Tag: White House

That Email Thing

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I’ve been writing about the use of Republican National Committee mail servers by White House staffers (here, here and here).

When I began writing, I just knew it was wrong in the abstract. I had no idea if these non-governmentally served emails would pose a problem or enter into any partisan battle.

I guess they do. Tonight, Jon Stewart spent the first 7:00 of his show on the subject. After the break, he came back and did some more.

The original reason for me to write about these email accounts was to question if and how long it would take for a big story to develop. My first entry on this was March 28, 2007.

Not all breaking news explodes. Some just simmers its way into the public consciousness.

Is It Soup Yet?

For the past few weeks I have been following (here and here), with great interest, stories about White House staffers using non-governmental email accounts while discussing government business on ‘company’ time. Obviously, that makes them somewhat more difficult to find (especially if people searching didn’t know there was any off site email to begin with).

It seemed like such an explosive story… but there’s hardly any buzz.

The LA Times seems to be carrying the water on this. Wednesday evening they added:

The White House said today that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.

I hate it when email gets lost. It’s so convenient tragic.

This story has been bubbling for a while – weeks now. Will it graduate to the big leagues? Who knows. It’s funny how some stories ooze out as opposed to break out.

It still looks like a big story to me.

The White House Email Story

On March 28, I wrote about White House staffers using ‘off the books’ email addresses from work. I thought the story would gain traction. It has not… until now.

The LA Times has picked up the story with a fairly long piece in this morning’s paper.

It’s funny how some news explodes while other stories slowly gain steam until they reach critical mass. It’s as if the editors are looking for cover by making sure others approve of their story choices.

No, it’s not as if. It just is! Everyone needs some assurance their choices are correct. Editors are no exception.

Quick Prediction

There is a story bubbling beneath the surface on the Internet that I expect will break through as a very large story over the next few days. It will be a partisan story and I’d like to not get involved in that part here on the blog.

Here’s the setup. Whenever you send mail, it goes through a server. Usually that’s an SMTP or Simple Mail Transport Protocol server.

Many companies and government agencies keep copies of all the messages flowing through their SMTP servers. That’s how lawyers can later reconstruct paper trails during the discovery phase of lawsuits.

So far, so good.

Let’s say you wanted to send mail but not have it tracked. You could route it through a different SMTP server. In fact, mail from (as an example) geofffox.com and my other domains are usually sent through other servers as a matter of convenience. When I send mail for work from home, it also goes through these generic servers.

If my boss was tracking my work emails (which he is probably entitled to do) he wouldn’t have a copy of those.

It’s probably no big deal if I send mail that way. It is a big deal if government employees… White House employees… use other servers and therefore keep their emails out of the normal archive process.

From TrustMe.com:

…documents made public in the course of the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal reveal that key Administration figures used such email addresses ending with “gwb43.com.”

As Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) notes:

CREW has learned that to fulfill its statutory obligations under the PRA, the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PRA.

I don’t know who or what side of the political spectrum CREW or TrustMe.com represent. I assume neither has a conservative bent.

Sometimes these things take a few days gain traction. As it is, TrustMe.com posted this three days ago. Or, maybe this is just some little thing blown way out of proportion and as a geek I’ve latched on to its ‘evil tech’ implications.

I’d like to think you heard it here first. Let me know, in the comments section, if this is already ‘a story’ and I just missed it?

Abe Lincoln – Wired

I often listen to NPR while taking my shower. Today, on Talk of the Nation, Neil Conan spoke with Tom Wheeler who had an op-ed piece in this morning’s Washington Post and who also wrote the book, “Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.”

(I)nsight into our greatest president is possible through the nearly 1,000 messages he sent via the new telegraph technology. These 19th-century versions of e-mail messages preserve his spur-of-the-moment thoughts and are the closest we will come to a transcript of a conversation with Abraham Lincoln. In their unstructured form, Lincoln comes alive.

Are you kidding? Lincoln was our first president to communicate electronically. I guess he really was the Great Communicator.

This made Abraham Lincoln our first president with instant access to information. Imagine how that benefited him as he formulated our political and military strategy during the Civil War?

You owe it to yourself to read the op-ed column.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Abe.

Continue reading “Abe Lincoln – Wired”

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

Wow – I like this show a lot.

