SeeCalifornia.com

The City of Los Angeles saw a 20% spike in their internet traffic this week, and workers are being urged to pull the plug and quit watching the Olympic Games that are being streamed live from London. The Olympics are so popular at City Hall that the computer systems risked a municipal computer meltdown. The chief technology officer for California’s largest city sent an email Tuesday to thousands of city employees, asking them to stop watching the games online at work. NBC streams the Olympics live on the Internet. When employees watch streamed material, it takes up a tremendous amount of bandwidth. City Council members responded by saying that employees aren’t paid to watch the Olympics on their computers or TV and work is no place to do so.

California’s presence at the Olympics includes one of the region’s favorite sports, beach volleyball. The U.S. women’s beach volleyball team of Jen Kessy and April Ross advanced from pool play when they defeated Netherlands No. 9 Marleen Van Iersel and Sanne Keizer, 21-15, 12-21, 15-8 on Tuesday at the Horse Guards Parade venue. On Thursday, Kessy and Ross went for the pool victory against No. 16 Liliana Fernandez Steiner and Elsa Baquerizo McMillan of Spain and won.

Kessy (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.) and Ross (Costa Mesa, Calif.) are first time Olympians and seeded No. 4 in the tournament. They are guaranteed to advance to the first round of single-elimination play on Friday.

Two time Gold Medalists  Misty-May Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings have their Friday position secured for single-elimination rounds beginning Friday night. They also are from California. May-Treanor was raised in Costa Mesa and Walsh-Jennings grew up in Santa Clara.

May-Treanor and Walsh-Jennings were on an Olympic win streak of 30 consecutive sets without a loss until losing the first set of three to Austria in a preliminary round on Wednesday night. They came back to win the second  set by a dominating 21-8 and took the third set 15-10 to remain unbeaten in this and every other trip to the Olympic Games.