Saturday, January 26, 2008

Fire at the Monte Carlo



It was rather fascinating on Friday, playing a poker tournament at the Orleans while watching the fire at the Monte Carlo on TV. And amazingly banal; most of the players weren't in the least bit concerned with the events barely two miles away.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Caucusians for Obama


Today was the Nevada Caucuses. Neither of us had ever lived in a caucus state, so we were both virgins. As it turns out, so were many (if not most) of the other caucusoids.


It took place in a lecture hall a couple miles away, at the (Community) College of Southern Nevada. [Recently, the students insisted on removing the term "community" from the college name, complaining that it was somehow pejorative. Sure beats "Junior College", but there's no satisfying some people.)

Two precincts were using the same building. Our precinct was typical of our neighborhood, a rather older demographic than the other precinct represented there (many more students, I think.)


The process was pretty simple. A bunch of boilerplate was read. We counted off the number of people in the room. We then arranged ourself by preference -- Hillary supporters over there, Obama supporters over here, etc. Then each of the groups was counted; the threshold was 15%, and we had 90-some people, so 14 supporters were needed to get a delegate. Since the Edwards and uncommitted supporters did not meet that threshold, we all got to cajole them into joining our own side for 15 minutes. Most of them went to the Obama side. The total, when all was said and done, was something like 54 for Hillary and 48 for Obama, resulting in 4 and 3 delegates respectively. We then chose the delegates -- both of us would have loved to, but he have to be in California when the county convention occurs. That was it.



It was fun meeting a lot of our neighbors in a different context. Those we knew, we knew from meeting on the street while walking Stella, so for a few it was the first safe (e.g., neither of us with overly protective dogs) meeting.

Bambi states her preference...

Saturday, January 05, 2008

The River Rose


Check out this shot captured from the webcam this afternoon.

Early this morning, the Kern surged from barely 300 cubic-feet-per-second to over 3000.

Here's the chart from Corps of Engineers hourly report website.
04JAN2008 2100     351
04JAN2008 2200 521
04JAN2008 2300 521
04JAN2008 2400 710
05JAN2008 0100 987
05JAN2008 0200 2444
05JAN2008 0300 2968
05JAN2008 0400 3069
05JAN2008 0500 2912
05JAN2008 0600 2638
Click to enlarge the photo and notice the waterline as the river recedes. In this shot it's running at about 1400cfs, which is about 200cfs more that it PEAKED at last year

Josh says the rain gauge showed nearly two inches of rain. Whoeeee whatta way to begin the new year!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

New Year's Eve


The final course of 2007...


We went to an "Early Bird" dinner dance at the
Orleans to end the year and had a lovely time with Aileen.
New Year's Eve

(the photos are dim, but as usual, click and slideshow,etc)