The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

My house is real 2x4's. Not the dried out stuff from home depot or even the better stuff from the local lumber yard. I'd take graft on

 

And made out of redwood, right? ;-)

 

I actually (know) two sons that made a house, for their parents, using redwood in the 70s in Carson City.

 

Now that’s impressive.

 

It was/is beautiful.

 

Our house is also real 2x4s and until 10 years ago knob and tube wiring. A year ago we had the kitchen remodeled (upgraded but retained the 1930s look) -- our architect had only heard of lath and plaster, she got to see it when they opened the wall.

 

Holy crap I've never seen the 395 so busy. I suppose it's normal for the holiday weekend, but this must be the first year we caught the big traffic jam driving home. Not that I'm complaining... felt like we had the Inyos to ourselves all weekend.



Awesome place to celebrate a nation's birthday.

 

Where did you hit traffic? I am in San Diego and where I seem to get the most frustrated is this stretch headed south before you get the I-15. So many damn traffic lights.

 

I have to go through there next week and I'm already dreading it.

 

One holiday in Washington state, on the way back to the city, in a small mountain town, Gold Bar, sitting in slooow traffic, there were about 10 people sitting at a long table with a big sign.
"10th Annual Gold Bar Flatlanders Watch"

 

Traffic on Sunday was crazy from 10AM till 4PM. Doesn't help that Cal Trans started "improvement" projects on the north and south side of town. Necking everyone down to one lane twice isn't the best why to keep people moving. lol

 

I love the choice of a holiday weekend. OT + Holiday pay to start. Then "Oh, it's a slow weekend".

 

State employees wouldn't get extra holiday pay if they worked July 4 - they'd get OT (there is no double time) and 8 hours of Holiday Leave (comp time). Granted, the contractor probably was getting double time.

Surprised they could get that closure approved, though. I had to pull all kinds of strings to get a nighttime closure on MLK Day this year. Had to play the "this allows us to finish work a week earlier" and "this saves tens of thousands on traffic control costs" cards, and people still thought I was nuts.

edit: Probably worth noting that those were shoulder closures, so they didn't even actually affect traffic. No way would they have allowed me to close a lane.

 

To be clear, no one was working. They just leave the lane closed because it's a large stretch and pulling the cones/signage every weekend would suck. lol

 

One of the few things I miss about living closer to LA was the 'commute' to the desert via the 14. Heck, now that the Olancha bypass is finally open, it's pretty much freeway all the way to Bishop. I live further east now; the 395 south of Ridgecrest is a perpetual shit show with all the trucks. And the 15 was closed for hours last night for a wreck, somehow I sidestepped it -- but only because I like trains. I think this is the first time that liking trains has been a time-saving endeavor.


Interesting 395 traffic north of Victorville

But the real zoo I was commenting on was the throngs of people heading down the Owens Valley, what with all the road construction. We were planning to head up to Bishop for lunch, but saw a mile-long line of cars inching south into Big Pine, and decided to just join them rather than race to the back of that line. And the line at Copper Top wrapped into the parking lot, sigh.

What I find lightens the normally frustrating drive on 395 south from Ridgecrest, is to scout out all the crazy desert shit listed on Google Maps along the drive, then see if I can spot them along the way. It at least gives us something to talk about. My favorite new find is a harebrained real-estate development plan at the bottom of Ridgecrest... based on glass-walled geodesic domes, and... somehow... blockchain technology. Some top-tier AI drivel there, if you are looking for an investment opportunity.

On an unrelated note, I once cooked an entire chicken to perfection by putting it in a glass-topped box and leaving it out in the sun all day in the desert. I guess technically someone else cooked the chicken for me, and we had a mirror or two on either side of it, but I definitely helped eat it.

Of course once you get to the stoplights by Victorville there is no way around it: that road sucks.

 

A former coworker posted about the 20 years of Google Earth. There's a documentary called "The Billion Dollar Code" which is about a lawsuit between Google and ART+COM over course to fine zooming. The short version is ART+COM lost.

What blows me away is the kind of compute power it took to run Google Earth 20 years ago vs today. Kinda cool to have worked in the place it all started (and it wasn't Google).

Here's a link to the history. https://youtu.be/lhMlFl_NR-g

 

@ian408
Back then, when Google Earth was a new download, there was a NASA program that I used. It seemed to have more functionality at that time. I cannot recall the name. Can you?

 

I don't but it could have been something from TerraVision.

 

It had NASA/JPL tagging, not private.
It worked on dialup internet.

 

Definitely not a real-time thing. EOSDIS or WorldWind maybe?