January 2008 Archives

Helaine and I did some intensive TV watching, waiting for the ball to drop. Here are a few observations from the evening.

Does everyone now have a New Year's Eve show from Times Square... and why? It looked like Fox News, CNN and CNBC were there for longform live shows. Is there that much demand for their ... especially when ABC and MTV are also there?

With all the networks and their non-interlocking musical acts, are the bands actually amplified enough to hear or are their outdoor performances a sham for TV? Times Square isn't big enough to have multiple musical acts performing at the same time without acoustic mayhem.

As it is, it looked like the acts were facing away from their audience. That shot works for TV, allowing a wide expanse of humanity to be on the screen. It's not very appealing for the people watching in the cold.

Tila Tequila - what's the deal? I have this fascination with Asian women, but I'm going to draw the line somewhere on this side of her.

At one point a musician picked her up. Dude - wash your hands.

Kid Rock looked like he was dressing to be a sideman in Funkadelic.

How did Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve get a pass from the Writer's Guild? Dick Clark Productions is a member of the producers organization. This show was scripted. Other DCP shows, like the People's Choice Awards, have been affected.

Poor Dick himself still sounds terrible and it is painful to watch. I know - that's my problem. I'm probably wrong for being judgmental in this way.

It should be noted, Dick was able to keep up with the countdown numbers. A few years ago, he was not.

Every year Helaine asks why anyone would go to Times Square. I watch, half expecting to see some act of terrorism. How can it not be a 'soft' target?

Why does anyone go? Is anyone there over the age of 25?

As I got set to turn the TV off, I saw Anderson Cooper on CNN with Kathy Grifffin. That's TVs new odd couple, right? I am sorry I missed them.

It's very unusual to read an article and say, "Yeah, that's how I feel too." That's especially true when it's an article about Global Warming.

To a large extent, people are reacting to a tidal wave of media and not any climate change they can feel. Change is very slow and well hidden within the atmospheric noise that is weather.

If you get a chance, please read this essay from John Tierney. It was printed in the Tuesday Science section of the New York Times. It is the antidote to climatic hysteria.

In the last year and a half, the traffic to this little blog has plummeted. There were two distinct drops. They were sudden and well defined. Both times, it was as if a switch had been thrown - and it had.

I might claim that the number of readers is unimportant, but it has bruised my fragile ego.

There are a few probable reasons. Some of you (hey - even me) use software like Adblock Plus. I count Google AdSense impressions. If you don't see the ads (I don't), I don't count you. Some of you catch this blog on its RSS feed. You're not counted either.

These only account for a small portion of the drop. My logs show the real story. The majority of loss has been on my archived entries - traffic mostly driven by Google.

Google doesn't think I'm as important as they once did. I'm not 100% sure why, but I have an idea. I'm not getting as many good inbound links.

Some of you have your own websites. I see them when your comments are posted. Unlike some other sites, I don't exclude your links from being followed by Google.

So, I'm going to ask a favor. Would you add a link to my site from somewhere on yours?

This is a small site. A few well placed links would make a huge difference.

Sunny Los Angeles. It looks like it's about to spend an extended period getting drenched. That can mean only one thing. I'm heading to L.A. I leave Saturday.

Why am I going? No real clue. It's just away. It's a place I enjoy.

I have some friends I want to see. Probably some photos to take too, if the weather cooperates.

One friend, who I'll be staying with for a few days, has grown a beard and then removed it since the last time I saw him. He has asked for anonymity on the blog - which will be respected.

I'll also be spending some time with my cousins in Orange County. I've never seen their house, near the retired El Toro Air Station, just inland from Laguna Beach.

Two more stops are planned, both with people I haven't seen in decades.

Joel lives and works in Malibu. I knew him when we were both disk jockeys in Charlotte and Philadelphia. I have known him under three different names!

Dave, who I first met as I turned 18, is from Marin County, near San Francisco. He runs a business designing, installing and repairing recording studios. He has lived an interesting and exotic life, including lots of time exploring Asia. He and I were ticketed for jaywalking across from the Roosevelt Hotel.

Today, I was trying to think of how many times I've been to Los Angeles. Certainly a dozen. Probably closer to twenty. Though I once got lost and ended up driving Helaine and myself through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods, I know my 'home turf' of the Valley and West Side reasonably well.

I will be taking Clicky and enough electronic accouterments to choke a TSA agent.

No changing planes, but we are stopping in Chicago (MDW). January and Chicago. Wish me luck!

This entry posted with my father's permission.

My dad, through a botched cataract operation, has only one working eye. This afternoon, he went for an appointment at the eye doctor.

"Does he charge you half price," I asked?

The DVR has two tuners. Tonight, I recorded Letterman and Leno simultaneously.

The truth is, I wanted Leno to suck because I'd like to see the writers prevail against the producers. I'm not going to lie. Over the long run, what they get will help a lot of others... maybe someday me.

Letterman first. You've read by now, he's bearded.

Because of a deal his production company cut with the writers, he was back with a full crew. It is a strategic move on the part of the writers to put NBC at a competitive disadvantage. Leno has no such waiver.

The show was fresh. Robin Williams was manic. The prepared bits weren't anything special, but the show has been allowed to catch its breath and was very enjoyable.

There was more than one gratuitous nod to the Writers Guild, including the top-10 list. Alan Zweibel and Nora Ephron were among the ten writers presenting.

The writers continue to win the PR war versus the producers. So far, it's a Pyrrhic victory.

Leno also came back fresh. I was surprised and disappointed the monologue and a taped bit were pre-written. The Guild had hoped there would be no written material. There will be cries of "scab" tomorrow.

I understand Jay's in a tough position. On one hand, his writers are striking. On the other, his mortal opponent, David Letterman, has a full staff.

Should he risk a fatal blow to his show in order to morally support the writers?

Leno claimed to have written the monologue and other material himself. I can't imagine how that's true.

