Who says utility plants have to be boring?

Arup and Gruen reveal new design for LAX, via Archpaper

TDL-4 botnet. This one scares me.

According to this ComputerWorld article, Kaspersky describes a new botnet that is "practically indestructible".  Since late 2010, it has infected 4.5M computers worldwide, with command and control servers located in...take a wild guess.

Some of the C&C server locations by IP.

Part of what makes TDL-4 difficult to even find let alone remove, is that it uses a rootkit to install on the master boot record.  But that's just part of the complexity of the botnet infection.

Geez, I might have to reconfigure my whole ecosystem and stop using Windows machines for browsing the internet.  The internet has just grown so dangerous with people falling for social engineering (phishing) attacks, such that even when you're safe, it's impossible now to trust your friends and family.

Google Calendar, an overwhelming Lifehacker Hive Five winner.

With more than half of all votes, Google Calendar won by a landslide against Apple's iCal, Microsoft's Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird and specialized app Rainlendar, this past week.

And today, Google Calendar implemented changes to its look with simplified UI, making it nicely scalable on different screens.  Love the clean, new look...I wonder if this has anything to do with former Macintosh designer Andy Hertzfeld's influence?  He's apparently the force behind the wheels in Google+.

That background image, by the way, was made possible by clicking on the options menu and selecting Labs, and enabling the background feature.

6-29-2011, 10-year US Treasuries

I'm not worried....
yet.

By the end of Friday however, the story might be different.

Oh my. Hydro power never looked so beautiful.

Talk about stunning. Via Smart Planet, instead of pursuing a decidedly industrial look, German architectural firm Becker Architects makes a real statement with swooping lines of concrete.

Six types of failures.

In a Fast Company Co.Design post, Parsons "The New" School for Design Professor Jamer Hunt notes that not all failures are the same, and that some are indeed bad for you, while others are part of a positive process in creativity.  Accordingly, there are six types of failures:

• Abject Failure
• a catastrophic failure in which permanent damage is caused and cannot be recovered from.
• Structural Failure
• integral part of a design fails, but does not cause permanent damage to one's reputation.
• Glorious Failure
• going down, in the blaze of glory where no recovery is possible, but it was fun watching.
• Common Failure
• recurring, minor failures that do not affect design.
• Version Failure
• each iteration of a design has small failures directly related to the design, but are correctable.
• Predicted Failure
• unknown yet expected mistakes, otherwise known as the reason why you always prototype.

I like these distinctions; I think they serve well as guidance as to what types of failures to expect, and provides a predictive sensibility of how to react.  You want to avoid the abject failure at all costs, while the glorious failure at least is entertaining and can provide a laugh.  Structural failure points to an internal process problem that needs to be corrected, whereas common failures are sometimes annoying to some, but have little bearing on the outcome.

Gene therapy: getting closer.

Via Smart Planet, scientists have successfully repaired DNA in mice, to correct for a lack of blood clotting abilities.  Looks like medicine is about to break through the next frontier.  Now if only they'd grow new teeth in humans (almost a reality, actually!)

Stumptown coffee sells out to the man...sorta.

Via Felix Salmon, Esquire noted that Stumptown sold a piece of equity to TSG, a private equity firm.  Selling out to the Man is not cool in Portland.  What next...Deek and Brian's?  VooDoo Doughnuts?  Rogue Ales?  Powells?

Groupon vs. Google Offers, directly competing for the same store, today.

You knew it was just a matter of time.

Groupon has a $4 for $6 (33% savings) Now coupon good only for today (6/27/2011 -- you get a refund if you don't use it) for the same company (Portland Bagel Company) that Google Offers is selling a $5 for $10 (50% savings) good for a year but redeemable only from tomorrow.

I'm guessing if people were paying attention, they'd go ahead and spend the extra dollar to get the extra $4 in redemption value savings.  I must seriously consider this offer...I'm feeling kinda hungry right now. :D

If only they'd offer a coupon for Elephant's Deli, I wouldn't even stop to think about it.

Nokia's first WP7 phone, made by.....Compal?

According to Intomobile, Digitimes has a post that states the first Nokia WP7 phone will not be made by Nokia, but will be outsourced to a Taiwanese ODM, Compal.  The speculation is that Nokia is doing this to get their WP7 phone out before the end of the year.

