The Log

Published: Friday, September 19, 2008 7:58 PM PDT

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Chula Vista released the "log of internet activity" recorded for the computer in former City Manager David Garcia's office. It's tough to pore over as it's just a set of spread sheets with a list of thousands and thousands of urls.

I'm not going to be able to get anything definitive on this as to whether it closes the case on whether Garcia viewed content that was sufficiently inappropriate to warrant his dismissal without a severance.

And as the accompanying caveat emptor the city placed with the records says, "the fact that a website address or uniform resource locator ("URL") for a specific page or site on the world wide web appears on a web log does not necessarily mean that one saw the data or image depicted on that site."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what they mean is this: On our site, for instance, you can go to the home page and your computer will call up dozens of different images. There's the logo, the main photo, and the amazing Survival in San Diego logo. There's tons more, of course. And there are some you will never see because you don't scroll down or whatever.

That said, the log shows that the on April 16, for example, in a period of a couple minutes, a series of urls pointing to celebrities with, how do you say, "wardrobe malfunctions" recorded. And we have found another image on the site flickr where people share things like vacation photos. There's an amateurish picture of a topless woman on that url now. I blushed and hurriedly turned away.

The fruit of my search so far: The urls access images that I certainly wouldn't want people who work for me to see me looking at. I wouldn't be surprised to lose my position if they did. But we don't know what he was actually looking at.

Yesterday, blogger and U-T editorialist Chris Reed, who was on the radio with me this morning, tried to frame what we should be looking for this way:

Is Chula Vista Mayor Cheryl Cox in a good mood this afternoon? Or is she walking around in a huge funk?

If it's the latter, I think I know why. Tomorrow at 5 p.m., city officials finally will offer specifics on what web sites just-fired City Manager David Garcia was frequenting for hours at a time and what photos he was downloading. After Garcia's at-work online habits prompted complaints from other workers, Cox rebuked him in May. Ever since then, she's resisted those who want more details released and who wanted Garcia fired. All we know now is that he liked a site featuring Pamela Anderson, which could be anything from G-rated to X.

If at 5 p.m. tomorrow, it turns out that, as Garcia's lawyer said, he was just looking at "vacation photos" -- apparently a reference to women in bikinis at the beach -- then Cox will be on solid ground in arguing that she was just trying to keep the city moving forward and not getting bogged down over minor stuff.

For now, it's just hard to say and I would need a team to help me find more.

-- SCOTT LEWIS