It's been raining pretty steadily, very heavy at times, since yesterday afternoon. The weather service says we should expect this to continue for at least a week, but it could go on for up to two weeks.

I mention this because it hardly ever happens here, and if people weren't truly in danger from mudslides in the burn areas (including my parents, their entire neighborhood, and a lot of my friends) it would be incredibly amusing to watch the local media go apeshit on STORMWATCH!!1!1, upgrading 4 inches of water in a street to a torrential river of death and destruction.

Seriously. I am not making that up. I saw it on the news earlier this afternoon.

For about thirty minutes this morning, though, a bunch of kids from down the street didn't think of the rain as a destructive force, as much as a way to propel their paper boats downstream, while they "accidentally" stepped and jumped into the water.

While I watched them play, I remembered building and teaching my boys how to build little paper boats for days just like this one, stomping through puddles long after I was old enough to know better (like into my 20s), and dancing in the rain with my wife, just because she asked me to.

The storm seems to have slowed down for a minute in the time it's taken me to write this post. The sun is trying to push through the clouds, and if I look out the window, I can see patches of bright blue appearing to race across the sky toward the mountains. The water in the street has slowed to a trickle. It's the calm before the next storm, which is supposed to arrive within a couple of hours.

I think I'm going to go make a paper boat, so I'm ready to meet it when it gets here.

Shawn Powers, who edits Linux Journal and is a friend to geeks everywhere, lost his house to a fire today. Scalzi says:

Shawn Powers, a friend of Whatever and also a frequent commenter here, has had a very bad day: His house has burned up. The good news is Shawn, his wife and children are safe; unfortunately their pets were victims of the fire.

Friends and co-workers have set up a place for other friends and concerned folks to chip in to help Shawn and his family get through this really terrible moment in their lives: It’s here. If you have a bit to spare, I’d appreciate you thinking about sparing it. There are also more details about today’s events at the link.

Thanks, and feel free to spread the word.

This is me spreading the word. I've never met Shawn in person, but we've traded lengthy e-mails and he's a really good guy. There's a whole lot of you reading this, so if even a fraction of you throw some change – seriously, just a buck – in his direction, it'll all add up and really help out a lot. At the very least, please take a moment to spare a thought for Shawn and his family.

I was going south on Highland, stopped six or so cars behind the light on Hollywood, when I took this picture yesterday afternoon. 

You can't see it, because it's just out of the frame on the left, but if you were to face north and go past that bar, you would an empty storefront that still has a crumbling sign and vague paint outline in the window that once identified it as a record store. I don't know what that giant construction project behind it is, but I suspect it'll be a hotel. Cross the street, and you're in a strip mall, where I saw a transvestite prostitute walking out of a 7-11, whacking a box of Marlboro Lights against the palm of one hand.

It's not a particularly special or unique scene; you could find something like this in any big American city, but I was inspired to take this picture by what you can't see. If you were behind the camera and looked over your right shoulder, all you would be able to see is the giant Hollywood and Highland complex, home of the Kodak theater.

Isn't that weird? Just a few hundred yards is all that separates this decidedly unglamorous, mundane urban scene from the home of the Academy Awards and American Idol. 

…not every facade in Hollywood is built on a studio backlot.

The Memories of the Futuremug makes an appearance in Stellar Cartography:

Isn't the perspective of the mug and the projector cool?

(Thanks to dotsandlines for taking and sharing this picture at flickr)