Here’s the funny part. I never would have seen it had it not been for Helaine, who set the DVR for herself. Last week it was just there. This week too.

I’ve told a few friends this is West Wing II. Maybe that’s unfair, because it’s obviously not a show about the White House, but a TV show.

The sensibilities are the same as West Wing. The edgy look, underlit and high contrast, matches West Wing too. Maybe that’s because, though the show is performed by an ensemble cast, all their words come from Aaron Sorkin, also responsible for West Wing.

You won’t immediately know the name of every significant cast member, but the faces are familiar. The biggest names are Bradley Whitford (West Wing), Matthew Perry (Friends) and Amanda Peet (gorgeous).

The premise is simple: a behind the scenes look at a weekly sketch comedy show, not unlike Saturday Night Live&#185. There’s conflict with the network, the public, the cast. Conflict is good for television.

It’s possible I like this show for different reasons than you. I think Studio 60 is showing us a part of television that’s in the midst of disappearing – high budget, mass market, common experience TV.

I like that kind of television. I will mourn its loss.

Can Studio 60, the show within the show, exist when broadcasting has given way to niche-casting? Can a show that hires a symphonic orchestra and chorus get renewed as budgets tighten and audiences shrink?

Even Saturday Night Live, the last of its kind, has been forced to cut back this season. At least four of last year’s cast members were dropped to save cash.

I love television. I love these complex pieces of programming that come together, touched by dozens of hands. There’s an excitement when the control room sits a dozen or more tightly wound souls, concentrating deeply enough to discern each of the 29.97 individual frames that flash by every second.

It’s what I grew up watching. It was attractive enough to sucker me as an employee.

TV is becoming more of an individual effort. TV programs are more narrowly aimed. In some cases TV programs have eliminated he TV station entirely. They are laser like as they look for their specific, targeted audience.

I grew up in an era when each network was a fire hose and everyone got wet!

There are no more Ed Sullivans, no more Walter Cronkites, no more Studio 60s. It’s quite possible there will be no more Geoff Fox’s – air talent who amass as many individual impressions as I have over twenty two years in one market.

This crunch over viewers and costs has been enabled by new technologies. which replace people. I suppose it’s inevitable, even if it’s a shame.

A single TV show as a universal experience will never happen again. That’s why we need to celebrate the glory that is Studio 60, today.

&#185 – Though there are parallels, this can’t be Saturday Night Live. In fact, Studio 60 acknowledges SNL as another network show.

Global Warming And Me

It is increasingly difficult to be a skeptic when it comes to global warming. That’s not because I am doubting my scientific beliefs, but because it’s more socially acceptable to be fearful of Vanuatu being inundated or Greenland turning green.

I was listening to the Faith Middleton Show today on Connecticut Public Radio. Global Warming was the topic and Dean James Gustave Speth of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies was a guest.

Dean Speth is a heavy hitter on the subject. I could copy his CV here, but I am so overshadowed by his achievements, I’d rather not risk the comparison.

Still, after hearing Dean Speth, I felt I had to send him this note:

Dear Dean Speth,

I listened to your broadcast today with great interest. Though I am skeptical of the harshest global warming pronouncements, I enjoy listening to experts, such as yourself and learning when I can.

Trust me when I say, it would be much easier to be a believer. It is a much more socially acceptable viewpoint to have.

Nearly ten years ago, I was invited to the White House to listen to then Vice President Gore speak on the subject. In spite of all I’d been told, he was a masterful speaker, making scientific points to an audience of meteorologists without benefit of notes or a written script. And yet, I wasn’t won over.

Though it’s purely anecdotal, most of the other meteorologists I spoke with then and speak with now, feel as I do. As operational forecasters, we use computer modeling on a daily basis and understand how weak it can be. We know we can’t always forecast tomorrow’s temperature accurately, much less next month’s or a few decades from now. Heck, we can’t always accurately initialize the models! It’s not for lack of trying.

Long range global modeling makes too many assumptions and takes too many shortcuts to keep me comfortable.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric concerning global warming has gotten so out of hand that lay people are starting to say they notice it! Summers are warmer. Storms are stronger. Winters have less snow.

Last summer and fall, our wild tropical season was attributed by many (Trenberth and Shea as an example) to global warming. Has it abated this year?

