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While camping near the Santa Ynez river, we came across a baptism in the river. It’s a scene that’s no doubt occurred tens of thousands of times over hundreds of years. Below is a short clip I captured while watching. I’ve learned to really appreciate traditions and gatherings such as this for the continuity they bring to a culture. I see in them a timeless quality that can’t help but connect the viewer/participant to history and to those that have traveled this way before us. Imagine this occurring in this very spot a 150 years prior. The only difference might be the clothes and the digital cameras.

My third TSD rally and we came in first in our Class C division with 111 points. Wooo Hooo!
Plenty of planing and thought went into getting ready for this event. Most of that was lost after a few moments of juggling the stopwatch the instructions, worksheets and my laptop. We didn’t have a pen and I’d forgotten to bring a calculator. Still we managed to beat 8 or 9 other cars in our class.

FFN 06/05/09 TSD Rally

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From time to time I find myself involved with online retailers that just don’t get it. Companies that can’t follow a protocol of online transactions that I’ve come to expect as a customer. Perhaps I’m spoiled by organizations such as Amazon that seem to do everything right. It just seems to me that online sales can be so easy. Mostly automated the hardest part has to be finding someone to put the item in the box and print the label.  Wait, even that can be automated for a price.

The Santa Barbara Olive Company is this the inspiration for this post. I met these folks April 18th at the Santa Barbara County Vinters association, wine tasting festival in Lompoc. I tasted their Olives, stuffed with Garlic, Jalapenos, Blue cheese etc. They were great.  They offered a 10% discount to buy online so on April 28th I bought 2 jars of olives and 3 bottles of olive oil. On the 6th or 7th of May, oliveless, I gave them a call.  Apparently the warehouse was in the midst of a software renovation or reorganization or some such thing. The young lady on the phone was very nice, She’d confirmed my olive order was there and would ship soon.

Still oliveless on the 12th of May I called again. After being told there was a fire in Santa Barbara (of course I was aware of this, I was also aware the olive company address is far from the fire. I found out they had lost my order completely. I emailed them a copy of my confirmation email they sent me on April 28. I received no reply or acknowledgment of that email and no apology for losing my order either.

Now it’s the 18th of May and I still see no olives. 20 days since my order was placed. I called them today, and was told there having a really tough time there with their new software. This time they took my name and email and promised to get back to me. Later that day she actually did. And they even offered an apology for the poor service and plea for me to not neglect them as a customer. Well see if the olives make there way here.

On the morning of May 19th I received a call from the Santa Barbara Olive company. The young lady apologized from the troubles with their new software and the inconvenience pf the fire on their ability to get there shipments out. But, she had more bad news. On there site I had apparently checked “pay by check”  Or more accurately the site probably defaulted to “pay be check” Now I’m being told that don’t do, checks. Unbelievable. After double checking my Visa and ATM charges, I discovered I had not been charged. I just went stepped through he process of buying something from these folks again, It turns out paying by check isn’t even an option.

I canceled my order.

Here’s the deal. I propose a sort of online customer’s bill of rights.  A list of expectations that online retailers should all meet.

1. Send a confirmation email upon receipt of an order. This may include a receipt upon successfully charging the customers credit card. Otherwise another email should be sent one the card has been charged.
2. Ship the item within 2 business days. It really should be one day. Customer orders something, and the next it’s put in a box.  That’s not to much to ask.
3. Send another email upon shipping. include a tracking number that works. include a link to the shippers website for tacking.
4. Then follow up with a “how’d we do” email.  Sort of like when a waiter checks back in with a table to make sure everyone is happy at the start of their meal.
5. Make sure you have a simple penalty free system for returning items.
6. If you have a link on your web page that says “shipping info” or “Customer tracking” make sure it works.

