Sunday, June 18, 2006

Strawberrys

The bike group went to Cal Poly pomona this saturday. it was a good ride, and Fred Roth showed off his stawberry patch:





After the ride , we all had lunch at a Taco place. Later on I di the group ride at Coates bicycle in Pomona. it was about 20 miles, with Pizza, Ice Cream, and a move afterwards. Thanks, Greg!
Sunday, only the fast and the furious showed up for the bagel ride. I rode with them until the 210 freeway . They were headed to Duarte and the City of Hope. I went back to church, usual thing, although did get invited to a 4 year study group. I then took a ride out the Chino airport

Thursday, June 15, 2006

doing an hour's work in 15 minutes

Thursday was the usual crisis day at work. everyone tries to get their stuff in before Friday. An d of course, they all wait till the last minutes and complain when their stuff doesn't get promoted. I forgot my laptop's ac adapter, so no progress made there. Talked on the train with Pat lopez. should have done some writing this pm, but watched tv instead.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Senilty Sucks.....


It's been a week since I became Great Aunt Jana. Pic 1 is Megan Nicole Lingo.
This moring I woke up for my normal bike ride and could not find my keys. They're still lost. I think that Lord Voldermort snuck in and cast a spell. I have the master key form the landlord for now, althiugh we will probably wind up switching the lack this weekend. I called Kal at LA LEADER(aka work) and he said to take today instead of friday off. I, of course, took my mind off the key by going for a bike ride!(what were you thinking?)
pic 2 is of Ontario peak from claremont

pic 3 is the junction of Baldy and Shinn(it's actually 2500 feet here)

pic 4 is spanish broom

next one is looking back over Upland and Claremont


The south baldy tunnel

and finally, a Yucca Plant in full bloom

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Now, we return you to the normally scheduled crisis.

Work came back with a vengeance today. I rejected about half the stuff that crossed my desk. Spent mots of my Java debating what to do next. Work on the database, The User interface (UI), and if so what to use AWT,SWT, or tomcat. or stud the SCJP exam some more. I think I 'll do the database. as that is probably be going to be a more attractive skill to an employer.
Bicycling – not much. The usual route around Sandy Place Ranch.
I'm on the train right now. The usual spectacular view of the San Gabriels. Got some more fiction work done. I need to start at looking how to market the grail book, and probably pick another one to work on I discovered that I'm now entitled to the “professional clergy” discount. woo hoo!! I can also subscribe to Christian Century. Tuesday is the night I usually watch NOVA, but KCET is having a beg-a-thon. Darn. the good news is that KVCR will run NOVA tommorrow.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Spelling is important





Turns My problem with HSQLDb was because I misspelled a class name. Happy, Happy.
Last night I went on a hike with the sierra club in the hills above claremont. After wards , we went to party. A good end to a great weekend

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Los Osis versus La Tiburon

My nick name in the bicycle club is “The Shark”. In Spanish, La Tiburon. Los Osis is "the bear". This Saturday, I did the hardest ride of my life, Orange County Wheelmen's ride around The Bear. 100 miles, with 9,000 feet of climbing
I arrived at the park in Redlands at 4:30 am. Ron and Cindy Meir were already there. Ron was going to ride it as a pirate, that is, not stopping at the official rest stops, Tom and Sue Tisler, Les, John and Fred Roth arrived shortly there after. Tom and Mary Lou Lodsgon had agreed to drive their van as a SAG vehcile I picked up my registration number and was on my way at 5:30

Fred and Sylvia Santiago were not able to ride.
The first 15 miles were through Redlands, Highlands, and San Bernardino. I met Tom and Mary Lou
when I turned onto Boulder in Highland. We went up Bolder to the Walmart, turned on to Route 330 and the fun began in honest, we soon passed this sign:

This one says "cars turn off air conditioners next 20 miles"
I laterpassed another sign that said “Watch for Bike racers” Funny, I did not think I was racing. We passed the 2,000 foot elevation sign and came to the first rest stop:

I rendezvoused with Tom and Mary Lou here, and got a refill of Cytomax(energy drink) and water. we soon passed the 3,4, and 5000 foot sign and entered Running Springs and California 18. Despite the fact that we were back in civilization, we kept on climbing. I stopped at the second rest stop at a ski resort, and we soon climbed past 7,000 foot sign and found this view:

If you look real closely at the mountain in the background(Mt San Bernardino), you can see snow. We soon started descending to Big Bear Lake (6,700) feet. I saw a pirate ship on the lake. Must drink more Cytomax... I did not get a chance to get a picture of the ship, but here is the lake:



I was grateful for the flat terrain surrounding the lake, I soon came to the Lunch rest stop:



I met up with Tom again:


As well as Mary Lou:


I made a wrong turn after lunch, but I was able to correct myself and was soon on my way to Onyx summit

getting there:



Almost, but not quite:



At long Last:



OCW claim its' all downhill from here (40 Miles), It actually 10 miles of downhill, with a mile uphill, 5 miles of rollers, and 16 miles of down hill. I had started cramping going up to onyx summit, so I was concerned about the mile uphill. It was not a big bother.

another pic of Mt San Bernardino.

and another view downhill:



I passed one of the of the Colivita Olive Oil riders on the way down. Maybe CalTrans was right about a bike race...

I was back at Redlands at 3:30. About what I had planned on, even though I just about dead last.

Friday, June 09, 2006

ants in jar! and bears as well

Well , I figured out what was wrong with ant.. nothing. It just put the Jar file in a different directory. still having problems getting the class to load. and Java still refuses to work in Linux. Maybe I do need to work on GUI stuff.

Work was actually some what busy, which was a break.

Did a little ride this am in the mist . Pat Lopez was on the evening train, so I did get any work on fiction stuff done. Will try and do some tomorrow. The carbo load dinner for Ride around the Bear for the club was at 5:30 , which I could not make... I guess they liked eating at Johnny Carino's better than my company. Oh well. I had some pancakes at IHOP. Will try to get bed early, as I have an early start tomorrow

Thursday, June 08, 2006

ants in my pants

Ants in my pants.

Well, I'd thought I'd be smart and download all kinds of stuff to keep me busy today. The best laid plans of mice....

I downloaded a program called Ant for windows. It 's designed to make builds(part of the programming/ compiling process) easier. And I needed to compile HSQLDB. I got it installed, and promptly built (I thought) HSQLDB. Tried to run a simple program. No dice. Being a Java newbie, I was not up to speed, so i thought I had something wrong.

I then tried to install Postgre. It complained that I was not using the NTFS file system. The only problem was I using Windows XP, which uses NTFS. I then tried to install MySQL. It complained that I had port 3306 closed. The only problem was I had 3306 open on my firewall. So much fun.

I switched over to Linux. I had installed Eclipse and HSQLDB last night. I quickly fired up Eclipse and entered the sample program. All was well, until i tried to compile it. I forgot to get the Java Compiler.

Back to Windows, I figured what happened to HSQLDB. When you compile a Java program, the computer is supposed to generate a something called a Jar file. As you may have guessed, I did not generate a JAR. The other gripe I had is that Java's strength is platform independence. In Other term, a Jar for windows should be the same as a jar for Linux or Apple OS/X. Anyway, I think I found site where i can get a jar without doing a build. It's either that or import the ant Build into eclipse so I can debug it. I was going to download it tonight at the Linux meeting at Caltech, but Mike forgot to bring along the wireless router.

Work was little less boring. The usual Thursday panic ensued at 4:30 right on schedule .

Weight is still the same. should get plenty of calories burned on Saturday.

Bicycling – the usual route. I did take it easy.

I had to drive in. it was the usual June fog.

Tomorrow- maybe I'll get SQL working on the laptop. should provide tons of fun for what is usually a boring day.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

yet another day as a professional web surfer, for the most part. I had some reviews and some case copies, but it was a boring day for the most part. I had downloaded several SQL engines to use use with my Java project. I 'm going to try HSQLDB, which is a Java-Based app. Unfortunately, I needed to do an Ant build, and I didn't have Ant downloaded to my XP partition. I'm seriously debating switching everything over to Ubuntu.
Update: I did get eclipse HSQLDB installed in ubuntu on the laptop. That shoulde give something to do other than surf the web all day.

Same old same old

Did my usual morning ride. Well,not quite. I added an extra mile. Got "challenged" to a "race" by a "Transportation" bicyclist. Oh joy! The fog was really thick this morning. Actually had a some work to do this morning, unlike yesterday when I was a professional Web surfer.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

blah blah blah