If global warming is science and not politics, why is every consequence I hear a negative one? Are there no positives, even in the most dire global warming scenarios? Won’t I save on heating oil? How about road wear and plowing in North America, Europe and parts of Asia? Won’t Siberia and the Great Plains of the US and Canada have a longer growing season?

And if Kyoto is the answer, why are the exclusions that exist in that treaty, and other exclusions which some countries have unilaterally declared (Germany’s removal of coal restrictions) for themselves, never mentioned? You made no mention of these today when declaring all the industrial countries had ratified Kyoto. If I were India or China, I’d ratify a million Kyotos which weaken my competitors and don’t touch me.

Again, it would be so much easier to believe. I am not a political extremist. I believe a clean and pure environment is good in the abstract. I am just scared we’re being sold an expensive bill of goods based on shaky science and strong emotional appeal.

Thank you for taking the time to read my email.

Sincerely,

Geoff Fox

Hamden, CT

I don’t expect Dean Speth to read my email and have a Eureka moment. I didn’t expect to be won over when I listened either.

Still, one of us has to be wrong. If it’s me, I’d rather know now than later. I hope he feels the same way.

Tough To Be A Global Warming Skeptic

I have mentioned this before. I am skeptical of many of the worst gloom and doom projections of those banging the drum for global warming.

Though I haven’t seen his movie, I have seen Al Gore speak on global warming. It was at the White House and he was one of the best scientific speakers I’ve ever heard. I still wasn’t convinced.

This weekend I thought about this a little. Why am I fighting the tide? After all, like you I’ve read all the pronouncements that science has made up its collective mind. Done deal. Fait accompli.

And, from a political point of view, if you’re a global warming skeptic, aren’t you on the side of oil companies and belching smoke stacks? Isn’t it better to side with the Prius people?

Like I said, I pondered this weekend. Then, this morning, I saw a link to an article in the Denver Press.

From Dr. Bill Gray at Colorado State University:

“They’ve been brainwashing us for 20 years,” Gray says. “Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we’ll look back and see what a hoax this was.”

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

“Climatologists,” reads the piece, “are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. … The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

the article continued with more quotes and another Colorado expert, but this was the part that struck me the hardest. Again, Dr. Gray:

“Plenty of young people tell me they don’t believe it,” he says. “But they won’t touch this at all. If they’re smart, they’ll say: ‘I’m going to let this run its course.’ It’s a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way.”

I understand exactly what he’s getting at. That’s why I was pondering my position this weekend. I was hearing the crowd instead seeing the science.

I know what I believe, but no one wants to be looked at with scorn.

Steve Colbert At The White House

I just hit pause on a video I’ve been watching. I recorded C-SPAN tonight! Has anyone ever done that before?

If my daughter is reading this, she’s laughing herself silly.

Tonight was the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. I’m sad to say I’ve watched these in the past. It really makes for uncomfortable TV.

Back in 1994, I squirmed as I watched Don Imus be inapropriate and unfunny. Tonight, it’s Steven Colbert’s turn. See, I’m non-partisan.

The good thing about recording this dinner (as opposed to watching it live) is, there’s so much to fast forward through. I did stop, watch, and enjoy, CBS correspondent Bill Plante’s tour of the soon to be dismantled White House Press Room. I had heard for years it was a dingy, cramped, slum. It is.

Back to Colbert.

The problem here is, comedians come here to take the president apart… the most powerful man in the world… a guy with a very serious job…and he’s sitting a few feet from you.

I just don’t think it’s possible to do.

I’m only a TV weatherman, and I won’t go into a carnival’s dunk tank. This is the presidential equivalent.

As Steve began to go through his speech, hitting what he expected to be laugh lines, there was silence. He went through a long dissertation, making fun of the president’s poll numbers and I winced. He talked about the president on an aircraft carrier and in a recently flooded city square to zero response.

I feel bad for the president. Not because he isn’t responsible for what Colbert is talking about. It’s because in this venue, with the president unable to respond, it’s an unfair attack. It was true with Imus and Clinton and it is true with Colbert and Bush.

In fact that’s probably why I’ve paused the video to write this. Frozen on the right side of my computer screen is Colbert at the podium, his finger poking the air for effect. I don’t want to hear any more because I’m embarrassed to watch any more.

