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Off To Vallejo

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Heading up north in an hour or so for the weekend. But there will be computers and bandwidth there.

[Thursday-morning update]

Got in late last night. It was a three-hour drive to get thirty miles, from Redondo Beach to Valencia. Smooth sailing after that, though. Don’t think we’ll do that again. And definitely not coming back Sunday night.

It’s a good reminder of what a mess it would be if there were some event that required evacuating the LA metro area. I think we need to keep a boat in the garage.

16 thoughts on “Off To Vallejo”

  2. Oh, and somehow I missed the death last month of one of the most watched engineers in history, George Thorton, who blew up a dead beached whale in 1970 in what’s said to be the sixth most-watched video clip in Youtube history.

    NBC story

    1. Keys to the blog? Not a bad idea. Small Dead Animals puts up a Reader Tips blog post every evening, and by morning there are a bunch of links, many of which end up on the main page. Rand makes fairly frequent road trips, so that’s as good a time as any for crowdsourcing the news.

    1. Speaking of SpaceX, did anybody happen to see the disastrously awful interview that Musk gave to Fareed Zakaria last weekend? He’s usually very polished and self-assured–not this time. Stammering, incoherent, and saying things that must have had his PR flaks nearly apoplectic. Example: When asked if he’d be on the first flight to Mars, his answer was, “Only if I was confident that SpaceX would be fine if I die.” A perfectly good engineering answer, but possibly the worst answer that could be given from a PR standpoint.

      Don’t know if he was stressed about Tesla, sick, or something else. Not reassuring.

        1. It’s terrible for SpaceX’s brand, irrespective of its factual accuracy. When you’re competing for federal dollars, public confidence means something. Saying things like, “I might die on a mission using my own product,” isn’t going to instill confidence. It’s so much easier to say something like, “It would be awfully hard to run a company from the surface of Mars.” (NB: I’m not suggesting that his assessment–and acceptance–of the risk is wrong in any respect; it’s just terrible spin from a PR standpoint.)

          I’m more concerned, though, with the terrible presentation through the whole interview. Musk usually comes across as completely in control of his subject matter. He was way off his game in this one.

          1. It’s terrible for SpaceX’s brand, irrespective of its factual accuracy. When you’re competing for federal dollars, public confidence means something. Saying things like, “I might die on a mission using my own product,” isn’t going to instill confidence.

            I don’t think he’s trying to instill confidence in his ability to do a Mars mission, and he’s not competing for federal dollars to do so. It would be foolish for him to pretend that it’s not extremely hazardous. He’s simply being honest, which some people might actually find refreshing.

      2. Yeah, that just shows some wisdom. He has to know that SpaceX can continue going forward without him before he risks losing the man at the helm. Korolev was never going to get to fly in space either, for the same reason. Heck, he was so vital to the Soviet program that they wouldn’t even say who he was.

  6. Twenty-four years ago, we moved from Soquel (near Santa Cruz) down to San Diego: myself, my wife, and several of our kids, all in a minivan, driving down the California coast to LA and then down I-5 to San Diego. For reasons that completely escape me now, I thought it would be a good idea to leave the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, probably because my new job started the following Monday.

    I realized my mistake within about a half an hour. Toooo late. Stop and go traffic pretty much the whole way down. Worst drive of my life.

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