Tag: California

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Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month.

After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s going to take them another decade to actually build the thing, but one of their first attractions is a helium balloon on a tether. Depending on wind conditions, they send it up anywhere from 250 to 400 feet, and visitors can get a 360° view of central Orange County and the park under construction.

Orange Balloon

Unfortunately, conditions weren’t ideal today. It was hazy, so visibility was only about 10 miles or so, and it was windy. In fact, when we arrived, they’d just tied down the balloon. The guy who organized the trip called back to the office to cancel, but those of us who were already there figured we might as well at least walk around and take a look.

As it turned out, they did start sending the balloon up again, though they limited it to 10 people per ride. So those of us who stayed ended up waiting about an hour, but we made it up.

Baloon view north
Looking north toward the Tustin Hills

Balloon view - south
Looking south. The Irvine Spectrum shopping center is just to the left of the taller buildings.

Balloon view east
Looking east toward the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Note the hangars and other former MCAS El Toro buildings in the foreground.

I managed okay up until the point where I decided (foolishly) to look down through the center of the gondola. (It’s shaped like a ring, as you can see from the first photo.) The landing was a bit bumpy, and we suspected that they were probably going to shut things down a few groups after we left.

As nerve-wracking as it was after a few minutes, I’d love to go again on a clear day like this one (second photo) back in February, especially if the wind was low enough that they were willing to send the balloon up to 400 feet.

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The Whole Foods market in Tustin (the only one in Orange County, as far as I can tell), is moving to the new District shopping center going in at the corner of Barranca and Jamboree, on the site of the former MCAS Tustin Marine base. Several of the big box stores are open already, but they haven’t moved yet. In fact, yesterday, they were only part way through putting up the sign:

Sign: Whole Foo

We drove around a bit, exploring the shopping center and the two segments of road that have been completed so far. Outside the shopping center, there’s not much to see yet except for barren fields and empty lots sweeping back toward the two blimp hangars and, off in the distance, a building complex on the far side of the former base.

Southeast blimp hangar at former MCAS Tustin
Southeast blimp hangar viewed from corner of Tustin Ranch Rd. and Warner Ave.

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California is an interesting state. We just re-elected Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger 55% to 39%, but also re-elected Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein 60% to 35%. All but one of the remaining state offices went to Democrats (some by larger margins than others).

The Governator is talking about a mandate. Politicians always do that when they win. 55% is a bit shaky, but with ~15 percentage points between him and Angelides, he’s at least more justified in claiming it than a certain Republican winner two years ago who only had a three-point lead.

Meanwhile Congress has returned to its natural state—namely, with at least one house controlled by the party not holding the Presidency—as the Democrats have taken back the House for the first time in 12 years. There’s an analysis in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that the Republicans’ mistake was in focusing too heavily on their base over the last few years and alienating the center.

Schwarzenegger is actually a good example of this. He’s a Republican, but a moderate one. During the 2003 recall election, the Republican party actually ran a second candidate, Tom McClintock, because Arnold wasn’t Republican enough. Admittedly you can chalk some of it up to name recognition and charisma, but the moderate Schwarzenegger not only won the recall handily, he had no problem holding onto the office this year when California voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, practically guaranteed to be the next speaker of the House, promised “to lead the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history” [note: originally linked to Forbes] and run things in a more bipartisan way than the Republicans have for the past 12 years. I’m jaded enough to say I’ll believe it when I see it, but encouraged enough that I think there’s at least a chance they will.

The real shocker, though, is Donald Rumsfeld stepping down as Secretary of Defense. I think it’s long overdue—this administration has generally rewarded loyalty over competence, and I’ll agree with many that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been mismanaged. Here’s hoping Robert Gates, if confirmed, does a better job.

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A few days ago I was remarking on the signs by the side of the 405 indicating where to find the Cal State Fullerton El Toro Campus. This is odd for several reasons, namely:

  • The signs went up years after the city of El Toro changed its name to Lake Forest.
  • Having the two cities in the name makes it sound like “University of California, Colorado Campus.”
  • From what I could tell, it wasn’t even in El Toro/Lake Forest—it was in Irvine.

Today I noticed that the signs have been changed to read “Cal State Fullerton, Irvine Campus.” That takes care of 2 out of 3, and the remaining one is at least logical, even if it sounds a bit odd. I mean, it’s a satellite campus, what else are you going to call it aside from the school name plus the location?

As for why they started out calling it the El Toro campus: it turns out it’s on the grounds of the former El Toro Marine Base.

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The Los Angeles Times website had an interesting way of describing the results of yesterday’s state election:

No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No

It’s hard to believe that all eight propositions failed. Even the four Orange County measures failed. Every item on the ballot in our district was rejected!

On a related note, I still don’t like the voting machines we have in OC. The interface is cumbersome and the display is godawful slow. The controls consist of a dial, which moves the cursor, and a button, which selects the current item.

The display is so slow you can watch it redrawing the title and summary of a ballot item when it highlights it. First the rectangle turns blue, then it redraws the text, line by line, in white. It’s like watching print preview in Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS on a 386. You just don’t see that kind of performance on modern computers unless they’re massively bogged down.

As for trying to use the machine, it’s kind of like entering your name in the high score list on an arcade video game with only a trackball and a fire button. I’m sure they chose it for durability reasons—a touch screen would be much more usable, but much easier to break—and went with the low-powered processor to keep the costs down.

I actually liked the punchcards we had before. It was so much more satisfying to slam down that lever.