Maybe it’s time for this long standing tradition to stop.

The Climatic Skeptic In Me

Wednesday morning on CNN, Miles O’Brien and meteorologist Chad Myers, chatting.

O’BRIEN: Let’s check the forecast now. Chad Myers, you’re a little bit of a skeptic on global warming, I know.

MYERS: No, I absolutely believe that CO2 is heating the atmosphere, but also, some of these thermometers that we’ve had out in the plains for years or in the cities for years are getting surrounded by more buildings. So you get more buildings, you get more asphalt, you get more heat, so the thermometers are different. The whole — metro areas are getting warmer, where, in fact, maybe you just see — if you put that same thermometer out in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska, maybe it wouldn’t be too much different. We’ll have to see. You know, I know that this is happening; it’s just a matter of how much it is, that’s all.

O’BRIEN: So, there’s a little bit of global paving, too, along with global warming?

MYERS: Well, there you go.

Myers comments got a quick rebuke on Mediamatters.org and spilled over to a weathercaster bulletin board I often read.

Like Chad Myers, I’m “a little bit of a skeptic on global warming.”

Here’s what I posted in the conversation after someone said, “This is a scientific issue, not a political one.”:

That one sentence cuts to the core of this controversy. Of course it’s a political issue. If it were a scientific discussion, we’d be hearing positive as well as negative implications to warming. Even in dire global warming scenarios, there are many beneficiaries.

If this were a scientific discussion, not political, graphs of CO2 levels would start at 0 ppm, not 310 ppm&#185. Starting high on the graph makes the increase look much more severe.

It seems, based on my limited contact with colleagues, that operational forecasters tend to be skeptics on the long range implications of additional CO2 in the atmosphere. I first noticed it at the “Million Meteorologist March,” when many of us were invited to the White House (excellent baked goods) to hear Al Gore speak about global warming. Most of the operational mets I spoke with that day were skeptical.

If you forecast the weather on a daily basis, you’re likely skeptical about the worst of the global warming predictions, because you’ve been burned by models and then chastised by viewers. Research mets don’t get that dose of forecast reality.

Last year I flew to Florida to see my folks. The plane stopped in Tampa on the way to PBI. As I looked out the window, I noticed the sky covered in cirrus clouds. As I looked closer, I realized they were contrails which had become diaphanous. They just hadn’t mixed out under the very weak upper flow.

I picked up my cellphone and called a friend – my expert on NWP. How, I asked, are these man made clouds taken into account in the models? They aren’t.

In fact all our short range models and certainly the multidecadal climate models, make assumptions, guesses and estimates. There’s just not enough data to properly initialize everything.

Tonight, based on the 12z runs, the models will have over predicted much of Connecticut’s temperatures by 5-10 degrees. And that’s just a 24 hour forecast!

In the meantime, I’m sure tonight many people in Fairbanks are saying of global warming, “Bring it on.”

PAFA 270653Z 00000KT 1/4SM R01L/3500V4500FT FZFG FEW001 BKN004 M43/ A2981 RMK A02 SLP123 T1433

That’s -45f with .25 mile visibility in freezing fog.

&#185 – Here’s the graph I was talking about.


Watergate – One More Thing

Tonight, on an ABC story about Mark Felt’s admission that he was Woodward and Bernstein’s “Deep Throat,” the reporter mentioned Watergate occurred before half the people alive today in the U.S. were born. Wow.

With that in mind, let me lay out a little history, because I think what Watergate was is often lost to time. Watergate was not about what White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler called, “a third-rate burglary.”

When Democratic National Chairman Larry O’Brien’s (yes – the guy who later became NBA commissioner) office at the Watergate was broken into, the election was already in the bag for Richard Nixon. So, in reality, it was a meaningless burglary.

What made Watergate poisonous to Richard Nixon was his attempt to cover it up. The more he lied… the more he stonewalled… the deeper the hole he was digging became. That the country was deeply divided over Vietnam certainly didn’t help either.

Mark Felt enters the picture because he was worried the FBI’s investigation was being hatcheted by the White House. He ‘ratted’ to protect his own turf.

Nixon was not a warm and fuzzy guy, but he had won by a landslide. He needed to be perceived as pretty evil to be run out of town on a rail – and make no mistake, he was run out of office.

