Brian the WLA Bike Guy

When we walked home from the Farmers' Market Saturday morning, we passed this garage with bikes. Brian, it turns out, is an out of work carpenter who told us that he's always worked on bikes. With the economy so bad, he's now getting old bikes, fixing them up and selling them. Since we'd been thinking about getting some bikes to use while in LA, we looked around.
Here's his office. He checks various sources for bikes and then gets them back into shape. J rode her 'new' bike home. He was still working on the one I chose.








I told Brian I had a blog and got his ok to post this. This is one veteran's way of eating during a recession. And it's a great service for people looking for a reasonably priced bike AND it's great for recycling. (Pun intended.)

In the water at Venice Beach

We parked about ten blocks from the beach where there was free on street parking and enjoyed the walk down Rose Avenue to the beach. Unfortunately, we don't have bikes here, it would have been an easy bike ride, but we didn't have time to walk all the way from my mom's and back. Having grown up here, I took this beach for granted. But how many big cities have a natural sand beach like this with fair to great surf right in the city? (OK, now someone is going to say that no, the ship the sand in, but the beach is way to wide to do that.) But coming down for a visit from Anchorage, I always see it with different eyes. This is the view from the parking lot at the end of Rose at Venice Beach.
And this is from where we parked our towels.



J took her time getting into the water. It does feel chilly when you first go in, but your body quickly adjusts and it feels great. The easiest - and hardest - way to go in is to just run in a dive when it gets deep enough or white water from a wave is coming at you. It's cold fast, but then you are in.

Here's J all the way in. There were a bunch of sea birds out beyond her having some sort of party.

When J got out it was my turn. The surf wasn't too big, but I was able to catch three quick waves and ride them in. Heaven.




But I had an appointment with the eye doctor so we reluctantly tore ourselves away and walked back to the car. This is the parking lot at Venice Beach along the boardwalk. Not sure why they call it that since there are no boards and I don't remember there being boards.



Table top shops are set up in both directions.

Snow Leopard Black Screen Disease Cure (Maybe)

So far it's looking good. My computer is hooked up with the adapter cord and I don't touch the keyboard for five minutes and the screen doesn't go black. If you can't wait to find out what it is you can skip down to the solution at the bottom.

In hindsight it's 'obvious' but as previous posts show, I've been in contact with an Apple Help expert for over two weeks, we've tried all sorts of things, and nothing solved the problem, including a new power cord.

But two hours with an Apple Genius (I think using that word as a job title tends to diminish the word itself) named Hannah, and it appears we solved the problem. That two hours doesn't count the hour it took for them to see me when, for some reason, my appointment was lost. Fortunately, David who made my appointment yesterday was there and confirmed I had a 6pm appointment. David's sitting in the blue t-shirt on the left.





There was one more clue that emerged tonight. Up til now I haven't actually timed how long it took for the screen to go black. I knew it was around five minutes. But since we kept doing things and then turning off the computer and then waiting to see if it went black again, I was timing it over and over and it was always exactly five minutes after I stopped touching the keyboard.



They finally connected me with Hannah who tried a few things. One thing she did to see if it was my hard drive or something in the software I had on my hard drive, was load Snow Leopard from a separate hard drive onto my computer to see whether it would still shut down. At this point I don't remember what happened. I think it still shut down, but I'm not certain.

She set up a test identity to see if we logged on as another user. It didn't have the problem as the other user.

Then she checked for applications that loaded when I - as the user - turned on my computer. She took them out of the startup. That didn't fix it.

She did some other stuff with other things plugged into the computer.

I wondered why it was always five minutes. And she said, "hmmmm, what is set to happen in five minutes?" She checked my screen saver. That was set for five minutes and when she tried to change it the round rainbow came on and the screen locked.

THE SOLUTION

I had as my screensaver a slide show set up in an older iPhoto, maybe iPhoto 06 or 08. It was set to start in five minutes after I didn't touch the keyboard. She took one of the generic Apple screensavers and set it up instead. After five minutes instead of going black, it went to the screensaver and I could still use the computer.

Why Snow Leopard can't handle this old iPhoto slide show screensaver I don't know nor does Hannah. But once we turned it off and put on another screensaver, it stopped going to black.