Elop risks weakening Nokia's WP7 brand by outsourcing the first phone's hardware, and a further erosion of its market share of smart phones (and by nature of market growth, total mobile phone market share), if there is even one minor hardware flaw.  Unlike Apple, I doubt Nokia is in a position to survive an antenna-gate.  Nokia's rapidly shrinking market share shows that its consumers are not in the mood to wait around for its WP7 solution, let alone stick around for a flawed WP7 phone.

And I'd be worried that by outsourcing hardware production, Nokia also risks having its internal designs exposed to a bunch of eyes outside of Nokia.

A lot of risks; are the rewards worth it?

Honeycomb or Mango? Google Trends edition.

If all human life is precious and should be protected...

Why is the health care system for humans in America, a for-profit business?

The answer is simple: not all human life is precious enough to protect every last one, especially the vulnerable.  Free Market theory clearly states that there are winners and losers.  If you're a loser, your reward is either death or debt.

Search social media: Google Realtime.

Happened to come across this: Google Realtime.  Allows you to search social media outputs to see what's going on, or keep up to date with what's setting the social world on fire.  Has a nice, sliding time line to screen search time periods.  It's the other half of Google Trends, eh?

Multnomah County Library: well that was weird.

First, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm not graciously thankful, but the events I'm about to describe are just downright weird in how they played out, to me.

This started a few months ago, seemingly after the county changed its computer system.  I had returned a couple of due books in the evening, on the day that it was due.  Normally when you drop books off at night, they accept it as though they were received the day they were due.  The following day I was checking my account to see how my queue was doing, and I saw that I had a 1-day fine on one of the books that I just returned.  I didn't complain, thinking that maybe there was a mistake made, and it was only $0.25 anyway.

A few weeks after that however, it happened again, where I dropped a pair of books off in the drop box at night, only to find one book resulted in a fine.  Well, at that point it's still just a total of $0.50 in fines, so no worries; I figured that they must have changed their policy: books returned at night were given a free pass on the first, but not on any other materials after that.

Again, a few weeks after that I had returned some books - though these were truly a day late - they split the fine with one book getting an extra $0.25 fine.  Seemed to reinforce my theory, and though I wasn't thrilled about it, I decided I'd just accept it.

Then this week happened.

This week, I was going to go in to the library to pick up a book held on reserve while dropping off 5 books (two of which were due that day) on my way back from a meeting.  There was an hour before the library closed, but I couldn't find a parking spot, so I figured I'd just drop the books off in the drop box and pick up the book some other day.  The next day I'm checking my queue, and again, one book received a fine while the other one didn't.

Now hold on for a moment here...I dropped BOTH books off before closing, and they still charged me a fine on one book?  That just blew my mind that they'd charge me for returning a book on the day it was due, in the drop box, a full hour before closing.  So I used their online form to send a query on why this happened, noting that while two books with fines were truly returned late, all the other fines seemed odd.

Two days passed on no response.  Today, while in the shower, I was going through the mental exercise of figuring what to do next, if they never bother to respond, and leave the fines in place...do I go to a small claims court just on principle for that $1.00 of seemingly improper fines?  How in the world would I prove my case?  I suppose I could set up a video of evidence showing my returning two books due the same day?

So on the third day (today) I checked my account, and voila, all fines were gone!  Not just the ones that seemed questionable, but all of them (still a meager $2.25 total).

But no explanation either.  No emails, no phone calls, nothing at all, despite entering my email and phone # in the form, to allow them to contact me.

So like I said at the start, I'm graciously thankful, but the events are just downright weird, to me.

Souris River, ND...yep, that's not normal.

From UPI, the Souris River in North Dakota is expected to shatter the 130 year old record by more than 8 feet.  US Army Corp of Engineers local engineering chief called it a "Noah flood".

8 feet over its highest ever record...if that happened to the Willamette River in Portland (record 1864 = 33'), I'd be out of luck, just within the flooded zone.  Bummer.

Half the bridges would be useless, because part of their access would be a few feet under water.  The Streetcar and Max wouldn't be able to run.  Heck, all of South Waterfront would be under several feet of water.

Sure, they could resurrect the sea wall steel plate walls they temporarily built in 1996's flood, but 8' above the record, would mean that the water would bypass the sea walls and come shooting up from the sewer.  Eww, right?

