My personal glimpse into the first half of the 21st Century for some yet to be known future
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Second cross-country road trip of 2011: Day 8 (refuelling made hard and the moon made easy)
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Second cross-country road trip in 2011: Day 7 (Niagara Falls)
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Second cross-country road trip in 2011: Day 6 (slow start, comments about various hotels)
Our hotel in Lake Havasu was spacious, but dingy.
The original hotel I booked in Albuquerque was in a very sketchy neighborhood, so we opted to cancel the reservation and stay at a Homewood Suites near the airport instead. Homewood is very nice and does accept pets, though for a very hefty fee of $100. The average (even at other nice hotels) was $25, so $100 is a bit over the top; particularly since you can just drop your dog off at the nearest Petsmart for about $30 overnight lodging, and that includes one-on-one human attention and a free meal. Note to Homewood, lower your pet fee!
The motel, er, again I mean "hotel" we stayed at in Oklahoma City, OK was also very sketchy and dingy.
The lesson I'm slowly learning is to stay away from the less expensive nationwide hotel brands that are in the big cities. Spend a little more to get a decent place, and try to pick towns that are a bit outside of the area, as smaller outlining towns tend to have higher quality versions of the nationwide hotel brands.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Second cross-country road trip in 2011: Day 5 (St. Louis)
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Second cross-country road trip: Days 3 and 4
We spent one night at a good hotel in Albuquerque, but a shady place in Oklahoma City. It's hard picking good places when you don't know the area.
In general, New Mexico is a beautiful state. Oklahoma is a state that does not really mirror that image presented in the movie by the same name.
The weather has been great. Day 3 had gorgeous and sunny skies, while day 4 had a very thin cloud layer for a pleasant break from the sun beating down on us all day as we drove.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Second cross-country road trip 2011: Day 2
Though I'm never likely to end up in Lake Havasu (Arizona) ever again, this is a beautiful place where I would've liked to spend more time. Allie and I got up early to get back on the road in order to get to the Grand Canyon with enough remaining daylight to enjoy the Grand Canyon.
The drive from Lake Havasu to the Grand Canyon was a short four hours with a couple of stops (mostly for our little dog). As you drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon from the direction of I-40, the land offers no clues as to the huge hole in the ground just a bit to the North. In fact, there is very little clue as you park at the South Rim's visitor center. There's no clue as you walk along the paved trail from the parking lot. There's only the slightest hint as the North Rim becomes visible over the trees. The full impact isn't realized until you are at the rim and look from East to West, and then nearly straight down. It's really true that photographs do not do justice to the Grand Canyon. Nothing really prepares you for the awe you'll experience when you first see it for yourself.
The Grand Canyon is pet friendly. Although my dog did seem to appreciate some aspects of the canyon, he was most interested in every single bush we walked past.
Our hotel was surprizingly good. I originally had booked with another hotel, but cancelled when they hung up on me three times in a row when I was trying to confirm my reservation. I'm glad I cancelled. The Grand Hotel turns out to be the best choice, not just for pet friendliness, but for general comfort and cleanliness.
We will very likely be back to the Grand Canyon some day to experience more of its wonders.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Second cross-country road trip 2011: Day 1
Due to the time of year, we had to avoid the heart of the Rockies, opting to drive through Arizona. The first day was a long 10 hours from Silicon Valley to Lake Havasu. We made a lot of stops, mostly cuz of my dog being restless during his very first road trip.
Sometimes it is easy to forget how big California really is. It takes many hours to leave the state from the Coastal regions.
We didn't make any stops to see anything. The goal was to get to Lake Havasu as quickly as possible to have a good nights sleep so we'd be able to take off early enough to enjoy the the Grand Canyon the next day.
Our hotel in Lake Havasu was beachside, but we didn't really have time to take advantage of that.
We did stop off at London Bridge (and got to drive over it twice). I didn't see any World War II damage marks on it, but didn't really have time to look all that closely. It was already nighttime when we arrived.
Monday, November 21, 2011
My wife asked to see proof
Friday, November 18, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Casted Branches
Night's pale spirit dashes spiderwebs upon earth,
Like villains cast onto silver screens,
Lying without breath; but breathing, as wind affects,
To spook our children on All Hallows' Eve.
