Woke up Saturday morning to the news of an 8.8 earthquake in Chile. Then I saw the startling tsunami warning for California. Never thought I would see that!! That was as surprising as the tornado warning we had earlier this rain season.

So like millions of others, I sat glued to the television waiting for the tsunami to hit Hawaii. Not much to see, in fact nothing to see. I should be glad that the islands were spared any damage shouldn't I?? I confess, I wanted to see a wave approach the island. Human nature I guess.

I woke up about 3:30 am Saturday morning to the sound of rain hitting the roof of our patio. It rained on and off all day, culminated by a series of thunder storms late in the afternoon. I opened the front door of our house and was met with the flash of lightning and an immediate crack of thunder. It was awesome!!!

Checking my trusty rain gauge in my back yard, I found that we received 2 3/4 inches of rain in about 15 hours. Several times throughout the day it rained quite hard. This puts us at about 15 inches for the season, with a chance for more coming in the middle of next week.

Actual headlines

Ms. Red Ridinghood with an attitude!!

A novel idea!!

Captain Vail from El Monte called me on Thursday to inform me that the city manager had approved me for hiring. I will be going into the department on Monday to fill out background papers for a "quick" background investigation.

I hope they don't fine out about my farmville addiction!!!

CHP budget cutbacks!!

Professional golfer Cristie Kerr shows her appreciation for winning this golf trophy.

Desperate times invoke desperate measures

On February 18th, Joseph Stark, furious with the IRS, set his house on fire and then drove his small plane into the Austin Texas IRS building killing himself and one occupant of the building. Stark wrote, "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."

This week, Terry Hoskins of Moscow, Ohio, bulldozed down his own house to keep the bank from foreclosing on it. Mr. Hoskins said, "when I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they they want to take it - no, I wasn't going to stand for that, so I took it down."

Peter Fonda, shown here with Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper in the movie "Easy Rider", turns 70 years old today.

Major league baseball spring training opened Monday. Los Angeles Dodger Manny Ramirez used his first contact with the media to announce that this would be his last season with the Dodgers.

Hey Manny, do us all a favor and leave now!!!

Dressed for success!!!

Letter to the editor

Burden on budget
Illegal migrants costly to S.B. County

Staff writer Stephan Wall, and by association, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin have chosen to heap blame for the San Bernardino County fiscal problems on those who have no voice to protest; illegal immigrants.

The inflammatory and bigoted front page headline and subsequent front page paragraphs of the Sunday Daily Bulletin, state that the esteemed San Bernardino County Grand Jury of 2005-2006 determined that $38 million was spent on services to illegal immigrants. An alarming amount of money no doubt, until you compare it to the overall county budget of over $4 billion. But you have to turn to page A7 to see that this $38 million figure isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Take for example the $9 million attributed to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution of illegal immigrants. District Attorney's Office spokesman Susan Mickey is quoted as saying, "no one here has any idea where that ($9 million) figure came from. We don't track cases by immigration status." Subtract $9 million.

Or how about the $9 million attributed to health care costs at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. According to the hospital spokesman Frank Arambula as much as 25% of their costs for services to illegal immigrants is reimbursed by Medicare. So scratch $2.25 million.

Another $9 million is attributed to the Public Defenders Office. County spokesman David Wert confirmed in the article that the $9 million figure was only an estimate, as the county doesn't actually track the costs for the Public Defenders Office. No confirmation - subtract $9 million.

The 2005-2006 Grand Jury report (available on line)lists the cost to jail illegal immigrants as $11 million, not the inflated $15.8 million shown in the article. The other costs listed in the report are $773,000.00 for the Probation Department and $316,232.00 for the Children's Services Department. Children's Services reported that $142,549.00 of their costs were recovered.

So let's do the math. $38 million minus $9 million from the District Attorney's office, minus $9 million from the Public Defenders Office, minus $2.25 million from the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, minus $173,683 from Children's Services, and you have just under $18 million.

The term "boogieman" can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear. Lets not let Mr. Wall and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin make illegal immigrants out to be the boogieman here. The facts, as stated, don't justify it.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about Tiger Woods and his sex life. This is between him and his wife. If he had any balls he would tell everyone else to go pound sand!!!