The big guest was Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate. Huckabee is very at ease on TV and came across warm and approachable. He played bass guitar as they came out of commercial.

People applauded the intricate guitar lead, but that wasn't Huckabee's part. It made no difference. A 'guy off the street' jumping in with that band is still impressive.

Jay's show was entertaining, for Jay's show. I suspect tomorrow's ratings will show writers to be overvalued and Leno outranking Letterman. The real effect won't be seen until later in the week... or maybe next.

The producer's great strength in this fight is, they're a faceless monolith who sell no product directly to consumers. In essence, they're anonymous.

It was six above as I pulled in the garage. We've haven't bottomed out quite yet. Last night was comparably cold.

I walked in the house and it was warm. Sure, I'm burning twenties in the furnace, but it's comfy here. We are equipped to deal with New England winters.

Let me contrast that with Florida.

NWS record reports usually don't come with humor. Obviously, tonight in the East, none come with warmth.

How do you talk with God? And, who is God anyway?

Is Google God? They pull a lot of weight and have become the gatekeeper of the Internet. Tonight, they removed me from their index. It is an amazingly weird story.

I've been writing about my traffic here on the blog recently. I mentioned some suspected reasons for the dropoff, especially traffic referred by Google.

To confirm some suspicions, I did a Google search on this site. It would instantly tell me which of my pages were most popular.

I was stunned.

The list was long and mainly consisted of pages I hadn't entered! The pages were virtually 100% made of keywords and links. They were obviously computer generated without human intervention.

I clicked on one. The address bar in my browser read www.geofffox.com/MT/archives... I went to my web server and looked for the files that made up this page. They weren't there.

My friend and ix-guru Bob said my webserver might have been hijacked. The bad files were now hidden from me. That's as good a guess as any, but wrong.

Though the address bar said geofffox.com, if you manually typed the web address you'd get a 404 error - page not found! Something was very fishy.

The content really wasn't on my site. Somehow, Google had been tricked and was sending people one place while saying it was another. I'm totally confused.

I went to the Google Webmaster Help forum and posted a note. Twenty minutes later, the bogus ad pages were gone from Google. So was nearly everything else in my site. A few hours later, the rest vanished.

As I write this, if you enter "site:geofffox.com" in Google, you get nothing! I am devastated.

I went to Google's Webmaster Tools.

Holy crap. Google has blacklisted me. As far as the Internet is concerned, I will cease to exist. No - I have ceased to exist!

I've already filled out a form, begging to be reconsidered, though I don't know what I did wrong. Google won't tell. They also won't tell how long they'll take to fix, or whether they'll fix it at all.

Maybe Google isn't God, but it sure acts like it. I'm just a little schlemiel with a simple website. What if my livelihood depended on this?

I'm pretty much done packing. The plane leaves at noon.

I hope Stef doesn't read this. I'm starting to pack like her. No, not clothes, but my stuff weighs more.

For Clicky, I've got the tripod and monopod, five lenses and a flash unit. Oh - there's the Gorilla Pod too. I normally carry three batteries and charger plus 3.5 Gb in compact flash memory cards.

I've got a computer and cell phone plus cables for both. Ditto with a GPS unit. And, on top of that, there are the army of power plugs and power bugs.

Stef passed her old iPod down to me. I've downloaded enough podcasts to fly to Burma. The iPod travels with earbuds and a cable. Though pink, it is now hidden in a black rubber skin, lest anyone question my masculinity.

This is nuts. All this stuff. Even I can see that, but I'm obsessed. It's an illness.

The weather has been horrendous out west. San Francisco had 60+ mph gusts on Friday. The system is moving down the coast, though it's weakening. I expect the pilot will be forced to wrestle the plane to the ground as we land at LAX.

We will chase the Sun, flying west at about 500 mph. It's a losing battle. The Sun's faster and won't be stopping at Midway.

Even with three time zones, the clock will read 4:30 PM when we put down.

My plane flies from Hartford to Los Angeles with that stop in Chicago. Somehow, I've gotten it in my head to post a blog entry from my airplane seat as the plane briefly empties while we are on the ground in Chicago. My cellphone will act as the modem, bringing the Internet to my laptop.

Now I'm worried I've forgotten something.

I'm at the airport, killing time while waiting for my flight. Bradley isn't too crowded today.

William Mitchell was the skycap who took my bag. "Did they call you Billy," I asked, referring to the famous aviator came up with the idea airplanes could takeoff and land on ships at sea (and after whom Milwaukee's airport is named)? He said the name hadn't been a problem until he started flying planes.

Note to self: This skycap is making more money than some of the pilots. One bag, two minutes, two bucks. He was Vegas friendly.

Speaking of which... a few trips ago, in Las Vegas, I was frisked because I was wearing a baggy sweatshirt. Same sweatshirt today. No problem.

They did look at Clicky and rubbed some bomb detecting stuff on my 70-300 mm lens.

I'm sitting off to the side, facing away from the gate. The only two people in this line of seats are me and another guy. We're here for the electrical outlets. Airports need more of those.

My flight is scheduled to depart on time. Easy to say, even though it's not physically here.

My flight to Chicago was relatively easy. I had the iPod for the first time and listened to a long interview with Bill Murray and This Week in Technology with Leo Laporte.

I love Leo. He's been a trailblazer in tech. The show was rudderless. I still listened all the way through. I just wanted more meat and more structure.

About twenty minutes out of Chicago a flight attendant came on the PA. "Is there a doctor, nurse or medical person on the flight?"

That only happens in the movies, right?

About ten rows behind me a woman had suffered a seizure. As I'd later find out, she had medication with her. This must not have been a total surprise.

You would guess this sort of thing puts you to the head of the line for landing. We hit the ground, hit the brakes, did a 250 degree turn and pulled right to the terminal.

The door popped open and in rushed three Chicago Fire Department EMTs.

I can't tell you how the woman is. She looked unconscious as they moved her off in a wheelchair.

