More Crestline on the Internet Please When I first moved to Crestline, there was very little on the Internet about happenings in our town. That is changing every day as more people in the mountains create and (more importantly, maintain) their own Web sites. Now, by going to www.google.com and entering crestline ca in the search, in just the first two pages of returns I get information on a wedding planner, our own Mountain News, a listing of hotels and motels, a florist, real estate listings, the Crestline Chamber of Commerce and more. You have to go through dozens of search pages to start running into a majority of items that aren’t really relevant to our town. However, in those latter pages, you can find interesting things that people from Crestline write on the bulletin boards of other Web sites if you’re really nosey and really bored. You can also alter your search requests. Try crestline ca fun and you’ll get activities for young and old. Or if you do want a florist, just type crestline ca florist. I like sites that are useful, like the college guys who hooked up their dorm’s snack machine to an Internet site that was devoted strictly to keeping an accurate inventory of what was in that machine. With this setup, instead of hauling their lazy butts downstairs to see if there are any Kit-Kat bars left, they just call up the site address on their browsers to see what’s left. I’d like to see air temperature and water temperature of Lake Gregory displayed in real time, all of the time, so I don’t have to pay $3 to stick my toes in the water and then make my decision about whether to go swimming there. One site comes close to this. If you want to see up-to-the minute information on temperature humidity, dew point, wind speed, heat index, wind chill and lots more for Crestline, go to http://petroglyph.crestline.ca.us/weather/details.shtm. This site is hooked to a weather station run by Scott Gomez Consulting, an independent computer consultancy. I’d also like to see where all the CalTrans flagmen are at all times, and where all the signs are located that indicate there are flagmen present and warn you to “Prepare to Stop” and there’s nobody there. On foggy and rainy days I’d like to see all of the places where tire-eating-size rocks are sitting in the road. CalTrans managers might argue that this would require extra manpower that is busy doing other things. If they make this protest, I’ll be happy to drive them around to their crews and point out to them where this “extra manpower” may be found. In my bookmarks on my browser (some call them “favorites”) I have several sites saved that are not necessarily Crestline sites, but I use them all of the time, mostly for local weather and earthquakes. Most of the site addresses are too long to fit well in justified newspaper columns, so I’ll just tell you how to get to them. One of my most important bookmarks is on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site, but just go to www.sgwa.org and click on Current Weather Forecast on the lower left, and then bookmark the site you get from clicking there. This is the current and extended forecast for the San Bernardino County mountains. It’s all text, but the forecast is updated at 3 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. every day. When the weather is rough, they sometimes update every few hours. I like to second-guess the meteorologists, so I like to see the radar and satellite imagery myself when a storm is on the way or in progress. For this I use www.accuweather.com or www.intellicast.com. Just go to either of these sites and put 92325 into the search box and you’ll get a wide array of still and motion radar and satellite imagery. Just book mark the ones you like and you’ll have much of the real-time stuff that the meteorologists are seeing. The only drawback with these sites is that you have to kill a few pop-up ads every time you visit. Another great resource is http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs. This is Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada. At this site, click on the area near Crestline and you’ll get a blown-up map of our area. Bookmark this area earthquake map. Once you have this bookmarked, if you feel what you believe is an earthquake, or if you have no doubt you feel one, just wait about two minutes and go to this site. Look for the red square, which means this earthquake happened during the past hour. Clicking on the square will tell you where the earthquake hit in relation to towns in the area, and its magnitude and depth. There will also be several links to a bunch of information about the quake that you and I couldn’t possibly understand. Even if you don’t feel the earthquakes, they’re still being recorded. For example, on June 9, at 8:18 a.m., at about the time I started writing this column, there was a 2.4-magnitude microearthquake that struck six miles north of Big Bear City. Nobody will pay too much notice to that little temblor, unless it’s a preshock for a big one. The one I’m talking about will be in yellow by the time this comes out, since it occurred during the past week. If a square is blue, that means the earthquake struck in the past hour. The Internet is becoming a great way to take a closer look at Crestline, and the Web sites for Crestline keep coming. For example, the newly formed Crestline Arts Network plans to have its Web site up and running by July 30. The address will be, fittingly, www.crestlineartsnetwork.org. As more businesses and other organizations come online, look for their links to appear on our Web site at www.mountain-news.com and the Crestline Chamber of Commerce Web site at www.crestlinechamber.net |
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