The biggest blow to Nixon was the release of the audio tapes, recorded in the Oval Office. Nixon and his aides could be heard plotting and scheming the cover up. Moreover, they were speaking in a manner never expected from occupants of the Oval Office. They were crude, vulgar and vindictive.

How, even after the courts had ruled against him, he could let these be released is beyond me.

I was in my early twenties at the time and not politically adept, but I was certainly hurt by what I heard and how the President of the United States had told bold faced lies to America. In the pre-24 hour news cycle era, the story started slowly and picked up steam until it was all encompassing.

The Watergate burglary itself was bad… but not this bad. There was no need for it to bring down the president. This became a textbook case in how not to handle a crisis.

You have to hope there were lessons learned in Watergate. You just have to.

Deep Throat Revealed

I woke up this morning , flipped on the TV and saw a ‘breaking news’ banner at the bottom of the screen on CNN. Breaking news doesn’t proffer quite the same importance it once did, but it still got my attention.

Deep throat revealed – that was the gist of the story.

This just might have been the best kept secret in Washington, the identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate source. Only four people knew for sure: Woodward, Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and Deep Throat himself… a claim now raised by W. Mark Felt.

Mark Felt was a high ranking FBI official. AP says he was number two at the bureau, putting him just below J. Edgar Hoover at the time.

His name has been linked to Deep Throat in the past, but he is not a high profile person. A quick Google search of “W. Mark Felt”&#185 shows only 292 hits. Even I’m better represented than that!

Woodward and Bernstein continued to protect their source until a few minutes ago when the Washington Post issued a confirmation. Over the years, as names were tossed out, they neither confirmed or denied what Felt today claimed. Before the confirmation, I was guessing, since this is in Vanity Fair which (in spite of its wimpy name) is very well respected for top notch writing and reportage, it’s true. I would expect this story has been well vetted.

Deep Throat’s tips were what broke open Watergate and finally brought down President Nixon. It is an excellent example of an unnamed source leading to credible journalism. Lately, unnamed sources have been under fire.

It’s funny that even today the White House offers up unnamed sources in a very structured way.

MR. McCORMACK: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the briefing you’ve all been waiting for — all day long. (Laughter and applause.) We have a senior administration official here who is going to be — has a few words to say about the President’s meetings with Prime Minister Singh of India and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. And then he’ll take a few questions from you.

With that, I’ll turn it over to our briefer.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi. I’m the senior administration official. The President met with Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh this morning at 8:05 a.m. And he met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at 3:00 p.m. And let me tell you a little bit about those two, and then I’ll take some questions.

That’s from an actual White House briefing as documented on the White House website.

The White House uses unnamed sources for the same reason they’re used elsewhere. Sometimes, people who know news that must get out just don’t have the ability to speak freely. I’d rather they weren’t used without additional attribution, but I believe inside sources… protected unnamed sources… are an important part of journalism.

Now, how the heck did they keep this a secret for so long?

&#185 – By putting my search in quotes, Google limits its results to only those pages with the exact text I’ve entered. Searching for W. Mark Felt without quotation marks yield millions of entries, but most of them aren’t on topic.

Spectacular Sunday In Southern California

When I went on Instant Messenger tonight, my friend Bob jumped in from Florida:

a few more blog posts, and i’ll begin to wonder if you’ll stay there

He is so right. Helaine, Steffie and I find this lifestyle and this place very appealing. I would go in a second.

Whoa! What am I doing? People at work read this blog. Don’t worry. Southern California is an obsession I’ve had forever.

Be quiet for a second. What do you hear? Nothing. No phone ringing. No offer. I came close with KCAL years ago, but I don’t think it’s meant to be.

So, we’ll continue to come out every year or two… continue to be teased by California… and life will go on happily in Connecticut.

As nice as California seems, my Connecticut life isn’t too shabby. After all, it affords me these trips to California!

Where were we?

We have stuffed ourselves like pigs on this trip. Every night has featured a spectacular dinner with appetizer and desert. There comes a point where enough is enough. That came this morning.

Instead of going someplace nice for breakfast, we decided to go to Starbucks and eat light. I had a bagel and coffee. Helaine and Steffie were similarly pedestrian in their meal.

