|
|
I wonder how many people know that the city of Thousand Oaks will be holding a special election on June 3, 2008 to vote on something called Measure B? Given the kind of weird way the file is linked, use this if you have problems.
I can't find anything online nor do I recall reading any reason for this modification to the general plan (perhaps someone is grumpy about the changes coming for the disaster at Erbes and Hillcrest?) but here's the summary from the document linked above:
The purpose of this initiative is to amend the General Plan and Municipal Code of Thousand Oaks to give the People the right to vote on any project that would result in unacceptable traffic congestion in our City.
We the people of the City of Thousand Oaks wish to maintain the character of our City and neighborhoods, and the quality of our lives. As citizens, we believe excess traffic flow beyond capacity and the resulting pollution are detrimental to our City. Traffic congestion, noise and air pollution, reduce our quality of life and the character of our City. As a result, the City must balance vehicular circulation requirements with aesthetic, pedestrian, bicycle and equestrian needs which affect our City. Too often, the City Council has approved development projects without appropriately considering the project’s impact on traffic congestion and its associated noise and air quality impacts.
It is time to take back some of the authority to approve large projects that will increase traffic congestion and generate more traffic and pollution. As citizens, we deserve a say in projects to ensure development interests do not overburden our City’s infrastructure and to maintain safe, efficient and adequate traffic circulation, based on existing and future capacity, for our City.
In enacting this measure, it is the intent of the People of Thousand Oaks to preserve acceptable traffic flows on our streets, preserve the character of the City, and limit the ability of City government to allow development projects that will decrease the “Level of Service” of our roads. The citizens hereby require all projects or other developments that would reduce the Level of Service (LOS) to worse than LOS C, prior to any approval of traffic mitigation, to be put to a vote in a Citywide election.
The city has done a lot of work to make more information available to us but they've got a long way to go.
It's great the the Conejo Valley Days parade is going to continue this year (after some early jockeying about the prohibitive costs), but adding $3,000 in cost to the city isn't going to help much in the long run.
Cutting the parade about two-tenths of a mile means it will stop at The Lakes, 2200 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., instead of continuing to Erbes Road as it has in the past. By making this change, Dallas Drive will be left open for paradegoers who would like to park at the Civic Arts Plaza parking structure.
The City Council voted 5-0 at their meeting last week to pay $3,050 to buy out the parking structure so parade watchers can park there for free beginning at 7:30 a.m. Sat., May 5. The parade is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.
"We changed the parade route so viewers will have easy access into and out of the structure," said Don Hegarty, CVD parade chairman and Kiwanis president-elect. "We believe more people will attend the parade with more parking available close to the parade route."
Back in October, the parade was pronounced dead because it would cost $15,000 (it was eventually raised). Not only do I have no idea how a parade full of volunteers could cost $15,000 but the city has now upped the ante for future parades.
The parking structure belongs to the city, which should result in zero cost unless they're going to staff it. If this was like most events, that would mean having someone collecting money at the entrance (a real salary is involved there). Then again, if you've ever been to an event at the Civic Arts Plaza, you know that the likelihood of encountering an employee anywhere after you have paid to gain entrance is as close to zero as one can get. All I can think of at this point is that it will cost an additional $3,000 in insurance to leave the entrance gate open all morning (with a $50 service charge).
Last year I was really slothful about getting out of the house to see Sarah and Jon do their thing. I left right about 9 AM (when the parade begins at Duesenberg / Auto Mall Drive) and wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to find somewhere to park. Instead of heading to the Elks Lodge (as I've done before), I figured I'd try the south side. I used the freeway to Willow Lane and back to the south side of Conejo School Road. The parking lot by Rhineland Deli and Café Provençal was predictably full, but the lot at the Lakes was wide open (at about 9:10 there were hundreds of open spaces) and I was able to quickly find an open spot. I didn't need to walk very far east of Conejo School Road on Thousand Oaks Boulevard (only a hundred yards or so) to find a place to plop myself down.
The music festival at The Lakes as the parade winds down sounds interesting, but it does seem like someone else (such as the merchants most likely to profit from a lingering crowd) should be picking up the tab for generating the foot traffic. Not the city.
For reasons I still can't pin down, my dear wife decided to purchase a halloween toy this year in the form of something called Shaking Spirits. I thought it was silly but figured people would laugh at it and that would be that.
We opened for business this evening as Sarah headed out with Jon (as a dapper vampire) with Steve as the designated candy server.
My office is right next to the front walkway, so I immediately had to deal with the squawking noise going off every couple minutes. The skeleton started going off randomly and some people thought it was neat (I was seriously wondering at some point), a few laughed and there was some discussion. About what I'd anticipated.
And then the first perfect moment. A couple families, a gaggle of little girls and the skeleton of terror went off just as they passed. One girl shrieked and another let out a loud yelp, there was a lot of urgent chatter as the source was identified and then oohed and aahed over. I couldn't help it, I started laughing. After listening to the infernal contraption for 30 minutes or so, I had the payoff.
A bit later, we'd run out of candy when the treat scavenging duo returned home. We shutdown the front lights and killed off the motion detection light on the corner of the garage. I came back down to my office figuring the activities for the evening were finished and totally forgot about the electronic monster lurking a dozen feet from the front door.
You've got to love teenagers.
There's a reason that young people are the primary targets of monsters in the movies (besides the fact that young gruesomely dead bodies are better from a cinematic standpoint and the young are the primary customers). They'll blindly charge ahead where others fear to tread. Ignoring all signs of evacuation (except for my office light and a light upstairs in a bedroom), they climbed the 14 steps on the winding path or came up the rather steep driveway. We've got a half moon so you can see reasonably well, but it's still dark. They were a lively group but even when they were up the hill I figured they'd turn around.
I really hadn't considered the potential effect of the shadows near the front entrance with all the lights off. They're never completely off if you wander around a bit (it startles me occasionally) and don't actively make it so.
Now I believe I've got a better understanding of the people designing stuff like this.
When the twitching, flashing and screeching gadget launched its act, pandemonium ensued. We registered at least two more shrieks. The whole group froze in place for at least 30 seconds.
With the Day Wildland Fire (here's the rss feed) still burning on day 14 and the Santa Ana winds kicking up this weekend, things are getting a bit more dangerous. Early this morning the county released an evacuation notice.
