Category: General

New Macs come with a terribly amusing program, Comic Life, which is really fun. For a bit of fun, I put together a comic version of our recent trip to San Diego. Check it our here.

Tell me what you think!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Blog, Mac, MacBook, Comic, Travel

I actually started writing my (then journal, now) blog entries back in 1998 because I wanted to remember my travels. I’ve got a great head from facts and figures and a particularly lousy one for remembering places and dates.

That makes it all the more annoying that, having just been in San Diego and writing my entries in a timely fashion, I completely forgot to mention to coolest thing on the trip. On Zoo day, we went afterwards to the natural history museum. It’s an OK museum, quite small, but it has some interesting displays.

In the basement, they had a temporary exhibit called Dinosaurs Reel and Robotic. (I hate the fact that link will be bad someday. I wonder if it is on archive.org yet?) It was a fantastic collection of classic movie posters, artwork, comic books, old novels, actual movie props (like the brontosaur from Son of Kong) from all over the world. There were also robotic dinosaurs armatures and animatronic displays. The most striking to me was an authentic re-creation of the tyrannosaur from King Kong, placed in front of painted background, with a foreground glass matte. It was setup exactly as it would be for filming, complete with a viewfinder to look at the shot though.

You could look all around it and see how obviously fake it was, but when you looked through the viewfinder it’s completely convincing. I’m really glad I got to see that and I’m tempted to try playing around with some foreground mattes just for fun.

Why didn’t I remember this cool exhibit? When I wrote my blog, I looked at my pictures for the day to refresh my memory.

This exhibit didn’t allow photography. Blast their eyes.

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Dinosaur, Dinosaurs, Travel, Video

Our plan was for this to be our last day in California, but we were not in any hurry to get out of town, and we had contingency plans to stay one more night if we so chose.

Having our laptops was a great help – when we got back to the room each day. We could search for things to do in San Diego, research hours and addresses, and use Google Earth to track them down and figure out the quickest freeway route to the desired location.

The problem was, the list of “things to do in San Diego” was not as exciting as you might imagine. One memorable item that I remember coming up on such a list was the “California Dept of Fish and Game Building.” Ho hum.

Balboa Park is loaded with museums (I’ll say this for San Diego, clustering the museums together does make them easier to get to.) but most of them I wouldn’t lift a finger to see. We’d already been to the Natural History museum and museums such as “Model Railroads”, “Hall of Champions Sport Museum” and the “Automotive Museum” don’t appeal to me much. (OK, I might go to the automotive museum.)

The Air & Space museum was of interest, but it got trumped.

When I realized the USS Midway was in the harbor and now a public museum, I had to go see that. My concern was that it didn’t seem like the most kid-friendly museum I could think of. Chu-Wan was willing to go, and she realized that she’d probably have to keep a tight reign on James, so, that was our first destination.

The ship itself is amazing, and they’ve opened many areas for public touring. Considering it would be manned by 4,500 sailors and pilots, it’s hardly surprising that most of the underside seemed to consist of kitchens and dining rooms. They seemed to go on forever. One of the reasons this trumped the air & space museum was that 23 vintage aircraft are on display aboard the carrier, either on the flight deck or on the hanger deck.

Michelle didn’t meet the minimum height requirement and so she had to stay behind with Chu-Wan as I got to tour the flight tower, map room and bridge. Those tours are conducted by former crew members of the Midway, and I was lucky enough to have a guide who was a former fighter pilot in the 60’s and the flight officer in the 70’s. He had some interesting tales to tell. It’s certainly an unbelievable amount of work that a huge number of sailors had to perform, perfectly, so that a few pilots could fly.

Commissioned in 1945 and decommissioned in 1992, the Midway wasn’t built for someone 6’3“ tall. It was necessary for me to bend over almost all the time, even in the ”living spaces“ below deck, my hair was always brushing the ceiling if I stood up.

Most of the crew stations have mannequins positioned in them to give the feel of how the ship operated. One spot – I won’t give away where – has a man standing like a mannequin, and made up to look plastic, waiting to give a shock to any unsuspecting passerby.

Whenever we were on the flight deck, there was food being prepared somewhere nearby that smelled amazing! Chu-Wan thought it was Indian Food, although I thought it smelled more like barbecue. When we left, we decided to try to find it.

I had mentioned that the Star of India was nearby, and Chu-Wan decided we would go there to eat. I didn’t know it was a restaurant, and she didn’t know it was a sailing ship turned into a museum. We were both right, but they’re not the same Star of India, so we drove around the maddening, no-left-turn streets trying to reach a restaurant, and when we found one, driving on and on trying to find parking.

We ended up in Seaport Village, a supposed neo-turn-of-the-century (20th, not 21st) re-imagining of a stylized waterfront. In other words, it’s a shopping center, with a food court, on the ocean front, with lots of wood.