We sat outside. It wasn’t long before Cleo, the dog, came and made friends with us. As we learned, her owner, now working on a movie in production, needed to give Cleo away. She was living in a place with no dogs allowed. Very sad, but we couldn’t bring Cleo back on the plane with us.

This was to be a shopping day. Before the trip Steffie had decided on some stores and some areas she wanted to visit.

I will admit it. She travels in a totally different world from me, especially when it comes to style and fashion. As I have learned during this trip, there are trendy stores, ‘celebrity’ stores, written up in People and US Weekly, featured on “E” and VH-1.

The names of these stores mean nothing to me, but to Steffie, this is a big deal.

We went to two or three of these ‘name’ shops on Robertson Blvd. in West Hollywood. While Steffie and Helaine browsed stores like Kitson, I walked the streets.

Actually, there’s a lot to learn.

For instance, just before the corner of Robertson and Beverly, there’s a sign warning that the intersection is “Photo Enforced.” Adjacent to a few of the traffic lights in the intersection are boxes with strobe lights and cameras.

Run the intersection, and you get a moving violation with photo showing you, the red light you’re running and other pertinent details! I saw it in action. Very sobering.

A block away from the shopping is Cedars-Sinai Hospital. There’s the Max Factor Pavilion, a center with Steven Spielberg’s name on it, and (just outside the hospital) the intersection of George Burns Road and Gracie Allen Drive!

This is Los Angeles, a factory town for TV and the movies. Getting your name out is everything.

Next stop for shopping was Melrose. I’m not sure why, but I gently begged off. I just didn’t want to walk into store-after-store-after-store.

Trust me. This is great sport for Helaine and especially Steffie. And I’d be right there with them if these were computer or camera stores. I dropped them off and decided to go on a search for the Hollywood sign.

I had done this before. There are places where the Hollywood sign is very visible, and then a block or two away, it’s gone. And, if you try and drive toward the sign, you quickly find none of the streets are parallel, nor lead in a single direction for more than a few hundred feet.

Nothing in my luck changed. I saw the sign, headed toward it and then lost sight of it. I got lost enough to end up on a ramp for the Hollywood Freeway with Burbank the first exit.

I got off and looked for a way to loop around and reverse course. Before I could get back on the freeway, I saw I was approaching Mulholland Drive.

Mulholland Drive is a twisty two lane road that runs through the peaks of the Santa Monica Mountains. The Santa Monica Mountains are what separate the ocean side of Los Angeles County from the San Fernando Valley (aka – The Valley).

Back in the 50s I used to watch The Bob Cummings Show. Bob, a perennial bachelor, would always talk about taking his dates to Mulholland Drive.

I turned onto Mulholland and it wasn’t long before I saw the entrance to a small parking lot. Immediately, I knew it was a scenic overlook. What I didn’t know was I had hit the motherlode for seeing the Hollywood sign! Not only that, the overlook also had an amazingly commanding view of Downtown LA and most of the west side of town.

I drove on, pulling to the side of the road a mile or so later for a view to the east of the entire San Fernando Valley. The sky was blue, the visibility was high.

None of these spots are for the faint of heart. These are steep mountains and the best view is close to the edge. In case you’re looking to get these vista, here’s my best guess of where I was!

I was excited at my find, but no longer had a reason to be on Mulholland. I drove to Laurel Canyon Road, made a left, and headed back toward Hollywood proper and Melrose Avenue in particular.

Melrose Avenue is where you go when you need something that looks good with your new piercings or to match the ink color on your tattoo. Whereas most of the parts of LA we had visited so far were pretty and well to do, Melrose Avenue is gritty.

I took a shot of a trash can filled to the brim, because I think it’s indicative of the Melrose feel. So are parking meters covered in concert posters and band stickers.

Amazingly, I found both a parking spot and Helaine and Steffie. As they continued to shop, I continued to shoot photos. This is a very photogenic street. And every ethnic, racial and socio-economic group is well represented.

Well, everything but middle aged white guys. I was the token.

We headed back to the Century Plaza to get ready for dinner. Tonight we were heading to The Ivy on Robertson, where earlier Steffie had shopped.

This was our fourth trip to The Ivy. There are two reasons for that. First, the food is spectacular. Second, there are always celebrities there – always.