But why only when the power adapter cord was on? We went into the sleep preferences. I had changed to sleep preference for the power adapter to an hour after it came back from the MacHaus and they'd both been reset for one minute. (I'm not exactly sure what I did at this time, but I know at some point I put it at an hour hoping that would stop it, but it didn't.) At that time we thought it was related to going to sleep. I didn't want it to go to sleep for longer so it wouldn't shut down. But I hadn't changed it for battery so it still went to sleep in one minute. So it would go to sleep before the screensaver was set to go on (which was five minutes.)

As I say, in hindsight the answer was 'obvious.'

This doesn't guarantee that the rest of you getting here searching "Snow Leopard Black Screen" or "Snow Leopard Blank Screen" (between 10 and 20 people a day) have exactly the same problem. Something in Snow Leopard is getting screwed up - on my computer - with something on the old iPhoto slideshow I was using as a screen saver. So if you have an old iPhoto slideshow for a screensaver, I'd change that first thing. If you don't have an old slide show as a screensaver, is there some possibility it is related to an old slide show or just even to an old photo shop picture coming up?

So far I've tested this about three times and it's worked fine. It never worked fine before this. One good part of this for others with the problem is that the software that is messing it up for me is an Apple product - iPhoto. So it is Apple's responsibility to figure out why this is happening and fix it. Not some other company's responsibility.

Good luck. And if this turns out to be your problem too, leave a comment.

Santa Monica Pier

It seemed we drove another mile in the parking garage in Santa Monica. This view is from the the almost top level where we parked. But the first two hours are free. This was yesterday. From there to the Apple Store, then some Israeli food, and off to the Santa Monica pier.

We parked a bit away where we could find a reasonably priced parking meter and could spend some tme on the beach walking to the pier. The weather was still feeling hot to our Alaska blood and plenty of people were there for an October Thursday afternoon.

Here's J getting her feet wet - her best birthday present.
(Today she got to go in all the way, but that'll have to wait.


Here's the pier from the beach. We found a stair going up to the pier.

Pier parking turned out to be fairly cheap. But you had to give them the $6
when you parked and if you were under the max, they refunded the extra.


Trapeze school anyone?

This is Orlando.

These two are looking south.

I'm back in the Apple store after seeing the eye doctor. But my appointment for 6pm was lost. Fortunately David who made the appointment was here and verified it and I'm now on standby.

Anchorage to LA

The terminal was pretty empty at 8:30am

I don't think the artist who did this mural anticipated that the airport would put ads up on top of the mural. Was this part of the 1% for the arts program? Is it legal to put ads on top of art works? It certainly shows a complete lack of aesthetic sense. Or is this an ad for people to become whale hunters?

Some of the destinations in the domestic terminal.

The flights are pretty full these days, even on a Wednesday in late September. I guess that's good to have full planes - less pollution per passenger.

Seattle's airport was a lot more crowded.

We scheduled a long enough stop in Seattle to meet our daughter for lunch.
But first we went out for some fresh air.

The eating choices inside security are pretty good.
But outside security they are pretty limited.
Since our daughter didn't have a ticket, we had to eat outside security.

Waiting at Seatac to take off.

A little out of Seattle.

I think these are the Channel Islands near Santa Barbara.

Closing in on LA.

LA's Hot

It feels really hot, though the car thermometer says it's only 77˚F.

I'm in the Santa Monica Apple store having them look at my MacBook checking out my Snow Leopard black screen. I'm for changing the name to Black Leopard. I guess they retired panther. Anyway, my trip photos are on my computer which I can't use it right now. And my mom's internet isn't working so I couldn't post last night. I'll put some up of the trip from Anchorage to LA. We did get to have a two hour lunch with our daughter at Seatac.

My mom is doing quite well, walking around with a cane.

[Update Oct. 3 - see this later post for what the problem was for me. Doesn't mean it will work for you, but it seems to have solved my problem.]

Happy Birthday Dad - Goodbye Sylvia

Today's my dad's birthday. He'd be 98 if he were still alive. He was born into a totally different world. Before electricity, cars, airplanes had taken over the world. His father was a wine merchant who would travel around Europe filling up people's wine cellars. He lived through WW I in Germany, often hungry. Then, without going anywhere, he landed in pre-Nazi Germany. He was lucky. He had an aunt in Chicago, a sister of my grandmother, who sponsored him to come to the United States. After several years of working on this, he arrived in 1934. By the time the US got into WW II, my father was a citizen and in the army. He got a good break, not sure why, and was stationed in Key West, Florida. So my mom, whom he'd just married, could go along.