Creaks and cackles echo,
While creep jostles our own essence.
This imparts solace upon howling ghosts,
Who excape from Inferno's demented joy.
Clamoring so, and wailing,
Lost souls seek new abodes;
Haunting our windows as light upon memories;
Whisking about, agitated, frustrated...then night wanes.
Apollo rides out with his own cast of characters,
To sweep away specters and their weeps,
And comfort bring to little ones as they arise,
Oblivious to the crypts under tread.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Never order a Mojito on a plane
Looking at the food menu, I saw that Mojitos were offered. I let out a brief private chuckle at the very thought of a flight attendant trying to make a Mojito in flight. Mojitos are one of the most labor intensive cocktails, as they require crushing of mint leafs within the glass. How would any of this be accomplished on a plane? So, much to the surprize of others around me, I ordered a Mojito on a plane, just to see what I would actually get.
I was handed the following, along with the same plastic cup you get if you order soda or water.
My travel day had been particularly bad (more than most on the plane) so I give the flight attendant a quick sad story to convince him to throw in an extra Bacardi minibar bottle. A very small consolation for a very crappy day, but nice nonetheless.
That single shot of Bacardi and the bag of mint flavored lime juice was $11....and that's with me "mixing" the drink myself. Without the mint leafs, it would be debated that this was actually a Mojito at all. So, the moral of this story is to never order a Mojito on a plane.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Senseless Sunday: Now that tittle is heavy!
- A giraffe heart weighs about 24 pounds.
- Plastic sheaths at each end of a shoe lace are called aglets.
- The world's largest baseball bat is 120 feet long. It weighs 68,000 pounds.
- Pat Welsh was the voice of E.T. in the movie E.T. the Extra-terrestrial
- That dot over the lowercase j and i is called a tittle.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tuesday Two: saves lives, makes lives
Who knew this was even an issue. Broken lobster traps sometimes break free from tethers and wash up on beaches and riverfront properties in Maine. Too expensive and bulky to haul off, Kim Boehm created the Trapzilla as a convenient way to compact the traps to a manageable size.
Epoch fail
The Wedding Countdown Bra puts a clock on a bra to let....well, I'm not really sure what the countdown supposed to encourage. It signifies the countdown to when the wedding ring is placed on the wearer's finger. Ironically, press vidoes and images all show the model with an engagement ring instead. Nothing says "Marry me!" more than a countdown to wedding bells attached to a bra.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Roaming around Boston on the last fair weather weekend of the year
Not wanting to drive around the city, finding parking spots, paying multiple parking fees, dealing with the traffic, etc, I decided to give mass transit a try. The Commuter Rail ride from Southborough was comfortable. In about an hour, it got me to South Station. From there, Dewey Square was just across the street. This gave me a chance to check out the Occupy Boston camp-in protest. There's a lot of people, but the event is not a big as one might think.
After that, I rode the T subway to the Museum of Science at Science Park. It's a fairly large museum with a lot of interactive displays and several shows. Some areas are for adults, but much of it is a glorified play land for kids (which isn't a bad thing for the kids).
I then walked over to Charleston and Bunker Hill. Foolishly, I decided to walk to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument, all 294 spiraling steps! The view of Boston from the top was great.
Next stop of Chinatown, so called. It's really just a city block or two. There's a few Chinese style restaurants, but just as many Vietnamese places too. The topper is that there's a McDonald's, two Starbucks and two Dunkin Donuts as well. Yes, TWO! So sad.
However, I did stumble upon my second news item of the day. Sirens where everywhere in Boston. It turns out, they where all heading down to Beach St. in Chinatown. A large chunk of bricks fell off several floors from the facade of a parking garage. They smashed up a car below, damaged some businesses across the street and injured one person who was taken to the hospital.
After that, I headed home, back on Commuter Rail to Southborough. On the drive back to my place, I stopped of to get some ice cream. Massachusetts is a strange place. It's winter about 1/3 of the year, and cold much of the rest, yet there are ice cream parlors (out door window service) almost everywhere, especially in the middle of nowhere! I'm not really sure why they are called parlors if there is no actual entry, but hey, who am I to argue with a great tasting treat on a warm Summer...er...Autumn evening. Anyway, Ulhman's Ice Cream Parlor was a good capper to a great day of exploration.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Bricks fell from several stories up in Boston, injuring one person,damage too
Bricks fell from several stories up in Boston, injuring one person, damage too, a photo by fcsuper on Flickr.
