This and That

Posted December 16, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Windows
Tags: , ,

It’s about time for an update. Two weeks is too long between posts. Paula and Mary are off to church this morning. I am left behind to watch Boomba. We are dog sitting this weekend so that Mike, Theresa and Jonathan can have a weekend away. Now I remember why we don’t have a pet.

Boomba is a good dog but… He is like an alarm clock that you can’t turn off. Last night we was awake at three AM. Whining. So somehow it was my turn to get up and get dressed and take him for a walk. Then he was back up at 0600. Now it was Paula’s turn. Mike & Theresa will be back this afternoon to pick him up.

Well the new computer has arrived. Loaded all of my files from the old computer and shipped the old one to Neil. It’s taking me a while to get used to the new keyboard. Lots of typos. Windows 8 is taking some getting used to. Overall, I am pleased with the performance.

We have been in Southern California for about four months now. Weather is beginning to turn cold and damp. I finally broke down and started putting on a coat. Temp is in the fifties. The weather guy on the news gives about 8 or 9 forecasts depending on our location. LA county is (geographically) huge. Probably bigger than the state of RI.

Life with Mary K goes on. She has her good days and bad days. Her short term memory is getting very bad. I can tell her something one day and have to repeat again the next. Our tastes in TV tend to differ. She likes to watch Dr Phil and the local news while we like to watch Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. When she watches Dr Phil, I either go in the office and watch videos online or read. I don’t think she has figured out that I despise watching Dr Phil.

In the reading department, I am reading the biography of Joseph P Kennedy by David Nasaw. Interesting stuff.

Last Monday, we watched the NE Patriots play on Monday Night Football. Of course Mary K doesn’t like football, so she went in to her room and pouted for the rest of the evening. Sigh. It’s not like we watch football every weekend. This was the first football game we had watched all NFL season. She probably won’t be happy tonight. Patriots are on Sunday Night Football tonight. I expect that towards the end of the season we will see more Patriot’s games on national TV.

We met with our new minister last week. He preached at last Sunday’s services. He also came to our weekly bible study meeting. Seems like a nice enough guy. His command of the Bible is impressive. (though I would certainly expect him to be.) The church was to vote on accepting him after the service. Mostly a done deal. He managed to remember everyone’s name around the table. He starts work on Feb 1.

Finally, we got our Christmas letter written and mailed. Paula has a few letters that she will be adding personal notes.

I will probably do a separate post on the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Later

 

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New Laptop

Posted November 30, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: Technology, Windows
Tags: , ,

The time has come to consider replacing my aging HP Laptop. It’s going on 4.5 years old now. I probably would have replaced it sooner if it were not for my purchase of my iPad.

So here are my decision points. I seriously considered getting a Mac book but rejected the idea based on the price. Well configured Mac books were running over $1500. Ouch!

So considering that I am an HP retiree, I have access to HP’s Employee Purchase Plan. Not a huge discount, but i’d save a couple of hundred dollars.

Prices start around $400 and go up as one adds options like additional memory or larger disk, etc. I can get a fairly well configured laptop for about $800. Also, this time of year HP is heavily discounting stuff.

So here’s where all of friends can help. Most of the new laptops come with Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro. Does anyone have any experience with Win 8? Is it worth the extra $25 to upgrade to Win 8 Pro? Considering what I’ve read, Win 8 Pro mostly has features that I don’t really need, like access to corporate domains.

I am particularly interested in the <4lb laptops. One way they cut down on weight is to eliminate the DVD drive. DVD drive is external option. I only need a DVD drive once or twice a year. Most of the time I can do without. To me this seems a reasonable tradeoff.

For a disk drive i will probably go for the largest capacity and fasted drive. Nuff said.

Memory. Most laptops come with default of 2GB and options for 4, 6, or 8Gb. Is it worth it to add the additional memory? I think so bot not sure.

Other options are software packages like MS Office, Norton AV, etc, I believe that their are decent Anti Virus packages for free available. I will probably get the MS Office. Price is not outrageous.

Any other issues I’ve missed?

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Heritage Square

Posted November 28, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Museums
Tags:

On Tuesday we joined a group from the San Pedro Historical Society to visit Heritage Square in downtown Los Angeles. It felt a little bit strange to be the youngest two people on the tour. We dragged Mary K. along. By the time that we got back to San Pedro we were all tuckered out.

The Historical Society had chartered a bus for the occasion and we had a group tour arranged with the folks at Heritage Square. We had about thirty people for the tour divided into three groups for the tour. The tour was led by a volunteer docent. The docent was knowledgable about the various homes. I managed to stump him when I asked about the provenance of the piano in the Hale mansion.

