moon my neighbor flatly refused to consider the sun and its tidal influences. An avid fisherman and boat owner denied the sun was involved.

Sea Hare Cabrillo Beach Tidepool

Low tides are hard on the creatures in tide pools that get invaded by shit heads resembling an invasion of Japanese picture takers.

gangway rides on this roller

Since your house or apartment stays put you over the air TV stays the same or if you are a slave to cable or Direct you don't need to worry. But today my sailboat will change in height by 8 feet so at spring tides my Telly reception improves or sucks.

Samsung hidden behind bicycles

The above nonsense is my son Dylan YouTube Channel breaking 5,000 subscribers.

Tandem is from Epic Bike.

All my pictures shown here were taken with my Nikon D80. In the sidebar there is a video of the high water mark at Cabillo Beach YC and that was taken with my Samsung S6

Another late afternoon edition. My son has a new Stranger BMX 20 inch frame out.


 

This Video above was taken Wednesday afternoon at extreme low tide by Point Fermin during my afternoon bicycle ride.

Beyond My Bicycle Budget

Does Johnnie Walker Black taste better than Red? In the past when I was a scotch drinker I also worked in Canada. Canadian whiskey prices were much lower above the border than in California where I lived. So I became fond of Walker that was priced out of my California budget. Ask any bartender or cocktail waitress if the bar customer can tell the difference between "well whiskey"  and expensive label drinks after a couple of shots. I would suspect the answer would be no.

Fuji Pro and Schwinn Paramount 1938

I have been riding bicycles for more than a few years. I don't drink scotch any more but I have two sailing friends that drink scotch. One buys his at Costco the other imports his from Scotland both taste the same too me. Back to the bicycle thing, I prefer my wheels to have matching rims, tires and hubs. My fixed gear rear wheels collection includes one clincher, two sew-ups (tubular). I can make an almost pair of tubular but not so with the clincher. I need to purchase a matching pair. Prices vary from dam cheap to several thousand.

Painting Bob Jackson 3 years ago

My last matching pair were Zipp with a carbon disk rear and Zipp rim with Phil Wood hub and bladed stainless spokes. The most expensive Zipps out there now are close to $4,000.00. I am still stuck in 1950s price range.

Schwinn Paramount

My knowledge of current prices comes from reading Bicycle Blogs and Internet searches. My budget is beyond purchasing bicycle magazines to look at and there is no reason if I can't afford to purchase the mag I sure as hell can't afford the shiny stuff inside.

This clip is from YouTube and is my son Dylan recently jumping stairs at UCI. The reference to El Toro is the stairs at El Toro High School which is located in Lake Forest. Before Lake Forest became a city the area was called El Toro. The Main street is El Toro Road, El Toro Library and Post Office then they got fancy and changed the name. There isn't any natural forest there or any real lakes. The El Toro Stairs add rails and attracted zillion of skateboarders then later twenty inch bikes. My daughter Frances went to ETHS but you will not find that in her bio. The area around the campus is somewhat hilly and when the school was built they did't grade it level so the parking lot between the Gym and office building has a small slope on it. Same with the stairs from the lockers down to the office. Many years past I was skateboarding with Frances and she fell there and banged her head. Neither of us wore helmets, probably no skater did then. Anyway Frances has not been right since then. (Father Humor).
N. Y. Bike Snob makes a living bashing Freds and I enjoy reading it. This morning I was reading a local blog where the author described the pleasure of shelling out almost 2k to buy a Brompton so he could use public transit and save the operating cost of his fossil fuel 4 wheeler. A fold-up can be purchased at Big 5 Sporting for $199.99. If one has the money to buy a Brompton please don't think I am whining it is good for the manufacturer to sell product. My neighbor suggested I get a folding bike and suggested Big 5. I have ridden the trains here in Los Angeles with my bike and there is ample room but I don't do rush hour so a fold-up doesn't fit in.

My current bicycle collection stands at seven. Included is one Specialized S-Works Cross Country that retailed for around five thousand USA dollars. My out the door price after discounting was $3,500. Now that was several years ago but the current S-Works CC is $11,500.00 plus sale tax in Los Angeles, California adding $1035.00. The S-Works shown in the link in a 29 inch whereas mine is only 26 inch.

These price increases don't make too much sense but I am not a MAMIL or a saddle based weekend jolly.  All these clever descriptions (middle age man in lycra) can be confusing as I first thought it was another reference to something similar to Rapha or Assos. After receiving a nice compliment yesterday about my tanned legs I coined a new acronym "OFSSL" (old fart still shaves legs).

Currently I am trying to get some Thorstein Veblen books and since he existed before e-books I might just have to ride up to my local library (it is all up hill) and get an old fashioned style book with pages. Velben Goods and the Theory of the Leisure Class. Being of a discursive nature Velben got me thinking about reading Vance Packard books and his bashing.

This is not me riding.