Before we landed, the crew asked everyone to stay seated and not go to the overhead bins. The instructions were followed.

The Chicago-LAX passengers are starting to get on. It will be a full flight. I've moved back a row and taken a window seat. Maybe I'll see some snowcapped mountains.

Next stop Los Angeles.

Flying to LA was reasonably uneventful, though the last thirty minutes felt more like driving down the Cross Bronx Expressway than LAX Approach. We lumbered through a series of ugly looking cloud layers. Imagine flying slower and lower than you think a 737 should for thirty full minutes.

It's been raining on and off in LA. It's not 'shut down the city' rain, just some showers with temperatures in the fifties. It's actually quite pleasant, though the roads here scare me when wet.

Got my rental car with no problem, hooked up the GPS and was on my way. I know most of the route, but the GPS adds a layer of confidence.

It took about 25 minutes to get to my friend's home - the 'secret' location in the San Fernando Valley where I'll spend the next few days. My friend, his wife and 20-something son, live in a beautiful and large home a few seconds outside the Sherman Oaks business district.

For dinner, we walked to "Fukyo," a local sushi restaurant. I love sushi and now I love it even more! The food was incredibly tasty and with a spicy kick that snuck up seconds after you took your bite.

This is a long day. My commute to California started at home around 9:30 AM. It was after 6:00 PM PST before I got here.

It's still drippy here in the San Fernando Valley. I stepped outside barefoot to shoot a few photos of the grapefruit tree in the front yard. Try that back in Connecticut!

My friend, a member of a number of show biz societies, has some movie screeners, so this afternoon I'll re-watch Juno... and later (he's seen a bunch more) he'll vote for one of the myriad awards Hollywood gives itself.

There is something about Southern California that is appealingly laid back, while aggressively driven at the same time. It's tough to explain.

I am the guest of friends I've had for decades. I've known him 40 years. That is a very long time for anyone to be friends. And yet, after all this time I've made one new discovery.

He can bake!

This real New York Style Jewish Rye with carroway seeds was created 'in-house'.

Among my goals in California was a trip to the Commerce Casino. It is a mainly poker casino in a small municipality adjacent to Los Angeles.

This is by no means the type of casino you'd find in Connecticut or Las Vegas. It is smaller and looks a little worn.

There are poker rooms on the ground and second floors. Playing very low stakes games, I walked the stairs.

My friend and his son came along, and they actually had a good time. Though they're not poker players, they did play in a $40 sit and go tournament played on a computer driven dealerless table.

I really wanted to like the electronic poker table, but I didn't. There was something missing. I'm not sure if it was the lack of a dealer, many of whom don't speak English anyway, or the absence of the old school tactile connection with the cards and chips.

By the time we left, I had won around $100 playing at low stakes games. I had a good time, because I like playing cards. I've been to spiffier joints.

I almost forgot to write this. After poker, my friend and his son were hungry. Maybe Chinese food? We headed to Los Angeles' Chinatown.

There was a time when Chinatown was smoking all night. Not anymore. There were few places open as we drove by just before 11:00 PM.

We walked into the one we randomly chose and sat down by the window. The Health Department sign showed they had received a "B" on their last inspection. No Dean's List for you!

Outside, a rat took his time walking near the base of a newspaper box.

The food was OK. However, what I found totally unnerving was this entry at the bottom of one menu page. Somehow, it's lack of specificity is what scares me most. Exactly whose intestine is this?

Tonight I had dinner with Joel Denver. Joel and I were in radio first in Charlotte and then in Philadelphia back in the 70s. We became friends, but as is so often case, we moved and our lives changed until we fell out of touch.

Joel's company, AllAccess.com, is located on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Around 40 miles from where I'm staying, I gave the trip an hour.

I headed up the 405, through the Sepulvada Pass and past the Getty Museum. You go under Sunset but over Wilshire, as Century City fills the view to the left. From the 405 I moved to the Santa Monica Freeway and finally whipped north onto the Pacific Coast Highway.

Malibu is like no other place. Much of what's here has changed since the 50s! It is among the most beautiful and most dangerous places in the world to live.

Inland, homes sit on canyon walls. Most likely, one of your neighbor's homes is below you! Homes are often lost to fire or slide, usually with minimal warning.

On the ocean side, where the homeowner owns to the high water mark, lots have been maximized. As homes are rebuilt, the ocean side often ends up mainly glass. Lots of homes have decks, extending the property closer to the water.

PCH passes by municipal beaches, open space, shopping and thousands of tiny, mainly rectangular, homes. Often they are plopped on lots with little room to spare.

Driving north on PCH it's hard to separate one house from the next. They are that close. With few garages or driveways, the curb lane is filled with parked cars. These teeny homes all are well over a million dollars apiece.

I passed Cross Creek and then Webb. This is the real glitz area of the Pacific Coast Highway. The Malibu Beach Colony is in this area where PCH moves farther from the shoreline.

Joel's office is in a small office building just off the highway. I parked on the street and walked in. It was chilly tonight.

He looks like he always did. His smile is there. His laugh is there too.

Back in the 70s, I was single. Joel was married. He's still married, just not to the same person. His wife Ria seemed very nice.

Joel and I left for dinner. It was a sushi place a little farther north on the highway.

We had lots to talk about. Both of us had been in radio. Joel was still connected with the business, but no longer on-air.

Both the sushi and conversation were good. I enjoyed hearing a little about his business. Joel realized the Internet was the right place to publish back in 1995. He was able to anticipate the market.

As is often the case with new media, his success has come at the expense of old line printed pages. His site can get the info out sooner and with less cost and hassle.

I'm often amazed by the number of my friends who have done well. Here's another one for the list.

I'll have to go back and spend a little more time next time.

I so enjoy LA. Of course, I don't deal with its weaknesses and frailties on a daily basis.

There were a few stops for me to make today. First, I headed into Old Hollywood to visit my secretive friend. He has an office at small, older, studio complex. These are really more akin to office parks with various independent vendors, usually selling their services to each other.

