Neil Armstrong at 82.

I remember very well the moon landing. We kids and the parents were stuck in a traffic jam in Sacramento in the back of the Chevy wagon on the way back from a several day backpacking trip. A week or so on our own in the high Sierra and getting rained on this trip several times.  Down in the valley, it was at least  100 degrees plus. Was that Walter Cronkite doing the radio call? Probably. Good times though. Got orange slushes along the way and us 4 brothers sitting in the back and feeling like real mountain men. And maybe we could go to the moon too. Sorry all the ambition fell out of America while we all fought about Right vs. Left and who should steal the most money.

Massacre at Lonmin

On a hillside north of J'berg the South African police gunned down 30+ striking mineworkers.  Check out the smoke from the guns and the distance between the police and the dead and dying.  This is just like the old days of Apartheid, except the police are now the same color as the demonstrators.  Black.

Sickens me.  I guess color is just a code for lowest class versus the class above and easy to spot.  Looks kind of like a US Civil War reproduction battle, except this is real and weapons in use are assault rifles in semi or full automatic mode.

We need our metals, that's for sure but I call foul.  Lonmin can apologize all they want but the time has past for these kind of tactics .  Or, putting on my cynic hat, are we looking for more of this in the future?

Going camping

The younger generation are getting packed to go for camping at Huntington Lake.  A pretty high altitude reservoir in the Southern Sierra.  As the designated man, I am assigned to make sure the stove is in working order.  It really wasn't that great, being 50 years old or so but Coleman has been making the same model for longer than that and I was able to find out how to get it going.  Soaking the leather in the pump with oil and exercising it for a while and it's good to go.

When I opened the cover to check things out, I found my father had left a note on the handle that said "Take Fuel".  My daughter and I got a laugh out of that.  We can only guess at some trip where upon arriving at the campground there was no fuel.  She'll take the fuel this time.  Thanks, Dad.

Paul Ryan

So Romney has chosen a VP running mate.  Paul Ryan.  Too bad, you lose.  He may have good ideas and everything else but he's got a problem that will never be over come.   His voice is high and whiny.  This can never work with the electorate that needs John Wayne/Ronald Regan.  It's like listening to the rich kid give his project presentation and just cringing all the time.  Sorry dude, you just don't have the presence.

The city of Oakland (my birthplace) has gotten further and further in debt because of Police and Fire department pensions.  This is totally amazing since they stopped anyone from getting into this generous plan in 1976.  And what have they been doing with this problem for the past 36 years?  Refinancing it.  Over and over again.  And they just did it again.  Each time they refi, the interest is the same or more of the principle payments and the idiots in the city council think they are doing a good deal. 

One recipient mentioned is Nita Balousek.  Her husband, now deceased had worked for 27 years as a police officer.  So she thinks whatever she's got coming is well deserved.  Well, God bless Nita, but I've been working a lot longer than that and don't expect anything near the payments you are getting. 

What gets me is there are currently only 1086 beneficiary's in this plan.  The article doesn't really layout the current liability, just the periodic refinancing that makes the debt keep growing.  From the city council's view if the payment is out a few years, then it's free. 

It looks to me that who's really making the money is the bond underwriters that collect the fees and the interest on each cycle.  Another city going down to bankruptcy?   They've been working on it for years.

The decline of the Internet

I've just been searching the internet for information regarding the source of bubbles coming into my pool from the filter return lines.  Not that it's a big deal, at least I don't think so but I wanted to see.  BTW, the pool is now up to 80F and just wonderful, shorty (grandson) won't let me go a day without a swim and I feel like the summer fitness program is well under way.  Great way to get a good night's sleep after a swim.

But anyway, back to the bubbles an internet search yields what seems like a lot of useful results.  But on closer inspection, they are a lot of duplicates and the sites are simply aggregators.  I mean like: Ask.com, Instructables, Wiki answers, Wikihow, Ehow, Homegardenguides.com, and Yelp.  Ehow is my least favorite, the article is a bunch of generalities (did you know that air in the pipes can cause bubbles?) surrounded by ads and links to other marginally useful articles.  Although the link to a pool demolition company may be the ultimate solution.  (I did not appreciate the redirect through an ad site to get there.)

I thought our friends at google had made changes to lower the page rank or aggregators, at least there was some fuss about it a year or so ago.  But they seem to be going strong.  How about a search that then removes duplicate articles?  I'll take $10 Billion please.

Olympic Indians

What happened to white suburbia in the East Bay?  Used to be when I took my kids to swimming lessons they were all white except for the occasional Asian.  Now I'm taking my Grand-kid and it's now majority Indian.  Huh?

I do think it's important for people to learn to swim, especially in a neighborhood full of pools.  Is there an Indian history of Olympic swimmers?  No.  My kids were dreaming about Mark Spitz and maybe Summer Sanders or just playing in the water.  Has there been a Rajit Gupta Olympic swimmer?  No.  In the last summer Olympics the only medal won by an Indian was in shooting.

So 15 years from now, will we see a bunch of Indian swimmers from California?  My friend from the subcontinent says no,  their moms will make them all go to medical school.  (or Engineering or etc...)  They're looking for safe careers defined by education, not for any go for glory sort of sport thing.  Except maybe Cricket, but then we don't have that here.  So break out the Biology book and get to work.  In the meantime, I'm glad you can enjoy the water.