In the 1880’s a piano was definitely a luxury item, especially on the West Coast. Cost was generally more than twice the cost of a pump organ. To see both a piano and pump organ in the same house was ostentatious indeed.


The site consists of about five houses, a church, drugstore and railroad station that were built sometime between 1880 and 1900. All of the buildings had been relocated from their original site.


The cost to build the various homes varied from about $10,000 to $1500. You could really see the differences in both size and attention to detail. Some of the houses are still in need of additional restoration. They seem to be always short of cash for restoration projects. Go to the website (link is in the first paragraph) for additional pictures and details.

After we were done with the tour, we headed off to Olvera Street for lunch and shopping. Olvera Street is in the oldest section of Los Angeles. Here is the Wikipedia entry on Olvera Street. We ate a little Mexican restaurant and sat outside. Lots of small birds eager to get some lunch from us.


– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Los Angeles, CA

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Random Political comments

Posted November 8, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Politics
Tags: , , ,

I should have written this yesterday, but I didn’t so sue me.

Tuesday was a busy day for us. Luckily there was no line at our polling place in San Pedro. In and out in about 10 minutes.

Watching poll results in California is lots easier than back east. I didn’t have to stay up until the wee hours to know the results. We started watching the results at about 5pm west coast time. Polls had pretty much closed back east. We surfed the TV from ABC, NBC and CBS. I had my iPad for following my twitter feed, Facebook and a few blogs that I usually follow. Didn’t need my iPhone. I tried to listen to DailyKOS radio on the iPhone but the stream wasn’t that reliable.

Don’t know how i managed to follow all the news before having an iPad four years ago.

Needless to say Paula and I were very pleased with the results. Mary K not so much. Mary K went to bed early. We were very much interested in results in MA. We regretted not being able to vote for Elizabeth Warren.

So why did President Obama win? Turnout, turnout, turnout. I read that Latino voted 75/25% for Obama. In a state like California, Latino vote is huge. Obama won CA by 55%. In MA, Mayor Tom Menino got his political machine working for Elizabeth Warren. Voter turnouts in Boston were huge. Interesting article in today’s Boston Globe about the Menino machine. Women voters weren’t too happy with Republicans. Saw quote from Alec Baldwin. “When you ask how the rape candidate did? And you answer, which one? Things not going so good.

So why did Romney lose. My guess is the people didn’t believe him. There were never any details on his programs or the math just didn’t add up. I think that his refusal to release his tax returns for the last ten years hurt him. People thought he had something to hide. Especially with accounts in tax havens like the Caymans and Switzerland. Bottom line people didn’t believe that the middle class would get a fair shot under Romney. Romney’s lies were worse than Obama lies.

When Romney made the claim that Jeep jobs were going to China, and the head of Chrysler rebuts it with giving employees the day off to vote.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t help Romney either. Obama was busy looking presidential. Romney campaign wasn’t too happy with Governor Christie of NJ. Christie was doing his job seeing that his people got what they needed from the government.

I should have switched to Fox News to see the Carl Rove meltdown. I’ve heard it was something to watch.

So Romney couldn’t win any of his home states (MA, CA and Mich). Paul Ryan didn’t win his home state either (WS). A lot of sad faces in Boston at Romney HQ. Nice concession speech.

A couple more points then I’ll shut up. Didn’t hear anyone talk about the US Supreme Court. There will certainly be some retirements over the next four years that will be filled by President Obama. Big deal.

So I went to bed at about midnight Pacific time. I was a happy camper.

I think that Obama will have a lot more clout with Congress. I expect to see a lot more getting done.

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Autumn in LA

Posted November 3, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: Uncategorized

Autumn has finally arrived. Temperatures are going down. Night time averages in the low 60’s. This morning at 11AM it is 64F. Time to put away the shorts and flip-flops.

You might ask, what about leaves turning color? Not so much. The maple trees outside our condo are turning an ugly shade of brown. Pine trees and palm trees just stay the same. Here’s what I see.


Nothing like the foliage in New England. Not even close. I can still sit outside and enjoy breeze and listen to our artificial stream that runs through the common areas. Just means I need to put on a long sleeve shirt.


So this morning, i have the place all to myself. Paula is off to Zumba class and Mary K is off to the YMCA. I sit, blog and read my Kindle books. Life is good.

Tonight turn your clocks back. I get an extra hour of sleep before we go off to church.

No football this weekend. Patriots are on their bye week.

TTFN

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Pedro, CA

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November

Posted November 1, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California

How did get to be November already? Seems just like yesterday when we arrived in San Pedro. But the calendar says November 1.

