California, Part 1


Huntington Beach – surfer

Originally uploaded by etacar11

Where is that damn California sun? Three mornings we’ve been here and it’s been overcast for all of them. Sure, the Sun came out eventually each day but I want to wake up to some Sun, dang it!

We visited my brother’s grave first thing after arriving in CA.  That was emotional for me.  I hadn’t been to see him in the four years since the funeral.  This was one of the main reasons I came on this trip. We also visited with my 90 year old grandmother.  She’s not doing so well and that’s very hard to deal with as well.

On our second day here, we visited one of my favorite Huntington Beach landmarks: the pier.  I took the surfer picture while standing on it.  There was a competition going on but this guy was on the opposite side of the pier from it.  So I guess he was just surfing for fun. We had lunch at the Ruby’s Diner at the end of the pier.  I had been wanting to go there for a while.  Checked off my list.

Today I took my dad to see Hellboy II while my mom spent more time with Grandma.  We’re going to drive out to Palm Springs tomorrow to see some friends and relatives.

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Calvert Cliffs


Calvert Cliffs

Originally uploaded by etacar11

I had been wanting to check out this state park in Southern Maryland for a while. Rob and I drove down there one Sunday afternoon. The beach is a good two mile hike through the woods from the parking lot. Very pleasant, mostly level, and part of it is through marshland.

The beach seen here, which is on the Chesapeake Bay, is very small. In fact the area in the shot is designated off limits, because of erosion. Behind me was the area where people were hanging out. You are allowed to hunt for fossils on the beach and keep what you find. We didn’t do any digging ourselves, just waded in the water a bit.

Cove Point Lighthouse is visible from the shore when looking south.  Another place on my list…

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Gravelly Point – American plane landing

A lot of airports have places where people go to watch the planes. Washington National Airport has a park near one end of its runway called Gravelly Point.

We had a little MEETinDC gathering there to take pictures of the planes as they were coming in for a landing. And they were coming in low right over our heads. Very loudly.

It was an extremely hot and humid day. My friend Cat and I almost collapsed on the walk up the Mt. Vernon Trail from the National Airport Metro stop. But, thankfully, our MEETin buddies were set up in a shady spot.

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California here I come

I’m going to Huntington Beach, California (my hometown), with my parents next month on vacation.  They go back every year for their high school alumni picnic.  I haven’t been back in four years, since my brother Neal’s funeral in 2004.  So this year I decided to go with them.

We only lived in Huntington Beach until I was four years old.  It’s my hometown but I’ve never felt like I know it very well, sadly.  So in the ten days we’re there, I intend to get to know it and the surrounding area a little better.

I’ve been to the great H.B. pier and the beach there many times, actually, on all the short visits back over the years.  But I don’t have any good pictures, so I plan to get a lot.

The Bolsa Chica Wetlands have fascinated me for a while.  I’ve seen tons of pictures on Flickr of all the different kinds of birds that reside there.  May sound boring to some people but, hey, I like that kind of thing.  Photographing birds in flight can be a very challenging thing.  North of Huntington Beach is Seal Beach, which has a National Wildlife Refuge on the Naval Weapons Station there.  My dad worked at that Weapons Station in the ’70’s.  Ironically, the Navy only put the Refuge there so that a highway couldn’t be built that would have divided the base.  Well, the wildlife is grateful, I’m sure.

On the historical side, Mission San Juan Capistrano is down the coast.  I know very little about California history, but I know the Mission is over two hundred years old so I. Must. Go. My parents probably don’t share my fascination but hopefully I can wheedle them into going.

There was an Impressionist movement among California artists in the early 20th century.  So, of course, I must visit a few of the local museums to take it in.  The Bowers Museum, the Laguna Art Museum, and Orange County Museum of Art are possibilities.  I doubt I’ll get my parents to go to all of them, but it can’t hurt to try!

Further afield, I was hoping to get up to Griffith Observatory in LA.  I went there a few times when I was at USC, but they recently did a major renovation/update and I’m dying to see it.  On the lighthouse front, Point Fermin in San Pedro beckons.

So those are my plans so far.  We’ll see how much of it actually happens.

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Facebook has me now

I always refused to join networks like MySpace and Facebook. In my mind they’re for kids. I still feel that way about MySpace. Facebook, I’ve changed my mind about. It seems like a cool way to connect with people you know, people with common interests…although I admit I was mainly attracted by the fact that one of my favorite bands (Nine Inch Nails) recently set up a Facebook page.

Ok, I really started my page a couple of months ago at the behest of a friend, but only in the last week have I done anything with it. I’ve added personal info/interests, linked to my Twitter feed, connected to friends, joined some groups, linked to my Flickr page. Oh there’s just so much you can do, the mind boggles.

It’s almost too much, actually. And it’s another nail in the coffin of the “all-in-one” personal website (see one of my previous posts).

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Long Island Lighthouse Challenge (Part 2)


Fire Island Lighthouse

Originally uploaded by etacar11

Yes, the weather held up for us. We had only three stops left on the second day and we finished easily.

The seventh stop of the challenge was Old Field Point Lighthouse. Apparently they used to bus people to this stop. This year we drove right to it. Through a quite lovely neighborhood that my mom went ga-ga over. She had decided that the Hamptons were too snobby, too remote, and too lacking in fast-food restaurants. Old Field, with its lovely yards and gardens and beautiful homes, I think she could take. Old Field Point was climbable, even for my parents, and had a nice view of Long Island Sound.