Once I sat back-to-back with Martin Scorsese. Drew Barrymore walked by and stopped to talk with ‘Marty.’ The last time we were there, Steffie and Helaine saw Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit.

Tonight, our reservation was for 7:00 PM and we had requested to sit outside. Please, don’t be fooled. Outside in LA means under the stars, but adjacent to a propane heater. Even on a cool night, you’re nice and warm.

More importantly, from an outside table you get to see and be seen.

It didn’t take long for Steffie and Helaine to realize Cojo (OK – I called him Cujo, not knowing who he was), aka – Steven Cojocaru, was at a table nearby.

I’m not going to explain who he is because either you know him and are excited, or don’t and are a loser… like me.

Cojo was sitting at a table with a woman (unknown) and Al Roker, weatherman from the Today Show. As it turns out, I know Al. I’m not saying we’re best friends, but we know each other.

The last time I saw Al was at the White House in Washington. How many people can say that?

Years ago, Al made a very kind gesture to me, recommending me for a job that I didn’t even know existed, and I’ll never forget it. He is first class and one of a kind. He deserves whatever success he has… maybe more.

After dinner, I went over and said hello, and we chatted for a few minutes.

Helaine and Steffie felt the evening was a total success! I agree.

As always, the food was superb and the service attentive. We shared an appetizer pizza and I had linguine with all sorts of seafood. For desert I had ice cream and hot fudge over a pecan square. There were no leftovers from me!

By the way, the Ivy shots here on the blog are ‘stock’ shots taken in the afternoon. So as not to come off as a yahoo tourist, I was asked to leave my camera at home… and I did just that.

I’m probably not supposed to say this, because she’s very private about it, but today was Helaine’s birthday. Going to The Ivy was part of our celebration, and it lived up it our expectations.

Tomorrow is our last day in Los Angeles before heading to Palm Springs. We’ve planned a day at Universal. More tomorrow.

Crunch Time for School

Our 20th wedding anniversary is coming up tomorrow, so I am rushing to finish my school assignments so the day can be free and dedicated to celebrating.

It’s funny, but in the beginning of the school year, Severe Weather was the tough course. Now, it’s Statistical Climatology.

Tonight, doing some homework necessary for a quarterly test, I worked for a half hour on a problem only to realize the data was split between two pages, so I had left half of it out. This problem had dozens of individual little steps. And, after a point, everything became dependent on what you had previously calculated.

When I realized how long it would take to redo everything, I went a little crazy. If only I knew how to do it on a spreadsheet!

I tried getting my friend Bob on Instant Messenger. He’s Mr. Meteorology (actually Dr. Meteorology) and a math wiz. Nothing. So, a quick call to Paul in California who has used spreadsheets for years to do budgets… but never stat work and never using any functions other than add, subtract, multiply and divide. I needed to do square roots and other obscure functions.

As I was hearing about Paul’s limitations, Bob answered the IM call. I hung up on Paul and phoned Bob. In two minutes I had accomplished as much as I had before I discovered my error earlier!

I don’t want to sound like George HW Bush at that Grocery Convention a few years back&#185, but I have no experience with spreadsheets. They were, after all, the first ‘killer app’ for computers – beginning with Visicalc. I should have a working knowledge.

It is astounding what I was able to do, accurately, and in very short order. And, to do the simple stuff was fairly easy. I should be able to go back without trouble.

I am using the spreadsheet built into OpenOffice.org, which is a Microsoft Office look alike/work alike… and it’s FREE! I would like OpenOffice.org more if it was supported by books. There are dozens of books on Microsoft Office but hardly anything to buy on OpenOffice.org.

With the homework now finished, tomorrow I can take my tests (actually, later today).

&#185Today, for instance, [Bush] emerged from 11 years in Washington’s choicest executive mansions to confront the modern supermarket.

Visiting the exhibition hall of the National Grocers Association convention here, Mr. Bush lingered at the mock-up of a checkout lane. He signed his name on an electronic pad used to detect check forgeries.

“If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?” the President asked. “Yes,” he was told, and he shook his head in wonder.

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

“This is for checking out?” asked Mr. Bush. “I just took a tour through the exhibits here,” he told the grocers later. “Amazed by some of the technology.”

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electronic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade.

From The New York Times