K-Squared Ramblings

GeoCities / Com & Line

• GeoCities lingered for a day, but has shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. # Over at Speed Force, I wrote a piece on GeoCities, RIP: Fandom’s Lost Pages.
• Interesting typo seen on a mailing list: “com and line option.” (command line) #

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? #

Word, Fire, Borg and Spam

• RT @ThisIsTrue: AMAZING false-color NASA satellite pic of the damage caused by LA’s #StationFire. #
• Hah! Today’s flashback post is about the time I dreamed I auditioned for Borg: The Musical. (Sadly, I didn’t record any details.) #

Tech

• Odd: the Weather Channel #Android app is 3 times the size of Sherpa. What did they do, forget to compress the graphics? #
• Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of disks on the freeway. Or a pigeon w/a datacard. #
• Realized while writing “Go to Help…” that it would be easy to make a very unfortunate typo. #
• WTF? MS Word 2007 *still* has no keyboard shortcut for Find Next…and it’s not listed in the Customize Keyboard dialog! #
• Aha! It’s called “RepeatFind” even though the button is “Find Next” and DOES have keys…Shift+F4 & Ctrl+Alt+Y??? Standard is F3 or Ctrl+G! #
• Saw a good typo on a tech forum: Windows XP “Service Park 2″ #

Spam Silliness

• RT @lol_spam: Spam subject: “I have Salvia! Join me ” – I misread this as “saliva”…and almost did a spit-take (really!) #
• I don’t want *more* spam, but a wider variety would be nice. The funny stuff is mostly sex, drugs & watches w/occasional acaí. #

No More Diedrich

Diedrich Coffee’s website no longer has a store locator. It’s all online ordering. %^*! Starbucks. #

On another note, saw a great misspelling in search terms: “synapses” for “synopsis” #

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!” #

Saftey First – En Español

Just to show that English-language sign writers don’t have a monopoly on misspellings, here’s a sign we spotted at a construction site in Irvine:

Literally it means “Think Safety” — or it would if it said “Piense seguridad.” The typo makes this the Spanish equivalent of “Saftey First.”

Getting Propositioned

Oddly, the usual deluge of election propaganda hasn’t materialized yet, and the election is less than a week away. While looking through the scanty haul, most of which is focused on a quartet of propositions on Indian gaming, Katie found an intriguing statement:

Wait… pubic services? Whoa! And here I thought gambling on tribal lands was hot. This could blow it away… or alternatively, screw everyone over.

Irritable Liquid?

Found on the side of an AM-PM convenience store today:

That’s one cranky glass of water.

Or maybe Odo?

My best guess is that they were trying to say something like “inflammable,” decided it wouldn’t fit, and misused a thesaurus.

When Typos Attack!

eWeek has an article about URL Tracer, a new tool from Microsoft to keep track of typo-squatting. At one point, the article refers to “typos-quatting.”

I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon, but it seems strangely appropriate.

Those sushi chefs are such cut-ups!

Well, technically, the fish is severed…