This is as good a time as any to say how useful my GPS has been. I programmed all the addresses I'd need when I was in Connecticut, then threw it in my bag. I have used it with confidence.

Yes, it tried to have me drive into construction barriers, but for the most part it's been my faithful friend. It is much more sophisticated than it seemed at first glance. Learning how it works was time well spent.

I left The Valley on the Hollywood Freeway, turned onto Santa Monica and then into a gated driveway. This was "The Lot," formerly Goldwyn Studios.

It's funny how a studio really does have a distinctive look, no matter what its size. I've been to a few, though briefly. When busy, you're walking through a movie factory. When they're not, and this one wasn't, they are lonely.

Make no mistake, this is an industry town. When you see all the movies and TV shows being promoted, you realize it's for more than the audience at home.

I'm sure these writers (photo - left) thought I was a company security man, taking photos of them. I passed a number of picket sites including one at NBC on W. Alameda in Burbank.

Burbank was where I headed next. I was going to see David Kulka. Dave... everyone else now seems to call him David... and I met in 1968. It's a very unusual story.

He and I were BCBDXers. That means we listened to AM radio, trying to find more distant and difficult catches. Dave and I belonged to the same radio club.

Oh - we lived an entire continent apart. He lived in Marin County, just north of San Francisco and I lived in Queens.

Somehow we began corresponding and decided to go to a radio convention together. He was 15. I was 18. We were both leaving home for the first time.

We met in Los Angeles. Within the first hour, jaywalking tickets for both of us outside the Roosevelt Hotel! It was my fault 100%.

This was an amazing adventure, going from LA to Riverside and finally the San Francisco Bay Area and Dave's house in Greenbrae. His family made me welcome in a way they probably never appreciated. That was huge.

He was a great guy, but 40 years ago the coast-to-coast distance was a lot more daunting. We fell out of touch.

The Internet changes everything. That how Dave and I got back together.

Dave's house is on a small street that looks like it should be quiet. But this is Burbank. There's a lot of business being conducted, even on a residential looking street like this. That includes Dave's company.

In a small building behind the house sits an electronic workshop. It is the product of extreme organization - bright, neat, eat-off-the-floor clean. There were four people working when I arrived. They were mainly fixing audio equipment.

At first glance, this is old equipment. The circuits were hand wired with discrete components decades ago. There are dials and meters. It's very analog. I worked with some of this equipment in radio 30+ years ago.

The bottom line is, this stuff outperforms much that's digital. Maybe more importantly, some of it is built in as integral pieces in pre-existing studios and needs to be replaced as-is.

We left the shop and headed to the house. That's when I saw the first turtle.

Dave's wife Cholada collects turtles. In a small pond out back is a colony... pack... gaggle... whatever you call a group of turtles. There were at least a dozen, in and out of the water. None of them were in much of a rush to go anywhere.

Oh, there's one more living thing in the yard. It's a tortoise. He's fourteen years old, nearly 100 pounds and lives in a heated doghouse. Pretty standard stuff really.

Dave and I sat and talked. Our lives have taken such different paths. There was so much to learn.

This was such a good idea. I'm glad I went. A case can be made that contacting people you haven't seen in decades is wrong. No! At least not in this case.

Our conversation reminded me of so many things we had done. The summer of '68 was intense. So much was going on in my world and the real world. You really should have been there.

The party has moved. Greetings from Orange County. I drove this afternoon from the San Fernando Valley down past Los Angeles, Anaheim and Irvine to Lake Forest.

I am learning to really lean on the GPS. What I've found is advance planning is a necessity. The downside is, the GPS demands attention. You can't look at the road when you're looking at the GPS.

Use the power wisely, Luke.

As soon as I-5 broke into Orange County, the entire feel of the landscape changed. It was as if a switch had been thrown. This is a land where nothing is old!

This town, Lake Forest, was virtual nothingness 30 years ago. Nothing here is ugly or ramshackle or unplanned.

My cousins live on a man made lake in community of single homes not far from where the El Toro Marine Air Station was. Looking out their back door reminds me more of Disney than a conventional neighborhood.

We to a quick stop for coffee at a gigantic mall. There is both a skating rink and Ferris wheel along with the stores. The mall is mainly uncovered with wide walkways

Everyone is stylishly dressed. Stef would love it here.

Last night was the first night of the trip I got a full night's sleep! I think it all must have caught up with me, because I was in bed before 11:00 and slept until 8:00.

On top of that, the house was totally quiet... eerily so. After the phone ringing and truck rumbling of the secret Valley location, this was a radical change.

I'm heading to my cousin's office to do some unofficial consulting (it's good to be the geek) and then going on a photo expedition to the beach with my Cousin Michael.

We're approaching mid-January but I'm on my cousin's deck, sitting outside typing this entry. Granted, I'm about to go back inside, but the point is, I could sit outside!

It's Orange County in Southern California. People were wearing jackets last night, but that's about as cold as it ever gets - ever.

I went to work with my cousins today. I sat in on a meeting about their business and an Internet site. I butted in a few times. I hope I did more good than harm. One never can tell.

Michael and I bugged out after the meeting and headed west. Before long, we were in Newport Beach.

Before this trip to California, I knew I wanted to photograph surfers. It's not that I'm into surfing or surfer boys, but surfing makes for good photography. My main 'surfing' lens is also my lowest quality lens, but with strong light it gets the job done.

Today's photo problem was the light was behind the surfers. It shows in the pictures. If I had unlimited time and access, I'd come out in the morning when the Sun would be over my shoulder.

Newport Beach was attractive for a number of reasons. Like much of Southern California, there's a thriving business district right up to the beach. There are cafes and shops and foot traffic. There's also plenty of parking... or at least enough for a January afternoon.

Newport Beach also has a long pier. That allowed me to go out as far as the surfers, though still far away.

I took nearly 300 photos today. That's crazy. In the film days, this never would have happened. Ansel Adams only had eight or ten plates when he hiked into the back country.

