K-Squared Ramblings

Help Solve a Mall Mystery!

I keep walking past this empty storefront at the Irvine Spectrum, and I have yet to spot anything indicating just what is going in. The phrasing kind of implies that something specific is opening soon. It makes me wonder if I’m supposed to recognize the pattern or something.

Any ideas?

Starting the Week with Weird Al

My iPod ran down its charge over the weekend, and I had to plug in the car charger this morning and start over at the beginning of a playlist. I usually leave it on shuffle on a reaaaaaally long list so I get lots of different songs.

It started up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bohemian Polka,” which was a fun, off-kilter start to the week. When it followed up with “Jurassic Park,” I didn’t think much of it. Twofers by artist, and even by album, aren’t that uncommon.

When “Living in the Fridge” started up, I got a little suspicious.

Sure enough, when I stopped the car and checked, shuffle was set to “off.” I figure the playlist must have been sorted by album the last time I synced, with Alapalooza the first on the list.

I’m still not sure whether it switched off shuffle when the battery ran down, or I just had it off before and didn’t notice because the last playlist I was listening to was pre-shuffled. Still, it was — appropriately — weird.

Coffee Saving Time

Since the time change, coffee has been running out an hour earlier. Coincidence? #

Comic-Con Sellout

I’m floored.

Absolutely floored that 4-day passes for Comic-Con International 2010 have sold out.

I mean, it’s the first week of November, and the convention isn’t until next July!

Tickets with access to Wednesday’s Preview Night sold out a few weeks ago, but at the time, CCI didn’t provide any information about how many regular 4-day passes were left. This Monday, they posted a progress gauge at 70%. The last time I looked yesterday, it was up to 89%.

Today? Sold out completely.

I can’t help but think it would have taken longer if they hadn’t provided a gauge to let people know just how scarce a resource memberships were going to be. There’s nothing like the fear of a shortage to get people to run out and buy up what’s available (and create a shortage). But I also can’t complain, because without that feedback, we might have kept putting off plunking down the $200 for the two of us, and we might have missed our chance.

Single-day tickets haven’t gone on sale yet, so it’s still possible to go if you haven’t already bought your tickets. You can of course buy more than one, it just means standing in line each morning to pick up the next badge. (Even the more relaxed WonderCon, run by the same organization, doesn’t let you pick up a Sunday badge on Saturday, as we discovered last year.)

If you’re planning on going to San Diego next year, keep an eye on the website. Four-day passes went insanely quickly, and I would expect the one-day passes to do the same.

(Cross-posted at Speed Force)

Traffic Spike & Comic-Con Pile-Up

• 6 years ago I titled a blog post “Offensive Driving.” It’s getting a traffic spike from people searching for a particular “handbook.” # Blame Balloon Boy.
• Crazy: 4-day tickets for Comic-Con International 2010 – NEXT JULY – are 70% sold out. #

There’s a Slogan for That

“There’s a ___ for that” is the new “Got ___?” #

Great Park, Great Pumpkin

Great Park – Great Pumpkin, originally uploaded by Kelson.

The Great Park Balloon in Irvine, California, all dressed up as a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween. I was hoping to get a shot of it aloft, but it landed as I approached the park.

It looks really eerie lit up at night, floating off in the distance. Or just floating above office buildings.

It’s not as good a picture as the one I found on Flickr last week, but you can see the whole face.

Here’s a non-zoomed shot, showing the big empty field and Saddleback in the background:

Why?

• Got a tech support question consisting of a single word: “Why?” #
• What genius decided dark green on black was a good way to mark up parking spaces? # To make matters worse, some of the spaces actually are 20-minute spaces…only they’re labeled on the ground, in the same color green paint. I was almost into the space before I noticed.
• Judging by the commercial, Ford’s hybrids are hippier than the Prius. # And I say this as the happy owner of a Prius. Seriously…the size of a tree indicates energy efficiency? The Prius has a bar graph.

