Smoke via satellite
Campfires are in the air again today. It's super hazy outside.
A friend sent me a link to the image I was looking for that really tells the story of how the fire smoke is blanketing our region. Amazing.
« May 2008 | Main | July 2008 »
June 26, 2008
When worlds collide
The media business is a pretty small world, but I thought this clip epitomized it for me.
The background: Charlene Birkeland is parenting editor and blogger for Yahoo! Shine, (not to mention a fine writer and downright nice person). She's also married to my first boss at Yahoo, Jeff Birkeland (a fine fellow in his own right). In this clip, she's talking to Michaela Pereira, who I worked with at TechTV. Michaela has been rocking the morning news at KTLA Los Angeles for a few years now.
Small world.
June 24, 2008
Smoke. Bad.
The state says there are more than 800 fires burning in Northern California. We've had our share of them locally, which is really strange especially this time of year. Fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains and in both Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties have all sent smoke billowing into the sky, all visible from various Santa Clara Valley locales.
Since Friday of last week, smoke has started filling the valley, casting an eerie, heavy haze over things. I can't see the hills around the valley, which is really rare. From time to time, it smells like a campfire outside. Air quality warnings are in effect for the whole region, and being outside generally just stinks right now. Firesare burning on both ends of the SF Bay, so no matter which way the wind blows it's not doing any good. On this NOAA analysis, you can see the smoke blowing out to Utah. Today, you can see wisps of smoke on the visible satellite image blowing to the southwest.
Most of the more recent fires were caused by a weird dry lightning storm that blew through the area on Saturday. We just don't get that kind of weather here very often, especially in June. On Saturday, we were down at the beach and got to talking to a local family. They swore they had seen a funnel cloud over the water, and at one point it was hailing on the beach while temps were in the mid-90s. We all remarked that we'd never seen anything like it in this area.
Crazy. I hope it all stops, and soon.
June 19, 2008
Slideshow test
June 10, 2008
Reason #73 why I'm veg
People always ask me: "Why are you vegetarian?" Here's a story that sums up yet another reason why I don't eat things with legs.
Friday evening, my doorbell rang. I opened the door to find an old, frail Mexican man standing there. We both said hello, and I looked over the man's shoulder. I could see a beat-up, white Toyota pickup idling out in the middle of the street. I thought he had some kind of trouble and needed help.
Leaning on his cane, he asked, "You want tamales?"
"Excuse me?" I asked, surprised.
"I sell tamales," he said, in broken English.
My Spanish is terrible, so I tried to answer back as best I could: "Ahh, excellente! Vegetariano?"
"Si, si," he responded, waving me out to his truck.
So I followed, and he opened up a huge, foil-lined cooler packed with hot tamales.
"My wife made..." They were very fresh. He sold me four for $5 -- they smelled great.
Inside, we were already cooking dinner, but I took a peak inside the corn-wrapped tamales. Couldn't see any meat. Great. I wrapped them up in foil and stuck them in the fridge hoping to eat them the next day.
The next day, I peeked inside, and they were filled with what looked like steak. So I wrapped them back up and have since given them away to friends who enjoy carne. Or pollo. Or whatever it was. (Puerco?)
On Saturday, I played golf with my brother-in-law's father, who was raised in New Mexico. After telling my tamale story, he told us the story of a boy who was famous for selling the best-tasting tamales he's ever had. Week after week he and friends bought tamales from this boy, who pushed his cart around town, selling food.
After a while, the town's cats started disappearing, and nobody could figure out why. One day, someone found out what the secret source material was for the tamales: cats.
I never asked what happened to the boy, but needless to say: I don't eat things with legs.
June 03, 2008
Smooth-E night
Through the powers and wonders of MySpace and Facebook, I was recently reconnected with an old college classmate and Mustang Daily colleague. Back in the day, Eric Schwartz used to do some standup in the Cal Poly quad, and in the campus pizza joint.
Tonight, he's appearing at the Improv comedy club in downtown San Jose. Pretty cool. I'm going to see him - looking forward to it.
June 02, 2008
Shoot Bigfoot, win $1 million
This is awesome: Bushnell is offering $1 million to the lucky photographer who snaps a verifiable photo of a Bigfoot with one of its motion-detecting trail cams.
How anyone can actually verify a photo of a sasquatch is beyond me, but the contest organizers are also putting up prizes for attempts to fool the judges, along with prizes for other good trail cam photos. Should be worth watching.
The cameras are cool. Once reserved for the likes of National Geographic photogs hunting exotic animals in far-flung locales, Bushnell is selling these cameras for just a couple hundred bucks. The cameras seem to be marketed at hunters, but if I had a forest in my backyard, I'd probably get one just for fun (and in hopes of bagging the sasquatch prize).
