Ron's Log

The Weather

The Bostonist has picked up one of my photos to illustrate current weather in Boston!

Moonlight Hikes

I'm about to kick off a six-month, seven-moon string of moonlight hikes with GOPS (where we do it with clothes on). Tim, the usual moonlight hike leader, is taking a sabbatical to lead an Adventure Cycling tour across the U.S. (among other things).

Coming up on Wednesday, January 3, I'll be leading a moonlight hike starting at 7 PM. Meet at the eastern end of the Rimrock shopping center at Gene Autry and East Palm Canyon in Palm Springs. Non-members pay $2. Bring a flashlight (probably unnecessary) and water (necessary).

I'm looking for suggestions for locations for future moonlight hikes. Here's my list of places so far:

• Rimrock
• South end of the South Lykken
• North end of the South Lykken
• Pushawalla ridge
• Magnesia Falls, Palm Desert
• Painted Canyon
• Garstin trail

Where I don't want to lead moonlight hikes: Museum Trail, any part of the North Lykken.

Obviously, a vista point is a nice objective for any moonlight hike. A spot with a view of the valley lights is a great place to stand and socialize. But if you've got a flat place to suggest, I'm open to it. The trail should be easy enough to follow in moonlight that we don't risk a lot of injuries. Moonlight hikes up on Mt. San Jacinto don't work well because the tram stops running at 9:30 PM (or thereabouts). This time of year it's too cold up there for me, and when it's warm enough the tram schedule prevents us from enjoying a real night hike.

Best Buy Tries To Go Postal - Cops Do NOT Join In The Fray

Story of a guy who bought a CD at Best Buy that wouldn't play, so he returned to the store to ask for a refund not more than 3 minutes after buying it. The Best Buy store gives him the line that there are federal and state laws against refunding money!! Customer laughs. Store calls 911.

And now here comes the sort of vague Martha-Stewart-how-did-she-do-that miracle: while waiting for the cops to show, our customer gets Best Buy corporate customer support on the phone, explains the story, and gets customer support to agree with him that the store is out of control. He doesn't tell us objectively how long it took for the cops to show. Maybe it was a Saturday night in a drug-riddled town with an inadequate police force. So by the time the police actually drive up, the store manager has handed back the guy's money to him.

By the way, it was a Tony Bennett CD!

Bush Not Alone

Along with the president (who was indeed cutting brush and riding his bike – issue of horsing around unaddressed) 500 members of Congress have skipped Ford's state funeral. Six supreme court justices are staying at home, along with all but two members of the cabinet! The article points out that Bush also skipped Reagan's funeral, but he was at the G8 conference that time.

Perhaps some of these non-attendees need to be reminded that Betty Ford is still quite definitely among the living and she knows ALL the dirt!

4 Gb Flash Drive For $17.98

At OfficeMax. Go for it.

Genius!

DailyLit is a way to surreptitiously goof off at work while expanding your mind. Non-workers may want to use it too. You can sign up at DailyLit to have them e-mail you a daily chunk of one of the public domain books they stock. A chunk is supposed to be readable in five minutes. You can control the frequency at which you get the e-mails. And it seems to be entirely free.

The Catacombs

A 1978 article in Drummer about The Catacombs in San Francisco, a fisting club. No photos.

Colbert

Stephen Colbert drops his character for an appearance at Harvard.

Prime-Time

By LA Scumbag. You may also be interested in these Flickr pools: Legalize It, Pot Smokers Unite, Stoner Culture, Cannabis, 420, Marihuana and 4:20.

Is That Smaller Than A Breadbox?

I link to this only mildly interesting story that equipment willl be placed on taxicabs in NYC to map cellphone dead spots, because the unidentified author (FoxNews) was so geeky as to describe the equipment as "about the size of a computer modem." Other geeks might wonder if he means an internal or external modem, but most readers will own computers that had a modem built in when they bought it, so all they know (if they know they have one) is that it must be smaller than the box of the computer itself. Maybe he had originally written it as "about the size of a cigarette pack," only to have his editor reject that as somehow politically incorrect.