It’s the Great Pumpkin

_MG_4592, originally uploaded by blueskyoveraquatic.

Actually it’s the Great Park Balloon in Irvine, done up with a Jack-O-Lantern face. I keep meaning to run out at lunch and try to catch a photo of it floating above the office parks, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

For now, this photo I found on Flickr will do.

Bright Fog

Weird: I had to wear sunglasses while driving through fog. The layer was just thin enough to produce major glare from the sun. #

Stella!

After last weekend’s trip to storage, I was planning to re-read Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, until I remembered that the new Wheel of Time novel, The Gathering Storm (why, oh why did they have to pick such a generic title?), comes out next week. Not the best time to start a four-book epic.

So I rummaged through the to-read box this morning, looking for something to bring along and read at lunch, and settled on The True Stella Awards. I picked it up when it was new, four years ago, but somehow never got around to reading it.

The nonfiction book is by Randy Cassingham, author of the long-running This is True newsletter, and is a collection of write-ups of frivolous lawsuits. It’s named after an email forward that used to go around with the title “The Stella Awards” (only that used made-up lawsuits like the one about the guy who supposedly put his Winnebago on cruise control and went into the back to make a sandwich). That list was named after Stella Liebeck, the woman famous for suing McDonalds after spilling scalding hot coffee on herself. Cassingham decided that using fake examples to illustrate a real problem was counterproductive, and started a newsletter featuring real cases of legal abuse, eventually making it into a book.

It’s been interesting to see which cases have been included. One of the first examples was a 2003 lawsuit against Nabisco for using trans-fats in Oreos (they’ve since been reformulated, IIRC)…which was dropped as soon as the filer had racked up enough publicity.

The Thirteenth

• It’s not off to a great start, but heres hoping today is less frustrating than yesterday. #
• Was hoping for more than 30% chance of rain, esp. the way TV news was going on last night w/LIVE DOPPLER 2000! Where’s that @AlYankovic vid? #
• Appropriate. Today’s Word of the Day is triskaidekaphobia. #
• Slowest Patch Tuesday update ever. ’Course that’s partly because Norton decided to run a full scan DURING the update. #
• Patches did eventually finish, but it took >1.5 hours to install them. Usually if I start it before lunch, it’s done when I get back. #
• Someone searching for “old photos of shoreline village long beach” hit this photo…taken last week. Oops. #

Line Items for 2009-10-02

• Why do people get take-out fast food, then sit and eat it in their car in the parking lot, idling with the AC on? #
• Cool! Butterfly Boucher’s “For The Love Of Love” is today’s Free Song of the Day on Amazon MP3! #
• Problem: Twitter trending topics are quickly flooded with in-jokes & spam. There’s no context if you don’t already know what they’re about #

Man-Eating Birds, Algae-Powered Cars, and Googly Androids

• Fossils linked to Maori legend of man-eating bird. # The giant Haast’s Eagle, which died out at least 500 years ago, was originally thought to have been a scavenger, but new analysis of fossils indicates that it was a lion-level predator…making it the probable basis for the Maori Te Hokioi legend.
• Top Cyber Security Risks 2009. # Operating systems are becoming less and less of a problem, as attackers focus on client applications like Adobe Reader, QuickTime, and so forth.
• Odd headline combo: “The algae-fueled Prius hits the road” and “Flesh-eating bacteria hit the beach.” (ZDNet newsletter) #
• I like the sound of “Googly Android devices” #
• Not sure what this song is, but what I can hear of it sounds like the chorus from Gethsemane – over and over and over. #
• WTF? Allergy recall of “Fannie May Milk Chocolate & Almonds” due to undeclared almonds. How is that undeclared? #

Cliq & Shock

• Android phones: Motorola Cliq might tempt me away from my G1 if storage is good. 5-megapixel camera, headphone jack, still has keyboard. #
• Weird: Routine Coast Guard training exercise spooks press because it’s 9/11. #
• I wonder how many people were freaked out by the shuttle landing’s sonic boom because of the timing? #