Don't think it could happen?  That's exactly what happened near the Old Spaghetti Factory in the South Waterfront area in the 1996 flood -- you could see the water pouring into the street from the sewers, with the Willamette River short of 29' flood level.

I have a lot of sympathy for those folks in Minot, ND.

Rough overlay of 41' elevation

Greed, lies and fakery: Skype Edition.

Felix Salmon's got a better representation of the actions of Skype / Silver Lake Partners, and the attempts at obfuscation especially by Silver Lake Partners, than the original article by Peter Burrows and Joseph Galante in BBW, IMO.

This time, it centers around Yee Lee, a former Skype who left shortly after being fully vested in his stock options.  Turns out, being vested was worthless, because Silver Lake Partners inserted language that allowed Skype to buy back stock options at the original purchase value.  All those gains, of course, get returned back to the rest of the investors.

Looking back with all this perspective, one can't help but laugh, when an anonymous [Silver Lake] investor said that the amount of money involved in the first article by Joseph Galante was not "worth the time to make the phone call" to dispute Galante's article.

Justice Thomas... yikes.

Try to follow this excerpt (if you can) of Justice Thomas' majority opinion on lawsuits against generic drug makers, extracted from the NYT:

“If they had done so,” Justice Thomas wrote of a possible request for a label change, “and if the F.D.A. decided there was sufficient supporting information, and if the F.D.A. undertook negotiations with the brand-name manufacturer, and if adequate label changes were decided on and implemented, then the manufacturers would have started a Mouse Trap game that eventually led to a better label on generic metoclopramide.”

Should we laugh or cry?  It's bad enough that he wrote a single, lengthy sentence with multiple verbs, but it feels like he's trying to torture us:

Archos Honeycomb Tablets intro'd.

Oh my.  What we've got here, are Archos Honeycomb tablets running an ultra slim (7mm) hard drive...for $279 (8") and $349 (10.1").  My, my, how positively interesting the tablet markets are getting!

Google voice search, on Chrome.

Noticed just now, Chrome (13.0.782.32 beta channel) has enabled voice search.  Now, you can search by talking into your computer -- assuming you have a microphone -- just like you do on your Android phone.

Update: Well there you go...an Arduino shaped in the form of Google Search, via Make.

External USB 3.0 drives.

Just thought I'd mention, I'd been waiting weeks and finally this black Fantom USB 3.0 2TB external drive went on sale at Buy.com for just $84.99.  It had dropped down to this price a few weeks ago, but I hesitated and missed out...normally it's priced over $100, easily.  It also fits cleanly next to my 1TB Fantom USB 2.0 drive, in silver.

It's arriving tomorrow, and I'm so excited!  Geek out! :D

Some thoughts on Nokia's N9 and WP7 Mango comparison.

Today, image / video leaks of Nokia's WP7 Mango phone are spreading, but basically, it's an N9 on the hardware / outside.  (Yes, bad image of the WP7 Mango phone below, but it was a leak.  And though it may not look like it, the hardware is nearly identical to the N9.)

I've never bought into the live tiles, but upon placing the images side by side, I guess the thing is, Android, iOS and MeeGo all share the same UI access to apps (more or less), while the live tiles are very different.  And maybe that's a flaw inside of my thinking, that because Microsoft's live tiles is so different, that it sucks.  I don't know for sure, but it just doesn't get me excited at all.  I mean, if you compare side to side on the same hardware, live tiles is most definitely a monumental paradigm shift, but is it a good shift?

I think I'm going to go to a T-Mobile store to play around with the WP7 phone to see exactly how it operates (and check out the newest Android G-Slate tablet).

Austerity causes....more government spending.

Via Salon, Brits are finding out that by slashing government jobs, it has had to pay more for social welfare benefits (think unemployment compensation), erasing any benefit that cuts in jobs has brought.  Further, austerity has ended up adding MORE to debt borrowing, rather than reducing it, including debt as a percentage of GDP.

It's no wonder PIMCO's Bill Gross has suddenly changed his opinion about inflation, resulting from QE2's cheap money...looks like consumers aren't exactly going on a spending spree in the US, and businesses aren't expanding.

AVG site reports, June 2011

This made me chuckle a little.

