The rains came yesterday, along with the onshore flow (or winds coming from the ocean) to help drive the smoke, ash and fire back. Here is a sat photo from about 2am this morning:

The big San Diego fire, the Cedar Ridge fire, is on the retreat. They hope to have it contained by Wednesday. Here’s a great map of the current conditions for all the SD fires. Towards the west of the Cedar fire is Carmel Mountain, where I work, and Poway, where several from our office live. As you can see, there were some tense moments a few days ago.

I’ll share one of the stories I’ve heard over this past week. A home in the hills of eastern San Diego was in danger of being engulfed by flames. The husband, at work, called his wife and told her to pack some things and get out. She began loading up the car in their detached garage, frantically collecting of everything they needed to save. Running back to the house to retrieve one last item, she returned to find the garage overrun by the flames. The house was spared, but the garage and all of their prized possessions were gone in a matter of minutes. Now that’s a bad day.

I was bound to uncover the truth of my lineage. Tom Sawyer WAS real… and I’m related to him.

It’s Halloween, and nothing will strike terror in your heart more than a crazed man in a bunny suit. Silly rabbit.

A short animation that give you a little perspective on things. Zoom from millions of lightyears out in space to the heart of a single oak leaf. Isn’t science grand?

My brother’s wife’s brother works for the man over at AOL and they needed a fire photo pronto. Rather than play hopscotch over all the red tape with a national news wire, Todd borrowed one of my smokey pics. Whala! Networking = fast turnarounds = I get one of my cheesy photos on a local AOL city guide. Now I’m not changing my career path just yet. Here’s a quote from “the man” himself:

LAToddH: It was a big deal for me to be able to pull a photo out of thin air in minutes, while the corporate guys were signing things in triplicate and angling deals with AP photographers.
LAToddH: Something to throw into the “blogging vs. the media” debate.