The Sheriff’s Department is recommending evacuation of residents living in the north-west area of Fillmore, including Goodenough Road and Grand Avenue, north of Telegraph Road. Sheriff’s personnel will be going door-to-door advising residents of the recommended evacuation. Additionally, residents along highway 150 between the cities of Santa Paula and Ojai will also be advised of the recommended evacuation. Persons who believe their property is in the path of the fire are urged to leave and seek safe shelter.
Sarah mentioned last night that they could see flames in the distance from Sunset Road while traveling north on the 23 freeway into Moorpark. And this release from noon today indicates the size of the fire area has increased to more than 80,000 acres with winds gusting to 60 mph.
Fire is part of life here, but every time it completely captures my attention (not that it has a lot of competition) which brings me back to last falls fire. I found the video below while poking around and thought I'd share. Eli Jarra (the creator) describes it this way:
Firestorm uncovers the fascinating world of altered time to the viewer, allowing a unique look at nature's fury. Shot with 3 cameras over a period of 28 hours during September 28-29th 2005. Firestorm shows a a unique look at the Simi Valley fire which consumed 25,000 acres. Look for Mars, Orion & the Moon rising in the distance...
Click through if you can't see it (I guess I need a Javascript detector). [h/t to Brian Dennert here...]
I also found a QuickTime version of the fire movie (an earlier cut without sound) California wildfire -- 7.7 MB on a page full of nature time lapse movies.
The perpetual color of Southern California during the summer is blue. Blue skies, blue water on the beaches (for some, blue cars). It's what everyone who thinks they know something about California knows (with the obvious exception of the Hollywood sign). Heck, that's all I knew about California for the first 25 years of my life.
Odd colors and views abound, most notably in the hills and canyons that are so plentiful here. On Saturday morning I pulled together some photos from this summer to document one persons view on a typical California Season. I pulled a couple pictures to use here.
First we've got the western Simi Hills in their typical summer brown.
On the day after the hottest day of the summer, we had some very weird light effects all afternoon and on my way home from errand I noticed how peculiar it looked. This is one of the shots I took that afternoon.
The last photo was taken last week near sunset. The color bands were a result of the smoke tail from Day (or Sespe) fire up in the Los Padres National Forest drifting down across western Ventura County. The fire continues to burn and I read recently that the area had not burned since the early 60's, leaving plenty of kindling.
The LA Daily News has a story today by Kerry Cavanaugh regarding 184 pages of logs that delves into some specifics of the materials destroyed at the site. It's not pretty.
I quoted a lot because the story will disappear completely in a few days:
After decades of secrecy, Boeing officials have revealed that the former owners of the Santa Susana Field Lab destroyed napalm, dioxin and other highly toxic materials in open-air burn pits, documents obtained Monday show.
The 184 pages of documents that Boeing delivered last week to the Department of Toxic Substances Control include logs detailing how Rocketdyne detonated and destroyed hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic liquids and gases at the so-called Area 1 burn pit.
The list includes 50 gallons of napalm burned in 1969, three gallons of dioxin burned in 1971, and the destruction of flammable waste in 1990 that resulted in a 10-foot-high fireball.
Concern about the potential health hazard to workers prompted state officials to postpone a planned cleanup of the pit.
"With this new information we think we may need to fully characterize this burn pit to figure out what went in there and what was burned there," DTSC spokesman Ron Baker said. "We can't move forward with a big question mark."
State officials have ordered Boeing to cap the pit with clay or grass to prevent runoff from carrying contaminated soil off the hilltop lab. That will give Boeing and state officials more time to investigate the contamination in the pit.
The documents were prepared by the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International, which was later purchased by the Boeing Co. They show that Rocketdyne's Canoga Park facility also sent material up to the lab for disposal - information that surprised state regulators.
Boeing spokeswoman Blythe Jameson said DTSC officials had requested records of the burn pit and that the company is compiling even more historic documents on the pit usage.
"This site was primarily used to destroy rocket fuels, chemicals to support rocket engine tests and other rocket engine waste," she said.
The Santa Susana Field Lab is a 2,800-acre facility at the top of the Simi Hills in Ventura County, near the Los Angeles city limits. Beginning in the 1940s, the Department of Energy experimented with 10 nuclear reactors, one of which experienced a partial meltdown. The lab also tested rocket engines under contracts with the Department of Defense and NASA.
The Daily News first disclosed serious concerns about contamination at the field lab in 1989, including questionable practices involving disposal of toxic materials in the burn pit.
...
The documents include workers' notes on how they burned the materials - pouring chemicals on sawdust, igniting the mixture, then observing the smoke.
In one test conducted at 8:40 a.m. April 29, 1989, workers burned a blue cylinder containing unknown material. A handwritten note on the log notes: "Still off-gassing at 12:30! Probably F2," a reference to fluorine, a poisonous, pale yellow gas.
...
That letter says workers burned 13,810 pounds of reactive metals, such as sodium and magnesium; 450,000 gallons of fuel, including hydrazine; and toxic gases such as chlorine.
The pit was supposed to close in 1971 because there were concerns about air pollution, but records show that employees burned waste through 1990.
The Ventura County Reporter is celebrating thirty years of operation in this weeks issue. My hat's off to them! I hope they continue for another thirty and beyond.
An anniversary issue is an interesting proposition and, logistically, there are two ways you can approach it. It’s technically our anniversary, so we could fill every page with stories about the VC Reporter and everything that has happened to it over the last 30 years. Or we could look out into the community and explore what has happened here in Ventura County over the last 30 years. We chose the latter (which doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun looking back at old issues and covers of the Reporter — see Saundra Sorenson’s story on page 9), for a number of reasons, which means I can feel justified in talking a little bit about the paper in this space.
The story by Saundra Sorenson is where things take a strange twist...
When the editorial staff at the Ventura County Reporter began preparing for its 30th anniversary issue, they were surprised to find that their paper’s history, in-house, went back only five years. The oldest issue archived didn’t even pre-date the current presidential administration.
After scouring the paper’s archives — housed in a small, unnaturally warm room behind the production department — the go-to guy seemed to be film critic, calendar editor and 30-year Reporter veteran John Larsen.
And, at one time, Larsen was able to supply the first ever Reporter. Five years ago, he brought his impressive collection to the paper’s office, where old headlines would be quoted, covers scanned and reprinted. But a quick flip through the 25th anniversary Reporter shows no evidence of these vintage papers, and they appear to have been lost in some bizarre, intra-office black hole around the time the last anniversary edition was published. Whether it was negligence on the management’s part, or a sentimental employee pocketing what amounts to nearly 1,300 papers, the disappearance of Larsen’s personal archives remains a mystery.
