We did another camping trip, the first since 2022. This time we went to Pinnacles National Park. Pinnacles is buried along CA RT 25, a north-south highway between US Hwy 101 and I-5, about the same position as Fresno.
Monday, March 31, 2025
Camping at Pinnacles
Friday, March 28, 2025
Singularities Up Close
A singularity, in mostly common parlance, refers to a part of a black hole, the center point of infinite density. But singularities exist in another place in mathematics, and that's where a function is no longer defined at a given point.
Now, sometimes the result of when functions don't exist at given points are asymptotes, dotted vertical lines where the curves shoot off, either up or down, towards infinity and hugging those dotted lines, never to cross.
Other times, mathematical functions will have undefined points, but these will result in holes instead of those pesky asymptotes. These are easy for Algebra students to identify and draw into their sketches, but calculator devices will never show them, because the hole will be too small considering how the calculator's numbering works.
Recently I was examining two functions, trying to estimate what the output of the function would be where the hole would exist. Here're the functions:
Northwest League is Winning
I was doing some research on sports teams that use Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, as a mascot or logo. More logo, I suppose, because Squatch was the name of the Supersonics mascot back before they were stolen away from Seattle:
I was really interested in Bigfoot/Sasquatch logos, and, of course, Minor League Baseball didn't disappoint:
Thursday, March 20, 2025
St. Patrick's Day, 2025
Bought a corned beef from our farmer people, and it was good. It was a little fancier than we otherwise like, which is that it was heavy with the other spices---mustard seed and cinnamon---whereas we're a little basic: we like just the all spice berries and crushed bay leaf. Those were present in this as well, but the other profiles were heavy.
Having kids during this holiday shenanigans is different: no more strolling to wait in loine at the bar at 3 am. Just work, make dinner, have just a little whiskey. All good.
I did find a picture from St. Patrick's 2009, from hanging out with Marc at their place in Hell's Kitchen, and made a collage with a picture from myself from this year. So, 16 years apart to the day, wearing the same shirt...
The Interview Will Continue Verbally
I came home after a baseball game with Cass and saw the remnants of an "interview" Camille had with Corrie:
Friday, March 7, 2025
Go Surf!
Youth sports is fun. At least, it's more fun to watch that I would have guessed. But it does get a little pricey. To combat this, Corrie signed me up to be an assistant coach. At least that's what she thought. But, signing up as a coach erases the price to that family, so that's more than enough motivation.
When I went to one of the "assistant coach" meetings, they said: Be sure to be here for the tryouts, so you can keep track of players for the draft a few days later, and then don'tmiss the draft, and soon we'll get your team name and cap designs.
My raised eyebrows said, Umm, what? Running a practice in the first few weeks was more stressful than coaching the games; I can say that with experiences as the head-coach, draft-maven, and team-namer.
Originally I went with the name Tyrants. I was going togo with a t-rex theme, and it sounded like it fit the times, anyway. I was going to go with a a black and white, cursive, uplifting script team name across the chest, white letters on black shirt, so we could have black pants (score one for non-white pants). But this was nixed on account of having to steal the images and jersey designs from established teams, and beyond a novel I'm writing, there are no major league, minor league, or college team sporting that name.
After a long discussion with Cass, and going back and forth a few times between a few other names, I made the executive decision and chose the Surf, as in: the Long Beach Surf. I went with an LA soccer team from the late 70s for the cresting wave logo, but really, I was interested in a cyan (sky blue) cap with the neon green interlocking LB cap. I thought the cap would stand out.
The jersey folks told me they changed the hat plan, but thought it would work. They settled on:
This coaching deal has been something new. I got used to different titles: chef, mister...and now I'm called "coach" pretty regularly by a certain tiny group of parents and kids.
Go Surf!
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Bad Idea Saturday
I've written about Bad Idea a few times before, and by "Bad Idea" I mean the comic book company. I wrote about them in 2021, 2023, and last year, 2024.