In some ways the time goes quickly other times so slowly. We can’t wait for the election to be over with. Getting so tired of the political ads, not just for the presidential election, but also for the Cal ballot questions. Seeing as CA is not a battle ground state (like Ohio, Florida, and the like) we don’t see much of the candidates in CA.

Well enough of that. This past week we celebrated Jonathan’s first birthday. Mike and Theresa reserved a picnic at a local park for the occasion. They provided food from a place called “Maui Chicken“. Everyone had a great time. Kids got to play on the swings and slides. Adults sat, ate and talked.

Here’s a picture of Jonathan getting into his birthday cake.


Here’s a picture of Jonathan in one of his new toys.


So this past week, we read about hurricane Sandy on the east coast. First time ever that we were out of harm’s way for big storms. We were happy to just read about it on FB, Twitter and newspapers.

Jonathan is getting big. He had his 1 yr checkup at the Pediatrician’s office. He is 32″ and 24 lb.

Tuesday is Jonathan day here. Generally, every Tuesday Jonathan and family join us for dinner. This past Tuesday we had Grampa’s special lasagna and a bottle of chianti. Jonathan now knows where the box of toys is in the condo.

This past Thurday, our piano tuner came by to do the first tuning of the new piano. Sounds real good. Jonathan now knows that if you push the keys down it makes a sound. Here’s a picture of Frank from Steinway doing the tuning.


One final bit of info. The weather. It’s beginning to cool off a bit. I think it might be time to put away the shorts. It was 65 this afternoon and a bit cloudy.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Pedro

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Sandy

Posted October 30, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Technology
Tags:

For the first time in our lives, we were not in harms way for a hurricane / Nor’easter that hit New England. While our east coast friends were getting doused with heavy rain and wind, we were sitting nicely on our balcony watching the sun go down into the Pacific.

When we lived in Billerica, we ALWAYS lost power. Always. One of the real useful sources of information I use is Twitter. Billerica Police has a twitter account (BillericaPD). They keep it up to date with very local information about stuff like trees down or flooding. If you live in Billerica, get yourself a twitter account and follow them. They also feed information from neighboring towns.

Billerica also has a service called “Billerica Code-Red” (Click here to register ) Code red is a free service that Billerica uses to reach out to neighborhoods with emergency information, like power outages, school closings, etc. By the way, it’s free.

Facebook seems to be useful for seeing how your friends are getting on. Though some of the pictures are not always the real deal. Photoshop seems to be alive and well. One of the pictures making the rounds was the pictures of the guards at Arlington National Cemetery. Nice picture, but it wasn’t taken yesterday. I recommend snopes.com for an excellent source for information about computer myths and hoaxes.

That’s all for now. I hope that everyone gets there power back on and everything cleaned up and back to normal.

Joe

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Pedro

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Geography Lesson

Posted October 23, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Travel
Tags: , ,

This past week Paula and I took a little trip up the road to the thriving metropolis of Fresno, California. We were there to attend the Grand Chapter session of the Order of the Eastern Star ( henceforth in this post called OES) for the state of California.

The session is held every year at this time. Typically held in central California for a couple of reasons. First, it levels the pain everyone feels for traveling to the session (after all regular unleaded is running at about $4.75/gallon).
Here’s a map of the route.

Second, prices of hotels, convention centers and restaurants tend to be a tad bit lower than in LA or SF.

So the trip is about 250 miles give or take. The first part of the trip is through downtown LA on the 110 freeway (I110 for you easterners). As we head north, we go through the San Fernando Valley. The San Fernando Valley is pretty much ugly urban sprawl.

Once you get to the town of Castaic, we enter a section of road known as the Grapevine. The Grapevine is about a 40 mile stretch of road through the Los Padres National Forest. We begin a climb from about sea level to about 3ooo’ ASL. The road snakes back and forth. Trucks are expected to stay to the right (They do mostly). The Grapevine is pretty much uninhabited. On the way south, we stopped for gas at a gas station in Castaic. This was the first gas station that I have seen in our travels across the county with pay toilets. ($.25 please). Actually, if you bought gas, they will give you a token, but still. The Grapevine can be pretty nasty in the winter with rain and icing roads.

Once we got through the Grapevine, we enter California’s Central Valley. First we get to Bakerfield on I5. Farms as far as the eye can see. There is a lot of Railroad traffic. It is not uncommon to see freight trains with over a 100 cars heading down the track. I saw several bulk haulers filled to the brim with carrots. We see orchards, vineyards and farmland. The central valley is where much of America’s food comes from.

We pulled into Fresno after about six hours of driving. We stayed at a La Quinta Inn for about $65 per night. Pretty mediocre hotel. The rug in the room was filthy. The WiFi was slow. The breakfast room was crowded. On the good side there was an El Torito Mexican restaurant on one side and an IHOP on the other.