John Larsen (thirty years at the same job, wow) takes his own tour down memory lane including this anecdote...
After a short hiatus, Elton John returned to recording in 1978 with the single, “Ego.” To trumpet the release, the label shot a short movie (music videos were still several years away) and premiered it at the National Theater in Westwood. Robert Emert, a friend since high school, and I headed down Highway 1 for what seemed like an innocuous event, a five-minute film with free popcorn. On the way there, we rear-ended a car, crushing the front end of Robert’s little Honda. Since it was mostly cosmetic damage, we decided to carry on. What was supposed to be a little goof turned into a major goof, at least for us. Imagine our surprise when we pulled up to the National Theater to hundreds of screaming fans, who stood behind velvet ropes to catch a glimpse of rock and roll royalty. We were escorted out of our crushed little car by the valet, walked down the red carpet (who the hell are they?), and entered the theater. Inside was a Who’s Who of rock and roll, a packed house choking down packets of Pop Rocks followed by Champagne chasers.
They've also finally dealt with the issue of keeping their articles online which is more cause for celebration (if a story link dies in less than a week it's pretty useless in a link dominated medium). I tumbled to the changes that seem to have occurred last December (all issues from December onward seem to be there) while I was updating my local news sources page last week (adding the Santa Paula Times [Topix is really fond of them] and the overlooked Camarillo Acorn).
With these changes, I'm hopeful they won't be stuck trying to figure out where the next thirty years of stories and features went.
Our hometown newspaper had some sort of major hiccup this morning.
I like to go to a local breakfast spot on occasion, sit at the counter and read the paper while having an omelet amidst the chaos near the kitchen. It's a lively and bustling environment in a place that's usually packed all morning, but almost always has a space open at the counter. Most of the patrons and waitresses in the counter area seem to know one another, leaving me the interloper who doesn't quite fit into the casual chatter and needs to be asked what I want. I don't mind.
This morning when I went out to start the car, there was no paper out front. Hmm. Sarah might have brought it in and put it somewhere odd, so I came back in and scouted around, finding nothing. I called but my wife was already riding something at Magic Mountain, and not answering.
I noticed that none of my neighbors had a paper in the driveway, which is a bit odd for 8:00 on a Sunday. I set off to find a paper and eat. And struck out everywhere I went (I almost purchased the Saturday paper at my first stop, the clerk kept me from that). I eventually bought the LA Times, spent the obligatory ten minutes fishing out the business and opinion sections from the blizzard of ads and other crap and went to eat.
When I got back, I checked the Star page to see what was up and found this notice:
TO OUR READERS:
The Star experienced a major technical problem Saturday night that prevented us from printing and delivering Sunday's newspaper. We are working on the problem and hope to have a solution soon. We will deliver the paper as soon as possible, hopefully before 5 p.m. today. Some customers may be receiving only partial newspapers this morning. We apologize for the inconvenience to our readers and advertising customers.
Joe R. Howry
Editor
Ventura County Star
Later in the day the announcement changed a bit:
TO OUR READERS:
The Star experienced a major technical problem Saturday night that prevented us from printing and delivering Sunday's newspaper. We are working on the problem and hope to have a solution soon. Unfortunately, we will not be able to deliver the newspaper in its entirety today. We will deliver by approximately 5 p.m. today the Arts & Living, Business, Escapes and Classified sections along with all advertising inserts.
The main, local and sports sections of Sunday's paper will be delivered with Monday's paper. The Sunday Star will not be available at news stands.
We would like to remind readers they can find all of the Sunday Star online at venturacountystar.com, and we will continuously update the website with the latest news throughout the day.
In addition to our printing problems, The Star's phone system has been unable to handle the volume of calls. We apologize for the inconvenience to our readers and advertising customers.
Joe R. Howry
Editor
Ventura County Star
I bet it's been a really fun day at the Star. I'm a bit disappointed though.
They've still got a functioning web site to publish a real ongoing story about their problems and they didn't use it. I was guessing that it might have something to do water main break in Ventura (water is pretty important to the printing process from what I recall) but no word was forthcoming.
Mr. Howry is an advocate of open records for public agencies and has criticized Elton Gallegly in the past for not talking to the Star, positions I certainly support. I'm not convinced he sees his paper in quite the same light, which is odd given its position as a trusted messenger.
Earlier this month the Star was caught in controversy when the Editor & Publisher was first to report a story about ethics violations by Managing Editor Richard Luna. I had hoped they might have learned something from that process.
They really need to sort this problem out and figure out how they're going to communicate information about the paper (and the area they cover) that can't find room in the paper. Heck, there's a dormant weblog by assistant managing editor John Moore that would have been perfect for this kind of story.
I don't bike, but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that the recently completed Tour of California hadn't captured my attention.
I had a plan for Saturday as the race came through town. I'd been scouting locations and had picked out where I wanted to be. I'd thought about doing the top of the grade coming into town but decided that I'd go out to a western ridge line and catch them all scattered out on the floor of the valley on Santa Rosa Road and hope to catch them again on Lynn Road.
At 2 AM on Saturday, Jon walked into my office with an earache. He's been fighting a cold that we've been sharing for a couple weeks and it had really taken hold in his head. Sarah is the committee chair for our local cub scout pack and they had all kinds of plans for Saturday. The pickup for the food drive was on Saturday morning (and afternoon) and she had to be there. So Jon and I hung out, but he was listless and in more discomfort as the day rolled on. After a trip to the local clinic, an ear infection was found and antibiotics prescribed.
Which leads to a segue... What ever happened to ear drops? For several years of my childhood, I and my sister had occasional ear problems and we always used ear drops. For a while (some years?), I think we kept using the same ear drops. I keep hearing about all the antibiotic resistant forms of infection but whatever happened skipping antibiotics and using old fashioned mechanisms? Ear drops and a cotton ball worked quite well for a time. Making this tour related... are the Amgen's of the world partly at fault? Segue over, we're back on tour...
Saturday evening, I came into my office and watched the ESPN2 update while checking out Ole's coverage (I knew he'd have something). I'd read about the cow bells but his video helped make it more real somehow. I hope they're able to do this again and I get to play a more active role.