After the war they moved back to Chicago and then to LA where my mother's brother had ended up. But the marriage between two German Jewish refugees didn't work out. But they maintained very amiable relations for the rest of his life and I stayed with my dad many weekends as I was growing up. When we were together, his time was totally spent on me and we had a lot of great adventures, especially when we went off for two weeks in the summer. He introduced me to so many things that are still important parts of my life - the outdoors, foreign films, art, theater, critical thinking, to name a few.

He's been gone 21 years now. And tonight, as we are getting ready to go visit my mom in LA, we learned that another close family friend (relative through marriage on my wife's side) died in her 90s. You can't be surprised when someone dies in their 90's and logically you can't be too upset. But it still tears a hole in your soul when anyone important in your life dies. Sylvia had a good and rich life til the end. She was bright and caring and alert and someone I always looked forward to seeing. I did stop by and visit her and Mose on my last trip to LA. I'd been hoping to see her again this trip.

I've got a little more to do before going to bed and taking off tomorrow. If all goes well, we'll get to visit with our daughter for a couple of hours at Seatac.

A Fast Day

[This is one of those posts that took on a life of its own as a quick check on the Gates of Repentance prayerbook, turned out to be not so quick.]

Yom Kippur, starting at sun down until sun down, is a fast day. No food, no water, if you are really observant, no bathing even. For ten days, since Rosh Hashanah, when God is supposed to write people's names in the book of life for next year (or not), until today, when it is sealed, there is still time to appeal to be written in the book of life.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written,
on Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be,
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall see ripe age and who shall not;
who shall perish by fire and who by water;
who by sword and who by beast;
who by hunger and who by thirst;
who by earthquake and who by plague;
who by strangling and who by stoning;
who shall be secure and who shall be driven;
who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled;
who shall be poor and who shall be rich;
who shall be humbled and who exalted. (p. 313)

If I take the idea of God as a metaphor and such passages as the one above as an allegory, then I can handle this all as a reminder to look into my soul and check on how well I'm doing.

And there is a lot that connects directly with the world today:

Today let us remember the earth's oppressed;
let us restore their human heritage
to the victims of torture,
the weak and the weary,
all who are imprisoned without caue.
Let us remember them,
bring peace to every home,
and comfort to eery heart. (p445)

I think about the kind of teaching people are getting at the religious services where the leader lashes out hate at people who act and think differently than the congregants. In contrast, at our service we are constantly reminded to look into ourselves to root out our own transgressions and to be more loving toward others.

Here's Lynn reading the Hebrew in Braille.

Quotations are from Gates of Repentance, 1978. These are really old prayer books and our rabbis, for years, have been substituting non-sexist language and less royal terminology ('king' and 'lord' being replaced with 'adonai' or 'God') for years. When I googled Gates of Repentance the book publishers/sellers didn't list publication dates but there is a 'gender inclusive' edition mentioned. But finding any sites that talked about the history (or future) of the prayerbook is hard.

Here, Rabbi Barry H. Block, in a 2005 sermon, discussed the need for new regular Sabbath prayerbooks as well as new High Holiday prayer books. After saying that a new regular prayer book was expected in 2006, he wrote:

For those who are wondering, to my knowledge, nobody is contemplating a replacement of Gates of Repentance, our High Holy Day prayerbook.

You can read a brief biography of Chaim Stern, who edited Gates of Repentance. And as I keep looking, here's his NY Times obituary in 2001.

As I was searching, I noticed a number of synagogues require you to bring your own copy of the prayer book. Here's from the Cleveland area's Temple Israel Ner Tamid's website:

High Holy Days 5770 - 2009 High Holy Days Services

Our temple uses the Gates of Repentance prayer book. Please remember to bring your own. Copies are available for sale before the High Holy Days in the Temple Israel Ner Tamid office.

Fortunately, in Anchorage we don't don't have to bring our own prayer books, nor do we have to buy tickets for the High Holy Days like most congregations.

Brown Bug

This critter was downstairs yesterday caught in a plastic cover. I thought it was quite handsome in its black and tan outfit.


I took this picture of the squash seed so you could see how small the beetle was.

