The Harbor with a Red Hat

So yeah, I had Wednesday off so I went fishing in Newport Harbor using live bait caught with an umbrella net (baby smelt, I think, could be way off).

Notes on umbrella nets:

- It's hard to catch fish at night.
- It's hard to catch fish if there's too much current.
- Keep chumming and be patient (Little fish like wheat bread, but not shrimp crackers.)
- Drop the net down at least 3 feet.

It was a productive day even though we didn't end up with any keepers. I caught two calico bass on a high low leader and my wife caught a baby shovelnose. Some people next to us caught 3 big shovelnose, a bunch of rays, and couple bass. It was a good day overall, nice weather and not too crowded.

I installed Red Hat EL4 on one of my home computers I use primarily for development. I was able to connect to the internet immediately which was nice because previously I was using Fedora 7 and had problems getting PPPoe to work correctly. I tried upgrading to Fedora 9 a couple days ago but I had problems burning the CDs from the downloaded ISOs. (I'm not a big fan of Fedora right now.) Anyways, now I'm trying to update Firefox to Firefox 3 and it won't work because Pango's not installed or something like that.

Lesson of the day:

Linux is for people that like spending a lot of time with their computers getting simple, everyday things to work!!

Mac Attack!!

This evening I took my wife and her parents fishing off Balboa Pier.  There was a stiff, cold breeze coming off the ocean so everyone was pretty cold.  Evidently the fish were cold too because they weren't biting much.  There were a couple people fishing the surf and a several more people fishing mid-pier; best I could tell they were all pretty much striking out.  

There was a slow but steady flow of mackerel coming in on the end of the pier, so I changed a couple of the poles from high-low leaders set up for shovelnose to sabikis with 'chovies.  I figured my wife's parents would rather catch mackerel than nothing at all .  (I also threw a glow stick on the line that I got on clearance at Walmart.)

Sure enough, my wife caught a decent-sized mackerel.   Everyone was excited because they felt they could now escape the cold without leaving empty handed.  

I usually avoid mackerel because they have the reputation of being stinky, strong tasting fish, but I figured since everyone was so excited we'd give it a try.  My wife's family is from Vietnam and eat a variety of fish on a regular basis, so I was curious to see how my mother-in-law would prepare it.  She cooked it stove top with lemon grass, Costco seasoning (how's that for very authentic vietnamese cooking), chile pepper sauce of some sort and onions for garnish.  She served it with rice and cucumbers.  

Meanwhile my wife cooked mac & cheese a burner over.  I asked my wife's mother if they had mackerel in Vietnam.  She explained to me that they didn't have that kind of noodle.  I didn't quite get it, but my wife who was listening to the conversation busted up.  I guess my mother-in-law thought I was talking about the macaroni instead of the mackerel.  I suppose you had to be there, but it turns out there are mackerel in Vietnam for those of you who are curious.

As it turned out, we had the mac with the mac and the dinner was a success!!  

Lesson of the day:

Mackerel can actually be pretty good when prepared properly and cooked fresh. 

Balboa Pier

So yeah, tonight I went fishing at Balboa Pier with my wife. I've been on somewhat of a fishing kick of late even though I don't really know what I'm doing. I've been reading a lot online and talking to people out on the piers to try and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Monday, I fished with two guys who showed me how to catch shovelnose guitarfish (or something like that). They caught quite a few but I just got my bait stolen. So anyways, tonight I went back and got a few more bites but no luck yet. A note to anyone who cares, some guys were catching some nice sized surf perch on blood worms. (They had like forty poles.) Some people were catching mackerel down at the end as well. I've still yet to catch a mackerel, though it seems some people catch them by the bus load. (That was humorous since fish swim in schools.)

So even though I'm not catching anything yet, I'm learning a ton. 

Today's lesson:  If you leave a frozen squid in your car on Monday, your car will reek to high heavens by Thursday.

cout << "Hello World";

I am writing this blog because I have something very important to say...  I have something that must be shared with the whole world!!  Actually, I'm writing this because I just got my account set up and feel compelled to write something.  I hope I can actually keep this thing going and that it might actually be interesting to someone that stumbles upon it. 

Anyways, I guess I'll start with a short introduction of what I expect to write about in this blog.  I live in Orange County, Ca and like things local.  This includes but is not limited to:  old buildings, geography, museums, the Lakers, farmer's markets, live music, the Dodgers, the piers, the mountains, galleries, history and anything out of the ordinary.

I'm also somewhat of geek so I spend a lot of time with Linux, DSP algos, Ajax, and a bunch of other technical stuff...  

Alright, I feel I have written enough...