I wonder about their plan for weather. It does actually happen, despite the hype. We had the first clouds of a good sized storm rolling in on Saturday during and after the race. The weather last week (warming back toward spring like conditions without being hot) probably played a big part in the large crowds. It's been raining here on and off (mostly on) since just after dawn.
The Tour website was uhh, interesting. I never really did see any video. I think they required the latest version of flash and I'm a bit behind there. It was pretty and useless all at once.
Their RSS feed was completely misguided and I dropped off after day five. Instead of building a list of articles about the tour, it was used as a daily blow by blow commentary. That's not to say that stage based feeds aren't good, but it shouldn't be the one and only feed and certainly shouldn't be the primary news feed. I wonder what the bandwidth hit was once people realized it was a live connection for one to eight hours per day? What are the long term implications of a feed updated every few minutes with hundreds of thousands of subscribers all doing an update every two minutes? Ouch.
Technical nit's aside, it's a very interesting bike race with a huge potential and I hope they keep running it for a long, long time.
The story about the Enzo wreck on PCH early Tuesday morning just keeps getting better and better. Escalating estimates on the speed, a dodgy past, rumors of stolen property, weird marketing tie ins and eBay. What else could you want?
Early stories pegged the speed at the time of the crash somewhere near 120 MPH but it's been drifting higher ever since (I was surprised it was so low). A Malibu Times piece today suggested the speed was well above 150 (but lost track of our mystery friend Dietrich). That's a heck of a lot closer to what I expected.
This piece puts the speed at 162 (do they really make such precise estimates?), delves a bit into Stefan Eriksson's history and discusses some ownership tussles with the Bank of Scotland. The real reason I linked to it was the collision between the story and an advertisement for Atari's new game CrashDay which comes out on Friday. No telling if the ad will still be there, but it made me laugh.
The side show to all of this is the action taken by Howard Dranow. He's selling a hose pulled from the wreckage on eBay (somewhere... I can never find anything there). On Saturday morning about an hour before the cyclists on the Tour of California start coming up the norwegian grade on one side of town, he'll be leading a pack of people down Decker Canyon to the crash site.
Here's something you don't see too often, a positive spin on sprawl with some historical context to help frame the discussion. Or so it seems.
LA Curbed calls him a dingleberry from Chicago, but I think there might be more to it than that. Robert Bruegmann's Sprawl : A Compact History is now on my must read list (as soon as I finish paring down the bunch of Joseph Ellis books I've collected). I don't really think the Curbed folks read the book, they were just spouting opinions based the LAT review: Sprawling into controversy.
I'm not a big fan of sprawl, but I've always seen it as a natural progression of civilization. Crawl in your hole and call it obscene if you like, but that's the way the system appears to work. I've watched parts of the process in several cities (most notably Virginia Beach during a frantic phase of their build out in the early and mid eighties).
Coming to SoCal after living for a couple years just off the outer banks was traumatic. So many people, so much traffic. Ultimately it left us ready to leave for somewhere else and I had a good job offer in Flowery Branch, GA. We were ready to jump and yet even back in early 1993 I could see a tiny town being transformed (the four lane highways and strip malls were new and empty). I need to check it out but would bet it's just another Lake Lanier area suburb of Atlanta now.
Around that time some friends dragged us out to Ventura County and we learned the upside of the sprawl equation. With reasonable connector roads (highways and canyon routes initially), a distant location becomes a new community for those willing to make the trek. The initial long distance commuters (mostly pilots and aerospace employees, based upon the folks who moved here in the sixties that I've had the opportunity to interview) pushed for better roads and inspired developers to build more in a once 'remote' region. The end result? Sprawl and all the chaotic economic growth that goes along with it. When we finally moved out here, I spent the same 45-50 minutes getting to work, but it was driving through canyon roads and then tooling along the PCH through Malibu (versus winding my way along the 405 in stop and go) and my family could live an altogether different life style. That's slowly changing, because there's no easy way to halt sprawl.
What I'm most interested in learning about are the historical constraints which cause expansion to wash back toward the center and the economic impact. Should be a fun read.
So darned many people here. Good grief.
I was reminded of a conversation I had last week about the size and complexity of Los Angeles by Tale of Lesser Los Angeles and the conversation which started it, Psst, 411: Valley Seccession Didn't Pass.
Time for some basic research. It's interesting that Kevin pegs the population of the Valley at 1.3 million or so, assuming 40% of LA's population lives there. Based on recent numbers, we're talking about nearly 1.6 million folks.
I had some interesting misconceptions too. I pegged the city population at about 5 million and the county at 7 million. Even though I knew the state was at 36 million, I figured the SoCal coastal area was around 10 million. Those numbers are just a little outside (why isn't Uecker's wonderful quote listed somewhere?) More realistic estimates for city and county are 4 million and 10 million. The city of LA is enormous, but it skips many populous areas.
Digging around led me to the Wikipedia entry for Los Angeles, California and an interesting image (I've probably got the master for this somewhere as a 60 Meg TIFF) Los Angeles urban sprawl, which claims to represent 15 million people (the article claims 16 million). That has to be wrong, doesn't it?
Based on information from the US Census Bureau and the easiest to find breakdown of California by County, we get the starting numbers below. The 2005 estimates are based on 7% growth, which sometimes exceeds the 2004 numbers I have found and sometimes trails them. Seemed like a good fudge factor for now.
| County | 2000 | 2005 est |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 9,519,338 | 10,185,691 |
| Orange | 2,846,289 | 3,045,529 |
| Riverside | 1,545,387 | 1,653,564 |
| San Bernardino | 1,709,434 | 1,829,094 |
| Ventura | 753,197 | 805,920 |
| Total | 17,519,798 |
The numbers set me back for a bit. They're really close. Given that parts of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura are lopped off the map, 15 million is a darned good guess and 16 million seems like it's on the way. That set me to thinking, what about the mythical San Angeles (the Santa Barbara to San Diego megalopolis)? Here are some modern numbers.
| County | 2000 | 2005 est |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 9,519,338 | 10,185,691 |
| Orange | 2,846,289 | 3,045,529 |
| Riverside | 1,545,387 | 1,653,564 |
| San Bernardino | 1,709,434 | 1,829,094 |
| San Diego | 2,813,833 | 3,010,801 |
| Santa Barbara | 399,347 | 427,301 |
| Ventura | 753,197 | 805,920 |
| Total | 20,957,900 |
21 million people living and and working in coastal Southern California. Amazing. Shocking actually.