Apparently, I haven't unsubscribed from different Bad Idea email alerts, and one of them from a few weeks ago was about a get together in Eagle Rock at a comic shop called Revenge Of. This was a post convention party and you had to RSVP, but it was free. I was not going to whatever convention it was associated with, but I'd thought I'd RSVP anyway. Maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe I could spend a Saturday evening out of the house like a normal adult.
I was on the list, but they never checked. I got my freebie comic, and had it autographed. They had fre pizza and free beer, which was nice. They had many pinball machines and handed out five dollars in tokens to anybody who wanted. They had an event space behind their shop where they had a DJ, a table covered with meat and cheese and fruit, more drinks, the pizza station, and a photo-op mock up of the mech suit one of their characters wears.
On the patio of the actual grounds, they had a themed corn-hole setup as well as wall mounted signage:
Sunday, February 16, 2025
The Robots are Crossing Linden
The supermarket that I and my family visit is about one-thousand feet from our home. We walk unless we're on the way home from points further away and already in the car. Since you can count on two hands the days when the rain has been rough in the last, er, decade, inclement weather generally has no bearing on our grocery store decisions.
So, as was the case, I was making an evening trip to the grocery store. I walk south to Broadway, and then east along Broadway two blocks to Atlantic, where the Vons is. The block between my street, Elm, and Atlantic is Linden. (On a side note, the intersection of Broadway and Linden in downtown Long Beach is my favorite intersection...like maybe anywhere, which is a weird thing to say.)
As I waited to cross Linden at a red light along Broadway, on the opposite sidewalk was what looked like a big rectangular cooler on with serious off-roading wheels. Nice, I remember thinking, have a wheeled cooler would make parts of camping easier. I glanced around on that side of the street for someone getting ready to push it across one the light changed. But then I noticed that it had headlights. Once the light changed, we both started going, me to my coming side, east towards Atlantic and Vons, and it heading west.
What I had originally thought was some kind of pushing handle, was a lit-up touch screen, with four large letters centered on the screen. As we got closer and about to pass each other, I could read these four letters as "Alan."
Alan didn't have any kind of delivery-service company markings anywhere on, eh, it...him? As we passed, I smiled and wanted to say, "Hey Alan, how're you doin?" But I didn't. Would it have been confused? Probably not, but it was doing something, toiling across the street late at night.
As I grabbed the things I needed from the store, I was deep in thought about Alan. Was this Alan a programmable tool? Was it something you said, "Okay, Alan, I need you to go to Vons...get milk and eggs," or "Alan...go to Vons and pick up order #XX-XXXX?" Was it coming from Vons? Was it just a helper machine, and if so, isn't that how all origin stories about AI and the robot-apocalypse start out?
Where was it heading to? Did it have a nice spot to charge it's power core in the apartment of its owner? Could it ever be its own owner? Should it be its own owner? How long before those conversations are had?
I laughed it off---the coming existential crisis about AI and robotics---and marveled at my own lifespan: I'm of that weird in-between generation: too young for Gen-X proper and too old for Millenial...you know, first email account was basically in college, voted in 2000 for Nader, was a twenty-something during the post-9-11 world, now a forty-something parent watching cartoon supervillains taking over the country, AI is a homework cheating app on phones, and robots running errands at all hours of the night.
I mentioned it to Corrie, and she told me about the robot she saw, a taller, trapezoid-looking deal, passing her as she walked home from Vons. Whatta woild, we laughed.
The other night, as we checked out the neighborhood from our balcony, I saw Alan again. At least, I think it's Alan. This time Alan was again crossing Linden, only they were heading east, and was on 3rd, the block up from Broadway in our fair neck of the woods:
Monday, February 3, 2025
By Its Cover, I Guess
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Urban Coyotes
The first time I remember seeing a coyote in Long Beach was on a drive to work. My normal routes were impacted by street-work, so while driving west on Anaheim Ave, a major thoroughfare on the way out of town over the river and freeways, a coyote was trotting across the major street.