Before I continue, let me tell you a little story about our AAA membership.

We have a AAA membership, which we use infrequently. We sometimes get passport photos or International Driver’s Permits there, once in a blue moon call them for some roadside assistance or occasionally get maps from them before a trip.

Chu-Wan had gone down and picked up maps of Arizona and California, and they also provided a little detailed book of step by step directions. (Exactly what you’d get online at google maps.) We also get discounts through AAA on things like admission to places like The San Diego Zoo and Sea World.

So, with the booklet the printed out, we really didn’t use it. When we first started the trip and we were deciding where to stop for breakfast, there was a question if we were going through Casa Grande or Buckeye. After that, it never got used.

At the zoo, we thought it gave a discount admission, but it only gave a discount if you were buying a ticket to take the tour bus, too. We didn’t want that, so it was useless.

At Sea World, it was good for 10% off admission. The thing was, admission for one day was exactly the same price as admission for 2 days. We figured the zoo only took half a day to see, and we had plenty of time, so we might come back again the next day to let the kids see a show or take a ride or something. We chose the 2-day ticket, but you couldn’t use the AAA discount on that. Sea World ended up taking all day and we were pretty much done with the place, so we didn’t go back – another opportunity lost.

And so we came to the end of our trip, having not used our AAA benefits.

When we got to Seaport Village, Chu-Wan locked the keys in the car, and she had to call someone to come out and break into our car.

Which would have been a great blog story if only we’d called AAA to open the car. Instead we called Hyundai and they took care of it in no time. Still, had I been thinking, I would have made sure we called AAA instead.

And so, after eating an inadequate meal at Seaport Village, and building up a sufficient stress level, we left California and returned home.

Before we left town, we filled up on gas at yet another Costco, so I could get another picture for my collection.

The return trip was much as the way over, until Michelle finally fell asleep. I now understand why new mini-vans have in-car DVD players. Oh, to have had something to distract the kids.

San Diego just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, but it’s not an unpleasant place, the weather was nice, and we had fun. I guess that’s all I can ask for.

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Travel

Seriously, what it is about some cities that some people get all misty-eyed and pee-in-their-pants excited about? San Diego is one of those towns. Perhaps it’s in the second tier, but it’s still, but it’s still up there. Why?

My past experiences in San Diego lead me to believe it was a confusing and overrated city, but I felt we needed to try to understand it better. SO, instead of having any particular agenda for the day, we decided to pick a couple “ordinary” places to go to, and see what what we would see as we travelled to them, and poked around the area.

Chu-Wan has put out a call on babyhome.com.tw looking for Taiwanese ex-pats living in the San Diego area, hoping to find some good, home-style cooking. The response came back, “It’s not like we live in Los Angeles. There’s nothing here.” However, a restaurant called “168” was recommended, and it turned out to be inside the 99 Ranch supermarket. They also said that in the nearby area were tea shops and other things of Asian interest, so we headed off.

We didn’t have breakfast (the free continental breakfast at the hotel wasn’t worth bothering with) so I was quite hungry. It was too early when we arrived at 99 Ranch for 168 to be open, and they didn’t have posted hours of operation, so we didn’t know how the wait would be. We tried scouring the area and discovered several tea shops (the kind that serve lumps in their tea and charge extra for the opportunity to choke yourself), a few Japanese restaurants and a lot of Korean restaurants. Most of them were still unopened and so we ended up eating at Original Tommy’s Hamburgers. Which purports to be World Famous, but we’d never heard of them. In any case, any hamburger joint that opens at 7:00AM is starting out on the right foot already.

Inside we learned the first element of Tommy’s world-wide fame: Everything is served with chili on it. Now I love a good chili cheese-dog, so I figured if their chili is that good, then I might as well try it on a dog instead of a burger.

The first problem came in trying to communicate. The woman seemed to speak English. (If you think all the service people in Phoenix are all Mexican, or Mexican descended, these days, go to San Diego, it was significantly more prevalent.) Really, her English seemed quite good, but she could not understand the customers. It went like this:

“I’d like 2 Chili Cheese-Dogs.”

“With cheese?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything on them? Chili, tomato, onion, mustard, pickle?”

“No. No tomato, no mustard.” (Who freakin’ puts mustard on a chili dog?)

“So, 2 hot dogs, tomato and mustard only.”

“No. No tomato and no mustard.”

“Tomato and mustard only, then?”

“No. I do not want tomato. I do not want mustard. Everything else is fine.”

“Oh, you want everything on them.”

“No. Everything except tomato and mustard.”

“Tomato and mustard only?”

At this point Chu-Wan chips in, “Just tell her what you do want.”

I tried that, it had similar comic results, but finally we got it worked out and I got what I asked for.

