I was out there 45 minutes early to catch the shuttle fly over the East Bay, but luckily picked a pretty good spot on the Alameda-BFI bridge.
There was a group of school children there first but unfortunately their time ran out before it arrived. By the time it did show up at 10:10... I was the only one on the bridge.
We took the night off from swim practice to take the kids to a cultural night at the museum last month. Okay, maybe it was mainly to see Deerhoof play in the entrance of the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) but there were many bonus surprises.
Our friend Josh stopped by last night in a Tesla -- one of those newfangled electric cars that will retail for $100,000. He's a designer at their headquarters down in San Carlos and every now and then he gets to bring one home.
So he took me for a spin and wwhhhhoooooaaaaaaa, what a ride! I think we went from zero to XXX in about 5 seconds. Really feel those G's!! The car rides so low to the ground it could probably slide underneath a Yukon.
Wealthy folks are going to be eating these electric sportscars for breakfast. The mileage is equivalent to 170 miles/gallon, apparently. There is no trunk space because the rear is filled w/ engine and battery. It's a cool friggin' car... and this is coming from a guy (me) who generally does not care for cars. (After all, a car is only as good as the music playin' within.)
The SCARY think about this speedster is that it is so quiet. You will never hear it coming. Bad news for pedestrians or those who use their ears to back out onto the street (like I do.*) These might need something similar to what a dude had on his mountain bike yesterday at China Camp... some kind of whistling device to let us know he was coming.
Patsy and Dick bought us a Scooba, the floor-cleaning iRobot. Simon and Henry named it "Mecha-G" in honor of the giant robotic monster built to defend Japan from the real Godzilla.
Living in the fogbelt, we appreciate a good heat wave. We enjoyed a teaser 2 weeks ago and got the hint: 2 swamp coolers is better than one. Are you ready for a warm summer?
A swamp cooler is much like a fan that takes air through a "curtain of water." It uses far less electricity than air conditioning, which is overkill here in the Bay Area, especially when really hot days only occur in brief clusters a few times a year. But for those strings of swelter, a swamp cooler is perfect!You can buy a small, portable swamp cooler online for 100 bucks w/ free shipping. Our model (by Sunpentown, from Compact Appliance, legos not included) has 3 speeds and oscillates. If you keep it running on high you will need to refill the water every 20 hours or so. One thing I don't like is the loud beeping when changing settings/low water notification. These portable models won't cool your entire home but they cool everything in their oscillating paths... and you don't need to seal yourself in. We wheel it around to where we need it. The best part is: sleeping at night.
Thanks to our pal Morst and the fine folks at Sonoma Wire Works, we had passes to the MacWorld PodWorld Expo in SF yesterday. We weren't there for micro-gadget-fetish, though... we just wanted to get on John Lennon's bus!
We hustled straight over to Lennon's bus and low and behold... the bus was off limits for the entire day because Bob Weir and his chums were inside the bus recording a new song. We could see them on closed circuit widescreen lcd right as we stood just outside the bus -- they were kinda hangin' out w/ their instruments, talking about what they were gonna play -- but we couldn't get on the bus. We couldn't hear the contents of the bus either, but they wound up playing their creation later that afternoon.
You could say Weir on the bus, and we're off the bus. Wonder if he still consumes mass quantities of grapefruit....
