Haven't updated in a while.



Ed and I have been making a lot of beer and he has become an avid homebrewer. We've made several 5 gallon batches in the last 2 months and he's had one beer tasting party at my house and we're having another one at his place next weekend. We made a movie of "The Making Of Irish Wedding Red Ale" for his cousin who is getting married and receiving a case of red ale from Ed for the wedding.



I was up late on Friday hanging out with a friend and seeing X Men 2 after along walk to balboa Park with her huge Great Dane puppy and then dinner at a Spanish place. I got home at 1 AM and went to bed at 2 AM. I woke up 5 hours later, started my day and then said. "Forget this! I'm going back to sleep!" So I did and then woke up at 11:15 AM. Later that day I drove down to Ed's place and then we went to the Hotel del Coronado to work as database jockeys for the JDRF gala fundraising auction. It was tough work and it is amusing to see the office manager attempt to be authoritative when she doesn't react well under pressure.



At one point she actually instructed us to not allow anyone to check out because it wasn't "time" yet. My comment was that if a $15000 donor wants to check out and go home, or even if he wants to check out and go back in, I was going to check him out whether it fitted into her plans or not.



Apparently she wasn't happy that Ed and I took off to the Coronado Brewery for lunch. We... didn't care.



I have been hiking in the hills locally a lot and having a good summer so far. it should be a good summer; I am looking forward to it.

It was a tough weekend. Ed had his "Awesome Lethality Pale Ale" beer tasting yesterday. We used my house and the dozen of so people who attended had a very good time. I always enjoy having people come over. I was drinking a lot of pear cider instead of the brew and woke up at 4 AM today with a splitting headache. I took somepainkilerls, drank alittle water and went back to bed.



Eventually I woke up and called Paul. I drove down to see their new house and help them move furniture. Afterwards we drove over to Coronado and had lunch at their favorite place - Coronado Brewery. I drank iced tea.



That's it for now. I am really tired today and have to get to work early tomorrow.

A friend of mine sent this to his "Joke" list the other day. I've been thinking about it and have a response (below).



> With all of this talk of war, many of us may encounter "Peace Activists"

>who will try and convince us that we must refrain from retaliating

>against the ones who terrorized us all on September 11, 2001, and those

>who support terror. These activists may be alone or in a

>gathering.....most of us don't know how to react to them. When you come

>upon one of these people, or one of their rallies, here are the proper

>rules of etiquette:

>1. Listen politely while this person explains their views. Strike up a

>conversation if necessary and look very interested in their ideas. They

>will tell you how revenge is immoral, and that by attacking the people

>who did this to us, we will only bring on more violence. They will

>probably use many arguments, ranging from political to religious to

>humanitarian.

>2. In the middle of their remarks, without any warning, punch them in

>the nose.

>3. When the person gets up off of the ground, they will be very angry

>and they may try to hit you, so be careful.

>4. Very quickly and calmly remind the person that violence only brings

>about more violence and remind them of their stand on this matter. Tell

>them if they are really committed to a nonviolent approach to undeserved

>attacks, they will turn the other cheek and negotiate a solution. Tell

>them they must lead by example if they really believe what they are

>saying.

>5. Most of them will think for a moment and then agree that you are

>correct.

>6. As soon as they do that, hit them again. Only this time hit them much

>harder. Square in the nose.

>7. Repeat steps 2-5 until the desired results are obtained and the idiot

>realizes how stupid of an argument he/she is making.

>8. There is no difference in an individual attacking an unsuspecting

>victim or a group of terrorists attacking a nation of people. It is

>unacceptable and must be dealt with. Perhaps at a high cost. We owe our

>military a huge debt for what they are about to do for us and our

>children. We must support them and our leaders at times like these.

>We have no choice. We either strike back, VERY HARD, or we will keep

>getting hit in the nose.

>Lesson over, class dismissed



If I were the victim of the "lesson" in this story, I would have no doubts about immediately kicking the shit out of the person who assaulted me. Why? Because I have a right to defend myself. I am not a threat to anyone, so if someone comes up to me and assaults me, I am in "emminent danger" and am allowed to use force to protect myself. This is not the same as revenge. If you assaulted me and I kicked your ass and sent you to the hospital, IF you then came back looking for me you would be committing revenge, which is not legal. It is revenge because you were not in emminent danger from me when you left the hospital.



The analogy above plays out like this (without the description I gave just now):



You are walking down the street. I see you and in order to prevent your possible assault on me I kill you. I think you might punch me in the nose at the peace protest, so it's OK - I've taken a pre-emptive strike to protect myself. By the way, the pre-emptive strike will consist of me driving by in a car, shooting an AK-47 at you while you are walking with only a rubber band gun to defend you (but you might have something more powerful, so I have to be sure to overpower you). I will do my absolute best to keep the pattern of shots on your body tight, but if I hit your wife and your kids while I'm doing it, I'll apologize but hey, it's their fault for being there or maybe your fault for having them there. Either way, they're dead and I'm "really sorry".



I know that a lot of people like this war and think it is great we are there and as of yesterday think it's over. You know what? It's not over. Afghanistan isn't over, but we have now forgotten about them. The Taliban are regrouping in the eastern part of the country and the US isn't funding infrastructure rebuilding. There is no police force and Hamid Karzai has no power or influence in any area except Kabul. How can we expect the Afghan people to stand up on their own two feet and have a society we recognize as open, free and democratic if they can't even get fresh clean water, have no shoes on their feet and go to school in a bombed-out hulk of a building?



