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More proof that the Imperial Valley is growing hugely – there are two El Pollo Loco’s opening here later this year. One will be only a few miles away, mmmm mmmm good!

This morning on the way to San Diego, the area near the border patrol station was buzzing. For about a mile I was paralleled by a helicopter and I saw many border patrol vehicles off the freeway, parked in various ‘ready to go’ locations. At the station everyone was being stopped and officers were having a very good look in the windows and, in some cases, the boot too. However, when I pulled up in the MINI I was waved straight on – I guess they knew the people they were looking for couldn’t possibly be hiding anywhere in my car. One more benefit of driving a small car.

I always thought that the penny slots were great for killing time – your money goes a long way – but never for winning anything worthwhile. However, on Monday, a man won $2,065,685 on the “Twilight Zone” penny slot machine at Viejas Casino. So maybe I should play the penny machines after all? Although with such a big win, maybe I need to wait a while for the jackpot to build back up….

Last Thursday I had a flying lesson at 7am, when I got to the plane my instructor was already there “de-icing” the wings. Freezing temperatures overnight had left a thin, but bumpy, layer of frost across the top of the wing. Understandably, Bob didn’t want to take off with that on there so I spent 15 minutes fetching small cups of hot water from the office to pour over the wing. It was probably 25 minutes later that we got off the ground.

This afternoon I drive to San Diego, get on top of the grade in driving rain, which quickly becomes soft snow falling. All around it resembles an alpine scene – untouched white snow covering the ground and buildings, the road slowly disappearing in front of me as the snow settles where it was only just recently plowed. We all slow to about 35 mph, the temp guage on the MINI says 32F and I can hear ice crunch under the wheels. The dynamic steering control on the MINI even comes on a couple of times though I never felt any loss of control.

I know its ‘winter’, but this is the ‘So’ in SoCal, whats with the snow and ice??

According to this article at CNN.com :

Twice as many walkers die in traffic accidents in New Orleans, San Diego and Phoenix than in Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Boston.

Apparantly the USA is getting less and less friendly to pedestrians. Well, duh. It always amazes me that there are places you simply can’t get to without a vehicle. When the oil runs out, how will we get from A to B?

Get the full skinny here.

Prop B is a California proposition appearing on next week’s ballot. At stake is whether a landfill at Gregory Canyon gets built or not. Like most propositions, both sides have numerous television spots contradicting each other, confusing the issues and making it difficult to take an opinion. However, the really confusing thing is that a yes vote for prop B is a no vote for the landfill. If people in Florida can’t manage to follow an arrow on a ballot to know which box to put their ‘X’ in, how will people understand that if they don’t want the landfill than they have to vote yes? Or if they want the landfill they have to vote no?

No single of the week this week. Instead, I’m picking an anti-single of the week. William Shatner has covered Pulp’s Common People and its really scary. You can check it out here if you dare.

It’s raining outside. Now this shouldn’t be blog-worthy but until Sunday it hadn’t rained in San Diego for 182 days, setting a ‘no rain’ record for the city. The previous record of 181 days was set just last year.

But there’s no need to worry folks, the eminent governments of the Western world assure you there is no global warming, no greenhouse gas problem. So keep running your gas guzzlers, wasting energy, not recycling etc as normal weather variations will be back just as soon as another random event occurs to fix it.

Everyone is aware of the heat that one endures in the desert during the summer months, but many people don’t realise that we also get some nasty winds that pick up the dust and create little blizzards. Of course, Saturday I had my MINI detailed so last night the winds were fierce and down by Imperial Airport there were patches where you could not see more than a few feet where the dust was being blown across the road. I’m glad I was only driving by and not trying to land there. So today the MINI has a nice film of dust on it; still looks good though.

Another interesting thing about desert life is that when its hot outside the water in the toilet bowl gets hot. When you sit down to do your business, sometimes you get a real warm blast of air up between your legs. And not a lotta people know that.

So no updates this past week due to the fact that I started a new job in San Diego and didn’t bring the URL to the post page with me! But yes I am finally back to work not much to do in my first week but once they discovered I was a Perl person they had me fixing Perl programs – seems that no matter what I get hired to do at any company, I end up writing Perl.

Oct 12 2004: At the request of my employer, I have removed all references to the names and places of my employment from this article.

The cable modem has been acting up all week and Adelphia sent someone out to look at it today. Temperatures are now easily in the 110s during the day and it was already 92 at 9am this morning when the guy arrived. He had to do some things outside for maybe 5 minutes and looked a soaked wreck when he was finished. And this is just the start of his day. A lot of people have to work outdoors for some or all of the day so I just wanted to give a shout out to them, much respect to those who can handle it.