So it Continues ......

Again out on the deck this morning and about 75 degrees . After this I biked down to the beach. The waves were big and lots of people and would-be surfers just watching. I think there are already a bunch of Christmas holiday people around because traffic was heavy and there were folks all over the place.

Winter Solstice

I was just standing on the deck, 11:15 at night about 70 degrees F and a light breeze from the desert. I've never seen a Winter start like this before. Little blogging as work has been busy, on the bike every day (mostly) and between college football and politics have been distracted. Happy Holidays to anyone who reads this.

Saturday on the South Coast

Woke early to get some miles on the bike. The stars were really prominent - I had to stand outside for a minute of two and take it all in. An easy ride with real heavy fog up Torrey Pines so I didn't blast down the hill as usual. If there was anything on the shoulder I would just plow into it so I figured I would take the extra time to check out the dudes at Scripps Pier. Not a huge break but lots of people out there. Befriended a curious dog who actually ate some of my Clif bar -- apparently he's an organic vegetarian - more likely non-discriminatory. The dog looked just like Cochrane's old dog ... wonder if he is still around. Last night watched a really interesting PBS NOVA on the brain's apparent inability to distinguish between (or maybe better put - perceiving as similar) actually doing something and watching someone do the same thing. Very cool and something to think about. Also am finishing up a remarkable book I have had for awhile, "Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. Impossible to describe in a small paragraph but it is essentially a synopsis of Western history from something like 500 BC until today. Stunning. I also was able to email Tarnas to thank him for the book and he actually responded. I love technology ............... J

I Saw and Spoke With God

Yesterday while riding home from work in the early evening I met and had a chance to speak with God. He was ahead of me on Diamond Street in Pacific Beach heading down the hill on a beat-up cruiser bike. I first saw him in front of me zig-zagging back and forth across the road the way all bicylists do when there are no cars and they don't think anyone is looking. Its an instinctual behavior that first happens when you're about 4 years old and on your first bike. God was in his early 30's, deeply tanned with his wetsuit on up to his waist, unzipped and dangling above it. He had a small goatee and was carrying a beat-up fishtail surfboard under his right arm. I rode up beside him and said, "I just want you to know that I want to be you when I grow up". I had surprised him but, as you might expect from God, he had a good reply; "Steady now ....", he said. Made sense to me and I had to turn right up Dawes to get to Loring -- Hope he caught a few good waves. J

What a Wonderful Country....

Headlines for the day ...... "12.7% of the US population living in poverty", and (apparently on the positive side), "the number of people in the US without health insurance remained steady at 45.8 million". If I do my calculations correctly 12.7% * 295,000,000 means that there are a little less than 37.5 million people living in poverty in the US. So..... I guess it makes sense that we have spent $194,000,000,000 on the butt-stupidest war in a futile attempt to quash the "global spread of violent extremism" whatever the hell that means. Shrub should be forced to live on $9,060 per year in a trailer in Crawford, send his daughters to Iraq and begin to pay attention to the suffering at home .... I have never been much of a participant in popular uprising but if anyone is putting a team together give me a call. Disgusted with the whole thing - Demos GIVE ME SOMEONE TO VOTE FOR !!! J

Reminded

Just lying on the deck and watched the most remarkable sunset. Reminds me how much beauty there is in such a short life .... Everett Ruess

Getting the Route Down

The picture is of late afternoon from Mount Soledad looking west. The light on the water was impressive and changing - I think I stood outside for 45 minutes watching the light/water dance. Unrelated I finally have my bicycle commute ride nailed. I zoom down the hill into La Jolla and then stay south along the beach later moving up parallel to the major Pacific Beach thoughroughfares Grand and Garnett. I do end up on Grand as I move to the east but avoid it most of the way. If I lose my life on a bike I'm banking that it will be on Grand. Anyway I got some good video of WindanSea beach yesterday afternoon so I will try to get that up on the blog in the next couple of days.

La Jolla Shores - Dolphins

Another video of the beach last weeked. What's kind of cool about this one is that in the beginning you can see acouple of dolphins playing in the surf. Look for their dorsal fins at the break. Also, there is some guy kayak fishing in the same frames.

