Probably helped that we were outside and didn’t have stuff falling down on them. So it sort of didn’t kill our mood.

Some news: KPBS says…

The magnitude 7.2 quake was centered near Guadalupe Victoria in Baja California. The USGS reports it’s the largest earthquake to shake the region in 18 years.

There have been three large aftershocks so far, including one that registered a 5.5 magnitude, and other smaller temblors, USGS said.

We’ll see how things turn out tomorrow. The kicker is what the unseen damage has been – elevators, infrastructure, and so on.

Is it safe to go back into the water? Another San Diego surfer is suspected to have been eaten… We’ll find out more from the autopsy, but this occurred up near Ventura. 

Dead surfer found off Santa Cruz Island identified

The Associated Press | Article Launched: 05/04/2008 11:07:16 AM PDT

SAN DIEGO—Authorities have found the body of a 43-year-old San Diego man who disappeared while surfing with friends off Santa Cruz Island.

John M. Wagner was found dead in the water about 20 miles south of Ventura Harbor on Friday, the Ventura County coroner’s office said.

While surfing a break on the island with friends, Wagner went underwater for unknown reasons about 5 p.m., according to a Coast Guard official. The island is part of the Channel Islands National Park, and it was park rangers who found his body.

The autopsy will be conducted in Santa Barbara County where the death occurred.

Wagner’s death comes six days after a shark killed triathelete David Martin off Solana Beach.

Monday’s Update: According to the LA Times today, more details show this is not a shark… however there was another shark attack down in Mexico this weekend.

Wagner’s death comes just four days after a shark killed a 24-year-old San Francisco surfer in Mexico and a week after a triathlete was killed by a shark in San Diego County. Adrian Ruiz bled to death after being bitten on the thigh April 28 while surfing off Troncones beach west of Alcapulco.

It’s not clear what species was involved in the attack but Mexico’s Navy and maritime authorities had spotted two great white sharks nearby during helicopter overflights.

Beachgoers were being warned about the sharks’ presence near the largely undeveloped oceanfront.

And then there’s this account regarding the Ruiz attack…

Shark kills American: A shark killed San Francisco surfer Adrian Ruiz, 24, at Troncones beach north of Ixtapa on Monday. Mexicans then began slaughtering sharks.

“It is outrageous that the Mexican government is hunting sharks to protect tourists, when the biggest threat to tourists in Mexico is the crime wave that has engulfed the country,” said Serge Dedina of Wildcoast/ Costasalvaje, based in Imperial Beach and Tijuana.

Cousin Derek doesn’t blog?!? Say it ain’t so…

…Jeter updated his [mlb.com] journal four times in 2007, and Rodriguez once.

Jeter smiled when asked if he had thought about maintaining a true blog. “That’s too much for me to worry about,” said Jeter, who was in sixth grade when Hughes was born. Maybe, he [Phil Hughes] mused, there was a generation gap.

It would be hard to picture most players holding a contest for fans to guess a favorite quote from “The Office.” Hughes did, and more than 300 people replied before a reader named giambino0522 guessed correctly.

For the contest winner, Hughes sent a game-used, autographed ball from his victory in Game 3 of the division series. Hughes had two other balls from the game, so he apparently did not mind giving up a memento worth hundreds of dollars.

“The fans are very important to me,” Hughes said. “Without them, I wouldn’t have a job, basically. I try to give back as much as I can. It’s almost a no-brainer.”

Derek, you need to step up and get with the technology! Hook up with Twitter or something, do it from your cell phone… ’cause you’re just as old as my brother, and that’s not young in baseball! Those fans are fickle as well.

As for generation gap – meh!

Just two weeks after I helped one of my buddies buy and load two tandem kayaks onto his SUV… Newsblog | Helicopter sent to look for shark

A Coast Guard helicopter is being sent to assist Solana Beach officials after a fatal shark attack was reported there this morning. A man was killed in the apparent attack, officials said.

The HH-60 helicopter crew has been dispatched and is going up in support of lifeguards and other emergency crews.

“It is not an active search-and-rescue,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Clinton Dotson. “We will help clear the area … and see if we can spot the culprit.”

Solana Beach is just a few miles up the coast from where I go snorkeling in La Jolla. I’m bummed because we’re the mainland capital of training triathletes. I just texted my buddy who is a Search and Rescue swimmer with the Navy and he says he’ll tell me later this afternoon what happened. 

Why it happened?

My opinion as a native Californian, a San Diegan since 1989, and a former Navy DWEST student is…

…that we’ve let our pinniped population get out of control. Wetsuited swimmers (i.e. triathletes in this 58 degree water) resemble seals.