I didn’t feel so bad when the next customer came in and ordered a cheeseburger, no onion and she replied, “Hamburger with onion only.” …and he went through a similar routine.

After we got our food, we discovered the second think Tommy’s is “famous” for – “You don’t have to ask for double helpings of toppings, be cause we put double on everything automatically.” My cheese-dogs were swimming in chili and onions – particularly onions.

Anyway, final analysis: It was fair.

Apart from the Asian-themed restaurants, the area comprised nothing more than the “usual” stores and businesses you’d find in any other city. Used car dealers, corporate offices, Sears, furniture stores… nothing special.

We headed to the nearest Costco so I could photograph it and, as Michelle was being a bit of a pest, we put her in the Ikea playground for an hour (Ikea and Costco being in the same parking lot) while we wasted some time in Ikea. We hoped playing with other kids might wear her out a bit. It didn’t.

Next we headed towards Point Loma, which is part of the Cabrillo National Monument. Point Loma is the bit of California that juts out as a small peninsula down at the bottom just by Mexico. It’s also an active military base/cemetary and we go stuck during a funeral.

Sweeping views of the sea and an old lighthouse are at lands end, which are interesting. Had I lived a hundred years ago, I think I could have been a lighthouse keeper in a place like this.

We went down to the tide pools but it was high tide and they weren’t there. There were still people watching for whales, but it was a little too late in the season.

Across the harbor we could see the carrier USS Midway, which is now a museum, and on this side of the harbor a submarine was in the dock as well as another smaller military vessel. F-15s were flying training flights in the area. My telephone wasn’t good enough to get very good pictures of them, and the submarine was mostly obscured by the buildings at the dock. Although I tried to match this plane’s silhouette against US Fighters, the shape of the nose and tail just doesn’t quite look like a proper F-15. Can anyone confirm or deny this identification?

Later than night we returned to 99 Ranch and ate at 168. I had some fairly authentic beef noodle soup, and Chu-Wan seemed to enjoy eating not only her own food, but the kids as well. I was pleased to see that Michelle actually spoke some Chinese to the owner of the restaurant. He thought she was really cute and kept saying so, but I don’t think he gave us a “cute kid” discount.

Was having trouble with maintaining a solid internet connection using the wired internet in the hotel, so I grabbed an Airport wireless link someone had open in the area. (I assume he must be an Apple user.) He also had his iTunes shared. Wow! 126.77GB of music. That’s impressive. They don’t even make an iPod that could hold it. That was over 70 days of music. My 20Gb seems diminutive by comparison.

Pity he didn’t have anything worth listening to.

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Travel

James has got this thing about fish in aquariums. He loves them. So we figured he’d love Sea World. I’m more ambivalent about the place, but perhaps I’ll discuss that more later.

Having a family can be expensive. Taking that family to Sea World can be astronomically expensive! I know they have to feed the whales, but it was $162 for us to get into the place! It would have been $206 had James not been under 3. Add to that the cost of lunch ($36 for two people and one child) and souvenirs (Cheap at only about $25) and that makes for a very expensive day at the park.

Both my telephoto lens and my new 2GB CF card got a workout trying to capture the action at the performances. I got several “good” action shots, but I have a lot of photos to delete. For lack of any particular talent at photography, the shotgun approach will have to suffice.

James loved the whales. After we’d seen the whale show, and we walked into the gift shop, he grabbed a whale off the shelf and wouldn’t give it up. He was pretty much inseparable from it for the rest of the day.

Because of the cameras, camcorders and a sudden and mysterious terror I now how about getting my electronic gear wet, (Hmm, I wonder why?) I made sure we were seated well away from the “soak zones” during the performances. Michelle felt cheated and wanted to get wet, so Chu-Wan took her on the Shipwreck Reef ride. She loved it the first time through and got a little wet.

They decided a go a second time, and while they were getting started, I realized I’d exhausted my 2GB CF card. I switched to one of my two 1GB backup cards and discovered it was full. Now, in a rush, I switched to the third card, just as Michelle and Chu-Wan passed by. I barely caught them on the second pass, but I could see Michelle was hunkered down for some reason.

It wasn’t hard to tell why when she came out the other side – she was soaked to the bone. Chu-Wan switched her into her swimsuit for the rest of the day, but it was clearly time to go.

We tried to let James see the whales up close, but they wouldn’t come over to the window, which was a disappointment.

After going back to the room and drying off, we headed out in search of food. We finally found a mall and ate Indian food, which wasn’t too bad. Unless you actually know what you’re looking for and where it is, San Diego is just like Phoenix or Tucson, just with a really crap layout. It’s just that never-ending sprawl of suburbia. (Well, suburbia was invented in California, afterall.)

Tomorrow… hmmm, tomorrow’s plan isn’t cast in stone yet.

Flickr Photoset of Sea World Here

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Natural Sciences, Travel