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It’s 1:05 AM. Jim Edmonds just grounded into a double play. We’re going into the 22nd inning. EPIC.

UPDATE: 1:21 AM. Rockies win. Sigh.

UPDATE 2: I’m so fucking disgusted with the Padres offense. Peavy, Hoffy, Bell, Thatcher, Cameron, Ledezma, Rusch all pitched magnificently. KG’s error was so damn costly, ultimately resulting in the game winning run. What it comes down to is the Padres offense, which is no where to be seen. The Pads have gone 94 innings without a HR. Fucking pitiful.

Looks like Time Warner Cable’s move to switched digital video is freeing up some bandwidth. Hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg. On April 8th, they are rolling out History HD, CNN HD, Discovery HD, and Lifetime Movies HD. My lifelong dream of watching Cher in Mask has finally come to an end.

I went shooting last weekend with Hanie, my sister Julie, and her boyfriend Mike. We went shooting at a place that Mike was very familiar with, Orosco Ridge. As opposed to an indoor shooting range, Orosco Ridge is basically an open area where you can freely fire guns in the Cleveland National Forest. There are various spots and ridges where you can pull over and shoot. There are no paved roads. It is basically mother nature, you, and some guns. Set on the outskirts of Ramona, Orosco Ridge overlooks the very picturesque Pamo Valley, which although partially scorched by the recent Witch Fire, still looked breathtaking after the recent rains. You will need a National Forest Adventure Pass to enter the Orosco Ridge area. However, there is no ranger station or physically manned booth that checks for the pass.

We went late afternoon and there were only a few people in the area. I don’t know if that is how it is all the time or we just got lucky. The area feels very remote and you feel like you are the only ones shooting. There isn’t that unsettling claustrophobia that you feel at indoor ranges, where strangers are shooting literally right next to you. We arrived at one of the many ridge locations, just as two relatively young guys were finishing up shooting. They left in a Nissan Sentra, which we all found both surprising and impressive, since the road to get there is rather uneven, unpaved, and peppered with rocks. We probably had a much easier and fun time getting there in a truck.

We all shot 2 different guns: a .45 revolver and a pump action shotgun.

The .45 is heavy, massive, and incredibly loud. The bullets are huge, dwarfing the more common 9mm or .22. The sound is also deafening. It is distinctly louder than other handguns. Where most handguns have a popping sound, the .45 is more of a thunderous boom. You can feel it in your chest. Mike brought out a bowling pin for us to shoot at. The bowling pin is surprisingly dense and shatter resistant.

The shotgun was a blast, no pun intended. It was surprisingly light and quieter than the .45. We shot clay targets, which is both extremely fun and challenging. I think I hit 10 or 15 percent of my targets.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun, as did everyone else. After an hour or so, we picked up all our spent shotgun shells and headed out of the area as the sun was setting. It was a fun time.

A few weeks ago, Hanie and I visited Anza Borrego Desert State Park to do some hiking and check out the desert wildflowers, which were blooming for a short time after a generous amount of recent rainfall. Roughly an hour and a half drive outside of San Diego, Anza Borrego is the largest state park in CA and the second largest in the US. The majority of the park is located in San Diego county, with a few parts that bleed over into Riverside and Imperial county.

The drive out to Anza Borrego is a relaxing and fun drive, comprising of curvy mountain roads, small towns, and scenic views. The best part of the drive is the descent from the mountains to the desert floor via S22. The road has an 8% grade and gives you a wide view of the desert all the way out to the Salton Sea. S22 continues through to the town of Borrego Springs, which sits quietly outside of the park and the park visitors center.

The Anza Borrego Desert State Park visitors center is actually one of the best visitor centers I’ve been to. It has a very pleasing, low profile southwestern architecture that compliments the desert scenery. The visitors center has a small trail that winds around and nearby, presenting the various plant and animal species within the park grounds. Informative and well executed, you can tell this part of the visitors center was never an afterthought and an integral part of the center’s design. The interior of the center continues the same theme, with nice displays of the history of the park and its environs. Most importantly, it was properly air conditioned and contained numerous bathrooms.

Prior to checking out the wildflowers, Hanie and I hiked the popular Borrego Palm Canyon trail, which starts near the visitors center. A little over 3 miles roundtrip, the trail follows a creek and ends in a massive group of native California palms. Surrounded by boulders, Hanie and I had fun climbing and scrambling up the various boulders. The weather was perfect the entire hike, staying in the high 70s. During the heat of summer, even an easy hike like this could be punishing.

After the hike, we drove to the outskirts of Borrego Springs, which lies adjacent to the park, and took pictures of the desert wildflowers as the sun was setting. We chose the easy spot for picture taking, off of Henderson Canyon Rd., as we only had a 2WD drive vehicle. The other wildflower spot, Coyote Canyon, has a more varied collection of wildflowers, but a vehicle with 4WD or AWD was recommended as the road isn’t paved. Our good friend Val actually went out to Coyote Canyon, with the help of some good ole 4WD.

I definitely plan to return. The park is massive and there is a lot left to explore and hike. Here are some teaser photos from our trip, following with the link to the entire gallery.