Here's the photo close-up the bricks that smashed the car, injuried one person and busted windows in shops across the street today on Beach St. in Chinatown, Downtown Boston!
Aftermath of parking garage brick falls several floors in Boston on Beach St. in Chinatown
Only in Amish land
Monday, September 26, 2011
An old tree at the bottom of the forest
I took this today near the apartments where I live. In trying to get this shot, I had to dodge an aggressive mesquito, who got a taste of me before she died by the swipe of my hand. The battle with the natural elements was worth the photo.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Flying over dramatic clouds between Evansville, IN and Chicago, IL
Video of flight over dramatic cloud formations on my flight between Evansville, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois last week. The clouds are beautiful, but let's not think about the rain and gloomy day beneath them.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
McFlurry at Chicago airport
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Solyndra headquarters during weekday, just after bankruptcy announcement
This video is of the Solyndra headquarters in Fremont, California just days after they announced that they are going bankrupt. There's three large buildings around two massive properties.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Funny use for boobs (or turning your breasts into useful tools)
She was bumping herself up against the wall panel like a robot that was stuck in one direction. Had she been paying attention, she would've noticed that I had already pressed elevator button just a couple seconds before. As the elevator door opened, I was like, "I got it already...but you were interesting to watch." She giggled. Her boyfriend looked as though he was trying to pretend the episode didn't just happen.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Today Show jumped the shark years ago (Let's make sperm donors evil!)
They interviewed two talking heads that both expressed they were shocked by this number and that something was wrong and the fertility industry needed regulation to put a stop to this. Really? No one ever once said what was actual wrong with donating sperm and bringing new lives in to this world that otherwise wouldn't be here (regardless to the number). The whole point was that something was wrong.
As expected, the line, "Think about the children" was actually seriously used. Really? You mean, all those people who are alive today (who otherwise won't have been) are somehow detrimented! Again, the detriment was never vocalized. I guess they are suggesting that because there's a 1 in 50 chance some medical knowledge about their biological father *might* help one of them, we should stop any of them from being born at the risk of the one offspring not being able to know. Hey, Today Show, by your own logic, you just killed 150 people (for as much sense as any of this makes) to prevent one person the pain of having to go through and extra medical procedure (usually just a genetic test these days)...oh the horror of it all!
Of course, they tried to humanize and already human story by talking about the kids (many of them adults now) trying to get in touch with each other and their biological father. The offspring never say anything was wrong. They just talked about how they wanted to get in touch with each other. ::yawn::
So, what was the point of the story? In my opinion, it's a distraction. Like so many other stories aired on the Today Show nowadays, this story was targeted to get an emotion response without much regard for the integrity of the program itself. The Today Show has gone down the same road as Maury Povich, Geraldo Rivera and others that ended up making trash TV because they didn't have the skill to talk about real issues that are impacting everyone's lives in a way that most people can understand.
I'd rather spend $100 trillion dollars to solve the National Debt crisis than spend one red cent on creating regulation to control the fertility industry just because somebody feels like something is wrong somewhere or somehow.
You know what's wrong? About 15,000 people die each in America year because of drunk driving. 500,000+ Americans die each year due to cancer. 600,000+ die from heart attacks each year. Or, in government concerns, National Debt and deficit is causing the general decline of our country; as that continues, we have much worse problems to dealt within instead of worrying about some guys secretions.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Two months in New England
I've also learned ...oh wait, nevermind. I already knew what I was about to say.
I miss my wife and dog. They are still out in California. Allie and I talk every day. I can't wait until she gets out here so we can explore New England together.
Has anyone else noticed that New England and North East have the same initials? If you are ever in the area, you must know the difference between the two. North East includes places like Pennsylvania, and New York. New England, on the other hand, specifically excludes New York (and any state west and south from there).
Monday, July 18, 2011
Brief periods of popularity (kinda)
Its Trouble has had a couple of those blips on the radar over the years. These blips last for a few days where viewership jumps like 50 times normal. Of course, 50 x 2 is still only 100 unique visits.