Huntington Harbor Lighthouse was the eighth stop and we actually reached it by boat. It rests on a caisson and has its own dock. So we were able to explore this lighthouse, unlike the other off-shore ones. We all brought our coats with us but the weather was still being mild and we hardly needed them. The people working on preserving the lighthouse had many interesting stories to tell about its history. There was a picture of someone (a keeper’s family member) with a cat at the lighthouse. I’ll bet that cat moved there under extreme duress.

The ninth and final stop of the challenge was Fire Island Lighthouse.  This lighthouse is part of Fire Island National Seashore and reachable from Robert Moses State Park.  I had actually been to the state park before to go to the beach but had realized you could visit the lighthouse from there.  Fire Island was the tallest of the lighthouses on the challenge, I think.  I climbed it, my parents sat it out.  It had already been a bit of a hike from the state park parking lot.  And the climb was a little on the tough side.  I took breaks on the landings and looking up it seemed like I would never reach the top.  But I did, finally, and the view was tremendous.

The rain started as we left the parking lot for our trip home.  Perfect timing!  The drive home wasn’t much fun, but all-in-all, it was a fun trip.  Now my mom is excited to try the Maryland and New Jersey challenges.  We’ll see!

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Long Island Lighthouse Challenge (Part 1)


Montauk Point Lighthouse

Originally uploaded by etacar11

My parents and I are doing the Long Island Lighthouse Challenge this weekend. The drive up from Maryland was the worst. First, it rained ALL DAY. And the timing made us hit NYC at rush hour. NYC + Friday + rush hour + rain = a very horrific time. Plus my mom’s allergies were acting up. I felt so bad for her. We finally made it to our hotel near MacArthur Airport several hours after we expected to. And we got lost trying to find it. GPS isn’t always your friend!

But today made up for it, for the most part. Sunny and mostly clear all day. Lovely. Our first stop on the Challenge was the farthest out, Montauk Point Lighthouse. A bit pricey, you have to pay to park, plus to get into the lighthouse. But the view was nice and it was not a bad climb to the top.

The second stop was Cedar Island Lighthouse. It was out on a long, thin strip of sand that would have taken a long time to walk out on. So we just viewed it from a far. Maybe some other time, because it looked like a great walk.

Two ferries got us to the third stop, East End Seaport Museum in Greenport, NY. Ok, not a lighthouse but it’s part of the challenge. They have a lot of nice lighthouse memorabilia.

The fourth stop was Long Beach Bar Lighthouse, also viewed from afar. There was a man from the East End museum at the viewing spot who gave us a nice little history of the lighthouse. Apparently you used to be able to walk to it via a sand bar, but due to various reasons (including rising sea levels) they no longer connect. It’s no longer even that safe to visit it by boat. They make people get their own insurance if they want to do that…

The fifth stop was two lighthouses-in-one. Plum Island and Orient Point Lighthouses, both off-shore, were viewed from Orient Point County Park, right near a very cool-looking ferry that goes to New London, Conn. We had a 15 minute walk to a little beach to see the lighthouses. My parents didn’t make it all the way to the end of the path, but I went most of the way.

Our sixth and last top of the day was Horton Point Lighthouse. This one was NOT off-shore and since it isn’t a tall one, it was an easy climb. One of the guides said that the lighthouse is often included in winery bus tours. They make sure the tours come to the lighthouse BEFORE the wineries. Yeah, last thing you need is a bunch of drunks climbing up 27 steep spiral steps!

I got a U.S. Lighthouse Society passport at Montauk, and got it stamped at each stop. They also gave us souvenir magnets at each stop. Very nice. We have three more lighthouses we are going to try to see tomorrow before we head home. I just hope the weather holds up…

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No more all-in-one personal websites?

There was an interesting post on Wired magazine’s blog: Is the All-in-One Personal Website Headed for Extinction? I have to admit mine is rapidly (though I seriously need to update and redo it at the moment) becoming just a collection of links to my presences on other sites. Though this blog is hosted on my domain, all my photos are on Flickr, my bookmarks are on Del.icio.us, my resume is on Linked In. Heck, I’m even thinking about trying Twitter. What is the world coming to??

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South Mountain Creamery


South Mountain Creamery calf

Originally uploaded by etacar11

A dairy farm in Middletown, Maryland, near my family’s house, was having a festival last weekend. They called it the Cow Caper. I was amazed at how many people were there, but coverage of the festival in the Washington Post must have been a big part of it.

The highlights were seeing cows getting milked (weird machines actually suck it out of them), a horse-and-buggy ride, sampling the Creamery’s ice cream, and seeing calves like this. Very cute.

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Don't Make Me Think!

One of my co-workers lent me an interesting book recently. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug. It’s a short and easy read. The basic premise (and hence the title) is that you shouldn’t make the user work too hard to use or understand your website. I think the website I maintain at work, the AA Dept. website, does pretty well in that regard. And even if someone can’t find what they want, we have a link to the sitemap and a searchbox on every page. Hopefully that cuts down on user frustration.

Another usability rule Krug has is “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” I don’t think we can really apply that to our site. There’s no way to really cut down our explanations of various astronomical phenomena and algorithms.

In the next-to-last chapter, he mentions his three-second accessibility test for websites: increasing the size of the type. And he says almost every site he goes to fails. Ta-da! We don’t. You can increase the size of our type with your browser, no problem! Cool. Must be because I love Cascading Style Sheets to death.

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