Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I just finished reading What’s the Matter With Kansas?. It’s an entertaining read, all about how conservatives and the Republican Party have managed to convince blue-collar people to support them and vote against their own best interests. It’s an entertaining book, well-written and funny, and he makes a serious point. Highly recommended.

For more on the idea of voting and self-interest, see “Self-interest & Voting” at Slacktivist.

Went riding with Foothill again today. This time we did a kind of strange ride. Made a big loop through Arcadia, Temple City and South Pasadena to Highland Park. Then we went by the Rose Bowl and rode up and down the hills near there. That was fun, even if I did get a flat on the way back down. The snack stop was at Il Fornaio in Old Town. At the end, the ride was only 35 miles, so I rode out to Arcadia and back just to get a little more distance. 44 miles total.

I got us a web hosting account with PHP Webhosting for our web site. Currently, the site is getting something like 500 visitors a day, and serving about 1.7GB a month. This is getting to be a bit of a strain on our little DSL connection. So I got us a new domain name and hosting account. We will now be living at http://www.1134.org. I’ve gotten most of the site transferred over and working. When it’s all set up, I’ll set the old web server to issue redirects to the new URL.

Sadly, we can’t take our ‘cosmo’ domain with us, since it appears that Cogent Networks has disappeared, so I can’t find who to contact about changing the domain pointers. The ‘delegated domains’ list at http://www.nic.us/register/delegated_subdomains.txt gives an address of ‘domains@cogent.net’ for pasadena.ca.us, but cogent.net now points to pcnalert.com. I sent an email on the off chance someone there is still minding the store…

We tried a new brownie recipe this evening. It was quite good.

Went riding with Foothill Cycle today. We rode out to Glendora, with a snack stop at the coffee shop at the Classic Car Gallery there. The ride was about 37 miles, but at the end, a couple of us took a side trip up to Chantry Flat in Santa Anita Canyon. This added 8 miles and some climbing to the trip. It was fun. 45 miles.

We went to see “Stacked: Homage to Pamela Anderson” at DiRT Gallery in West Hollywood today. This was a fun little art show with a wide range of works by different artists. One room was devoted to Ms. Anderson. Another room was filled with acrylic hatchets with various objects embedded in them. Also, there was a whole series of hand-painted porcelain guns and hand grenades.

On the way back, we went to Griffith Park to look for the Old Zoo trail. We managed to locate it, but by then Lucinda was tired and cranky, so we went home.

Took a short ride this morning. Out through Sierra Madre and then up to Chantry Flat. The climb was four miles and about 1,500 vertical feet. The road is closed to regular traffic, so I only saw one family of hikers, two runners, four people on bicycles and one Forest Service truck. It was a nice ride. 16 miles.

I went to the doctor today to get the results of my latest cholesterol test. 198 total, with a 163/35 LDL/HDL split. They said this is good, so I don’t have to take statins. It’s a lot better than the 232 I scored back in March. I’ve also lost 10 pounds since March. So the program of bike riding and not eating eggs seems to be working out well.

They told me that I should be getting a half-hour of exercise three times a week. I get a bit more than that five times a week riding my bike to work, and I’ve been doing that for nine years now. But that wasn’t enough. It took adding the 40 mile Sunday rides with Foothill Cycle to make the difference here. But I like riding my bike, so it’s just fun. It doesn’t seem like an ‘exercise program’ at all.

Today there was no official Sunday bike club ride, so the four of us who wanted to ride made our own. I made up a route that took us over to Hollywood, then up Nichols Canyon to Mulholland Drive. We took Mulholland down to Cahuenga Pass and then down into Burbank. Our snack stop was at Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake. Then straight home through Glendale and Eagle Rock. 49 miles.

Today I went for a bike ride to see the sanitarium where Curly Howard died, as well as the cemetary where he is buried. Both are relatively close to our house. The sanitarium is an old building set back off the road, and it’s kind of hard to see. The cemetary seems a bit out of place, as it’s in the middle of the East L.A. barrio. Not the place one expects to find a Jewish cemetary. Still, it was an interesting little adventure, and it’s worth pausing for a moment to salute Curly, since he can still make us laugh over 50 years later. The bike ride was pretty nice, too. I did it early in the morning, so there wasn’t too much traffic. 29 miles.