Anza Borrego Desert State Park

It’s opening day for the 2008 season and I am beyond pumped. As with the end of nearly every Padres season it seems, I have a furious knee-jerk reaction to the Padres shooting themselves in the foot by either failing to make the playoffs by a few games or rolling over in the first round. After a brief moment of swearing off my allegiance to them once and for all, I come back down from orbit, hungry for the next season to begin. The upcoming 2008 season is no different. After an overwhelmingly flaccid finish last season, the Padres retooled and overall things look good.

I was pissed for a while we missed out on the Fukudome sweepstakes, but I’m over it now. The Padres shed some baggage over the off-season and picked up some new guys. Jim Edmonds, who I thought would defy his age and his critics, unfortunately looks to be confirming everyone’s predictions by starting the season on the DL. Although I’m sad to see Geoff Blum go, I’m happy with Tadahito Iguchi at 2nd. Most importantly, the Pads have young guys who look to do some offensive damage for once (similar to what Colorado did last season). Callix Crabbie, Paul McAnulty, and Chase Headley, who was just sent down to AAA to work on his defensive skills (which is a total load of horseshit), all look promising. Scott Hairston and Kevin Kouzmanoff are looking to have a big season. The biggest question mark ironically is the Padres rotation. I hope Jake Peavy can continue his Cy Young form. I hope Chris Young is fully healed. I hope Greg Maddux can pull out another year of wizardry. I hope Justin Germano can stay consistent. I hope Padres icon Trevor Hoffman hasn’t jumped the shark. I hope budget pitchers looking for a 2nd life like Mark Prior and Randy Wolf can just last through the entire season.

Baseball analysts don’t give the Padres much respect or hope this season. All the Yahoo! Sports analysts put them finishing 4th in the NL West. I can’t wait for the Padres to prove them wrong. I never though I’d say it, but I’m more confident and excited in the Padres offense than their pitching. In any case, the Padres take on the Houston Astros tonight at Petco. Peavy v Oswalt. It’s going to epic, and I can’t fucking wait.

UPDATE: Pads win 4-0. Peavy pitches 3 hits over 7 innings. Bell looked good. The Claw looked good. Pads amass 14 hits on the night. I am fucking beyond stoked.

WARNING: Total nerdy post ahead based on my limited knowledge of a complex issue

For you San Diego Time Warner Cable (TWC) customers, you may have recently noticed the new program guide on your cable boxes/DVRs. Dubbed Navigator, it is basically Time Warner’s in-house cable box software, which allows them to replace existing licensed software from either Scientific Atlantic (SARA) or Aptiv Digital (Passport). More importantly, it signifies TWC’s move to their switched digital video (SDV) platform.

SDV basically reclaims massive amounts of cable bandwidth by only sending out requested channels. Traditionally, all channels are transmitted over cable lines, regardless of what channel you watch or subscribe to. So, even though you are watching 1 channel, the cable company is still broadcasting numerous unwatched channels, wasting precious bandwidth. This distribution method is the primary technical reason why Time Warner Cable’s HD offerings have been limited and their HD signal quality suspect. The lack of available bandwidth restricts TWC from adding new HD channels. Ever notice your picture turning into a giant mosaic of little blocks momentarily, especially in fast moving scenes? Known as macroblocking, this is a result of cable companies compressing bandwidth-hungry HD streams over their already saturated cable network. With SDV, Time Warner can reclaim large amounts of bandwidth by not broadcasting unwatched channels, thus allowing them to add more HD content and increase bandwidth for existing HD content. Navigator is the software piece that makes this happen.

The largest and most damaging drawback/side effect from the move to SDV is the effect on people who do not use Time Warner supplied hardware. People using CableCARDs in their TVs and 3rd party devices such as a Tivo S3 and TivoHD are SOL for the channels that are distributed using SDV. The hardware, namely CableCARD, and obviously the software will not support SDV. From what I understand, only digital tier channels are slated to be distributed over SDV, namely existing/new HD and seldom watched digital channels. When those channels switch over to SDV distribution, affected customers will not be able to receive those channels, in addition to already not having access to services such as Video-On-Demand (VOD) and Pay-Per-View (PPV). Digital broadcast channels such as CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox should be unaffected since those channels are required by the FCC to be universally available. Plans to release a special SDV dongle to allow the necessary 2-way communication back to the distribution hub is in the works for Tivo owners and is planned to be released in the 2nd half of this year.

The root of the complicated problem is a mix of issues. Some of these include:

• Cable companies’ move to SDV in order to free up existing bandwidth without having to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrading existing and adding new distribution infrastructure
• Poor, slow adoption and implementation of CableCARDs by cable companies and CableLabs
• Idiotic bickering and bureaucracy between CableLabs, cable companies, and the FCC in developing and enforcing open and standard protocols for 2-way cable communication and distribution

So far, Navigator has been pretty good. It is a tad bit slower than the previous running software (Passport) on my SA8300HD. The biggest improvement is that the sidebars on SD content is now black, instead of grey. I can also see how much remaining space is left on the hard drive for my recordings. Once the SDV transition is complete, we’ll see if TWC starts to rapidly add the dozens of HD channels already available to satellite customers.