I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:

A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.

The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo

As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).

(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:

The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.

OK, Wells Fargo isn’t really stealing my money. At least, I doubt it. Jen ahd I have had a joint checking account with the bank since 2005. And in that time, we’ve had several issues with overdrafts. I believe I do a pretty good job of keeping the checkbook balanced. And each time we’ve been hit with overdrafts, I’ve implemented new methods to help keep track of the account balance. And still, every couple months, it happens again. The most recent round of overdrafts happened yesterday. Fortunately, we have overdraft protection on the account, thanks to the Wells Fargo credit account I opened for this very reason. (Though there’s probably still some kind of fee involved, it’ll just be connected to the credit account instead of the checking account.) As it stands, we have no money in the bank. This is especially discouraging, as our finances had been riding high lately due to cash infusions from several sources. But now we’re back to zero. This has happened more times with Wells Fargo than any other bank I’ve ever used. I’m not one of these corporate-conspiracy cranks. I really don’t think Wells Fargo is taking my money. But something is off, and I’m not sure what to do. I suppose that one of the bank’s employees could try and track down the error. Most likely, it was caused by an ATM transaction I missed. The difference between what I was showing in the checkbook and the amount of money that was overdrafted would equal about the same as a typical ATM withdrawal. But I’d really like to just start all over again with a new accoun. I’ve been considering opening an account with a local bank. Sure, the local bank may not have the world-spanning reach of Wells Fargo. But you can e-mail the bank’s president right from the website. That’s pretty cool. And I’ve noticed that throughout my banking history, the larger the size of the bank, the more problems I’ve had. Of course, switching banks comes with its own set of hassles. Between me and Jen, we’d have to get three direct deposits changed, and that’s likely to take weeks. Still, I think now’s the time. Before Wells Fargo has a chance to take any more of my money.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you’ve likely heard the news that comedian George Carlin has died. Sad news. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid. I can actually remember the first time I heard some of Carlin’s work. I was eleven, maybe twelve years old. I was just at that point in my life where my parents felt comfortable leaving me home alone. And during one of those times where I happened to be the only one in the house, the phone rang. I answered it. From the other end of the line, I heard this:

“I had an interesting morning. I got into an argument with my Rice Krispies. I distinctly heard, ‘Snap, crackle, Fuck you!’”

Keep in mind, this was before the days of Caller ID or *69. I figured it was a prank call, but I was only half right. It turned out to be my friend Ronnie from down the street. He was also home alone, and was having some fun with his parents’ record collection. Once the initial surprise of the phone call wore off, I realized that that bit about the Rice Krispies was pretty funny. Ronnie eventually managed to dub all of his parents’ Carlin records onto cassettes. He and I spent many hours listening to those tapes on my crappy Montgomery Ward stereo. I followed Carlin’s career ever since. I watched many of his cable specials, read one of his books, and I even tuned into the fairly mediocre TV show that was based around him. Jen and I got to see him live here in San Luis Obispo on his last tour. He was preparing for his latest special, which was to be taped in Santa Cruz. He pretty much had his set down, but he was still working from multiple pages of notes which he held while on stage. It was a great show. Here’s a couple really bad photos I took during the performance:

And here’s a fitting video tribute to the “Rice Krispies” bit mentioned above.

So long, George.

San Luis Obispo has experienced record high temperatures over the last few days. It’s been so bad, that our house is literally falling apart. For example, we had a ceiling tile lose its adhesive hold:

A similar thing happened to the ceiling in the back of the house, as well.
Read on …

Clearly, someone at SLO Transit needs some help with their grammar.

Two slugbugs in a row in front of us as we were pulling into the Marsh Street garage. Originally, I thought the white one was Geek Squad, but now I’m not so sure. (No door logo on the right-hand side.)
Read on …