Digital photography is a blessing and a curse. The curse is, it encourages you to be slutty with your camera, shooting anything that moves (Slutty is the right word, isn't it?).

We spent a couple of hours at the beach. The day was beautiful and mild. The waves were running five and six feet.

I called Helaine to tell her to throw a few things in a bag and join me. Whatever she couldn't take, we'd get here.

There's a lot to be said for the warm California sun. I'm still going back home tomorrow.

Will try and put in an entry later today, but this will be a full day of traveling, so who knows.

My plane leaves LAX this afternoon at 12:40 PST. We stop in Chicago (MDW) before landing in Hartford. Helaine says the flight has been early the last two days. I'd like them to go three for three.

This has been a wonderful trip. I've done pretty much everything I set out to do... and then some. Nothing was a disappointment.

When I get home, I'll go through the photos to pick out some 'orphan' shots that were cool, but didn't fit in any blog entry.

The first time I ever told Helaine I missed her was back in our dating days. I was on-assignment in Germany doing PM Magazine stories. It was the early 80s. I called her from a pay phone in Frankfurt.

I miss her even more now... and now I'm totally sure why.

Everything went smoothly. I wasn't totally sure that would be the case.

As usual, I misplaced something (my Bluetooth earpiece) and had to search before I could leave. Even so, I waved to Cousin Michael (Melissa and Max having long since left) and headed out around my planned 9:00 AM departure.

The GPS was programmed with the out-of-the-way address for Deluxe Car Rental. This was an address that hadn't been added before the trip and it took a minute or two to enter. Once again, it was like having a co-pilot.

I headed up the San Diego Freeway passing Irvine and Anaheim. A lot of people in those brand new, shiny office towers must be sweating it out today. This is ground zero for the subprime mortgage meltdown. Countrywide, in Calabassas went down earlier today.

Around 30 miles from LAX I hit my first traffic jam. From 65 mph, I slowed to a crawl. I then continued to crawl for the next 45 minutes! Suddenly the traffic was gone. I was moving again at the speed limit.

What was causing the tie-up? Nothing I could see. This is typical of Southern California.

At the airport, a medium sized crowd was waiting to check in and go through security. The Southwest agent who gave me my baggage claim check couldn't have been nicer. All smiles!

Then I climbed a flight of stairs to the TSA's special portion of hell. With all my electronics, I used three bins. I probably could have used four.

As I was standing in line, listening to Luna on the other side of the magnetometer yelling at us to remember our boarding passes, I realized what this whole process reminded me of: prison!

Thanks to MSNBC's "Extended Stay" prison docs, I realize security at the airport is similar to what prisoners go through when they're brought into the slammer. Who knew a documentary could be so practically useful?

I found some food to bring on the plane and Starbucks has brewed my first cup of coffee. Now I'm sitting in the waiting area, plugged into half the freely available power outlets I can find. My cell phone (connecting at old school slow speed and not 3G) is my link to the web.

Helaine says it's quite foggy in Connecticut. Hopefully that will be gone by the time I land in Connecticut late tonight.

I'm writing this while flying over Colorado. We're at 37,000 feet.

On my way west, we were averaging a bit under 400 mph. With the wind at our back, Flight 265 is doing 570 mph! The pilot says we'll be 20 minutes early to Midway.

Back at LAX, the gate agent called "boarding in five minutes." I shut down my laptop and began to pack. My laptop had other ideas.

Without warning I was installing update 1 of 6!

Please, don't turn me off until I'm done, my laptop screamed in big letters from a font I'd not chosen. No one asked me. If they had, I'd have said "later."

I semi-closed the lid, slipping my finger between the keyboard and screen to keep any switches from killing the power. That's the way I boarded the plane. Helaine and Stef, reading this, are glad they weren't around. Another embarrassing Geeky Greg moment.

This flight is around half full. My rowmate, A middle-aged woman, is dozing in the aisle seat. I'm at the window. I chose the right side to see any prettiness associated with the sunset, which should soon be happening.

Our country is beautiful from this altitude. Yes, the sophisticated traveler takes the aisle seat to have easier bathroom access. He's too cool to look out the window. I need the scenery.

We took off from Los Angeles and headed out to sea. After a few miles we turned north, paralleling the Pacific Coast toward Malibu. There was fog this morning. It covered the ocean near the shoreline, penetrating inland to the first foothills. Things must be slow on the PCH today.

Inland, a layer of haze made the ground a little less distinct. I could also use the "S" word - smog. There's some of that too.

Already above 10,000 feet, we made a sweeping left 270 degree turn, finally heading east. A few minutes later I started seeing snow capped mountains. They weren't far from LA.

Nearly all that's between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is desolate. Sometimes you'll pick out a road etched into the vast expanse of dirt. Cryptically, every once in a while a geometric pattern shows up. Are they housing tracts, surveyed but never developed? Way out in the desert, it's easy to wonder why this land would be considered for anything.

I saw Lake Mead, but not nearby Las Vegas. The Grand Canyon appeared out my window, just a bit south of us. A few minutes later, I saw the bane of my last trip west. It was the gigantic Navajo Power Plant near Page, AZ. Close by was the Glenn Canyon Dam. Have I really been here enough times to start picking out landmarks from above?

I shot a few photos of Monument Valley, looking south from the Utah side. The plane wouldn't be there long. We were heading toward Colorado.

There is plenty of snow out here. Originally, I thought what I saw was a light patch. Then I realized the trees and bushes poking through the snow was why it never looked solidly white. The slopes of the Western Rockies looked like chocolate cake with powdered sugar sprinkled on.

Below me now, the mountains have disappeared. It's Kansas. It's flat. As far as the eye can see, there are rectangular fields. Sometimes the fields are interrupted by perfectly round patches where an irrigation system rotating on wheels or tracks has made its presence known.

I'm not sure where the water comes from. So far, the vast majority of river beds I've seen have been dry.