A Day in the Connected Life Vortex

This is a first-ever look into the bowels of the Connected Life group at an unnamed company who shall remain anonymous unless you are color blind and have lived in a cave for the past 10 years. This is my extended family who I all miss. Even Josh ... but I wish he would shut up... and I never really got to know Russell .... and Jerald and Joe will now probably mix with the wrong people ... and Paul has body parts in his cube.

Beach at Torrey Pines Park

Last Sunday morning on the Coast Highway just before Del Mar

It's all About the Bike

This morning Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France. Unrelated to the tour (as you can probably tell from earlier posts) I have been riding a road bike for about a dozen years on-and-off and currently have a wonderful Torelli Countach frame with Campagnolo components that I plow the roads around my home with. I'm relatively new to the San Diego area and am really enjoying discovering the rides. I ride early and today noticed a LOT of people on the road and finally realized it was because they probably woke to Lance's win. Anyway, I look forward to nxt weekend when it gets a little quieter again. And by the way -- still nothing like the circus I left in Palo Alto - many fewer and more normal riders down here! Enclosed pics show my bike and Torrey Pines Beach this morning about 6:15. J

Kudos to the Spin Doctors at the White House

Un frigging believable. It looks as if Carl Rove has committed a felony and he's got his shorts in a bunch right now. George deftly pulls John Roberts out of the hat, a man who seems not to be of the administration's ideological ilk - actually a reasonable man. The dissonance this has created completely overshadows Carl-in-the-corner. Don't worry, buddy - we Democrats my not have the penchant for making things up or the killer instincts you've shown over the years - but we have enough not to let this one get away. Have a wonderful weekend. J

FW: Paradise

-----Original Message----- From: James Dorst <jim.dorst@verdisoft.com> Sent: 7/19/05 6:13:44 AM To: jdorst_us@ailsoft.blogger.com Subject: Paradise

I am sitting in my kitchen literally in a cloud. We live on the top of Mt. Soledad in La Jolla. So quiet -- have always wanted to live in the mountains or beach -- am finally at the beach and it is delicious.

Need to start on the vision quest blog; Have only been thinking on it for 12 years now....

:-)

J

Ken or Saddam ???

Saddam has been a bad-guy longer than Ken Lay but I think someone ought to handicap who gets to go to the "Big House" first. Personally, I think George would get more votes out of locking up Kenny-boy especially because the big bang-for-the-buck with Saddam has already been had. I mean pulling him out of a hole like a rat -- that's pretty good when you want to demonize somebody. Saddam on the stand nobody in America so much cares about unless he does something goofy. Lay is differnt (Texas sp). George can spank his buddy and look like a reformed man! Maybe Kenny-boy can be in the same cell as Karl! They can cheat at poker with one another! This would be cool. J

Big Fun

When you get to a certain point in life it is sometimes hard to just have pure fun. Behold Lauren, William and Marian all having pure fun at Pacific Beach yesterday. It just doesn't get any better than a big-ass inflatable "slip-n-slide". J

Speaking of Propaganda

I was being a lazy-dog watching CNN the day after the multiple blasts in the London tube and suddenly stiffened up when a "news bulletin" peppered out of the TV. It went something like this; ".. an unidentified high-level CIA source indicates that the terrorists involved in the bombings in London may have connections to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi the infamous Al Qaeda leader in Iraq....". Excuse me, but the Brits (who seem to really have their act together in responding to all of this) had barely begun speculating that the bombs themselves were set by timing devices and were not suicide or cell-phone bombs. One day after the events how in the hell could anyone in the US intelligence community have ANY REAL IDEA that this terrorist attack was connected to Al Zarqawi? I am afraid that the answer is that they could not have any such information but such a "connection" would be valuable to the White House -- just a few days after George went on TV to fumble through a "decisive" speech trying to justify the stupidity of Iraq. If any government types read this (and I assume you might because blogs are probably scanned for these sorts of sentiments) I want to apologize. Normally I wouldn't think anything of it but when you make it so damned obvious it just sticks in my craw. Remember when we used to call Soviet leaders "ham-handed"? J

