Entries this day: beach zzzLos_Angeles

beach

2:23pm Sunday 22 April 2001

At a outdoor cafe thing with Kevin, Kathy, AJ, and Erin as our waitress.

I have an idea for a theme for a KTRU show: a countdown. Just play track 12, 11, 10, ... down to track 1 on various CDs.

(written on 25 April)

I now have officially been to Long Beach in Los Angeles. Pretty light sandy colored sand, but with itty bitty gold fleck looking things! Certainly they were not actually gold, but it looked like someone had sprinkled glitter over the whole beach. So pretty as they glistened sparkly while the waves washed over.

The water was FREEEZING cold!!!

Two weird man-made (?) islands off the shore, with weird, um.. structures? art? big monolithic blocks of white and other colors I think. Weird.

Lots of peeps on the beach laying out and playing in the sand. I got sand only on my hands and feet. I didn't bring swim trunks. And only 1 pair of shorts. How silly!!!!!

But, as I said, the water was freeezing.

We decided to rent one of those 4 person bicycle things. Basically two tandem bikes bolted together like the size of a big golf cart:

5:29 pm 22 April 2001

I'm holding my keybard and Visor with my left hand and typing a two or three finger type with my right hand as we ride a tandem tandem bicycle built for four.

exquisite weather and sun and slight breeze on the sidewalk by long beach Los Angeles.

Respeck my athoratie!!! as we honk at the pedestrians on the sidewalk!

5:46 pm

WOW!!!!

Flying wings easy recovery from bonks midair collisions and the guy I talked to was talking to me no problem and he had only been flying for a couple months!! Quite amazing!!! totally silent with no motor gliders with only independent ailerons on each wing.

$50 for the kit then gotta buy a radio. One type of wing is called a boomerang and the other a zig zag I think he said.

- - - -

synchronized kite flying like airforce jets and now seeing some big n's that could lift a body??

- - - -

oh awesome! The big ns were big enough to lift their person off the ground. But the coolest thing was they surfed!! Doubly cool is that my motel is within 2 blocks of the beach!! Super awesome.

I think I *might* visit the beach tonight! Or maybe watch the sun set over the water.

(written 25 April: false.)

7:04 pm

We ate dinner type something at an internet cafe. I checked my email which indicated that I hadn't made all the requested changes to the datasets that our Singapore peeps requessted. Doh!

I asked her to resend the changes and I'll have Dave or someone implement them tomorrow. I CCed all of them that the changes need to be made. it will all work out.

Also at the intenet cafe was a super cute girl who reminded me of the lead singer from Til Tuesday. can't remember her name, nor did I find out the cafe girl's name. She was still pretty cute.

Now we are in the opening cermony of the SAS conference thing.. They are asking us to squeeze in toward the center of the seats.. One guy was all, 'is this (seat that I'm sitting in) the center? If so everyone should come closer to me.' Ha ha very funny mister. Move over. ;-)

Riding the tandem tandem bike was great fun for 1.5 hours. All kinds of flying things on the beach, but I must say the flying wings were the coolest.

zzzLos Angeles

9:33pm (California time) Sunday 22 April 2001

Wow. This is a pretty city. We spent the whole afternoon on Long Beach, riding a 4 person bicycle. We = me, Kevin, Kevin's sister Kathy, and her son AJ. Kevin and I are here for SUGI 26, the conference for all the SAS-geeks in the world like us.

They have a huge bank of terminals set up so we can check mail or... write journal entries. Nice.

Un-nice is that I did not (apparently) make all the changes to the dataset that our Singapore peeps requested. I replied to her and CC'd people at work so they will be able to make the changes for me. It will all work great.

I've written some stuff in my Handspring Visor, but of all the things, most cool today was seeing these guys remote-control flying these wings. Just wings. My dad used to build and fly model airplanes, but these were just wings with no fuselage, no tail, no engine. They did have vertical stabilizers, but no rudders. Just an aileron on each wing. So awesome that they could fly so perfectly silently like a flock of bats in one little airspace where the ocean wind blew in and ^^UP^^ the beachfront embankment, providing ample lift for these wings. Very very cool. The guy I spoke with said a kit was about $50 and 10 hours of work to build it. Buy a radio transmitter to control the servos in the wing and presto instant fun for the afternoon.

They were awesomely manueverable and recoverable and stable. By recoverable I mean that when they bonked into each other (often intentionally), they usually didn't end up on the ground. A slight dive then swoop away out of danger. Stable because they would start a flight just by "setting" the wing on the wind, as if it were a table. The wing just flew away. So so amazing!!

I'll look for a website for them... Hold please.

That was easy. http://www.fatlion.com/sailplanes/boomerang.html

Okay, bye!!