We had a great time. We met up with some of our OES friends from Massachusetts and of course our OES friends from San Pedro.

TTFN

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The Balcony

Posted October 14, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California
Tags:

Time for another update. We have this really nice balcony here at our place in San Pedro. First of all the balcony is made of concrete and steel. No wood to rot and crash down on oneself. Of course the weather here is pretty dry, so if it were wood it probably wouldn’t rot anyhow. At any rate, it isn’t going anywhere. I don’t ever want to have a deck collapse ever to happen to me again.

When we moved here from Billerica, the only furniture we brought with us was two pieces of pseudo patio furniture, a love seat and a rocking chair. The balcony is mostly shaded by the balcony on the unit above us.


There is a view of the pool and hot tub. Sometimes occupied, sometimes not. There is a lot of trees and foliage that tends to insure privacy from our neighbors across the way.


The view is eastward toward Long Beach. All one can see is parts of the oil refinery and parts of the container ship loading cranes. But in the evening all one sees are the lights of Long Beach and San Pedro.


In between the two buildings in this man made stream, that runs 24×7 by some pumps somewhere. So we listen to a lovely running stream. It tends to mask the noise from our neighbors, which is good.


We’re still trying to figure out whether or not gas grills are allowed or not. Haven’t got a straight answer from anyone. We’ll wait and see.

So here is the best part, my mother-in-law doesn’t like to go out on the balcony. Don’t know quite why but it gives Paula and I additional privacy. I can go out in the evening and a taste of Scotch or Irish Whiskey and smoke a cigar. And read my iPad. Life is good.


Lately, the temps have been dropping a tad, usually in the mid-sixties. For my M-I-L, that’s freezing, for me it’s just right. I know for New Englanders, that’s not very cold. There were some nights in September when it was still pretty warm out there, but the peace and quiet is worth it. Last night for example, it was 66 and clear. I sat out side reading and smoking a cigar. Listening to the running stream.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Pedro

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Whitney & Cleopatra

Posted October 7, 2012 by joebowker
Categories: California, Museums, Travel
Tags: ,

Busy weekend. It started on Friday. We were waiting in the Cell Phone lot at LAX for Andrea to arrive. [Cell phone lots are places where you can hang out for free to wait for someone to arrive. Passenger calls you when they get out to the curb and you go pick them up. LAX has one, BOS has one. Follow the signs to find them.]

So while waiting we got a call from our R.E. agent in New Hampshire. She told us that she had a couple of prospects for renting our condo in Plymouth. Good news indeed.Then we got a call from Dr. Sheila. [Paula’s boss at Chelmford Ped’s] She called to tell us that she was in Long Beach for the weekend. So we made plans to meet up later in the day. Then Andrea called to tell she was at the curb. Off we go to fetch her.

Our plan for Friday was to go to the Grammy Museum in downtown LA. We had seen review of a new Whitney Houston exhibit. I don’t have any pictures. Mgmt was real stinky about allowing folks taking pictures. They had lots of memorabilia of many big name acts. You could listen to some of the major hits of acts like Beach Boys, Woody Guthrie, R&B acts. Interesting stuff. Of course you exit through the gift shop. Lots of CD’s and T shirts. All over priced. There was a greatest hits CD for Whitney for $30. You can buy the same album on iTunes for $15.

We had dinner at lodge. Every other Friday is pub night at the lodge. Food and drink for reasonable donation.

On Saturday we were off to see the “Cleopatra” exhibit at the California Science Center. We started with Imax film about Egypt. Narrated by Omar Sharif. Omar sure has aged gracefully. Film had nothing to do with Cleopatra. Mostly about the Nile and Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Interesting stuff.


We had lunch in the big cafe. Then on to the Cleopatra exhibit. Not quite as good as the King Tut exhibit, but interesting nevertheless. Here you could take as many pictures as you like, just no video and no flash. No problem.

The exhibit was mostly artifacts from archeological digs in waters off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. All of these pictures are taken from my iPhone. It was a fun afternoon. We will have to go back for more sometime.

Here are some of the pictures:

You can’t talk about Cleopatra without talking about Hollywood. They had shots of many women who played Cleopatra, including of course Elizabeth Taylor. (By the way, that was such a terrible movie.Three hours of interminable drivel.)


Claudette Colbert


Interestingly, no art or sculpture has ever survived to give any hints what Cleopatra actually other than words that said that she was drop dead gorgeous.

Here’s some other art works.


Done by 4PM. Now off to Long Beach to find Dr. Sheila.


That’s enuf for this post. Next post will be on Paula’s birthday dinner.

TTYL

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Los Angeles

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