Supposed to be my Last Day and Podcasting

How's that for two disparate topics. Later this afternoon the boys are going to have pizza and cake for my last day at Yahoo. Turns out I will be working tomorrow as well and some into the future but as the last day of the month it is kind of a line of demarcation. I loaded the iTunes podcasting software on my Powerbook and iPod. iTunes doesn't support BitTorrent so some of the podcasts that look the most interesting I can't get but I am sure that will change soon because these are some of the most advertised podcasts. It's interesting when you look at the Top Ten podcasts, Al Franken is in there and his deal is Bit Torrent I think. So what I guess this means is there are a bunch of pissed off people trying to download Franken's shows, failing, but still driving his show into the top ten. What's wrong with this picture? J

Neighborhood Watering Holes Not a Good Idea

When I lived in Menlo Park I was riding my bike to work at Yahoo in Sunnyvale. Along the route on Old Middlefield road I saw a classic old bar near San Antonio road - called Fred's Bar. It is set back a bit from the street and has a classic neon sign, come-on-in-after work look to it and it made me think about taking up drinking again. There were people in there who would be interesting. Today in the newspaper, the following: "About 2:15 AM Friday, a patron of Fred's Bar on Old Middlefield Road was arrested on the 2500 block of Alvin Street after allegedly standing in the middle of the road with his pants down and scratching five vehicles with a knife." Reminding me that there is a damn good reason for both my abstinence and the lack of as many "colorful neighborhood bars" as there used to be. A

Friday and going home

Well, here I am finishing up another week. Detroit lost last night but it was a good series and things could be worse. I have been thinking about people's overall complacency regarding the war in Iraq (and the acceptance of this administration's completely implausible and sometimes outright false explanations for things) and what the real reasons for creating this hell in Baghdad are and I am afraid of the answer. I go back to the Vietnam war. I think at the time if one had taken a reasonably intelligent 12 year-old child, shown her a map of Southeast Asia and explained to her the "Domino Theory" of the spread of communism, she would have looked at you as if you were insane. The argument on its face just made no sense. Taking another equally intelligent 12 year-old today, show her a map of the world, explain to her how a country like Iraq possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction which can be used against the United States a half a world away and this is somehow a threat to us ??? (I am going to forget about trying to get her to buy off on the, "Terrorists from Saudi Arabia, by way of Afganistan, trained in Iraq, blew up a couple of buildings in New York" argument) ...... Anyway, I think you get the picture. Collectively, we Americans are stupid and easily led around by our noses. I will scream in anguish against the war if my son or daughter comes home in a "transport tube" (they don't call them "body bags" any longer) but am then forced to rationalize the loss by accepting the Bush Administration's specious argument because if I don't -- then I am guilty of sacrificing my child to my own unquestioning lack of critical thought. I don't think it's completely blood for oil -- later on this topic and apologies for being so bleak. I take comfort in Cheney's learned assessment that the insurgency in Iraq is in its, "last throes"...... A A

Off the Back Deck

Might be hard to tell but this is what I can look out on when I am at home....

Kinda Back

Well, I am soon to complete my stint at Yahoo and am leaving a front row seat for their mobile initiatives but for probably a good reason. That being to move to La Jolla where my family already is. I had tried to warm to the Yahoo360 blog product but, although in beta, it is nothing near as robust as the Google blogger so I am going to stay here I think. Today across from my cube I had a chance to talk to Russell Beattie (just search for him and you'll find his blog) who sits right across from me. I am sorry I leave next week because Russ is a real interesting guy and I could spend a lot of time talking with him about a lot of things which mostly would educate me. He is a very interesting guy. Today is the first aniversary of my friend Don Cochrane's death as well as my daughter's 10th birthday, so a lot of mixed thoughts run through my mind. A

From San Diego

Blogging from San Diego on the Easter weekend. Spongebob and Scooby on the tube and trying to get to the beach. Will return hopefully with some pictures to post. Still need to figure out how to do this on a Powerbook. Weather is cool - will report back on the beach situation later. August

Well things are Kind of Evening Out

It has been a long time because our little software company is now a small piece of a much larger company and being the operations guy - I took a big shot of the brunt of the thing, I still have a couple of weeks of insanity but then things should settle down and I will show up here again. Probably the newest thing is that I am now the proud owner of a 15" Powerbook - I have made the switch to Apple and my main thought has been - "Life is too short to live it inelegantly". This machine is amazing. Later - A