Today was the day that I'd planned to go see the new Fry's in Oxnard which opened a couple weeks ago. Last Sunday evening as I was preparing to depart for Atlanta I found out about the opening of the Apple store in the Oaks Mall, so that was added to the list.
And then this morning while catching up on various neglected feeds, L.A. Observed called out something that caught my eye, a brewhaha about hidden Hummers caused by a local blogger (an engineer in his mid forties, I swear it's a disease). One more item for the list.
I wasn't too surprised by the discovery, there's a Ford dealer in Pasadena who has been keeping more than a hundred vehicles on a dirt lot owned by SCE located next to our building. There used to be a Utility Man Rodeo there each year, I've been wondering where that might have relocated to. I guess I'll need to take some more pictures.
I started with the local Hummer dealership on Auto Mall Drive (or Duesenberg Drive as the locals and street signs still call it). We have pictures. I was surprised to note so few Hummers on the lot (I think I saw six, one of which was an '04). Then I wandered off to the Westlake Hyatt (a nice hotel, my aunts usually stay there when they come to town and we've been there for several events over the years) to see what I'd never noticed before.
Yep, sure enough. The eastern corner of the Townsgate Road complex was filled Hummers and there was a long line of them just south of the 101 freeway. It's interesting that the satellite image shows no cars, I don't think the Google satellite data is very old either. While wandering around, I noticed something that seemed out of place and wandered over to check it out. The local Infiniti dealer is also using this space. After taking a few pictures, I started seeing this batch of cars in baggies in an odd light (colored no doubt by the goofy movie I watched on the plane back from Atlanta yesterday, The Island — an overly long Twilight Zone episode with lotsa stuff that blows up).
Before leaving, I wandered a bit down the line of Hummers and found my favorite. How long does a vehicle need to sit in a lot before someone scrawls "Dead Battery" on the windshield? I'm guessing quite some time.
When I was talking about it this evening with the kids, Adam mentioned that they used to keep a whole bunch of Hummers on the top level of the parking garage at the Janss Marketplace.
The new Fry's in Oxnard was quite a shock. It's quite well lit, has a good layout and the aroma of fresh coffee seems to be everywhere.
It's been quite a while since I've been to any of the Fry's stores here in SoCal except for the one in Burbank, and that one has seemed dark and disorganized from the day it opened (or shortly afterward when I dropped by). I've only been to the Manhattan Beach store twice, as it opened after we moved away from the South Bay. It's also been quite a long time since I've been to the Woodland Hills location, preferring to defer the whole thing until I can find a way to drop into Burbank. Driving down to Oxnard is not only closer, but a heck of a lot less stressing. Besides, the Conejo Grade is always a great view (and often fun to drive, assuming some maneuvering room).
The new place in Oxnard has a lot of room, and actually cannibalizes some of the room in the middle of the store to create a coffee bar. It's a nice touch. I was tempted to wander in and overspend on a cup of coffee a couple times.
There were some other surprises.
Yes, it's an Apple store but it the dinkiest I've ever been in. Unlike every other corporate store I've seen thus far, it's too small to have a training area. It's small enough that there is only a tiny area in the back set aside to hawk non Apple products. On the plus side, it has a genius bar.
I guess Apple was desperate to have a physical location in this upscale burb that can draw customers from Simi Valley, Agoura and Camarillo and settled for less than ideal dimensions to get it. I think they could have done better, but it's nice to have a store only minutes away.
For those who wondered what the heck happened to me after the fires a bit more than a week ago, here's a small explanation. I was depressed and tired after waiting and watching to see if the fire would hop Westlake Boulevard (it didn't or I might have had a whole new reason for a bit of depression).
I just didn't want to deal with the fire, or my silly weblog. Work and family were already overly complicated.
Even a couple days later, once I felt a bit better about things I just couldn't rustle up the enthusiasm to post about it. I had a bunch of things gathered that I never posted. Oh well.
What went right seems to cover much of it, and I certainly appreciate the long of hours of training and preparation that went into preparing to fight the fire. The article does seem to lowball the massive amount of luck we had with the winds dying down so quickly. Had Thursday been another day of Santa Ana winds, all bets were off.
By Sunday morning things had calmed down enough that I didn't figure to make a pest of myself so I went out and took a bunch of photos.
I went by the Topanga Incident Command Post (over at Conejo Creek Park) first, and chatted with a friendly fellow with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection who hailed from Chico. He assured me that all was well including the Burbank fire which was still burning at that time. He also mentioned that he'd been coming down to SoCal fires for many years, beginning with the SoCal firestorms of 1993 (I'll always recall that election day, I'd had to turn around in Malibu Canyon to come back to vote and by the time I got back the Old Topanga/Malibu fire was underway).
Afterwards, I went to Oakbrook Park where there was little to see but a few engine companies ready in case anything happened.
Finally, I ran around for a bit in the uncomfortably named Smokey Ridge Avenue area of Oak Park. That section starts here and goes on for the rest of the collection. The firefighters must be commended for their work in Oak Park. There was a small bit of brush still smoldering on Sunday morning and that was it. That no homes were damaged continues to amaze me.
I'll finish up this fire saga with a couple interesting things to read:
Just a quick update for now...
The world is orange, again. Ash has been falling pretty steadily here for much of the morning.
There are more than 3,000 fire fighters involved and 16,985 acres burned according to a press conference that has just ended.
The Star has a good map of yesterday's fire areas. Also of note, this photo from somewhere in Oak Park this morning.
The Ventura Fire page has some general information and this Thousand Oaks news bulletin has some information about all the activity in the area of Conejo Creek Park (Janss and the 23 freeway).
The Thousand Oaks Teen Center, Goebel Senior Center and Conejo Creek Park North are being used as the Topanga Fire Incident Center. Traffic along Janss Road may be heavy at times.
The report right now is that the fire has burned 3,500 acres and is 5% contained.
This image was posted by a Moorpark student this afternoon:
|
We've also heard that Oak Park is the next big target? If it runs the ridge between Simi and Oak Park things could get very interesting here.
I just can't get over the idea that all these fires broke out on the first day of this years Santa Ana winds. Two days ago it rained on me in Moorpark and today we've got independent fires near Moorpark College, in the Santa Susana Pass (and Calabasas) and in Moreno Valley.