I'm tired. I'll be exhausted by Hartford. I'll need the rest of the weekend to recuperate from my vacation.

Blogger's addendum: When first published, this entry was full of typos and poorly formed English. That's what happens when you write against time, trying to finish before the battery gives out. Writing offline without a spell checker didn't help either! It's mostly fixed now

Most people on my flight were only going as far as Chicago. For around 20 minutes our plane had a handful of passengers. As I looked at some weather data, the pilot and three flight attendants came by to take a look.

The pilot's briefing, already in hand, was fine. I didn't check to see if my forecast agreed.

I like John Mayer. I like how he sings. I like how he plays guitar (amazing). I like the songs he writes and performs. That he was a viewer growing up only adds to my fun.

We met and spoke a few years ago. I immediately liked him as a person. He's really smart... really thoughtful.

Earlier today Helaine pointed to an entry in John's blog. Whatever I thought before, I feel more now!

There's no obligation for a rock or sports or movie star (or even a weatherman) to be a role model. By the time you're old enough to be one, you have no choice. You were either brought up that way or you weren't.

I am watching the end of the Seattle - Green Bay game from Lambeau Field. Helaine wanted Seattle to win. Sorry.

The game is being played in a major snowstorm. I'm glad I'm not there. On the other hand, it's so much fun to watch.

Weather as a factor is one reason football is such an amazing game. Why would they ever allow it to be played inside?

I just read an article about the NASA space probe, currently approaching Mercury.

Hey, I'm with you. Other than knowing it's a planet, I'm pretty stumped about Mercury.

As the official geofffox.com meteorologist, I should add, temperatures on Mercury range from -292° F to 806° F!¹

Mercury is not a hospitable place. And, it's so close to the Sun, temperature would be the least of your problems. There's enough solar radiation to turn you into a Hot Pocket.

Back to the probe.

It's quite an ambitious undertaking, sending this 2,400 pound, car sized lab out into space. MESSENGER (that's it's name) was launched in 2004. It will map and otherwise probe Mercury.

This would be really cool, if it was free. Unfortunately, Reuters says MESSENGER will cost around a half billion dollars!

Oh sure, you think that's a lot of money. You're not NASA.

I'm a science guy. I love discovery. This is ridiculous. The $446,000,000 could be better spent where the outcome might conceivably lead to a practical application.

NASA seems to do this all the time.

¹ - When temperatures are converted from one scale to another (Celsius to Fahrenheit), round numbers often become exact numbers. I believe the stated upper and lower limits of Mercurian temperature are estimates. Your mileage may vary.

I had a lot (well, for this blog a lot) of nice comments about my SoCal 2008 blog entries. Because of that, I've created a 'chronologically correct' page to read all the entries from start to finish.

SoCal 2008 - Enjoy the trip. I did.

If you watch a lot of football, and we do, you see a lot of the same ads repeated... and repeated again.

Helaine likes the animals singing along with Andy Kim's Rock Me Gently. I like the NFL merchandise spot where players deliver 'swag,' like Adam Vinatieri kicking a grill long distance to a fan.

We like anything with Peyton Manning, especially his "pep talks." Helaine just rewound the DVR to see MasterCard was the sponsor. Oops. I'd work on that brand recognition boys.

We're disappointed by Southwest Airlines' new business oriented spots. We like Southwest as they were, people oriented.

Mostly, I'm bugged by the Coors Light ads. You know the ones. Twentysomething guys infiltrate NFL post-game press conferences. Using actual coaches responses, the script inserts new questions.

This bit was pretty funny when Steve Allen did it in the early 60s¹. It is not funny now.

Good writing is incredibly valuable. These are terribly written. There is no subtlety, no nuance. The match between question and answer is often tenuous. The whole thing is just forced.

There is one unforeseen problem with my distaste for these spots. I can't turn away! Helaine was first to notice, as soon as the commercial came on TV I'd snap my neck in that direction.

Maybe I shouldn't let Coors know.

¹ - I remember Allen using this on his Sunday evening show. He would play back studio supplied, filmed interviews with movie stars on location. First he'd do the interview straight. Then he'd do it again, with new questions.

Steve Allen invented most of what's on TV and everything that's on late night.

The Fox Family subscribes to Netflix, the DVD rental service. We are on their "Wow you're cheap" plan, getting a single DVD at a time. It's perfectly suited for our needs.

Last night, I read about their new program where you can watch movies or TV shows on-line at no additional cost. I had to try.

I went on the Netflix site, logged in, got scolded because I was using Firefox and switched to Internet Explorer.

Please, let me choose my broswer Netflix. Don't force me to use a Microsoft browser on a Microsoft platform.

I downloaded the player and then waited as it gauged my Internet connection speed. Within a few seconds, my movie was playing.

The quality was excellent - somewhere between VHS and a DVD. Playing back on my laptop, which was on my lap, and filling the full screen, it was as good as watching a large screen TV across the room.

Playback was flawless. I'm very impressed technically. I'm not impressed with the program selection.

I'm a documentary fan, so I chose "Helvetica," a documentary about the Helvetica typeface. It was actually a movie I wanted to see.

Yeah, I hear you. It doesn't seem like there should be enough going on with Helvetica to fill an entire movie. You're right! The movie was a disappointment. That's not Netflix's fault.

Unfortunately, the rest of their catalogue was pretty thin, to be kind. The movies were mainly third rate. The documentaries were mainly obscure. None of the TV shows interested me.

I'm sure the problem is with rights acquisition. It's always tough to convince content owners to embrace a new technology, especially when it hasn't yet been established whether users of that technology can rip-off your product.

If and when Netflix improves their selection, this will be a powerful business. My guess is, they already see the writing on the wall for their current business.

This entry has been edited because, it has been pointed out, most of the state was properly forecast by me... just not the city where the station sits.

I went to work Sunday night, handling the forecasting details on-the-air. A storm was brewing.

