Category: Life

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A couple of weeks ago I just had to get out of the house for an afternoon and found myself at the entrance to Peters Canyon Park. The last time I’d been there, the park was closed due to recent rains. This time, it was open.

Several trails run from the entrance around the edge of the park, and one goes inward to an area that’s currently closed off. Because…well…take a look:

Damaged sign: Warning - Mountain Lion Country

I couldn’t help but take a picture. It went so perfectly with this sign I found in Hawaii near the active lava flows: Continue reading →

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  • Very cool! 175 Photos of Day Taken at Night
  • Humans TXT: We Are People, Not Machines. Cool idea, but I’m not sure how practical it is without (ironically, I know) a machine-readable standard. If we can’t get most people to watch the credits on a movie, who’s going to go looking for a text file that’s referenced in a hidden link?
  • The Android Market is finally viewable on the web! I love being able to look for and download an app directly on my phone, but sometimes the desktop environment is just easier to deal with.
  • What happens when the cloud evaporates? Flickr: Too big to fail (We hope?) at ZDNet. (TL;DR case study: Flickr accidentally deleted a photographer’s entire account with 4,000 photos. He had his own copies of the pictures themselves, but all the account structure: links on his blog and elsewhere, titles, descriptions, labels, etc. were lost until they were able to dredge it up out of system backups.)
  • Webcomic SMBC asks: Where’s the ball?
  • Sad balrog has no one left to play with. 🙁

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I got off the freeway to catch the train out to the office last Tuesday morning, and saw this incredibly bright sundog off to the east. I couldn’t get a parking space, so I had to drive the rest of the way, but I did get a couple of photos.

The sun is off-frame to the right.

I’m not sure why the bright patch was so elongated and well-defined. My guess is that a smaller cloud in the foreground happened to be in exactly the right spot to reflect the sunlight.

I had to shorten the exposure in order to actually get some detail on here, like the bit of color spectrum in the middle.

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Continued from volume one…

  • You put a filter in the coffee maker, then go back to get…a filter for the coffee maker. And then put the bag of coffee back in the fridge…where you’ve never kept coffee. Ever. (Yeah, I was batting 1,000 that day.)
  • You get halfway up the stairs before realizing you left your travel mug in the car. (I’ve done this several times.)
  • You get impatient with the pour rate while filling your mug.
  • You pour cereal into your coffee mug instead of a bowl. (Well, almost.)
  • You come up with a great item to add to your “You know you need coffee when…” list and can’t remember what it was.

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Don’t have time to go to Starbucks, but want something more than plain coffee? Here are some simple drinks you can make with ingredients that might be in your lunch room, or that you can easily keep at your desk.

Coffee + hot chocolate mix = mocha

Coffee + hot chocolate mix + cinnamon

Hot chocolate mix + mint-flavored black tea

Hot chocolate mix + cinnamon-flavored black tea

Hot chocolate mix + masala chai tea

Since I realized that this was more of a list of what you can do with hot chocolate mix, I’ve been meaning to fill in more detail for…well, months now. Apparently today is National Coffee Break Day, so I figured rather than letting it sit in the drafts folder forever, I’d post what I had in observance!

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I can’t get worked up about Starbucks’ new super-size for iced drinks, the 31-ounce Trenta. Here’s why:

  • It’s only on iced drinks. Iced tea, lemonade, iced lattes, etc. Unless you’re getting plain iced coffee, you’re not getting 31 ounces of fully-caffeinated coffee.
  • Even then, there’s ice taking up a lot of that space. So you’re still not getting 31 ounces of coffee.
  • You can get a 32-ounce drink in any fast food place in America. Sometimes it’s called a large. Sometimes it’s called a medium.

A 31-ounce Frappucino might be a bit much…but how much do you typically get in a milkshake at a restaurant that specializes in them? I’m going to guess it’s 12-16 ounces in the glass, plus about the same in the metal mixing cup that they usually deliver to your table at places like Ruby’s or Johnny Rockets. That brings it to 24-32 ounces — in other words, about the same.

So, a little perspective. Is the Trenta bigger than any other Starbucks drink size? Sure. But compared to a Big Gulp? No one would think twice if you picked up a 32-ounce iced tea or lemonade at McDonald’s (except to ask why you weren’t getting a soda), or refilled your 12-ounce glass twice at a sit-down restaurant.

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