PE.com (The Press-Enterprise Newspaper)
January 25, 2010 12:58 pm

Menifee School Officials Remove Dictionary

Officials from the Menifee Union School District (Menifee, Ca.) have removed copies of the dictionary from their elementary school classrooms. Officials received a complaint from an elementary school student's parent after the student stumbled upon the definition of "oral sex" in the schools dictionary. The dictionary in question is the "Merriam Webster's 10th edition."

School officials will review the dictionary to decide if it should be permanently banned because of the "sexually graphic" entry, said district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus. "It's just not age appropriate" , Cadmus added.

When I first read this story on a blog, I couldn't believe it. My first thoughts were of the big to-do over Sarah Palin's city library banning books and then the vision of Hitler's book burning episodes. So I traced it back to the Press-Enterprise Newspaper's website. You can read the story and the 361 comments after it at www.pe.com/localnews/menifee/stories/PE_News.

One interesting responses was given by "Guest" who quoted Ezekiel 23:20 as, "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." (I had to look it up to confirm it) I guess we had better get rid of those Bibles as well.

Random Signs

Carnival in Rio

Happy birthday wishes go out to Vanna White who turns 53 years old today. Vanna Marie Rosich was born in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Vanna is divorced from businessman George Santo Pietro and they have two children, Nicholas who is 16 and Giovanna who is 13.

Vanna has been the hostess of "Wheel of Fortune" since December 13, 1982. Wheel of Fortune has had over 5,000 episodes since it's inception.

In 1987, Vanna was featured in a Playboy pictorial showing photos of her, taken prior to her Wheel of Fortune career, wearing see-through lingerie.

Vanna has made cameo appearances in "Married ... with Children", "Naked Gun 33 1/3" and "The Final Insult."

I had to pick up a prescription at the Kaiser clinic in Ontario Wednesday, so Karen, Corey, and I got the R2D2 flu shot. Josh was at work.

They didn't give me a sucker!!! I even asked for one. The nurse did offer me a sticker. A sticker!!! That's no substitute for a sucker!!! The nurse said she didn't want to promote tooth decay. It's not fair I tell you!!!

Looks like I will be heading back to work. I had an interview with Captain Vail at El Monte P.D. Tuesday morning. I was given a tour of the department and introduced to everyone in sight. When we sat down for serious discussions, I learned that I would be a part-time employee with the city rather than a contract employee. I will probably work three 8-hr. days a week depending on the work load. I will be the only one in the forensics unit and will have any fingerprint matches I make verified by members of the West Covina P.D. Forensic Identification Unit.

My uniform will be dark blue or black cargo pants and an El Monte P.D. polo shirt. My duties will be to process evidence submitted by patrolmen for fingerprints, search any fingerprints developed and submitted latent prints through the lafis computer, write reports and so on. I may have to process a vehicle involved in a serious felony once in awhile, but mostly I will be the proverbial "lab rat". No crime scenes and no midnight phone calls.

I arranged to work with the forensic dudes at WCPD a couple days to get back up to speed on the lafis computer. I have also started reading up on old forensic info, hence the page turner shown shown to the right. It's all starting to come back to me.

The only thing left is a brief background investigation. I could start work as early as March 1st. Should be fun and help pay a couple of bills.

Jack and I rode from Anaheim Stadium to the Huntington Beach Pier on Sunday. The ride is 17 miles one way. It was a beautiful day, with clear skies, temps in the high 70's, and just a little bit of a breeze.

My mountain bike and I have racked up about 2,000 miles together. I just had a service done on it and they replaced the chain and a spoke in the rear wheel, and did some tweaking and tightening. It works a lot better.

Jack's bike is a road bike and built for speed. As you can see, he is much more appropriately dressed than I. My average speed when I ride is 13 mph. Jack doesn't even break a sweat at 13 mph.

The beach was quite crowded. We had to weave in and out of walkers, bicyclists, roller bladers and the like to get to the pier. We spent about 45 minutes at the pier and had a quick lunch.

We had a minor oops when Jack had a flat tire about 3 miles from the finish. We were back on the road in no time after Jack replaced his tube.

The ride runs along the Santa Ana River to the ocean. In this area, the river runs through a golf course and is usually only a couple of feet across. You can see the large amount of water running from Prado Dam to the sea.

All in all, it was a great ride. Great weather and great company.