Though my call was significantly below the Weather Service and was the lowest snow prediction in the state (as usual), the forecast busted on parts of the shoreline¹. Thankfully, my low number call was good for most of inland Connecticut.

After two hours of sleet and mixed precipitation, New Haven had six straight hours of snow at the airport... but no accumulation. The ground was too warm or too wet and the snow was already close to melting as it approached the surface.

Schools were closed. People cancelled appointments. There had been snow in the sky, but without impact.

Here's part of an email I received:

My first words at 11:00 PM were, "My wife asked me not to scare everyone," which is what I tried to do. Of course with the Weather Service's "HEAVY SNOW WARNING" in effect, it was tough to avoid.

Yesterday, I went on the air and apologized. I don't know if it will make the viewers feel better. It helps me.

Bill Evans from WABC was quoted in the NY Daily News today:

Exactly, though Bill's bust was orders of magnitude bigger than mine.

It's not just the forecast was wrong. It's that it was wrong in spite of doing everything we could do to get it right. Going back, I probably would have made the same forecast. In fact, a meteorologist friend was giving me reasons to raise the numbers just before air time (I resisted).

This is the most frustrating part of what is normally a fun job. I want people to trust me. No one wants to drop the ball. No one wants to get those emails. No one wants to be quoted in an article, as Bill Evans was, titled "Now that was a flaky weather forecast"

¹ - The rest of the state's forecast - covering 90% of the landmass and around 75% of the populace, was accurate.

Are you into politics much? We ran a poll on-the-air Tuesday and only 3% of our voting viewers said they were obsessed with politics. If I'm not in the 3%, I'm close.

Maybe it's not so much I'm into politics as I watch a lot of news, especially the cable news networks. I see them when I get up and again when I come home.

Tonight I turned on MSNBC and came upon a post-Michigan primary roundtable hosted by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. They were chatting it up with NBC's political director and Andrea Mitchell.

At one point they all began to salivate. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they were excited. Leaving Michigan, no candidate has gotten an insurmountable lead. It's possible one, or both, of the political conventions will be contested.

I'm not sure that's happened in my lifetime, a convention convened without a candidate already anointed.

For the last few decades, political conventions have been stage managed and homogenized. In an open convention, political warfare would take place. It might be riveting. Think of it as a reality show.

It also might allow a fatally wounded (in the electable sense) candidate to be chosen.

This coming presidential election promises to be one of the most interesting in a very long time. The current national political tilting away from Republicans could be short lived if Democrats fight too much this summer Denver.

I read a lot of tech news online. It's pretty tough to find a technical subject I don't want to delve into.

Finding these articles can be tough, so like many people I harness the power of the Internet by going to 'aggregator' sites. These sites don't usually produce content on their own. Instead, they link to other sites where the articles are kept.

Originally, my favorite was Slashdot. There were times I'd go there a half dozen or more times a day.

The way Slashdot works is, people suggest stories, editors check them out, they get posted. When first discovered, I liked Slashdot a lot.

Over time it got too slow for me. I'm not talking about how long it took for a page to load. It wasn't pushing enough links my way.

Next came Digg, a San Francisco start-up headed by Kevin Rose, formerly of TechTV. This site also takes suggestions from readers. Instead of having editors pass judgement, Digg encourages their readers to digg a story (or not). Get a lot of digs and your story hits the front page and gets read by lots of people.

The more I liked Digg, the less time I spent on Slashdot.

Then came Reddit. Like Digg, this site's content is juried by its readers. What I liked was, more stories made the front page and the lineup was volatile from hour-to-hour. There was lots for me to read.

The more I liked Reddit, the less time I spent on Digg. Even worse (for them), Slashdot was falling off my radar.

Now there's a problem. A small community, like Digg or Reddit, can easily be overrun by single issue zealots. For Reddit especially, that means supporters of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Stop - I'm not criticizing either of these candidates. What I'm concerned about is how their supporters have hijacked these sites to get their points across. I want to read tech, not hear about who feels short changed and why.

Having no editor should lead to a democratically juried site. Instead, it's leading to anarchy.

At the moment, I still read all three. Their order of importance in my life is currently Digg, Reddit, Slashdot... but Reddit is getting very close to dropping to number three.

I'm not totally sure if I wrote about this before (and without Google to check, I'm powerless to see), but I've been watching Celebrity Rehab on VH1.

Sure, I can say one of the executive producers was best man at my wedding, but that would be a weaselly way of justifying it. I started watching and now I'm hooked on a show about dependence.

Stef originally told me about it and asked me to watch the first episode so we could watch more while she was home (she is home now). Tonight we watched episode two.

The premise is, a bunch of Z-list celebs with substance problems do rehab together under the supervision of America's favorite physician, Dr. Drew Pinsky - the Dr. Joyce Brothers of the 21st Century.

To quote a friend, "It is like a car wreck. You can't look away." That's a perfect characterization.

Stef says many of the participants have been on MTV/VH1 reality shows before.

There's Brigitte Nielsen, looking very tired, very old, very spent. She has the largest hands I've ever seen on a woman. Mary Carey, porn star/alcoholic is skankier than I would have imagined. Seth "Shifty" Binzer is a tattoo with legs... and a Mohawk.

There are more, including a Baldwin brother (I don't remember which one), but all the characters fade into the woodwork when compared to Jeff Conaway. He was young and cute on Taxi 25 years ago. That's his most recent work I remember, though IMDB says there were 50 episodes of Babylon 5.

Even that was off-the-air ten years ago. The last ten years has been less stellar.

I have seen people drunk and stoned. When I was younger, I helped friends down from bad trips (does that language date me? Probably). I've never seen anyone close to being as fcuked up as he is. This is not a part time gig. He seemed strung out 24/7.

His tremors and suffering while in detox were disturbing for me to watch. Even seeing him being pushed around, slumped over in a wheelchair was terribly sad. He was obviously suffering... obviously in his own personal hell.