Update March 31, 2010:  Thanks to Anon's comment today, I now know this is a larder beetle.  That allowed me to find this description (well there's more on the Iowa State University Department of Entomology site):

Larder Beetle

The larder beetle is a very common and widespread household insect pest.  The insect's name comes from it's presence in dried, cured meats stored at room temperature prior to refrigeration.  Today, larder beetles may be a pest in stored foods and other items of high protein content.  Larder beetles outdoors are valuable “recyclers” that play an important role in the breakdown and recycling of animal protein.
The larder beetle adult is slightly longer than 1/4th inch.  It is roundly oval and dark brown to black with a characteristic light colored band running across the body.   This light band contains 6 more or less prominent dark spots.  Larder beetle larvae are up to 1/2 inch long.  They are tapered in shape and covered with sparse, stiff hair.   There are 2 upward curved spines on the posterior end.

 They have a larvae picture as well there.

Max Blumenthal at University of Alaska Anchorage

Blumenthal adds pyschology into the analysis of the far right Christians in his book Republican Gomorrah. Last night he spoke about the book to a receptive audience in the art building at UAA.

He began talking about President Eisenhower's letter to a soldier who'd written to him. I'll just quote directly from his book, Republican Gomorrah:

[Eisenhower's] experience in Europe had taught him that the rise of extreme movements could be explained only by the psychological yearnings and social needs of their supporters. He understood that these movements were not unique to any place or time. Authoritarianism could take root anywhere even in America. Eisenhower did not believe that an American exceptionalism immunized the country against the spores of extremism.

...throughout his presidency, Eisenhower clung to a short book that informed his view of the danger of extremist movements. He referred to this book in the first televised presidential press conference ever, distributed it to his friends and top aides, and cited its wisdom to a terminally ill World War II veteran, Robert Biggs, who had written him a letter saying he "felt from your recent speeches the feeling of hedging and a little uncertainty. We wait for someone to speak for us and back him completely if the statement is made in truth."

Eisenhower could have tossed Biggs's missive in a heap of unread letters his secretary discarded each day, or he could have allowed a perfunctory and canned response, but he was eager for an opportunity to expound on his vision of the open society. "I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed," Eisenhower wrote Briggs on February 10, 1959. "Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life."(pp. 5-6)

The president then opined that free societies do not necessarily perpetuate freedom; many citizens would be far more comfortable under a structure that provides rigid order and certainty about all aspects of life. "The mental stress and burden which this form of government imposes has been particularly well recognized in a little book about which I have spoken on several occasions," Eisenhower wrote. "It is 'The True Believer,' by Eric Hoffer; you might find it of interest. In it, he points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems - freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions."(p. 6)[emphasis added.]

For me, this is one of the more plausible narratives, one I've toyed with, though not in the depth Blumenthal has, to explain the angry shut minds that we've been seeing at anti-health care debates, on Fox News, etc.

From pop philosopher Eric Hoffer, Blumenthal goes to Erich Fromm, a German Jewish psychoanalyst and scholar, who fled Germany when the Nazis came to power and

. . .published Escape from Freedom, a book illuminating the danger of rising authoritarian movements with penetrating psychoanalytical insight.

Writing after the Nazis had overrun Europe but before the entrance of the United States into World War II, Fromm warned, "there is no greater mistake and no graver danger than not to see that in our own society we are faced with the same phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere: the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual." (p. 8) [emphasis added]

I've written on this blog and elsewhere that I felt that much of the anger we see these days stems with the frustrations of a rapidly changing and difficult-to-understand new world that leaves many people feeling powerless - particularly those who in the past had relatively stable and privileged positions in society.

Those who could not endure the vertiginous new social, political, and personal freedoms of the modern age, those who craved "security and a feeling of belonging and of being rooted somewhere" might be susceptible to the siren song of fascism. For the fascist, the struggle for a utopian future was more than politics and even war - it was an effort to attain salvation through self-medication. When radical extremists sought to cleanse society of sin and evil, what they really desired was the cleansing of their souls. (p. 8)

Blumenthal takes this premise as the jumping off point to examine the religious right, their leaders, and followers. He offers facts about the lives of the leaders and followers to show how they fit Fromm's model. A lot of people, scared by the choices of the modern world, reaching for father figures who explain the world in black and white, good and evil terms, and outline a path to a better worold.

Blumenthal is young, yet the talk - and I assume the book itself, which he outlined, and I've only skimmed - reveals a macro level understanding of American politics and society which he buttresses with lots of supporting details. We will hear a lot more from Blumenthal.

It's the kind of book that should be assigned reading for all people planning to attend a Teabagger event and all people who are thinking about attending a right wing Evangelical church service. Some are too far into denial to see themselves, but some are not so far gone that some flashes of light won't make it through to them. And there is also the danger of taken this as 'the truth' rather than as an explanation.