Just another WordPress.com weblog
Well, Meg tried to take out a telephone pole with the Caliber two weeks ago. She walked away with a fat lip and a bruise from the airbags. Caliber was totaled.
Engine mounts broken, check, Transmission broken free, check, everything shoved to the side of the engine compartment, check.
Full Airbag Deployment
One busted Caliber
I was poking through some pictures earlier today and saw a set of pictures that really shows how much time we have lived in Pacific Grove, CA.
The first picture is from around 2007, from before we moved to Scotland.
Nora at the Pacific Grove car show.
This second picture is from last year, in front of the same car. A little bit of a difference.
Molly and Nora at the Pacific Grove car show in 2012
We’ve lived here longer than we have lived anywhere else. It’s been a fun ride.
The girls and I took Gandalf down for his first “big crowd” event on Saturday. It was the Pacific Grove Good Ole Days fair and parade. He was pretty wound up at first, pulling on his leash and wanting to go ten different directions at once. However, after a bit he settled down and we all had a good time.
Molly walked with the AFRP, Animal Friends Rescue Project, during the parade. She had a little dog with her that was up for adoption. We didn’t bring Gandalf down until later in the day. When we did get down there he received so much attention it was nuts.
He got treats and belly rubs galore.
Gandalf relaxing with Nora, Molly, and Vianna.
We sat and relaxed in front of the PG Framing shop. The owner came out and took Gandalf inside for treats. Talk about one spoiled pup.
Gandalf getting some random love
Here the big softie is getting attention from some girls that were there. This was a pretty normal scene. So much for the big scary Pit Bull image.
I have a friend that is currently walking the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James. He’s planning on the trip taking roughly 6 weeks start to finish and he’s blogging enroute. Check out his progress at http://oceanosailor.tumblr.com
There was a movie made about the Camino de Santiago, produced by Emelio Estevez, and starring Martin Sheen. Here’s a link to the official trailer. The Way. I originally saw this on Netflix, definitely worth watching, at least I thought so.
The various routes of el Camino de Santiago
Just so others know. If you’re looking to get a Pit Bull, they have absolutely no understanding of personal space, or how to get the heck out of the way.
A pit bull just happens to be nothing but 60+ pounds of muscle and bone. So, hypothetically speaking, if you’re in the kitchen making breakfast for the girls. Gandalf, oh wait, I mean the wizard dog that shall not be named, will probably plop himself down right in the middle of the tiny kitchen, directly in the way, and then refuse to move. You are, after all, doing something he may find interesting, so he’ll just sit there, all 60 pounds of him, and become a statue.
This is bad enough, but when he does the same thing in a door way, well, it get’s interesting. (-:
He’s a beast and he knows it.
I’m sitting here at the San Jose airport waiting to catch a flight to Seattle for a few days. I find traveling by plane to be both a pain in the neck, and fascinating at the same time.
To make life easier I caught the Monterey Airport shuttle out of Monterey to San Jose, no fighting traffic, no parking, etc. On the shuttle up I chat with an older lady and her friend who are off for a vacation in New Dehli India. Another passenger has her 5 year old daughter, it’s their first flight together (I’m thinking single mom, but didn’t ask).
Now I’m enjoying a slice of “Pizza my Heart” pizza and watching folks walk up and down the concourse. This is one of the most intersting places to people watch. So many different people, ethnicity, and attitudes.
Well,
I was invited to give another talk this week. This time it was at the Dell executive briefing center in Santa Clara, CA. It was a one day HPC workshop entitled “Enabling Discovery and Product Innovation with Dell HPC Solutions!“
It turned out to be a pretty decent workshop. I attended the HPC Advisory Council workshop at Stanford a month or so ago and it was pretty dry. Most of the talks were technically overdone and filled with way to much detail. Not all of the talks mind you, some were really good, but a lot were snoozers. So, with that in mind I figured, heck, the talk I gave a Supercomputing and also at the DellXL consortium get together would go over pretty good.
