My second Pfizer shot is done!

That is all.

(Well, at least until I need a booster shot...)

Vaccine progress

California has administered 28.5 million vaccine doses; 57% of eligible Californians (those age 16 or older) have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Among all 50 states, California is now 50th (last place) in new cases per 100K population over the last 7 days.

It's hard to look at this data and not feel some hope that the two observations are causally related.

Fingers crossed that it's working.

Wow Dan Kaminski died

I never got to meet Dan Kaminski, but I loved reading his work. He was not only a brilliant engineer but also a great communicator.

What a shame. 42 is way too young.

That which connects Alameda CA and Ann Arbor, MI

Lovely short article: You can take a magical tour of Alameda's fairy doors with this online map

The rise in fairy doors on Alameda began about seven years ago and is largely attributed to Fred Hogenboom and his granddaughter, Serena. The pair built about a dozen doors from scrap wood in Hogenboom's wood shop, then installed them on trees and telephone poles near Hogenboom's home on Oak Street. After that, “social media got a hold of it and from there it just blew up,” Hogenboom said, laughing.

...

Alameda is a whimsical little city, but it isn’t alone in its fascination with fairy doors. San Francisco has seen its own fairy door boom in recent years, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, has mysterious doors that have been around since 1993 (the doors even have their own Wikipedia page). There are notable fairy door communities everywhere from New York and Washington, D.C., to Kentucky and North Carolina.

It just so happens, I do in fact know some lovers of fairy doors, both in Alameda, and in Ann Arbor...

Vaccine progress!

Courtesy of the City of Berkeley Health Department, today I got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine!

I was extremely impressed with the way the mass vaccination site was run. They were very organized, they moved everybody through smoothly and accurately, and everybody who I talked to was friendly and helpful.

Including the 15 minute wait time after the shot, I was through the entire process in barely 25 minutes.

Great work by Curative, who operate the clinic, and the City of Berkeley HD!

Giant Cargo Ship Traffic Jams Everywhere!

Forget highways, Bay Area's biggest traffic jam right now is on the bay

For the past few weeks, San Francisco Bay has been packed with huge cargo ships. There were 15 of them anchored south of the Bay Bridge at midweek. There is so much ship traffic that there is not enough room inside the bay for them all to anchor safely. Nine more big ships were waiting in the Pacific, steaming up and down 20 to 30 miles offshore between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.

Everything is complicated nowadays.

Normally, a big ship like the T.Jefferson would sail up the Oakland Estuary straight from sea and not have to spend time at anchor. It would be accompanied by tugs and navigated under control of one or more pilots. The 1,200-foot-long ship would be turned 180 degrees in a basin a ways up the estuary. The turning basin has a diameter of just under 1,500 feet, so turning a 1,200-foot ship there is a delicate maneuver.

My son used to attend junior sailing classes in that turning basin, which is in the section of the estuary close to Coast Guard Island and across from the Encinal Yacht Club in Alameda.

Learning to sail those little Optimist dinghies was a wonderful memory ... I'm glad he never had to avoid the T. Jefferson!

The Known World: a very short review

Early in the new year, browsing through the scads of "best books of 2020" lists that always appear in various publications, I was struck by a note from one critic, who said something to the effect of: "yes, it's 18 years old, but The Known World is still one of the best books you could possibly read."

So I tracked it down, and spent the next two months slowly reading it, and I can confirm that that critic was entirely correct.

I'll be thinking about The Known World, and about how deeply it's affected me, for many months and years to come.