I've been trying to catch up with the fires around the area ever since Sarah alerted me to the rest of the world when she got home from work. We left shortly afterward for Harley's and as we drove into Simi Valley on Tierra Rejada Road, the two fires on the east side of the valley were distinct. Traffic was a mess, probably because of the 118 freeway closure through the Santa Susana Pass. The traffic on southbound 23 exceeded the usual morning rush hour problem and was still at a virtual standstill as far north as Tierra Rejada and probably looped around to the 118 and back into Simi.
At the bowling alley, the topic of conversation was the fire near Moorpark College. Several people live in the area and had stories to tell about some tense moments this afternoon.
It seemed impossibly hot as we left Harley's at about 8:30 this evening. The smell of smoke in the air served as a reminder to what was happening outside the little cocoon we'd lived in for the last couple hours. As we drove north west out of Simi, the southern fire was burning brightly on the east side.
There's a lot of confusion. KCAL is the only station doing local coverage (FOX might be doing so now). KCAL has talked about the fire burning south and west, both into Ventura County and into Agoura. This part of a VCStar article confused me...
A 100-acre fire burned through brush in the Chatsworth area of Northwest Los Angeles County getting close to the Ventura County line before it was contained early Thursday, authorities said.
I read that about 10 PM which is still Wednesday. Yeah, OK, wire services but it still caught me at first.
Either way, nothing seems contained at this point.
It seems that CalTrans is thinking about inflicting their new program to make our freeway system as ineffective as possible here in Ventura County. Toss my hat into the ring with our mayor:
Thousand Oaks Mayor Claudia Bill-de la Pena echoed the view of others who say that drivers often slow down to read the freeway signs, so she would like to know how well the program works before it is introduced to the Ventura County area.
The Daily News has a couple letters from people grumbling. The Times has a story on the grand plan. I believe (with a lot of experience) that these signs cause more problems than they alleviate and the people making decisions haven't a clue how the system works as a whole. Consider this quote:
"In general, the research shows very clearly that the better information about arrival time significantly reduces the burden people perceive," said Brian Taylor, director of UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies. He pointed to a study showing people felt less stressed on the Metro's Rapid bus line when they were able to see how many minutes until the next bus arrived.
So we're going extrapolate from a study on the perceptions of people standing around at stationary bus stations and somehow apply that to people flying down a freeway at 75 miles per hour. Sounds like a winning concept! Not to be left out, USC had to chime in:
"Improving people's states of information will in general make them less frustrated," said James Moore, chairman of USC's Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
I can't argue with that general idea. Heck, that's why I check the various traffic sites before leaving home. The problem isn't the information, it's the delivery system and the way people react to it. Had either of these traffic experts ever driven around near our wonderful freeway signs they might have learned something. Oops, wait, that's field research. My bad.
I'll go out on a limb here but I'd bet the reason the traffic backs up is because a lot of people slow down (and some even brake; and when one lane breaks the others do so in sympathy or something) to read the damned sign. I've seen this so often. Traffic comes to a halt, I flip around the dial looking for a cause and find nothing, get to the sign and realize that was the accident. Yes, I've seen real accidents (a few of them at the signs) and road breaks for crap on the roads cause the same problems, but it's far from a coincidence when it always ends in the same place (and that place is lit up with some useless message).
The sad reality is that as soon as the signs go on, traffics slows down in a very non linear way that I can only surmise based on far too much personal experimentation (I don't have the raw data and no one seems to be looking at it). In general, the pattern is much like what you'd see shortly after a major collision was finally cleared. At the scene (the signs), the traffic is moving somewhat slowly (mid 30's to 40's) and then opens up completely. A mile back it's stop and go, somewhere between 0 and 40. The further it backs up, the more sluggish the traffic reacts (because they have no idea what the hell is wrong). When the South (East) 101 sign at White Oak is on for any length of time, the traffic will typically come to a dead stop at Topanga and sometimes even further back. That's about a four mile traffic backup just so we can pass along a message.
Besides, we do have radio (if you're from these parts you know about KFWB and KNX, and if you're not, too bad) and we're got a bunch of new technologies coming that will make the sensing data available on the web today mobile. The signs feel like a feeble experiment gone horribly wrong and now CalTrans needs to justify their cost somehow. Can't we just say 'oops'?
I'm going to give this idiotic notion some time (and entirely avoid the 101 going east for a while), but I'm not hopeful.
A local group of teenaged musicians called the Calabasas All Star Jazz Band is soliciting donations to pay for a trip to China. Based purely on the tune played on their front page and the commercial I saw, they're a pretty talented group.
It's unfortunate that their money raising strategy is so horrendously bad. By May 2nd of this year, kids who aren't even playing knew they were going. Until last night, I had no idea anything like this was happening and there's almost no information on the web. Secrecy isn't a useful attribute for a money raising campaign.
The failure here is a lack of understanding that I blame on the advisors. Local parents respond well (perhaps too well) to begging for money (we're conditioned to it starting around the time they enroll). The current model asks us to give money without anything in return, with no guarantee that the trip will actually take place and nothing to commemorate it actually happening. The strategy ignores the idea that once it expands beyond certain geographic boundaries (where parents are obligated), it becomes a marketing (sales?) problem and requires something in return for the investment. Inevitably, people will ask, "What's in it for me"?
There doesn't seem to be (and never was as far as I call tell) an opportunity to overpay to attend an event to help finance the trip. I can understand that it's expensive to book a venue and guarantee gate receipts, but I believe that some locations (like our local Civic Arts Plaza) have special deals in place for exactly this reason.
The biggest problem (and easiest to solve) is the music itself. Jazz is certainly popular enough to keep our local public radio station, KCLU running. I should be able to check a few samples and buy a CD (worst case) or a download of a bunch of MP3's (or better yet, AAC's) of the groups work. I'm quite willing to overpay to support their efforts.
There are a lot of well connected musicians in this area who could have helped out in some way. Imagine what could have happened had people like Tim Heintz (he's the only one I know because he lives just up the street) been involved earlier? I fear it's too late for significant money raising, but I'll ping Tim none the less (even though I know he's busy with LoVEFest tomorrow).
This situation has careened out of control...
A sheriff was shot this morning in the Santa Rosa Valley and then the suspect fled to Simi. The names in the story also fit with the sketchy details in last night's comment.
The shooting on Monday afternoon is going to be big news for several days to come around these parts. I was kind of surprised when I first heard there had been some sort of car jacking from one of the boys. It was only later that we learned of the shootings.
