Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Mommy took Lucinda to Farrell’s Ice Cream today. They had a ‘Volcano’, which they made a valiant attempt to finish. Afterward, Lucinda played some games, and they watched the roller skaters at the rink there.

Here’s a recent sample of Lucinda’s artwork. She brought this to the breakfast table and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

We went to see “Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election” today. This was part of Laemmle’s Documentary Days film series. It showed the breathtaking and utterly shameless methods that the Republican Party used to get their way in Florida. For more information, see the film’s web site at http://www.unprecedented.org

We went to Burbank Airport today to see the two restored World War II bombers again. These are the same ones we saw back in 1998. We took Lucinda along, and she had fun climbing back and forth through the airplanes.

We also got to meet some more veterans of the war. One man had been the radio operator on a B-17 in Europe. The second had been the flight engineer on a B-24 in Italy near the end of the war. He said that his job involved mostly taking care of the fuel tanks to keep the airplane balanced. He also told us about building a little ‘igloo’ out of flak jackets to hide in when the plane was under fire. They both said that flying in combat was a horrendously frightening thing. But at the same time, they felt like they were fortunate in a way. When they weren’t flying, they were safe back at the base, eating good food and sleeping in real beds. They felt that this was better than being in the Infantry and being shot at all the time.

For more on this, see the page about the other time we saw these planes: http://cosmo.pasadena.ca.us/adventures/airshow

Also, for B-17 history, see http://www.softwhale.com/history/b-17/b-17-home.html

To get a little idea what it was like flying in these planes, see “Exerpts from the diary of a B-17 ball turret gunner” at http://www.cloudnet.com/~jfb

Finally, just to add a special non-sequiter to the day, we heard a roaring jet engine just outside of the plane. Being at the airport, we weren’t too surprised by this until we got out and saw that it was actually a motorcycle. It was Jay Leno, stopping by for a visit. So very L.A.

Finally, we stopped off for a nice dinner out at Cafe Bizou.

Upgraded MRTG today in an attempt to get ‘bbmrtg.pl’ to work. The problem turned out to be a typo in bbmrtg.pl. Sent a patch in to the Big Brother mailing list.

Upgraded PHP to 4.3.1 today. Had to add ‘–enable-calendar’ to the main port makefile so that the calendar routines would compile in. This was to enable the ‘easter_date’ function so as to allow for automatic holiday decor on the front page. The upgrade broke the ‘file_get_contents’ function in funcs.php. The new version has this function built-in, so it complained until I commented out the hacked simulation in funcs.php.

We went to the Los Angeles County Arboretum today. They had an insect fair. Then we walked around the grounds, chasing the peacocks and ducks at the lake. Pictures at http://1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=4&aday=12&byear=2003&bmonth=4&bday=12&submit=Search

This evening, we tried yet another brownie recipe. “Chocoholic Brownies” can be found at http://www.recipesource.com/baked-goods/desserts/brownies/00/rec0094.html

We took Lucinda to the Natural History Museum today. We went to see the Chocolate exhibit. She didn’t find that all that interesting, but as always, she asked to go the Insect Zoo. She got to meet and pet a number of animals in the Discovery Center, including a Desert Tortise, a Malaysian stick insect, a hissing cockroach, and a giant millipede. She’s not afraid of bugs. Besides this, we took her to see the gem and mineral exhibits and bought her a big iron pyrite crystal in the museum shop. Photos at: http://1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?ayear=2003&amonth=4&aday=6&byear=2003&bmonth=4&bday=6&submit=Search

We went to the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park today to see the Chocolate exhibit. The story of chocolate, from the Mayans in the rainforest up to the present. It was quite interesting and amusing.

Tonight we tried another brownie recipe. This was the Deep Dish Brownies from the Hershey cookbook. Lucinda liked this one, too. The flavor and texture are similar to the Ghirardelli brownies we made on Monday. The Hershey recipe can be found at http://www.recipesource.com/desserts/brownies/00/rec0060.html