There were a group of Iraqis chanting "Allah is great! Saddam is an enemy of Allah!" today in Baghdad. Criminey. Is that why we went there? So these guys can elect a mullah and descend into the Dark Ages again?

Macca's "Back in the US - Live 2002" DVD and CD



I bought the DVD and the CD of McCartney's 2002 tour last night and watched the DVD.



Oof.



The music for the most part is great, the band is amazing, especially Abe Laboriel, Jr and the performances are energetic, except maybe for that 60 year old man inthe center of the stage. The man's voice is not what it was, but that's a consequence of aging and isn't his fault. The problem for me with this disk is that there is an awful lot of "Paul is great, I'm his biggest fan" and "Look at all the celebrities at his concerts" stuff in between the songs. I laughed out loud (and not in a "that's funny!" way) when they actually gave credits to the various people they featured (Howard Stern and his latest porn star/stripper girlfriend, Paul Stanley of KISS, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, John Cusack, lots of others).



There's a bit much of the "Heather and I are really happy together" stuff, too. It's odd to me that his wife has no real clue about his music (and that's McCartney's description, not mine). At least she's not on stage playing one-fingered keyboards and "singing" like Linda was for all those years.



So, there are a few constants in the world; death, taxes and Macca's continual quest to make sure all of us know he was important in the Beatles, too and not just that John Lennon fellow.



If you are a Beatles fan and a Macca fan then you should get this, if you are a casual fan you probably won't find it all that interesting.

Geocaching



I did something new today, that combines gadget geekiness with map reading and hiking. It's called geocaching and is a modern version of the treasure hunt.



It requires a GPS receiver and information about the location of a geocache, which is usually a small weather-resistent plastic container filled with little knick-knacks and a log book. When you find the cache you open it, take a little trinket, leave one of your own and sign the log book. Then you hide it in the same location.



It's pretty fun and combines physical exercise with a little brain power, trying to use the GPS receiver to locate the geocache.



Today I hiked all over the Calaveras Hill area, which is south of 78 and a little east of College Blvd. The hill itself is a 20 million year old volcano plug and the view from the top today was great - I could see from the ocean all the way to Mt San Jacinto and the San Bernardino mountains.



I found 3 of the 4 geocaches I set out to look for; there are three or four others in the area I didn't even set out to find.



http://www.geocaching.com is a good place to start.

Another fun weekend wraps up. Mom and Dad came down on Friday and we drove out to Anza Borrego Desert State Park on Saturday. I had heard that the wildflowers were blooming in a big way, but when we got there it was very hot and the flowers were out but not really in what I would term "abundance." We took some photos anyway, hung out at the Vistor's Center and then drove back home.



They stayed the nght and then Dad and I finished the work bench, Mom did some gardening for me and then they went home.



An hour later Ed called me because he had an extra David Wilcox ticket that night at the Belly Up, so I agreed to go. I t was a really great show and I am glad I was there to see it.



The opening act was local faves Berkley Hart, who are enormously talented and unfortunately for them one of them is also enormous so they'll never get a lot of interest from record labels.

I was in LA yesterday; at LACMA actually. I saw two shows: "Ansel Adams at 100" and "John Singer Sargeant." Both were very interesting shows. Ansel Adams in particular was very interesting from both an aesthetic and a technical viewpoint. The large format film that he used is able to bring out an incredible level of detail and that is what people are reacting to with his photos, I believe. Sargeant worked in both oils and watercolors and used Italy as his subject. The exhibit has an entire room devoted to his paintings of Venice, for example, but the favorite painting of both myself and my friend was one of a Carerra marble quarry.



We had a great day together starting with brunch and a little bit of antique shopping and then the museum and some conversation afterwards.



On the drive back home to Oceanside I decided to stop by what I knew was the no-longer-existing B-2 plant in Pico Rivera. I exited Paramount Blvd and headed north. How many times had I driven on this road? Well, not as many times as I'd driven Washington Blvd or Rosecrans, but a lot nonetheless. Under the railroad overcrossing and... wow! Rex Road is a real road; nicely landscaped, lots of streetlights, unlike what it used to be, which was basically an overgrown alleyway. Where the old gym, track and softball fields were is a new industrial/warehouse building and more being built across on what used to be the West Factory. I could see some other buildings way up front to the north.



So, I turned onto a brand new street called "Stealth Way", that was probably on or near what used to be the access road into the south turnstile area and drove all the way to the north side of the lot. What used to be the front lobby and the first few corridors (and maybe even the big and main cafeterias) is now a Lowe's and bunch of other retail stores. The road into the shopping area is the same road that was the front entry way road.



The only area that may in fact be original is the front corner at Washington and Rosecrans - the lawn that had the N O R T H R O P sign and had the secret outline of the B-2 on it. It was fenced off and I didn't get out of the car to take a look.



It was very... what, exactly? Very strange to know that what was for roughly 30 years a Ford assembly plant and was then recycled for another 20 years as a secret aircraft manufacturing plant that had launched so many careers of people I knew and employed 11 000 people at its peak was now relegated to a quiet recognition via the name of a street in the back of the complex.



And so now what do I say for my resume?



"1986-1996, Northrop Grumman B-2 Division 8900 E. Washington Blve, Pico Rivera CA, 90660 (No longer exists)."