Dealing with the heat
It’s been a record-tying weekend for heat in the Seattle area. Fish and Ike are dealing with it the best they can, from padded chair or cardboard box as usual …
The return of in-flight wireless?
SAS totally misled me about in-flight wireless access. On my first international business trip with Microsoft, I had wireless access while cruising over the North Atlantic (albeit rather briefly). So I assumed this was the beginning of a broad industry trend, and soon we’d have wireless internet access on all flights. But then, to my horror, Boeing pulled the plug on its Connexion system a year later, and there has been no in-flight internet connectivity ever since.
Until this week: American Airlines is testing a new in-flight wireless system. Yes!
Email from a Yahoo employee
This is worth reading, just for the writing.
Awareness of recent Yahoo news makes it even funnier.
Poor Jerry Wang, he’s on thin ice in the real world, and now he’s been fired from his temp job in the parallel universe of Fake Steve.
(Mom, I should tell you that Fake Steve link has quite a bit of profanity. You have been warned. :-))
Will Muqtada al-Sadr be the next John Hancock?
Probably not, but here’s some food for thought from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America:
… The history of the present King of Great Britain [King George] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States … He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people … the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within … He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people … He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our Legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power … He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws … For depriving us in many case, of the benefit of Trial by Jury; For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses … He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers.
Hat tip to Tom Englehardt for pointing out some interesting parallels.
PCC Parking Lot
Had a few minutes to kill while Megan was in the PCC on the way home from work today, and realized I hadn’t taken an HDR photo in like a week …
Parkour
I learned a new word today: Parkour. Here’s a video of some typical parkour action …
The Beastie Boys soundtrack includes the line “if you play Defender, I could be your hyperspace.” Gotta love that.
London, Briefly
I did something this week that I’ve never done before. I traveled to another country, and didn’t bother to bring a camera. So no photos to share.
The reason I didn’t bring a camera was that I knew it was going to be an extremely short and busy trip. And I was right. I landed at Heathrow late Monday afternoon, met with colleagues in the evening, went to a meeting in the morning, and was back at Heathrow Tuesday afternoon to fly home.
When I stepped onto the Northwest A300 for my return flight, the flight crew teased me. “Hey, we just dropped you off yesterday, you can’t go home yet!” “Could you do this every day? We sure need the business.”
I have some more meetings in London next month, but they’re spread out over a few days. Watch for photos of London then. Meanwhile, I’ll just say that I found the tube trains convenient, and I love the way everyone says “cheers.” It’s a little thing, but it’s so … I don’t know, cheerful.
Disney in the Dark
I finally got all of my pictures from Orlando edited and filed away in my photo-filing system, and I came across a few shots from Disney World that I hadn’t noticed the first time around. We went on some low-light rides where photography didn’t work very well, but I liked these attempts. That “HI” setting on the D40 (ISO 3200 to old-timers) is pretty fun.
A bird in the bush, two cats in the basement
Elton’s so in tune with animals. He always seems to know what’s going on with animals, and they always seem to see him as an ally. In our back yard last week, Elton pointed out a bird’s nest in a bush, which we had never noticed before …
We don’t have any AC in our house, and we’d like to keep it that way, for all the same reasons we don’t use any power tools in the yard, drive a hybrid, etc. So on days when it’s hot (like today) and the upstairs bedroom gets warm, we always end the day with some flow-through ventilation up there. But since the cats (especially Fish and Ike) will leap out an open window any time they get a chance, we have to lock them in the basement before opening the windows.
Here’s a photo I snapped this evening when Megan came down the hall with the boys, preparing for their nightly locked-in-the-basement-for-a-while ritual …
A few minutes later … we’re listening to some techno Indian CD, and Megan just said “the cats (locked downstairs) complaining really goes with this music.”