One example is that we let the Children’s Pool in La Jolla become a sea lion and seal refuge where there is plenty of natural habitat still available just past the break.

Add to this the early morning swim, and the cold water which Great Whites love this time of year, and you’re looking at increasing the odds. By the way, I don’t, as a habit, use my wetsuit as a toilet which some people do, particularly in endurance event training.

In 1995 there was a kayaker attacked in La Jolla right where I’ve swam for years. It’s just the risk you take when you go into the water, but it’s marginal if you take precautions.

Foxnews.com had this to report:

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. —  A male triathlete swimmer was killed Friday morning in a gruesome shark attack at a San Diego County beach.

San Diego County sheriff’s Lt. Mike McClain said deputies went to Solana Beach shortly before 7:30 a.m. Friday and found a shark bite victim, who was pronounced dead about an hour later.

The male victim — one of a group of triathlete swimmers training in the ocean — was pulled into shore, but efforts by medics to revive him failed, Deputy Fire Chief Dismas Abelman told FOX News.

Witnesses reported seeing the victim’s leg severed at the knee.

“He had very severe injuries to both legs,” Abelman told FOX.

The man, whose identity wasn’t immediately released, was described as being between 55 and 60 years old on the Solana Beach city Web site.

The incident happened at a strip called Tide Beach. Rescuers took the victim to the nearby Fletcher Cove Park lifeguard station for emergency treatment, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Coast Guard has issued warnings of sharks in the area since the tragic attack. Swimmers have been ordered out of the water for a 17-mile stretch around the site.

The county Sheriff’s Department has sent up helicopters to scan the waters for the shark.

From San Diego’s NBC News affiliate:

A group of nine swimmers entered the water near Fletcher Cove at about 6:30 a.m. for their daily ocean swim, according to witnesses. They swam northward, and While they were swimming, a 66-year-old man was bitten on both thighs, the spokesman for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said. Other swimmers looked back and saw the man flailing before he was pulled under the water, the spokesman said.

Witnesses said the victim resurfaced screaming. Several other swimmers pulled the man to shore.

Lifeguards arrived and a helicopter ambulance was called, but the victim bled to death on the beach.

Helicopter video showed lifeguards, firefighters and police gathered at the main lifeguard station in Solana Beach. What appeared to be the victim’s body covered by a yellow tarp was visible under a portable shade structure behind the headquarters.

The victim’s identity was not immediately known.

Lifeguards did not know what kind of shark attacked the man, but they speculated that it was a great white.

sip,structural insulated panel,construction,energy efficiency,solano county

I was recently asked by a friend how the construction project was going. Another blogreader asked how much I was involved.

A picture is worth a thousand words…

(jump beneath the fold for more)

When you can’t get things in a project completed properly you end up doing a lot yourself. I tried to get contractors to bid on this, nobody, not one, followed through with what I thought was professionalism. So… I took the time off and jumped in to complete the task.

Leadership By Example

Which led to me tied to a forklift thirty feet in the air jumping up and down on a hundred pound SIP to get it where it wasn’t going to go because someone else had redrawn the layout my contractor had previously done.

We used to call that ‘leadership by example’ in the Navy. You don’t want to ask others to do what you yourself wouldn’t want to do first.

Not my fault… not my problem that I created.. but ultimately it was my project, my responsibility.

And the risk associated with tying someone else up there was, in my opinion, not worth it. I had the equipment, and had spent months climbing rock walls in gyms and tying knots. Umm… Because I knew it would come in handy.

Well, in less than two months I and my intrepid band of high school dropouts, (aside from the contractor I brought in periodically) knowing nearly next to nothing about what we were doing took this…

and this..

and by manhandling these energy efficient structural insulated panels (which weigh a LOT more than you’d think) like this…

…We were able to accomplish this much in two months.

Not two months straight working mind you, there was Thanksgiving where we lost a week, and then every other week I was back in San Diego with my boys doing the Daddy thing. Something like 35 days total work sounds about right. With no more than five total people on the site at any time, best working group size was four IMHO.

We are now looking at this (and yes, it’s supposed to look like a barn, that’s what it is designed to be… just a really super energy efficient barn / office space).

Oh, and this…

and this…

We were on track to have our permit finaled at the end of this month however I’ve had just about every single Murphy’s Law item thrown at me during this project, (three relatives dying, one baby born, all sorts of family law issues) why not at the very end of it all just have yet. Another. Family law issue? (hate to vent, but after all, it is my blog).

Like I didn’t have my plate full already.