Bumper sticker spotted on a Corner Bakery delivery van:
It reminds me of the warnings you see on cardboard coffee cups that say things like, “The beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.” Though my favorite is still one from the late, lamented* Diedrich Coffee that said, “Of course it’s hot!”
*OK, they’re not completely gone—there are still two stores left in Orange County since Starbucks bought them out and either closed or converted the rest. *grumble*
Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month.
After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s going to take them another decade to actually build the thing, but one of their first attractions is a helium balloon on a tether. Depending on wind conditions, they send it up anywhere from 250 to 400 feet, and visitors can get a 360° view of central Orange County and the park under construction.
Unfortunately, conditions weren’t ideal today. It was hazy, so visibility was only about 10 miles or so, and it was windy. In fact, when we arrived, they’d just tied down the balloon. The guy who organized the trip called back to the office to cancel, but those of us who were already there figured we might as well at least walk around and take a look.
As it turned out, they did start sending the balloon up again, though they limited it to 10 people per ride. So those of us who stayed ended up waiting about an hour, but we made it up.
Looking north toward the Tustin Hills
Looking south. The Irvine Spectrum shopping center is just to the left of the taller buildings.
Looking east toward the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Note the hangars and other former MCAS El Toro buildings in the foreground.
I managed okay up until the point where I decided (foolishly) to look down through the center of the gondola. (It’s shaped like a ring, as you can see from the first photo.) The landing was a bit bumpy, and we suspected that they were probably going to shut things down a few groups after we left.
As nerve-wracking as it was after a few minutes, I’d love to go again on a clear day like this one (second photo) back in February, especially if the wind was low enough that they were willing to send the balloon up to 400 feet.
The following two “Weird Al” Yankovic songs popped up sequentially on the iPod the other day:
Sometimes random shuffle makes you wonder whether the software knows more about the songs than what’s in the ID3 tag.
I’m surprised it took so long, but trackback spammers seem to have finally figured out that they can sail past the simplest check against trackback spam—does the calling page actually link to the page being trackbacked?–by temporarily adding that link.
Or maybe they have for a while, and they’ve only just started getting past my other layers of defense (namely Bad Behavior and other checks by Spam Karma).
*sigh*
I’ve held off on posting funny spam subject lines lately, but I just had to comment on this pair. First up:
Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken.
It’s a quote from Lord of Chaos, the 6th book in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. The next one is a bit less obvious:
If Lan was attempting jokes, however feeble and wrongheaded, he was changing.
I wasn’t sure about this one, since there must be other stories with characters named Lan, but Google Book Search found it in book 5, The Fires of Heaven.
I’ve seen lots of spam that used filler from The Wizard of Oz and other novels old enough to be in the public domain. Project Gutenberg and the like have been transcribing them, making free plain-text ebooks for years, making it easy to snag a couple of lines of actual English text.
In theory this should be harder to identify as filler than randomly-generated text. Continue reading
Today DC Comics released The Flash: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, a collection of classic Flash stories ranging from 1947–1994. Back in February, when they announced the contents, I did a point-by-point comparison of the stories to be included and the stories that appeared in the 1991 book, The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told.
When I picked it up, I noticed that the paper was lower quality. The 1991 book was printed on thicker, almost glossy paper. It wasn’t archive level, as it’s noticeably yellowed over 16 years. The new book is certainly above newsprint, but the paper is thinner and matte. Of course, it’s still better paper—and better printing—than the stories originally got!
It looks like Johanna Draper-Carlson (Comics Worth Reading) was right when she suggested that the new Greatest Stories books are aimed at another audience: not the fan who wants a collection of classic stories, but a casual reader who might be interested in a sampler.
Alas, no Bart Allen cameo. The final 2 pages of Flash v2 #91, which were really a teaser for “Reckless Youth” and not part of “Out of Time,” were left out. But speaking of that story, Mark Waid’s introduction to the book contains a statement that, given recent events, takes on an unintended poignancy:
That they chose “Out of Time”—one written by me—is, I insist, simply a lucky byproduct of their real intent: to showcase the artwork of Mike Wieringo, a most deserving comics superstar whose interpretation of Wally as the Flash set a standard unsurpassed to this day.
Just some thoughts on the top 3 most intrusive pieces of computer hardware to upgrade or replace:
Then, of course, you need to do the whole thing in reverse.
One reason I haven’t upgraded my processor lately (a simple procedure by itself) is that whenever I do, it seems to need a new socket, which means getting a new motherboard. Which also needs new memory…
