The All Seeing Eye Sees All

Security Cams
Yet another Big News Story that features Security Cameras.

We're told that there's several security cam videos being investigated for leads in the Boston Marathon Terror Bombing.

I watched some coverage Monday night, and viewed a fair amount of cell phone camera videos of the blast and immediate aftermath as well.

Many of these phone videos ended up on Cable News, Network News, Local News, and news and newspaper websites around the world.

The old catchphrase 'Elvis Is Everywhere' has been supplanted by 'The Hills Have Eyes', or more succinctly, "Big Brother Is Watching You'.

London swings to the beat of security cams now, it's the most surveilled city on Earth now.

Time will tell if the security cam footage actually helps to apprehend Boston's Marathon Bomber.

Authorities are asking The Public to submit any videos or photographs that may provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bomber or bombers.

Hopefully we can deduce that nobody was watching the security cams in 'Real Time' and saw the Bomber place the pressure cooker bombs into the finish line trash cans.

Dash Cams
The Russian Meteorite that exploded over Chelyabinsk in The Urals on February 15th went viral on the internet just minutes after the fireball exploded. Most of the early videos were made with dash cams. I'd never heard of dash cams before and I did a little searching and found out that in Russia dash cams are very popular among Russian motorists because corruption is rampant in the Post-Soviet Police Forces.

After viewing a few of the dashcam videos on YouTube, I concluded that the dash cams are necessary on Russian highways because I've never seen more crazy drivers since I went to a Demolition Derby at the County Fair! Yikes!

Mashable has a good overview of the Russian DashCam phenomenon.

PBS's NOVA did an hour on the Russian Meteorite. It aired March 27, 2013. Astronomers from  University of  Western Ontario gathered these dash cam videos, and using GPS they plotted the location of the cams and the time the event was captured, and plotted the meteorite's path. They went to their predicted impact area and found pieces of the meteorite in the snow! You can watch the episode 'Meteor Impact' online.

I found a story about the legality of dash cams in California. They're 'legal' but there's some hoops to jump through if you want to use your dash cam on Public Roads. You must display a legible sign inside AND outside the vehicle equipped with a dash cam warning that a camera may record people in and around the dash cam equipped vehicle. Privacy is taken seriously by California Lawmakers...

I find the contrast between 'The All Seeing Eyes' of the Citizens vs those of the Government, to be very filling 'Food For Thought'...and not a little chilling...

Irony is hard...

The Springtime of My Discontent

This darn wind is starting to weigh on me. Oh, the Weatherman hints that there might be a break later in the week...fingers crossed.

The San Francisco Giants had the day off after four exciting games at Wrigley Field against the Cubs. Hard to believe I'm getting withdrawal symptoms after only twelve regular season games...

Still, the Giants have been playing exciting ball...and winning, taking three of four games...two wins by one run, and a wild back and forth hitting...wild pitching...extra innings finale.

For the four game series in Chitown, only one game was truly 'Torture'...April can still be Winter on the exposed shores of Lake Michigan, and the Giants left an 85°F AT&T Park, only to be greeted by cold drizzle, temps in the 40s,and windchills in the low 30s!

I went to that 85°F game against the Colorado Rockies...official temp at game-time was 78°F , but it was a solid 85°F in my nosebleed seat! There wasn't a puff of wind until the 8th Inning...turns out it was the only 'Fishable' day last week.

After a quick trip through the Post Office this afternoon, I ran some errands as the winds 'filled in' as they say in sailboat racing. Gale Warnings prevail all along The Coast, and the tall, still green grasses on the Inland Valley's wild hillsides looked alot like wind waves on San Francisco Bay on a mid-summer afternoon.

These winds, coupled with a day of rain have totally stripped the Ancestral Digs' beautiful wisteria of it's impressive show of blooms...there's now 'petal drifts' on the patio. I swept them into a pile, making a clean path to the BBQ, so I wouldn't track in bare feet-fulls of petals into the kitchen when I grilled some cheeseburgers for dinner.

Sorry if I'm coming off kinda whiny...especially in light of the bombing of the Boston Marathon...Bostonians could use our prayers...My angst will pass...

Opening Daze

I see I haven't pecked out a blog in six whole months. It would be disingenuous to claim 'Writer's Block' when I'm neither a writer or a blocked writer...

Sloth doesn't quite describe my failure to communicate either...indifference would be closer to the crux of the biscuit, actually.

Those who know me personally will find this hard to believe, but I haven't had a single bee in my bonnet in a half an Earth orbit around our star...unless you count Politics...

I'm not a pundit, and my folks were of the Old Fashioned variety...Politics and Religion are best kept to yourself in Polite Company they taught...

In the three years I blogged here, I strove to keep the partisan politics out of CorduroyPlanet, successfully I might add!

So why now you ask?

It's the middle of April...I'll be down at the Post Office today buying the Registered Mail/Return Receipt treatment for the Income Tax documents going to the Feds and Sacramento.

There's been a pair of Opening days in the past week or two, and I noticed a bunch of ski resorts closing for the season in Sunday's online newspaper editions.

"One in, one out..." Richard Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) 'Casablanca' 1942

Major League Baseball  returned for another season on the last day in March, while Spring Training, the Cactus League and the Florida version have rolled up their tents and faded into memory for another year.

Salmon Season off the Central California Coast opened April 6th to good success for most out trying for them.

That was before this regime of high northwesterly winds set upon us...the Reno NWS Office says there may be snow in the High Country in the next few days.

So ends my first whole season wherein I did not set foot on My Mountain, or climb into my BR350 Groomer and grind around the slopes having way too much fun to realistically refer to my time spent at the sticks of said groomer as Work.

Truth be told? I'd do it for nothing if I had the bank account to sustain me!  As much as I've missed the life, I'm sure glad I wasn't grooming this season...it looked exactly like work save for a few weeks of storm fighting in November and December!

Lots of weak, under-performing warm storms delivered rain at the base and glop on top. Days and nights of above freezing temperatures for weeks at a time doomed the slopes to thin sooner than the resorts would prefer...

So four months of dodgy conditions, and little Hero Snow...I'm broke, but my Soul wasn't exposed to the nightly heartbreak that would have broken it.

These windy conditions are trying my Soul...there's plenty of tasty Dungeness crab and Chinook salmon just offshore, but the weather is all Gale Warnings all the time so it seems.

Chin up! This too shall pass...I'm so ready for a crab/salmon combo...our own Captain's Plate, caught fresh...

Soon...