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By Jim Trageser
Since this issue is dedicated to finding Web sites, let's hit some of the funnest local ones (many of these are listed on my home page as well: www.trageser.com):
Hey, it's spring – where better to be than at the ballpark? And if you can't be there, the Padres' Web page will have to do. This is a well-designed and well-laid-out site, but it's not updated often enough. When visited on April 20, there was nothing about the Hawaii series against St. Louis that had been completed that day. Word is that the Pads have hired someone to keep it more up to date. Hopefully, the bad links will be fixed, too.
In direct contrast to the Padres' lethargy in updating their site, the Chargers' site is updated as often as ESPN news breaks. By the evening of April 20, the Chargers already had their draft picks from that weekend posted. The roster had been updated on April 15, and there was a depth chart from the end of the previous season (there won't be a new one until the next season starts). Links to ESPN give more details on Chargers' picks and trades, as well.
Maintained respectively by the San Diego Daily Transcript and the San Diego Union-Tribune, these two sites are each a one-stop electronic info booth on the park. From the Transcript's site, you can order tickets to the Old Globe (although the Globe schedule was nearly a year out of date), visit the Zoo, link to most of the museums, or view a history of Balboa Park (did you know there was once a nudist colony there? And not in the 1960s, either – but in the 1930s!). The U-T site also has pages for most of the museums, but no Globe page.
Until the new telescope in Hawaii opened a few years ago, Mount Palomar was the world's largest operational optical telescope. It's 200-inch Hale Telescope is still one of the best astronomical research tools in the world -- despite the city of San Diego's return to using high-pressure mercury street lights that practically blind the telescope (another of former Councilman John Hartley's infamous brain spasms). What this site doesn't have but should is photos taken from the observatory – they're mind-boggling in their stark beauty.