My first thought as I approached was Stray dog? Out here? because we don't really ever see strays. But as I got closer, the silhouette this 'dog' cut became clearer, and it was obvious this wasn't a dog-dog, it was wildlife. There was a large patch of overgrowth under the bridge over the LA river at Anaheim, in an area they'll probably be filling in with condos or apartments soon enough, that I was pretty sure was this coyote's destination.
It was a nifty encounter. Ever since college I've had a soft spot for coyotes. I've even named a character I put into two different stories Sin-ka-lip (the Salish name for coyote), who is, in case you're wondering, a talking coyote.
Anywho, a few years later, I was driving down one of our neighborhood streets and saw this sight:
How Much is That Doggy in the Window?
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Political Intrigue in Dinetah
"Dinetah" is the name the locals call the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the US:
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Movie Traditions
Before we had kids, Corrie would, on New Year's Eve, marathon watch the second of the Lord of the Rings movies---The Two Towers and The Return of the King. We didn't have The Fellowship, so it was never involved.
Anywho, Cass has been interested in knights and armor and battles---because what kid isn't?---and Corrie said, Well, there are these crazy vivid, involved, movies that have monsters, wizards, magic, sword-play, HUGE battle scenes, ghost armies, tiny half-sized people...it's pretty cool! And Cass's eyes went wide and he said: What the sigma are we waiting for (this is new slang for us oldies)?
So, before we left for Colorado, Corrie put on the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings films. The 12 hours of epic movie split nicely over two weeks---somedays we'd watch an hour, others an-hour-and-a-half---always ending for bed or shower at a reasonable place.
I didn't catch all of the extended versions, but from what I did see, some things were filled in, or nuance I was unaware of got explained. Like Aragorn being 87 years old, and being one of the "dudes who live for a few hundred years" typed of humans. I had no idea...
Anywho number two, that left Corrie and I with the desire to watch something new on New Year's Eve, and we had settled on wanting to put eyes on Ivan Reitman's "Evolution" from summer of 2001. We had just driven through the beautiful Glen Canyon area of Utah and Arizona---the site for where the movie takes place---and we quote it regularly...so the decision made sense.
One evening back in the pre-9/11 summer of 2001, Corrie, Tony, and I went to see this movie in the theater, but not in San Luis. We drove down to Arroyo Grande to a tiny single-screen theater (most likely the Fair Oaks Theatre), most likely having been drinking and partaking the whole drive down, only to crack up laughing over and over. I have a soft spot for this movie.
We put it on for the kids, but they weren't as interested as us, so we put it on after they went to bed. I spent some time online after watching it, to see if the online community loves it as much as I do (they decidedly do NOT), and to check specific filming locations and the like.
The third act climax is silly, and the end bad-guy in this essentially Ghostbusters-retooling is, eh, let's say pushing the boundaries of believability, but the physical nature of David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, and Julianne Moor's comedy cracks me up just by thinking about it. The chemistry between Duchovny and Jones in the small moments ("Ready for lunch Harry? Or...have you already eaten?"), or just Orlando Jones line reads ("God gave you two goddamned hands for a reason!"; "We're just trying to look after these little guys, your majesty!") or to him ("This is not a nightclub!") or Arizona's governor, played by Dan Ackroyd, ("Somebody take this bag of snakes and lay them out straight for me.") provide endless quotes for Corrie and me. And I haven't even mentioned Sean William Scott ("I do this!"; not a quote, but his face upon hearing his terrible boss was killed by a monster is priceless.)
After purchasing a new DVD player, I hope to return this movie to our rotation. It could make for a nice New Year's Eve movie, but I wouldn't want it to only get seen once a year. If you haven't seen it, I would say it's worth your time, but I also understand the main complaints about it.
The times, though, when it came out were the height of frivolity in America---the pre-9/11 summer of 2001. It's from a different era, and it takes me back there, which may be why I still adore it so much.
Sunday, January 5, 2025
Part 7: Vegas, Baby!
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"You can't park your car here!" |
I had a sound byte playing in my head often as we walked around, the scene where Johnny Depp is trying to leave his car under lights like the ones above at an early point in 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the attendant is yelling at him. I must have said it dozens of times, much to Cass's bewilderment.