AVG's site reports shows that Google, the top visited domain, has had zero threats in the last 30 day period, whereas Microsoft's Live.com along with Facebook.com have both had compromised pages.  Facebook with clickjacking doesn't surprise me; that there were 444 pages compromised is a bit surprising, though.

Real per-capita government revenue growth: the last 38 years (or why trickle-down economics is a fallacy)

From Paul Krugman's blog, (real) per-capita government revenue growth seems to have done quite well under Democratic presidents, while substantially stalling under Republican presidents.

Starkly obvious, the period between 2000 and 2007 (which doesn't include the Recession of '08-'09), under control of Republicans in Congress and the White House, revenues plummeted.  No surprise there, given the Bush tax cuts of 2002 and 2004.  Under Reagan, the same is true: tax cuts and lower real revenue (the key here, is real revenue as opposed to nominal, so even though revenue increased quite a bit, so did inflation).

So to distill it down: tax cuts do not increase government revenue, as the trickle-down theory of Conservatives have oft repeated as fact.

Sitting back, watching the hacking wars from the e-z chair.

It's like a soap opera...so-called script kiddies attacking companies, trying to get into government websites, pretending to have some higher moral calling...

and then came the web ninjas, pulling together people on the internet to expose the hackers from LulzSec.  And suddenly, one member of LulzSec goes down.  A 19 year old kid.

Their flaw: vanity.  They chatter in public about their exploits and their next targets, and since they're on IRC, someone's gonna get their chats and publish them.  Doesn't matter if they operate behind a VPN off in Iceland or the Bahamas, they leave tracks behind because they're too vain to not go quietly.

Most awesome Google Offer today - June 21, 2011.

Talk about awesome!  Google Offers has an offer for my favorite bookstore: Powells!  In just 10 minutes, already another 150 people have bought this offer! :O  And this is just for in-store in Portland metro area.  Geez!  If I could, I would have bought 100!

Update: In the 30 minutes after I bought my offer, another 400 people have done so, too.  Easily the most popular Google Offer to date.

Update2: The Powells offer has hit the 3000 mark at 9:40 am.  Seems like it'll run out before noon...maybe before 11 am.  This reminds me of the B&N offer on GroupOn earlier this year, although I have much more love for Powells.

Update3: It's 10:52, and there's less than 900 left -- the notification has changed over to # left out of 5000.

Update4: 12:16 and all 5000 are now gone.  Turns out, the last 300 were slower.  Can't wait to go to Powells, now. :D

In the near-future, a war fought by proxies.

The NYT reports that the US military machine is building up its capabilities to use all sorts of drones big and small, tasked from spying to killing by remote control. Upon first view, you won't know whether or not that animal or insect was real or a drone, and you might not even get a chance to a second view.  We've got flying humming bird drones and micro drones that resemble moths.

This isn't exactly brand new news, really.  Back in 2007, WaPo noted that the CIA and DARPA were developing robo bugs.  What the NYT article notes however, is that the US military is quickly moving to a remote-controlled workforce that does the dirty and dangerous jobs.

It won't be long that these drones will be outfitted with the capability to drop a payload of RFIDs or toxins, allowing the US to either track or kill someone (anyone) at will.  Create a network of wireless, solar-powered RFID reader stations, and you can locate and track people as they move from town to town, or block by block.

Some might suggest that we're moving towards Terminator.  I think we're moving closer to Runaway.  I fear rogue operations utilizing these mini- and micro-drones for nefarious deeds.

I can, for instance imagine these micro bots being utilized to steal login credentials and passwords.  Watch out what you let into the house or office, eh?

vis NYT

This keyboard reminds me of WP7 / Windows8 live tiles.

Not exactly.  Still, it has a certain resemblance with simple, larger buttons and bright colors.  Today only (Saturday, June 18, 2011), at 1saleaday.com for $14.99.  Kids like bright colors and easy to read buttons, don't they?

The radiation spread in Japan...wider and higher.

Caught this post on Smart Planet about the radiation levels resulting from the Fukushima nuclear plants.  Japanese bloggers are updating this map of measured radiation levels.  Hovering over the colored squares shows you the date and reading; most of the readings were done in the past two weeks.

You can perform the calculations yourself; suffice to say, 0.5 microsieverts per hour is nothing to laugh at, over a prolonged period of time.  You can see how the exclusion zone is wholly inadequate.  And yes, parts of Tokyo are affected.