Stef and I watched the show. When it was over, we talked about it.

She looks at TV like this differently than I do. She is a veteran of TV reality. For her, the shock value is gone. Not for me.

I was deeply touched. She was more cavalier.

She didn't feel sorry for these people because these were choices they made for themselves. More importantly, she didn't think they were in rehab as much as they were participating in career enhancement!

Wow, that's an indictment.

I hadn't thought of that, but she's most likely right. It puts a despicable edge on the whole thing. Is there nothing in life that's not commerce?

Her point was, would any of them be in rehab if there wasn't a camera and MTV?

These are sad people. I'm guessing the show is a hit.

I have been complaining for a few weeks now about the disappearance of my website from Google. It was a problem that only appeared when a page was clicked directly from a search engine, not entered by hand. Instead of my blog, spammy pages of links appeared, looking like they were coming from geofffox.com.

I looked and looked and couldn't find the content ascribed to me. Nothing.

A few times, I asked for assistance from the Google Groups Webmaster Help Forum. They didn't solve my problem, but they did help me figure out where to look.

Tonight, I think the mystery is solved.

On November 23 at 9:04 PM and again on Dec 10 at 10:54 AM someone gained access to my server.

Whether it was a hack or exploit doesn't matter. My host would like me to think it was an exploit - meaning it was through my doing. Whatever.

New .htaccess files were inserted in every directory on my web site. These files, which begin with a dot to make them normally invisible, control how certain web requests are handled.

These .htaccess files looked for 404 errors. That's what you get when a page is missing.

This explains why I couldn't find the spammy files on my website. This exploit only worked if a file name that DOESN'T exist was entered. Only then were they composed on-the-fly.

On top of that, a second file specified the trick should only worked if the request was coming from a search engine. No wonder I couldn't make these spammy pages appear.

As awful as it is, I have respect for the programmer who accomplished this. It's a very sneaky trick, and it sat on my site for a few months before I discovered it.

The .htaccess file called a php file, which is similar to the one this web page is served to your browser on. One set of these php files had an all numeric filename (002314.php, etc) and was 617 bytes long. The other used simple computer-ish names (server.php, command.php, etc.) and was 1260 bytes.

Every web attack has a weak spot and I had found it. Having the files all be the same length, and placed on my machine on specific days, made it easier to scout them out.

To make matters worse, permissions were changed all over the place. These are the rules that decide who can or cannot read, write or execute files. Lots of stuff was turned 777, meaning anyone could do anything!

The person who attacked my machine had opened all the doors. Now anyone could gain access and do anything.

Good grief!

I called on my friend Bob Hart to help.

Bob claims not be be a computer expert. Right.

His logical, organized, well exercised mind knew all the commands and tricks to remove thousands of files and reset an equal number of pointers without hurting anything. He dictated long strings of characters for me to type in... and they worked!

Is there an Emmy for computer assistance? I nominate Bob.

So, now you know the good news. The bad news is, it can happen again because I don't know how the miscreants got in. I'm working on that next.

Hopefully, in deleting files, rewriting permissions and changing passwords, I will slow them down until a solution is found.

Once again, I'm begging Google to let me back into their good graces. Traffic on the blog is down about 75%. Geofffox.com has slid off the face of the Earth!

In my efforts to win back Google, I've been making sure everything on this site is as it should be. Though I've done these before, I've just produced a fresh sitemap.

If you've never seen a sitemap. Here's mine (a very large file, so don't click if you're on dial-up or slow DSL). It's made for machines, not people. It contains a link to every page on geofffox.com

It's a 'shortcut' I produced for Google, so they can crawl my entire site more efficiently. It was created by GSiteCrawler, which does what Google does - crawl by following the links between pages. By now, some of my links are 4 or 5 clicks beneath the home page and would never be found.

Some of the pages on this site are, in essence, place holders. For instance, forms to enter comments on old postings... though I turn off commenting after five days. Most pages do have some content. Often a single posting is found in daily, monthly, category and individual entries.

This site has 28,717 pages at the moment! I'm still off Google.

I went to NYC tonight to see "The Farnsworth Invention." It is the story of David Sarnoff (Hank Azaria) and Philo Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson). Farnsworth invented television but was robbed of his patent.

I drove to the city by myself. Helaine and Stef were driving east, seeing Joy Behar at Foxwoods.

I was going to meet up with the secretive son of my secretive West Coast friend. He, along with a friend of his from school, had flown east for a few days. My secret friend's family has a secret small apartment on the Upper East Side, which is where the son and his friend are staying.

By the time I reached Manhattan, they were out. I headed down to Greenwich Village to pick them up.

I'd like to think I know New York City very well, but the lower end of Manhattan where streets no longer run parallel and have names instead of numbers, is another story. It's very confusing and I left the GPS home.

We drove down St. Marks Place and headed north to 8th Avenue and 45th Street. The Music Box Theater is on 45th between Broadway and 8th.

Lots of people avoid driving in Manhattan. I embrace it. It's actually a lot of fun, if you go in with the right mindset. Just remember, the goal is to fill any open car-sized space with a car. To the victor goes the spoils!

Parking is simple. You enter Manhattan knowing you cannot park on the street and that off-street parking is ridiculously expensive. With tax, parking was $44.

At least we got to watch the cars ride the car elevator, which not only goes up and down, but also goes sideways!

The Music Box Theater is small as Broadway houses go. We sat upstairs, about halfway through the balcony The site lines were excellent, as was the sound. There's no doubt we were looking down on the actors, which isn't a plus.

The Farnsworth Invention portrays both Philo Farnsworth and David Sarnoff as themselves and on-stage narrators. Sometimes, as narrator, the actors break the fourth wall, acknowledging and speaking to the audience or even clarifying a point by talking directly to the other character, who remains in character!

To pull this off, you need superb timing. That's how it's written and how it was performed!

As the first act progressed, I grew to like the visionary character that was David Sarnoff... but was I? Was it really Sarnoff or the w