6:15A 13 Apr 2009
April 14, 2009
Robert J Sawyer @ Borderlands Books
No, actually. That’s Ripley, Borderlands Books‘ hairless cat.
Ripley sat in my lap purring and snoozing during Sawyer’s talk and was reluctant to leave it when the presentation was over.
We hied off to Foreign Cinema afterwards for a late dinner, Sawyer having signed my copy of WAKE before the event kicked off.
Check out the book and the other seventeen books and zillions of short fiction items Sawyer has written.
The pilot for a FLASH FORWARD series is up for consideration in the next few days. Good luck to Sawyer on that.
After dinner at Foreign Cinema it was home again home again via the #14 Mission and the #30 Stockton, and a quarter mile walk up Telegraph Hill and home. The transit connections, though, were perfect. Maybe a four minute wait for the #14 and another four minute wait for the #30. Can’t get much better than that. Thanks, Muni.
April 13, 2009
A road trip home
We were in the Central Valley this weekend for a memorial service for my cousin.
We spent the night in Lost Hills and took the long way home, through the Bitterwater Valley and on to Parkfield, then up 101 and a jog here and another there and finally home.
More photos to follow. Maybe.
Parkfield
April 11, 2009
April 10, 2009
March 16, 2009
On a clear day … Mauna Kea
The first days of the conference were cloudy and a bit wet, but what harm does warm rain do? Folks who were interested in hiking, sunning, exploring had to deal with the weather. I was there to soak up panels so the rain only meant I’d get wet if I left the conference grounds in search of food.
A couple days of sunshine followed. The conference ended on a partly-cloudy note.
On one of the sunny days, I walked over to the nearby shopping center to pick up some lunch from the grocery store and discovered that the cloud cover that had hidden Mauna Kea was gone for the nonce.
March 14, 2009
Winging home
Coming into San Francisco, up from Los Angeles (all the seats on the direct Kona->SFO flights being full).
Moon above the cloud cover. Sun rising behind me, spilling pink on the clouds.
February 27, 2009
Let us now gaze down on the Port of San Francisco
Specifically, Piers 23, 19, and 17. (Click on the photo to get an enlarged version.)
Note the pilings on the north apron of Pier 23.
Note the shabby temporary patches on the roof of the Port building facing the Embarcadero where Pier 21 would be, if there were a Pier 21.
Check out the pilings on the north apron of Pier 19. You can barely see the pair of orange cones keeping you from accidentally walking where the worst of the damage to the apron is. (The apron has crumpled and is no longer horizontal.) What you can’t see in the picture very well is that the bulk of the apron to the west of the orange cones has disintegrated and fallen into the drink as well.
Check out the pilings at Pier 17 (the last pier you can see in the picture). They don’t look in very great shape either, do they?
To quote from a SPUR document, published in The Urbanist in August, 2007:
The Port’s 10-year Capital Plan is based on a comprehensive survey of the physical condition of all Port properties under its ownership. The Plan identifies the cost of bringing the Port into basic compliance with health, safety, seismic and Americans with Disabilities Act regulations, as well as fulfilling waterfront open-space needs, at nearly $1.5 billion. Almost one-third of the costs identified in this Capital Plan are for substructure repair and seismic strengthening of the Port’s pile-supported structures.
Something must be done.
What will it be? What to do, what to do, what to do. …
February 26, 2009
Grey day. Hoping for some rain.
Update: Day didn’t turn to rain. Quite the contrary. Sunny with interesting clouds.