There is clearly a culture at the Santa Brabara Olive Company that does not value a guy buying $35 worth of olives. Do they not realize that $35 today could be repeated a few times a year and friends of friends would all be enjoying my olives wondering where I got them.  If I were a large grocery chain I suppose they’d listen.  Unfortunately the small time olive buyer is not seen by these people as anything more than a nuisance.  That being the case they really ought to stop selling online. The ill will they’re spreading can’t possibly serve them in the end.

These shots were all taken with my relatively new Lumix LX3 camera. They’re mostly all of the Santa Yanez Mission in Solvang, California. A couple towards the end are from the surrounding area.

I recently competed in another Time Speed Distance (TSD) Road Rally. It was great fun. This rally was much faster and went through some beautiful countryside. At least I’m pretty sure it was dark and raining slightly.

in my first rally we earned 448 points. This rally had us bumped up a class, (due to my navigators experience) We went from the bottom, dumbass class, (class D) to class C. We came in fourth in class D. I don’t know how many cars were in class D, but the top three cars were within a few hundredths of a minute with scores in the 50s. The good news is: I now have a VERY clear idea about an new iphone application that could make rally time keeping really easy. Hope fully our times would improve even further.

Here’s the details of the rally.

FFN 05/01/09

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Middle of April 2009, while driving North from Los Olivos, CA on highway 154. So pretty.

I shot this with my Lumix LX3 camera.  It’s just a bunch short clips strung together from the day.
Press the the HQ button under the video frame after it starts to improve the quality.

Yeah, I realize we’ve been back from Germany for many months now. And I really should have finished posting these pictures a long time ago, but I grew bored with them.  Now they’re sort of new again.  There are two galleries that are new. Both are from Stuttgart. The first covers our trip on the German Bullet train and the second is our visit to the Mercedes Museum.

Don’t miss my report from the men’s room of the museum. It makes me laugh each time I watch it.

In an attempt to make our canyon jaunts take on a greater significance we thought we’d try and do them in harmony with events of greater celestial importance or with significant dates in our Gregorian calender.
The Equinox (first day of spring) is still 5 days away, but we figured, “Hey, were busy people, close enough”.
We had a blast.  Pictures

We started with a visit to the Supercar show in Woodland Hills across from the Motion Picture Hospital. That gets a much bigger turn out on the last Sunday of the month, but it was still interesting. Not as nice as a trip to “Cars and Coffee” in Irvine, but okay. Jay Leno brought a Duesenburg Coupe.

Once we’ed completed a couple laps of the show we were off to the canyons. We had a blast, ending up at the Reel Inn for some great fish and a beer.

BTW, these shots are all from my new LX3.  I was nursing the camera along with a low battery trying to capture the whole day. The camera finally died before lunch.

New photos just posted from: the “Queens English” car show at Woodley park on March 08, 2009. This was my new Panasonic LX3’s first real assignment. I left my SLR at home to force my self to see things through only the new camera’s eyes (eye).
Lots of gorgeous cars. Jay Leno arrived this year driving McLaren F1, a 240 MPH super car from the late 90s.  Roughly a million dollars new.

A pity I never made it through the rows of Triumphs or the Austin Healeys.

Here come the Germany photos. I’ve decided to simply post them as as they occurred starting with a collection of shots spanning the entire vacation. Then, galleries will be added of the different locations. On the photo page the newest galleries will be presented at the top as they are created. Check back often, It’ll take a while to get them all built and posted. The individual galleries will also have a lot of short video clips. The more artsy pics, will appear on evrange.com after more time goes by. After you enter the Germany Gallery click on the “Map This” button to see the sights we visited on Google Maps. Select the gallery from the “Photos/Family” page.

Having a great time though internet access is very spotty. We’re staying with mostly older relatives who do not use the internet. Even people our age don’t use the internet much. Here at the inn where I’m writing from the internet is very slow. So sorry not many pictures for you to see.

The shots from my phone suck and there’s even less access for the iphone. Stay tuned.  Sooner or later I’ll upload a few shots before we get home.

I have finally attempted to integrate my smugmug photo site into this one. Theoretically I should be able to make the header of my Smugmug pages appear exactly as it does here. I came pretty close, and the functionality is there so I guess I’m happy.

