Category: Blog Posts About Me

My site went from a daily average of 60 visits to a sudden spike of over 8,000 yesterday.  At one point 385 people were on the site, so I am happy my web server was able to keep up with the demand (thank you, WordPress and WP Super Cache).  The 400 pound snake story caused tons of people to visit yesterday from bing.com.  I was ranked third on Bing, and as of today I am now first (if you don’t count the Bing news article served up before it).  Even though I was thrilled to see so many people visiting, it looks like most came to the site and left after 30 seconds.  The good news is some of you stayed and some even subscribed to my RSS feed.  I say anyone who knows how to subscribe to an RSS feed is a friend of mine and most likely someone who will enjoy the articles on this site.  Thanks to everyone who visited and a big thanks to those of you who have come back or subscribed to my site.

Tyler, Wilbur, and I went for our regular walk this evening. The nice thing about where I live is you can walk out in what some may call a “semi-country” area.  I usually try to bring my camera with me, and today I was really happy I did, not to mention it was my new camera.  Usually I see some cows or some birds, but today I was walking back by some vineyards and there were three foxes that crossed our path maybe 30–40 yards away.   They aren’t great shots, but thanks to the great new zoom on my new camera I was able to zoom in pretty close where before you would have barely been able to see much.  On Wednesday night, I saw what I thought was a raccoon in the church parking lot, but it ended up being a fox. Ironically, on my walk this evening, I was thinking, I wish I had my camera with me that night, and 10 minutes later, I saw three foxes, which was awesome.  I never realized how small foxes are, they aren’t much bigger than a chihuahua.

We went to Santa Cruz’s Beach Boardwalk yesterday and the weather was fantastic (low 80s).  There was lots of Labor Day weekend traffic getting there, so it ended up taking a few hours.  We walked the boardwalk, went on the Ferris Wheel, had a great Mexican food lunch, played miniature golf, played some arcade games, walked on the beach, walked to the end of the pier, watched sea lions for a while. By that time, it was 6:30pm and time to head back.

While walking on the beach, I saw Oliver Choy and his girlfriend.  Oliver looked to be doing well, and I was really glad we ran into him.  I think I last saw Oliver down in Vignette Village in Austin, TX, maybe 3–4 years ago.  Below are some videos of the sea lions hanging out under the pier.  We got a tip from a nice lady at the end of the pier that you can take the stairs down and look under the piers.  The sea lions are able to jump up onto the piers and I got a video of them (below) unsuccessfully and successfully jumping onto the pier, which was fun to see.  I lost at miniature golf, I lost at air hockey, and I lost at a car racing game, so it wasn’t a winning day for me, but it was really enjoyable and lots of fun.

Successful Sea Lion Jump