Coco

We found this dog near the 5279 Felter, a little downhill of the intersection of Sweigert and Felter Road. After a phone call to the animal hospital in Lodi (whose number was on the rabies tag), and a phone call from the the family in Lodi, and a phone call both to and from the owner, the dog made it home, down at the end of Sweigert.

She’s a really nice dog, and was hard to take pictures of because she wanted to be standing right next to you, leaning on you. Her head is not as large as it appears in the picture. If you hold your mouse over the picture, the owner’s name and phone number will appear, and if you click, a large image of the dog will pop up.

> I contacted Mr. Millfelt and he will go to retrieve the dog as directed
> when the County facility in San Martin is open after the holiday. He
> thanks you for caring. The dog who broke loose, belongs to a family
> member and resides at Aura’s Acres.

I’m grateful to Keith Hurley, who happened by when I was figuring out how to take care of the dog and get to my destination on time. Keith immediately offered to take him to the Humane Society.

Click on the images for slightly larger pictures.

He or she is little older, with wolf-style coloration, a little smaller than a german shepherd, and friendly and nice. His coat was in good shape, and he wasn’t starved.

I don’t think he was dumped. He had a heavy blue collar on him, with no tags, and it was still attached to a 6 foot chain, which had a loop of plastic coated cable at the end that looks like it broke.

Keith reported in his posting to the list that the dog is chipless, and is only guaranteed alive through the 19th of this month. Here is the contact information and animal number from Keith’s posting:

County Of Santa Clara
Animal Care and Control Division
12370 Murphy Avenue
San Martin, CA 95046

Main: (408) 686-3900
Fax: (408) 683-2776

The Animal Number for this Case is: #A034327; German Shepard; Brown; found near Felter Road @ Marsh Road on 02/13/2009 @ approximately 1000 hrs.

Vandenberg is SSE, or almost due south and just a little east, of San Jose,
and the weather might be clear enough to let us see the vapor trail. The
trail might be a little bit to the west of south by the time it gets
high enough for us to see it.

These missiles tend to go near the end of the launch window, and they are
often scheduled for weekend evenings, which makes the best show in the sky.
I’ve seen Vandenberg launches before from here, and they can be pretty
dramatic.

They might scrub the launch, and this particular launch has already been postponed once.

We’ve already paid 25 million for this missile. We might as well enjoy it, too.

Here’s the website announcing the launch.

UPDATE:

I didn’t see it. There was a decent amount of cloud cover to the south, and the early time of the launch (about 3:45 pm) might have meant that the sky was too bright anyway to see the exhaust.

from the launch announcement mailing list:

A target missile was successfully launched at approximately 3:40 p.m.
PST from the U.S. Army’s Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the
Republic of the Marshall Islands. Approximately six minutes later, a
Ground-Based Interceptor was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air
Force Base, Calif. Both the target missile and Ground-Based
Interceptor performed nominally after launch. However, the Sea-Based
X-band radar did not perform as expected.

Program officials will conduct an extensive investigation to determine
the cause of the failure to intercept.

I’ve added a link to the PG&E outage map on their website, which I have gleaned from the lively discussion on the mailing list. It is updated frequently, and while it probably shouldn’t be relied on for up-to-the-minute information, it’s a nice map and has pretty colors that all mean something.

A website might not be that useful if you don’t have electricity to run your computer and internet service, but that’s another preparedness thing.

The Mercury News already has a story up, to add the the story they put up yesterday.

The USGS has a website that will locate an earthquake and identify its strength in about five minutes. I’ve added it to the sidebar, with the Volunteer Fire Department dispatch link.

Feel free to tell your neighbors about the hill people mailing list. There are a few ways to do this:

• You can email them this link to this blog posting, and then they can
  click here to sign themselves up.
• You can have your neighbor send email to hillpeople-join@calaverasroad.org. You can put anything you want in the subject or body of the email, and your neighbor will get some automatic email which will allow them to sign up.
• You can cut and paste this web address: http://lists.calaverasroad.org/listinfo.cgi/hillpeople-calaverasroad.org
  and send it in email to your neighbor. When they click on that link in their email, they’ll get to a page where they can sign up.

Because the email addresses in this list are locked up tight, it’s impossible for you to see
if any particular email address is subscribed, but there’s no harm in in mentioning it to a neighbor
and finding out they are already signed up.

I’ve cleaned up this WordPress blog, and added a link to a website that allows you to listen in on
the dispatches for the Cal Fire Santa Clara Rangers. That same dispatcher also calls our own
Spring Valley Volunteer Fire Department into action, so whenever I hear a siren up here,
I head to that website, and search for “Spring Valley Vol”. You can listen to a 90 second or 30
minute clip of the dispatcher’s voice, and that’ll give you some idea of what is happening.

The Spring Valley Volunteer Fire Department website is currently being remodelled, and as soon as
they let me know it’s ready, I’ll add a link here for them.

Some residents had gotten together to complain about the closure of Calaveras Road between where Evans used to be and Downing Road, for quarry work, and the Mayor of Milpitas made a remark about “the hill people” at the City Council meeting.

I’ll answer questions here as I get them, about the mailing list and how to make it do what you want.