For now all my pictures are now coming from Smugmug and you can click back to my other sites with ease. Now I should spend more time expressing myself here on the blog.

click on Photos/Family above to try it out.

I’ve decided I may have a problem. I love the idea of websites that host pictures. It seems i have photos scattered all over the place on the Web. For starters I have pictures hosted on a service called PBase.com. I liked Pbase (my account has expired, but the pictures are still there) because of it’s classy interface and also because it categorizes the equipment used to take a photo. for instance you can search for images taken with a certain lens. I also used Picasa, a free service of Google. The main draw here is it’s free and it integrates somewhat into my other Googles services such as Gmail. I also have pictures hosted here on my own site, see the photos link above. and also on my website EVRange.com. That’s my photoblob and that will probably run the way it is for some time.  But now I have signed up with another site called Smugmug.com. Why another service? Smugmug offers unlimited photo hosting and virtually unlimited bandwidth to display my pictures. They’ll automatically resize pictures and offer them in a variety of sizes and with a variety of themes in neatly organized galleries. I can also modify my Smugmug site to share the appearance and header/navigation banner of this site. Once that’s done it’ll integrate into this site and appear to be a part of it.

All I’ll have to do is upload my pics, add a few geo tags, and spend a wee bit of time making it all look slick. Sure I could continue to simply host picutes here using Minimal Gallery, (which I love BTW) But it’s getting cumbersome to manage.

So stay tuned, for a slick new integration of Smugmug into this site.

This is priceless. Clearly a sign from God.

At first I didn’t see it. He’s standing, arms outstretched about waist high.

The image here is an animated gif file. I like to believe it helps make the image clear and that it’s really there.

It’s Tuesday the 4th of September, 2007. Senator Craig resigned 3 days ago after it was revealed he’d been arrested in a men’s room in the Minneapolis airport. He plead guilty to disorderly conduct in lieu of charges of propositioning a homosexual encounter. He claims he needed to quit the Senate in order to defend himself in a closed, adjudicated case.

I’m not sure how he’s going to defend his actions in the restroom that day. Seems to me that all the defense has to do is bring on 3 or 4 “experts” to explain gay bathroom cruising etiquette, then have the arresting officer recount his observations and blammo case closed. But if that’s what he thinks he can do, best of luck to him.

Today the Washington Post is reporting that Craig is considering reversing his resignation decision. Amazing. Arrested, pleads guilty to a lesser charge (with the stated intention that he thought it would go away), resigns his Senate seat and now hopes for a complete “do over.”

In my twenties I worked for a private investigator as a plain clothes shoplifting agent. I would make 1-5 arrests a day. I listened to the recorded interview between Criag and the officer and came away with the clear impression of a panicked scared guilty man attempting to weasel out of a tight spot. I didn’t hear an innocent man trapped in a misunderstanding.

Sometimes an animal will naw off their own leg to escape a trap and survive. Sometimes a guilty person will believe their own lies to escape the unthinkable. Poor Senator Craig, he’s still thrashing wildly in his trap.

This is a hilarious new show from HBO. Two New Zealanders living in New York City attempting to hit the big time in the folk music world. Barley getting by their adventures will leave you in stitches. Check out the website to view the first show.

Quicksilver is an incredibly elegant, simple, and powerful utility used to start programs or perform certain tasks with your Mac.

This fellow has created an excellent tutorial on how to use it.    If you’re not using Quicksilver, do yourself a favor and start.

On the face of it, this is such a phenomenal act of criminal poor judgement. If this happened to my child, as a parent I hope I would have the strength to pursue justice until those responsible were severely punished.

from the AP

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

“We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation,” he said.

But parents of the sixth-grade students were outraged.

“The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them,” said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 students and professors dead, including the gunman.

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

It’s called Justin.TV  His goal is to wear a helmet cam and broadcast his life live at all times. He says he’ll do it for the rest of his life, we’ll see.