Licensing, Irony, and Ignorance
This ebook is one that budding apparatchiks of their professional associations should read. I was one once (apparatchik = low-level political operative). Don’t be a robot, like the robots in the snapshot above.
High Sierra–Piute Highway
Did California immigrants in their wagons or cross-country vacationers of the 1920s, in their Ford Model Ts, cross the High Sierra on Route 168? The map above sent me on a quest to solve this mystery.
East Bay rock walls
Journey along this path of solving, maybe, the mystery of why and when and by whom a 600-ft-long rock wall was built in the middle of nowhere. Aliens, Mexicans, Indians? I think I know.
Polish sound spelling cards
Written Polish may be easier to decode, read, and pronounce than one might think. The Polish language contains about 32 phonemes (sounds), versus the 46 of English.
Photographs
In late 2019, these photos resurfaced in a box in my attic. They’re prints from a roll of black-&-white film dating to, I think, 1992. They’re a quirky batch.
Measuring Earth’s curvature
Here’s a procedure for calculating the diameter of the Earth based on a sighting of a distant tall feature. You too can do geodesy like the ancients did 2 millennia ago. Yes, a low-tech, old-school, analog activity!
1989 earthquake
The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred in October 1989. Here’s a geologic report on the odd phenomena (ground disturbances, clusters of damaged homes) in Los Altos Hills.
Camp Pendleton geology
The last step in earning my M.S. degree in geology from SDSU was to prepare a THESIS, which was on the geology of a portion of Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base.
Sargent fault in Uvas Canyon
I stumbled across this intriguing geologic fault locality while on a leisurely hike among the waterfalls in Uvas Canyon Park in late 2018. It’s the most spectacular active-fault locality I’ve seen in my 38-year career as a geologist.
Honda CT90 trail bike
After getting this 1968 Honda CT 90 trail bike running in about 2000, it has hauled various combinations of backpacks, companions, fishing gear, and me up forest logging roads to points near High Sierra fishing destinations.
Honda CT110 trail bike
I obtained this 1980 Honda CT 110 around 2005. Like the Honda CT90, it has also done duty getting me to fly-fishing destinations in the High Sierra.
The addition of a huge rear sprocket turned the bike into a worthy hill climber.
Audacious strategic aircraft of the mid-20th century
The development of large combat aircraft of WW2 and the Cold War traced a path of rapid technological innovation that we may never see again in our lifetimes. (And I’m ignoring the familiar B-29, B-52, B-2, etc.)
Camp stove collection
Collection of at least fifteen camp stoves and backpack stoves. Some are quirky DIY efforts.
Make your neighbor pay 1/2 for a new fence
Thanks to a relatively new (2014) law in California, I was able, in 2017, to make a recalcitrant neighbor pay their half of the cost to replace
an old, rotted, falling-down fence between our properties (shown at left) with a new fence (below). Yee haw! I explain the steps I took. Perhaps you have the same issue.
Mitchell Park, Palo Alto, 430-deg. photo from around 1967
Heck of a quirky website
I know: what junk, huh? Such a grab bag.
On occasion, as maybe you do too, I’ll straighten up my attic, garage, or hard drives. Various items get tossed, sorted, recycled, donated, gifted, deleted, etc. When coming across an old item, I may think, “Ya know, this here may be of interest to someone else,” and I’ll present it in some form on this website. I think my 1985 master’s thesis may have been the first item I did that with. I haven’t wanted to part with my 1968 Honda 90, but I thought it would be fun to “share” it online here also. I wrote a book, Licensing, Irony, and Ignorance, mainly as a bookwormish challenge and to satisfy an urge to pound out words on a keyboard. It’s posted here also. A few additional miscellaneous things appear here such as the products of research and garage tinkering and my write-ups on random topics.
Questions? Comments? Contact Frank Groffie at fgroffie@aol.com