Well, the first two talks at the Dell workshop were excellent. The first was about creating a gene sequencing cluster that fit in a single rack. The purpose was to make a sequencing process easier and more efficient. A really interesting talk. The second talk was by a gentleman by the name of Brad at California State University San Francisco. His talk was about their two year project sequencing 100,000+ people with the help of Kaiser medical. Very very interesting stuff.
Thank goodness the next talk was fairly dry and technical. Otherwise I would have been screwed. (-:
My talk, “Mission Critical Global Weather Modeling” (not too exciting I know) went over pretty well. It sounds like they are going to make our talks available online (they didn’t video the talks this time, so it’ll just be the powerpoint), so I might make a link when they do put them up. Link to agenda.
It’s interesting giving talks in front of peers. Even when some of those peers are professors from Lawrence Berkley National Labs, Stanford, Lawrence Livermore National labs, etc. No stress. (-:
Anyhow, that’s what I did yesterday. It was a good time, I learned a lot and now have more contacts of people doing what I do.
So, as most of our friends now, after living in Alaska for almost 5 years Roberta and I know how to shoot pistols, rifles, etc. Well, we can’t let that knowledge go to waste. No matter what this damn Nanny state California thinks.
So, we’ve taken the girls up to a gun range in Watsonville to learn to shoot. Safely.
Nora learning to shoot
Molly learning to shoot
Molly does pretty good at shooting, but Nora, watch out. That kid is pretty darn good. She just naturally knows how to hit what she shoots at. In the picture above she would ask what to shoot for, hands, buttons, nose, and I’ll tell her which and she’d hit it. I think she missed once.
We had the girls shoot both revolvers and semi-auto’s. Starting with .22′s, then a .38 and finally a few rounds through the Smith & Wesson .40 Caliber. The .40 Cal is definitely too big for them to shoot comfortably, but we wanted them to at least know they could shoot it and know what the kick felt like.
For her birthday Nora wanted a target pistol. We haven’t picked one up for her yet. But if she continues to enjoy shooting as much as she does we will probably pick up a target .22 caliber semi-auto for her to plink with.
Oh, and hey California. Kiss my redneck arse. (-:
I was looking at some pictures earlier and I ran across an Infrared picture of the family deep in Mary Kings Close. So I scanned it in and removed some of the scratches.
Mary Kings Close is just off of the Edinburgh Royal Mile. A close is what we would think of as a closed off alleyway, kind of. Mary King’s is pretty famous and has become something of a tourist attraction. It’s called the most haunted place in Scotland.
 |
| From Adventures |
The girls really enjoyed the “Scary”tour. In fact Nora became a Plague Doctor” for halloween two years running because of the stories about the close during the plague years.
Molly walking our new Pit Bull Gandalf. He’s a 6 month old that was trained in the “Take the Lead”, part of the second chance program where troubled or incarcerated juveniles are put in charge of training a pup. He was taught sit, stay, down, off, watch me, target, and some other basic commands. It’s a good start.
One thing we didn’t realize was that he’s going to gain another 20-40 lbs. He’s already a walking tank of muscle.
One thing we are going to work on, continuously is manners. Some one like him needs to be very well mannered. He’s just to powerful not to keep well trained.
We’re starting to crate train him. He hasn’t ever lived inside before. He was an outside pup until he was dropped off at the SPCA on Christmas Eve. He’s been there for almost a month.
You know you live in a small town when you go to Petsmart and while checking out you mentiin that you just spent as much on stuff as you will for the dog. The girl behind the cash register says “SPCA?” I said yep, a 6 month old Pit. Her response about floored me. “You’re adopting Gandolf?!? He’s so lovable!” What? How did you???? It turns out she works at the SPCA part time and helped care for Gandolf. It’s a small world some times.
Oh ya. And he snores. We put him to bed a few minutes ago and he’s snoring. It’s cute. I did discover he knows how to bark. He’s done so once. I turned on the TV, he froze, watched it for a few moments, barked at it once, then looked at me like “what is it? Is it dangerous?” When I just chilled he settled down and after a bit he didn’t even glance up anymore”. Amazing to think he has never, before tonight, seen a television before.
This is going to be one loved mutt. There are three young ladies that are doting on his every need.
Recent Comments