Hacker on hacker...is that a crime?

LA Times notes that LulzSec is on a war against Anonymous and 4Chan. Is it a crime for hackers to hack at each other?

Hot Wheels extreme.

via Make: Online

Resembles Tokyo, no?

Paramount Pictures now utilizing strict DRM.

I have a computer set up, such that it is hooked up to a 24" screen LCD tv monitor (1920x1200 resolution!) in front of my bed.  It has served me really well that I watch most movies and videos either from DVD or streaming right from my bed.  About the only time I use my 42" plasma, is to watch live sports and broadcasts (or really good sci-fi movies) because it's a ton more comfortable on the bed.

Paramount undid that.

They've employed strict DRM that prevents VLC (and other players) from playing DVD movies, specifically True Grit.  It won't play properly; all you get is misrendered digital video.  And I think this might only apply to Netflix discs that Paramount sends over to them.

So do you suppose, Paramount is purposely targeting Netflix to harm their subscribers, so that people have to conform to Paramount's DRM or buy the movie in order to watch it from computers?

I'm pissed off at Paramount.  It's not as if they were blocking copying of movies; what they're doing is preventing proper playback of movies on a bunch of software such as VLC (by the way, VLC is the best media player!)

Google's "Me on the Web" in Google Dashboard.

Google has just introduced a new section to the Google Dashboard, called "Me on the Web", tracking your linked internet connections outside of Google.  In it, there's a pop-up box to set up alerts for mentions of your name on the internet.

Here's a better idea: just skip to Google Alerts and set up a bunch of alerts not just based on your name, but on other personal information as well.  Why not track any leaks of your social security number, credit card info, and your email addresses on the internet?  It gives you a heads-up for any data leaks that get posted, or any badly designed websites.

Google Offers...some early thoughts.

Sorting through the Google Offers in Portland, OR (not that there's any other city where it's available), it's clear that food, coffee and bars are far more popular than health and beauty services.  I have to agree...I prefer drinking coffee and eating food over going to the dentist or going to a spa.

Don't get me wrong: I really like the dental techs - young, cute females - and my dentist is pretty hip and awesome, but you never really get good news at the dentist; you only get bad news, really bad news, or relief from knowing that there was no change in the status of your teeth.  Same goes for doctors: their version of good news is that you're not sick.  When the status quo is good news, it tends not to motivate one to make regular visits. "John, I have great news: nothing's wrong with you!"

I hope that Google Offers will focus more on foodie and activities discounts than health and beauty.

Business	Type	percent savings	number purchased
Portland Rose Pedals Pedicab	transportation	50	26
Malu Day Spa	beauty	60	39
Mt. Tabor Dental	health	85	51
Fulcrum Fitness	health	82	83
Uptown Billiards Club	bar	50	95
Celebrity Tan	beauty	74	157
Karam Lebanese Cuisine	food	50	500
il Piatto	food	50	504
Le Bistro Montage	food	60	706
Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade	gaming	90	750
Mississippi Studios and Bar Bar	bar, show	65	1189
Floyd's Coffee Shop	Coffee	70	1709

View of an aurora from space.

Courtesy of ESA's Flickr, via Smart Planet.  Just curious, but isn't ESA a publicly-supported entity, and therefore all images should be generally free from copyrights, say like...oh I dunno...NASA?

Free CFLs for Portlanders.

Energy Trust of Oregon offers a free package of green, including free CFLs.

Lunar Eclipse today, June 15th, live via Google.

Google posted today, that it is broadcasting live streaming of the eclipse via its YouTube channel and via Google Earth.  Starts at 11:20 am PDT.  Awesome, really...especially the Google Earth tracking of the moon.

And it has begun!  11:23 am.

And still growing.  11:35 am.

Now halfway in the shadow. 11:52 am.

Almost there! 12:08 pm.

Near totality, the moon has begun to turn red. 12:17 pm.

Minutes away from totality, now more red.  12:23 pm.

Orange-red glow...feel the warmth.  12:32.

Now halfway through the entire event, a nice red.  1:00 pm.

Uniform reddish-orange.  1:20 pm.

Now starting to exit totality.  1:48pm.

....the light is coming back.  2:01 pm.

