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?

Errand Observations

• The Spectrum food court has ripped out the planters. I guess they realized they needed the floor space after they chopped off one end. #
• It’s Halloween, so Target has the Christmas decorations up! #
• Just heard a commercial that started off, “Winter is Coming.” #
• OK, only 3 people reading this will get the reference, but… “Where are you going?” #

Eye See You

Eye See You, originally uploaded by Kelson.

I think the picture says it all.

I took one other picture that’s framed better, but doesn’t have quite the same creepiness factor.

Powerless at the Mall

How an outdoor mall dealt with a lunchtime power outage. And some Apple observations.

• Power’s out at mall. No teriyaki bowl for me. Subway it is! (Hmm, and no iced coffee either. *sigh*) #
• Near as I can tell, the Apple store is just completely shut down. Hazards of making checkout depend on computer network, I guess. #
• For contrast, Subway just dug out a pad of paper credit card slips & did texture rubbings w/ a pen. #
• Odd: muzak is so omnipresent I didn’t notice it was still playing. Speakers must be on another circuit from the stores. #
• Turns out only some buildings have lost power. Including all the coffee except Starbucks. But Jamba Juice has power! #
• Was weird walking through mall at lunch seeing lighted stores on right & dark on left. Some stayed open, some closed, some adapted. #
• Coffee Bean mostly closed during the power outage, but set an employee out front with 2 urns of coffee. No ice, though. #

Links of the Day

• Mac users: if you upgrade to Snow Leopard, be sure to re-update Flash afterward. #
• Impressive LA fire pix at Flickr. #stationfire #

Coffee & Crowds

• You know you need coffee when: you put a filter in the coffee maker, then go back to get…a filter for the coffee maker. #
• It gets better: after that I went to put the bag of coffee back in the fridge. Where I’ve never kept coffee. Ever. Batting 1000 today. #
• Mall is a lot more crowded than Wed. Sure, it’s Friday, but also I think schools let out yesterday. Waiting in line this time at Jamba #

Line Items for 2009-05-17

• Midnight. No movement on freeway. Note the parking brake is on. (photo) #
• Home! That traffic break turned out to be for an overturned car that landed sideways. It’s 1am…time to slee #
• Bubble (photo) #

Trek Trip

• Not in Star Trek IMAX b/c they sold out while we were in line. Got tix 4 next show, but now we have 2.5 hours to kill at the Spectrum #
• Star Trek meets reality: when we registered at Robinson’s May for our wedding 5 yrs ago, the barcode scanner was called a phaser. #
• Aaargh! In Apple store and the song used in those interminable Air commercials just started! #
• Everyone else in the movie theater noticed the earthquake earlier. No one got up to leave, a murmur just passed through the audience. #
• Earthquake timing was good: right when they open a huge, loud door on the ice planet. #

South Coast Plaza Garden Show

Garden Show Centerpiece, originally uploaded by Kelson.

Braved South Coast Plaza this Saturday, and ended up in the middle of the Spring Garden Show, which took up all the non-store space in the wing formerly known as Crystal Court. I ended up wandering the garden show for a bit.

First floor was mostly furniture and decorations. The second and third floor were mostly people selling or showing off plants of various types, tools, pots, etc., with half of the third floor dedicated entirely to orchids.

There was also this huge centerpiece in the middle of the mall. Coincidentally, I was looking through old photos from one of our trips to Las Vegas earlier that day and found the pictures of the giant flower-and-insect display in the Bellagio.

I’ve posted a few photos taken with my phone.

Stealth Mime

Saw guy dressed like mime, standing by an actual glass wall. #

Mall Crush

Must remember: just because the mall is the CLOSEST place to grab lunch doesn’t make it the BEST place, esp. 3 days before Christmas. #

Christmas Shopping

• Need to sleep. Found myself typing “Satan Claus” by mistake. #
• Symptom of car culture: I almost feel like I have to justify crossing the street on foot to go to another store instead of moving the car. #
• Sun Halo. All you have to do is look up once in a while. #

• Linens & Things: Nothing left to sell but the shelves… #
• Almost. Walked around a corner and they do have SOME stuff left #
• Virgin Megastore is closing too, but they’ve still got lots of stuff. Incl 5000 copies of Serial Mom. #
• Replica toys: I get the nostalgia factor, but at the same time it’s a weird idea. #
• Going out of business sales seen today: 4. Mervyns, Linens&Things,Virgin,Steve&Barry’s. #
• And the more stores I look at, the more “What You Own” competes in my head for the ubiquitous Christmas music. #
• Amazon’s wishlist needs a generic option. Like “I want an 8GB Micro-SD card” rather than “I want THIS Micro-SD card specifically!” #

iPhone iLine

I went by the Spectrum for lunch, and the line to get into the Apple Store for the new iPhone was still stretched past several storefronts into the nearest courtyard, right up to the fountain by the carousel — even though they’d launched that morning. Actually, I had several co-workers who were late today because they went down at opening for the launch.

From what I hear it was fairly chaotic, at least in the morning. Apple’s new policy of making you activate the phone in the store was causing delays, especially factoring in the fact that iTunes’ servers got swamped. That would explain why the line was still so long several hours after opening.

Usability note: One of said co-workers got tripped up trying to sync music to his new phone, because the default is to not synchronize music, and the “Sync only checked songs” box looked close enough to being the right option that he didn’t dig deeper.

iCampers across the Spectrum

Since I was going to the Irvine Spectrum for lunch anyway, I figured I’d drop by the Apple Store and see how many people were there for the iPhone launch. I walked by around 1:50pm, about 4 hours before the event, and sure enough there were a bunch of people lined up all along the shops.

You can see some lawn chairs and umbrellas. The campers are sort of hidden in the shade, which is why I upped the brightness on the second picture. Of course, I’m sure everyone waiting in line appreciated the shade. Those shadows will only get longer over the course of the afternoon, and while there’s a nice breeze once you get out into more open areas, the corridors of the mall are better at channeling people than wind.

When I walked by the first time, I only noticed the line running to that corner you can see at the end, maybe 3 storefronts down. About 10 minutes later, after stopping at Kelly’s Coffee, I saw that they were wrapped around that corner, almost the entire length of Forever 21, and stopped at the edge of the patio for the restaurant next door.

Not a huge line—I’ve waited in much longer lines for movies—but bigger than I expected for a phone.

Star of Damocles

For various reasons, braved the crowds at South Coast Plaza yesterday. Oddly, it’s the easiest mall I’ve parked at all weekend. Getting to the Marketplace was a disaster, but that’s just because the streets are wholly inadequate to get cars in and out of the parking lot, and the Village (formerly the Mall of Orange) was just plain full.

At South Coast, as part of their Christmas decorations, they had these giant, shiny, 14-pointed stars hanging from the ceiling in several places.

Classic Christmas, but when you go down to the first floor and look up, there are all these giant, gleaming spikes hanging over your head.

It’s a little disconcerting. “Death from above!” is not something I want my holiday decorations to invoke.

Swimming in Christmas Trees

The Macy’s in the Laguna Hills Mall has a small storefront for seasonal products. In the lead-up to Christmas it’s full of decorations, ornaments, wrapping paper, and such. During the summer, it was swimwear. (I’m not sure what they use it for in winter.)

I walked by today, and they seem to be in transition:

The mismatch was so odd that it didn’t even hit me until several minutes later that this was the earliest example of holiday creep I’ve ever seen.