Such a tragic waste. And if this comment on the story is proven true, it will be even more unfortunate.
Chris Holland recently described how Hermosa Beach Gets Fiber to the Home. We're also in Verizon Fios land, but not much is happening here yet.
Last I heard from an insider (about a month ago), they were just about finished wiring Malibu and were working hard to drop fiber into a new housing development in Camarillo with the intention of pushing on to the rest of the city soon (likely happening by now). So why did this process bypass Thousand Oaks?
The scuttlebutt is that the city council is still pretty pissed at Verizon about the heave ho they pulled off with the former GTE Americast cable customers when we were sold to Adelphia (and now we're in some kind of tug of war between Comcast and Time Warner). GTE (before the Verizon big bang) made quite a splash here when we were a flagship city for the Americast service, going so far as walking door to door to talk to prospective customers (like me) and sign them up (me again); granted it didn't take much to make me switch from a company I called Very Crummy Cable on a good day (later purchased by TCI and then I think Adelphia) but they really had terrific features and service for the time (I'm guessing late '95 or so). It'll take a little while before the feathers are sufficiently smoothed to allow Verizon to creep back in to play once again in the video wars.
Best guess? Sometime next year. Maybe. I hope.
If you've been wondering what those itty bitty signs on the south end of Erbes Road are all about, here's what I've pieced together thus far.
The city is finally moving forward with a long shelved plan to expand the southern portion of Erbes Road and it seems they'll also be expanding the number of lanes at the intersection on both sides of Hillcrest Boulevard. If you've ever encountered the 'rush hour' traffic on east or westbound Hillcrest or, to lesser extent, southbound Erbes Road, you know how fun this intersection can be. I've recently seen queue's over half a mile long on Hillcrest, waiting to turn north on Erbes (and wondered... what the heck are those people thinking?)
A community meeting to discuss the environmental report for the Erbes Road Improvement Project is scheduled for this Thursday (May 6th, 2005) at the Civic Arts Plaza.
Here's my copy of the documents from April 30 (they're a bit hard to find elsewhere).
Sophia Fischer contributed a pretty complete (if understated) overview for the Acorn: Improvement project for Erbes Road slowly makes progress. What's happened? Quite simply, the two lane 23 North, which worked reasonably well even a decade ago was overwhelmed by two factors: the completion of the 23 / 118 Freeway connection (the Simi Valley and northern San Fernando Valley conduit) and the ever growing local traffic. The expansion of 23 to three lanes in each direction won't happen any time soon (and even when it does, my experience tells me the speed on the interchanges will continue to plummet).
Eventually, a lot of traffic bailed from 101 using Ranchero Road and Hampshire Road, and for a while the alternative routes worked pretty well.
Nothing is static, certainly not traffic. The opinion that 'the freeway' will take care of it is about to be overcome on the last major section of two lane road in town. I'm not overjoyed, this is my part of town, yet I see the inevitability of it. I gripe occasionally because the traffic light at Erbes and Hillcrest seems to be attuned to some weird biorhythm all it's own, but I have come to appreciate living just outside a weird eddy of the past.
The next place for stop light angst is going to be the day that a light is added to Erbes and Sunset. It'll happen if I stick around long enough (I don't want to be here that long I think).
We attended an auction and dinner for our youngest son's school on Friday at the Renaissance Hotel in Agoura Hills. It was a very pleasant evening and I had my camera with me for a change, thinking I might actually get around to taking some pictures inside. Didn't happen.
I got some nice shots of what was a relatively typical spring evening for this part of Southern California. The green lower level vegetation with the browning of the hillsides is particularly common, but with all the rain this year we still have a lot of green in places that last year were already scorched.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about my mundane shots of SoCal, even if I like them. What caught my attention later in the evening as I was dragging out a bit of our booty was a sign in the parking lot (I looked around and found several of them) with an interesting disclaimer (my apologies for the fact that I still don't seem to be able to shoot vertical when I want to — being in a hurry is no excuse):
|
THE HOTEL IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO VEHICLES, EQUIP- MENT OR CONTENTS. PLEASE REMOVE ALL LAPTOPS AND VALUABLES FROM VEHICLE. |
Was there some sort of massive crime outbreak in Agoura Hills that I missed? Is the Marriott chain putting up these disclaimers all over in the hope that they'll fend off some law suits? Or is this some weird local phenomena?
The whole thing just struck me as being very odd and given the location, quite unexpected and out of place.
While checking my referral logs, I noticed a hit from Ventura County Star Blogs, the Star's blog directory page. I don't remember signing up (it seemed like a pain and I'm form adverse) but I don't mind being there and it looks like they've greatly expanded the number of blogs listed.
Something else to explore when I get a chance.
A report in the Malibu Times indicates that there may be yet another long term closure of Kanan Road between Agoura Hills and Malibu.
Not everyone agrees that it's the fastest way down to PCH, but most acknowledge that it has the best view by far during the decent. On a decent day you can see Santa Barbara and Santa Catalina islands and on really clear days I'm certain that I've seen San Clemente Island (it's mostly behind Catalina). I suppose that similar views are available on 23 south (I've heard this), but if you're driving, you'd be dead if you looked (the road being rather narrow and very twisty most of the way).
This weeks Acorn has an article titled CVUSD math curriculum criticized that delves into Everyday Mathematics.
I don't know, one way or another whether it works or not.
I do feel that math is fuzzy, at least in terms of human perception. I've tried to explain approximation to both of our older kids and neither of them ever got it (such a pity). There are times when I feel like we need to yank the damned calculators out of their hands and make 'em do a year with slide rules just so the picture becomes a bit more clear. Perhaps it's just me, but that darned device gave me a gut feel for numbers, logs and any number of mathematical relationships that never become apparent with a chip. Maybe I spent too much time looking at the things, but the slide rule seemed to be a visual representation of mathematics; once you groked why it looked the way it did, everything else falls into place.
If you read this far and are sniggering because of the title, remind me of days long gone... it could have been worse. Alternative titles included:
I ended up working from home yesterday which worked out for the best. Sometimes it's all about being in the right place at the right time.
We'd planning on taking Jon out for a birthday dinner but because I worked from home, we were able to go out earlier and get him back in time to get a good night of sleep before his trip back east today. He and Sarah left this morning and are now at his grandfathers house, Easter surprise intact.