Oh, and by the way, Google Doodle is running a live updated animation of the eclipse.  Note: you might not be able to see it if you're utilizing IE9 or other older browsers not supporting HTML5.

End.  Well, at least for me it is.  Sun's taking over (outside that is.)

Why I have my doubts on Microsoft's live tiles.

Pakistan arrests CIA informants that led to Bin Laden's death.

No better proof of how disparate Pakistan's and US' goals are, than Pakistan arresting the informants who gathered intelligence for the CIA to nail Bin Laden.  They obviously hate us.  Why are we sending them money again???  They're playing Americans for fools by taking our tax dollars while pretending to fight on the same side, and we're obliging.  Hell, they're the ones responsible for passing on nuclear information to the Iranians.  Heck, they're responsible for spreading terrorism across its borders into India, then denying any association.

We got rid of Bin Laden; it might be time to get out of the area, I think.  Let them handle their problems on their own, right?  They sure haven't acted like a friendly nation at all.

A brief feel-good moment.

Was playing at the park with the dog this evening, when I noticed a bunch of crows playing with something.  Not sure what was going on, I kept watching from about 100' away.  In a matter of a minute, I realized they were taking turns attacking what seemed to be a lifeless bird.

Not sure what drove me to do so, but I got up, walked over to the crows and they backed off, slowly.  I approached the still bird, and saw its eyes half open, shutting and opening as if it were fully expecting to die shortly, in pain.  It did not cry out loud as animals in pain are wont to do, but instead just laid there, as if having accepted its fate to be bullied and torn asunder.  The sad looking spotted dove just seemed to have given up all hope.

I hate that.

Obviously, this is just a part of nature, but I found this unacceptable.  At first I had thought that this may have been a case of a sick, weak bird that the crows had stumbled upon.  But what if it wasn't?  What if this was a case of animals bullying another?

I decided to let the other birds know that this dove was protected.  I stood there for a bit, and the crows stared back from the trees.  I walked away; they flew back and began walking towards the spotted dove; I got up and started walking towards them.  This time, they didn't fly away immediately, as if they were challenging me.  I turned so that I was walking directly at them; they got the message and flew into the trees, but I didn't leave it there.  I walked towards them in the trees, staring them down one by one, as they hesitantly retreated to a further branch.  We played this pas-de-deux for 5 minutes, when they decided they had had enough, and flew completely away.

I returned to my grassy spot and started playing with the dog again, keeping an ever-vigilant eye for their return, but they did not return.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a scrub jay appear.  Still playing with the dog, it began to make its way towards the spotted dove still on the ground, unmoved.  In less than a minute, another scrub jay appeared, and I knew they were up to trouble.  They were making their way to the dove, so I walked towards them.  They somehow thought I was not going to bother them, as they ignored me up until I was 10 feet away from them.  As if realizing I might trouble them, they flew into a couple of nearby bushes, waiting for me to leave.  I did not.  Instead, I followed them and stared them down until they flew away -- talk about bravado, they weren't concerned even while I was just two feet away from them!  After they flew away, I took another look at the dove, and this time, its eyes were wide open, seemingly aware that death was not YET coming.

Again, I walked back to my grassy spot and began playing with the dog while keeping an eye on those scrub jays, but they gave up and flew away.

At this point, the sun was starting to set, and the realization that I might have to leave soon, I kept hope up that this bird would struggle away and hide.  I decided at that point, I would pick up the dove and place it in the bushes where it could be - at least temporarily - protected, if I were to leave.

And then it happened: the dove got up, flapped its wings, and flew away!  It took a round-about direction and flew over my head, as if to give thanks, and disappeared 200 feet in the opposite direction.  Well there you go: it was NOT a weak, sick bird, but one that was surprised and being bullied to death.

I saved a bird from being bullied to death.  That made my day.

Portland Japanese Garden and Rose Garden photos

Used my Groupon today (the final day) and it was a bit crowded at the Portland Japanese Garden.  Came to realize that a lot of people are like cows: if you do not direct them away from a spot, they'll sit there doing nothing, watching you as you wait for them to clear out.

I've previously taken wide shots, so I mostly stuck with macro, to focus on details of motion and texture.

Taken at the Rose Garden, across the way from the Japanese Garden.

Digitally edited to blur the floating crap on the water.

Taken at the Rose Garden.  Very few roses blooming.