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Just yesterday, I had no idea there was going to be a lunar eclipse this morning. Then I skimmed an article somewhere and got the impression it was only going to be visible on the east coast, And then I read about it on Bad Astronomy and realized I had it backward. Not only would I be able to see part of the eclipse, but I’d be able to see the moon in totality! All I had to do was get up early in the morning and find a place with a clear view of the western horizon. I considered driving down to the beach at 5am, but thought I’d start out by seeing how visible it was from home. As it turns out, I should have gone to the beach to start with, but I had some good viewing before I left.

So I set my alarm, woke up at 5am (plus the snooze button), and went out to see what I could see. To my surprise, I actually had a decent view of the partially-eclipsed moon from across the street. It was about half-covered at this point (as shown in the first photo above). So I stayed out there for a few minutes deciding what I wanted to do, went back in to have some coffee and breakfast, then went back out shortly before 6 to watch as the umbra covered the disc the rest of the way. I found it interesting that it didn’t look particularly reddish this time, just brown.

Awesome viewing, though it was clear the moon would dip below the roofs of the houses soon. I needed a less obstructed view.

As soon as the moon went into totality, I went back inside, woke up Katie just enough to let her know I was going, tossed the rest of my coffee in a travel mug and hightailed it down to the beach. Continue reading →

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Insert obligatory Army of Darkness reference here. I wonder if their “always fresh” guarantee applies to boom sticks… (Found in Torrance, California.)

On a vaguely related note, Incredible Cafe is no more. It’s now Four Brothers Burger Grill. I wonder where they came up with that naming scheme.

2026 Update: Sadly, S-Mart eventually closed. It sat vacant for a few years until Grocery Outlet opened in 2025. Fantastic Cafe, however (not to be confused with Incredible Cafe) has expanded.

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IEEE Spectrum article on The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix.

This was an interesting read, especially for the cloak-and-dagger tactics they had to resort to not only to create the OS in the first place, but to do things like distribute bugfixes (because management was afraid that distributing bugfixes would be considered “support”). Literally on the level of “go to the mailbox on such-and-such street after 2pm.”

(Rescued from my Google+ archive)

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Seriously? Bacon flavoring syrup?

A bottle of bacon flavored syrup by Torani.

Seriously? Bacon flavoring syrup?

While I was looking for cinnamon, someone else spotted it and said, “Bacon? You might as well have beef!” (He was looking for peppermint.)

Would you buy this? What would you make with it? A bacon latte? A bacon margarita?

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You’ve probably seen it: comments that say something entirely vague and either flattering or condescending, that could apply to just about any article. And then they link to an “escort” site, or a pill seller…or some small-town insurance office in the middle of nowhere who hired a black hat “SEO expert” who promised he’d get them backlinks and doesn’t care about the site’s reputation.

I got a great one last week: Somehow instead of getting one randomly-chosen message from a set, I got all of them in one comment: Continue reading →

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I’ve lost some confidence in USPS’s delivery confirmation service.

Even though we put mail delivery on hold while we were on vacation, USPS claims that delivered a package at 4:08pm on Saturday.

So, either they didn’t honor the mail hold and delivered it…in which case who knows where it is now…or they did honor the mail hold and falsely marked the package as having been delivered…in which case who knows where it is now.

At least it wasn’t anything important.

My suspicion is that it was “delivered” to the local post office, and that they haven’t sent us the accumulated mail like they were supposed to. Which means now I need to figure out which office handles our incoming mail and get there during business hours.

Update:

That package I mentioned finally showed up — three days after the end of the vacation hold and five days after delivery confirmation tracking claimed it had been delivered.

So now I know that delivery confirmation doesn’t actually confirm delivery. I wonder what it does confirm.