boman says the graeser 1994 gicoma cab is on its last legs. i have at least a half cased of the damned stuff. it’s sooooooo good. what a shame, i have to increase my consumption of one of my favourite wines. it is kinda sad knowing this will be the end for such a nice wine.

today i took ryan with me on a drive. usually when i go on drives, things turn out awesome. things like exploring a russian settlement, seeing the petrified forrest, finding interesting photo ops (wow!), meeting a vitner (and getting a fresh bottle of wine!), attend a bikers’ rally, spend some good time thinking,

today we went to the star on the map above. a town named copperopolis. that’s right. a 21.5 square miles large town of aabout 2,300. it was a short stop on our way to angel’s camp, a larger and really interesting town. it was super busy, lots of people out and cars lining both sides of the street. we tried to have lunch at a small deli, but they were closing. they recommended a restaurant named murphy’s but we made a mistake and wandered to the town of murphys, 8 miles away. we had a super lunch at murphys grill, hamburgers and great garlic fries.

we decided to track back and stop at a small apple farm store on the side of the road. we had some fantastic hot spiced cider. we brought home a half-gallon jug of it — wish we had opted for the larger jug!!

down the street was moaning caverns, the largest single space cavern in the state of california. i actually shot a roll of 120 film inside the cavern with my rolleicord. i pushed a roll of delta 3200 to ISO 8000. i hope it turns out! the cavern is fantastic. they offer rapelling and spelunking — we may invite some of our friends to go crawl through the 165 foot deep caverns with us next time!

on our way back into the bay area, we stopped by for the hour-long-wait to get into le cheval without reservations. of course it’s worth the wait :) after a long day in the car and hiking up a 100 foot spiral staircase then a 65 foot narrow, steep staircase, a nice glass of vietnamese iced coffee never tasted so good.

after so many awesome experiences, i should hop in the car more often. it’s been a total hit every time. by myself or with a pal. all it takes a full tank of gas, a day’s worth of time, and a compass direction to head.

remember when i was complaining about seeing 10,000 attempts a day to a single user account? lately the same pattern has jumped to 20,000-30,000 attempts a day.

yes, one day averaged once every 2.6 seconds around the clock.

2005-10-27: 27,657
2005-10-28: 25,836
2005-10-29: 25,373
2005-10-30: 33,735
2005-10-31: 20,176
2005-11-01: 23,949
2005-11-02: 27,876

these immediately get rejected, so it’s not like they’re going anywhere. but why?

today, 2005-11-02, the attempts came from 1,270 unique ip addresses.

why?