Yesterday afternoon, just seconds after I'd stepped out the shower, I got an interesting call. Sarah was on the phone, insisting that I had to look out the window (which direction? east!) to see a wonderful rainbow. I looked, saw a pretty string of colors, dressed hurriedly and wound up running up and down the stairs looking for my camera.
Eventually, I caught a few shots before it disappeared. I just wish I could have captured more.
It really was beautiful.
Welcome to spring, where everything this year is as wildly alive as I've ever seen it. Our seemingly endless rain has taken the day off but it seems reasonable that it'll be back.
I'd read somewhere earlier this week that the county community college system was going suspend horticulture courses and today we learn that Janet Wall has stepped up to fund the program for another year. As Colleen Cason points out, this seems like absurd step for a county with a growing horticulture industry and a long term, county wide commitment to retaining our agricultural history and attachment. One wonders, where are we focusing the funds if not on industries that are actually important in the county?
Perhaps administrators have fallen under the kool aid long passed around that we live in a high tech corridor. Certainly, we have some industry leaders (it's pretty hard to ignore the likes of Amgen) and if you hope for it long enough and often enough, it might come to pass, but not without educational commitment. The driving force behind the Boston, San Jose and to a lesser extent, Austin tech zones are the local universities, the companies which grew out of them and an accelerating feedback loop between the two. Looking at the east county, the driving force isn't particularly high tech. Home prices in the last six years have been driven mostly by expansion of Amgen and the relocation of Countrywide (a financial services firm) on top of the usual factors.
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't endeavor to build a solid technology base here, but we do need to be somewhat realistic about where we are on the growth path. And while we grow our new technology based identity we need to maintain and nurture our current agribusiness economy.
There are quite a number of interesting things happening in the Ventura County media, led primarily by the Ventura County Star. Last week Dan Gillmor mentioned that the Star gets the message in response to the following message at Poynter Online.
Our online editor, Alicia Hoffman, will be adding the role of citizen journalism/user-content specialist to her duties.
We see blogs, forums, photo blogs and other forms of citizen journalism as a significant part of the online news world. Our readers want to be part of the process of sharing the news and shaping the news. Technology is giving them the tools to do it, and as Dan Gillmor has pointed out, our readers often know more than we do. They can also be more places than we can. And, they also know what interests them and what news they want in ways that traditional, top-down journalism might miss. We need to give appropriate attention to this growing facet of our business.
Alicia's primary duties as online editor do not change, but the focus of her job will be different. She will pay close attention to how we're interacting with our readers and the content and business opportunities that emerge, and help to shape our evolving strategy. She will guide us in the world of "journalism as a conversation" as we develop VenturaCountyStar.com as the online community center for Ventura County. Our current plan is to grow organically in this area rather than push any one big initiative. We have blogs, forums and photo blogs now. We will work to grow these and help promote citizen journalism in Ventura County.
HOWARD OWENS
Director of New Media
Ventura County Star / E.W. Scripps Co.
In addition to other changes at the Ventura County Star, they've now added comment and trackback links on selected articles. It was pointed out over the weekend (see the comments) by Owens that adding comments (but probably not trackback) to every bylined story is somewhat experimental for now, and that they intend to roll this out on all articles sometime during the year.
It's interesting to see Howard Owens wandering the net, picking up on every mention of Ventura County Star and following up on it. That's not quite his job, but he's doing a pretty good job of being a sort of online ombudsman. And he's finally added a feed (not quite RSS, but it works) to his site. In the process he wonders why he's being asked for a feed more often now that he's returned from a hiatus, even though his traffic numbers are lower. Having also recently begun diving into RSS feeds himself using FeedDemon, I think the reason people want feeds for sites will become quite a bit more clear over the coming days and weeks. Once you get used to it, the desire to have other data from non static sources arrive in a similar way is quite powerful.
Cheers and best wishes to Howard and the Ventura County Star for pushing forward. It'll be very interesting to see how the whole citizen journalism initiative works out.
We all know that just about everything that comes out of Hollywood is faked in some fashion or anther. Certainly the film blockbusters with the computer generated images by the thousands. Even bio pics and movies which ought to be true use 'creative license' to spruce up what is otherwise another boring existence. Add to that the reality show phenomenon and of course, commercials.
I remember a few years ago they shot a car commercial in Simi Valley and they wanted to use the Venture Liquors store front but I guess they objected to the title, so they stuck a fake sign on the store and shot the commercial. I only know about this because we saw the hubbub around the place when bowling next door at Harley's one evening and I later went by to ask what was happening.
Interesting, but not the point. I can see why an automotive manufacturer might have a problem with a liquor store name and ask the owner to change it.
Sometimes though, I see something and I just have to ask why.
This particular question revolves around a Jetta commercial that's been running since at least September. I just saw another one this evening, leading to this silly post. I'd captured the commercial as part of something else on September 21 and turned it into a movie on October 3 of last year. I've looked for information on this a few times before. Nothing.
The original ad (and perhaps the latest ones too) are centered around special deals for remaining 2004 models. It was a typical closeout ad with one tiny exception. The ad begins with a car apparently getting onto Interstate 95, a major east coast transportation artery, which runs from Florida to Maine. I've been up and down nearly the entire length a few times, done the Florida to New Jersey run in both directions countless times and I once did it hitchhiking. The rest of the commercial takes place on both sides of the 118 freeway (aka the Ronald Reagan Freeway) in the eastern half (or so) of Simi Valley. No one, unless blind (and unable to see the sign) is going to think those mountains (the Santa Susana Pass) are anywhere close to I-95. Further, they left in the real street names: Stearns Street and Tapo Canyon Road. Stearns flys, but umm, Tapo Canyon? I don't think so.
I just can't understand it; why bother with the subterfuge? There had to be a meeting somewhere (either at the ad agency or at Volkwagon) where someone brought up the idea that they'd use a faked (stolen?) I-95 sign in the early part.
What the hell were these people thinking?
I've finally gotten around to using the static content system I created a while back to create a link to Ventura County News Sources.
The primary impetus was a desire to move my links online, but I was further spurred in that direction because of a blurb on L.A. Observed about La Conchita which pointed to an article in the Ventura County Reporter, which I'd never heard of (despite it's long term presence).
Unfortunately, the Ventura County Reporter doesn't use long lived links. I'm sure they've had many great articles, but what caught my eye was One soldier’s story. Patrick Campbell is a young man from Camarillo, a Cal grad who dropped out of law school (and gave up a posi