The blips usually come from some popular website noting an article I've written. It's been awhile since something on Its Trouble has interested someone with a popular blog. Google has noticed me recently for my review an online travel booking service feature. As of this moment, my review article comes up as #7 for a particular search phrase. It's moved around. At one point, I think it was #3 and then below #20. How much attention does that bring to my website? It's a a couple of extra hits each day.
SolidWorks Legion
My other blog is SolidWorks Legion. It covers topics related to the engineering field, with a focus on the software SolidWorks (a popular 3D CAD application). That site got a major spike in visitors when my article about DraftSight (a new 2D CAD application published by the same company as SolidWorks) when it was announced that they'd be releasing a Linux version last year. The article got picked up by a Linux-focused website. Normal visitors on SolidWorks Legion at that time was about 500 unique views per day. In one day, the number of visits jumped to 1000, then the next day, 10,000. The traffic actually almost took down my website a few times. Links from that Linux website tapered off eventually, but the number of visitors was elevated for a couple of months.
Sail Ship
A recent example of another spike wasn't for one of my blogs.
It was for a photograph that I just uploaded to Flickr.com. Apparently, my sarcastic comment about a ship with sails caught the attention of an author over at reddit.com. The same day that I uploaded the photo, it got 75 hits from reddit.com. For Flickr, that is a ton of attention. The normal hit rate is usually single digits. I was able to track down the actual link to my photo on reddit.com. (The Flickr.com tools allowed me to see that much of the traffic came from there.) Apparently, reddit.com readers are big on all things sarcastic, ironic and humorous.
Monday, July 04, 2011
In flight maps
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Is state sales tax on interstate commerce allowed?
For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state. We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue.Big-box retailers are companies like Target and Walmart. According to Amazon.com, companies like these seek to protect their businesses by fooling State governments into thinking the State will increase revenue with expanded scope on their sales taxes. Instead, this new tax (like any other tax) has a negative impact on the economy. I’m not against all taxation, but I am against any laws (taxes or otherwise) where one industry attempts to screw over another without providing any new benefit to the consumer. My website is just like any other. It does generate an extremely small amount of income from referrals (upon which I already pay income tax) via affiliate links with Amazon (please see the FTC 16 CRF Part 255 notice in the right column). Now, this law wouldn’t require me to pay any more taxes direclty, but as a customer of Amazon and other online sites, I would be forced to pay sales tax from a law that is probably unconstitutional. Laws that see to “tax the Internet” erode everyone’s rights, and threaten to hold anyone with a website accountable to the individual laws of over six thousand different taxing jurisdictions in America, according the Quill v ND ruling (linked above). Oddly enough, I no longer live in California. But, how long will it be before more States try to pass similar laws? Congress needs to act on this issue soon to prevent this economic nighmare from growing any further. I’m not making this a call to action because each person much act on their own. As such, I am going to be contacting my *new* Congress representitives about this issue very shortly. For additional reading, please see The Problems of State Taxation of Interstate Commerce and Why Congress Should Act (backup link)
Sunday, June 19, 2011
States I have visited (USA, Canada, Mexico)
As of today, the maps above represent the states and provinces that which I have visited. On the world map (not shown here), I also add Bahamas and Hong Kong to my list. My ultimate goal is to set foot on all seven continents. As of right now, I don't really have a goal about any specific number of states or countries. I do eventually want to visit particular places that would naturally add states, provinces and countries to my list of visited areas.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
4th Annual Taste of Downtown Marlborough (and 1st Annual Brewfest)
There were lots of long lines to sample the various restaurants. Later in the evening, it was a little easier to get samples, but some places had run out by then.
There was also various live acts, ranging from the classic to the drum beat based. One rock group played Turning Japanese and then She Bop right after. I couldn't help but grin when I saw parents dancing with their kids to those particular songs. Sometimes you have to wonder if people know what those songs are supposedly about.
There are also some interesting old buildings.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Ran over a bird (dang!)
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Cross-country trip photo (Flickr)
Cross-country trip, a set on Flickr.
I've uploaded all of the photos (many shown here) from my recent cross-country trip to a Flickr set. There's a few of my car, and many others taken from my car. I didn't get a chance to stop at many interesting places (for various reasons discussed in earlier articles), but there are still some interesting shots. Enjoy!