January 30, 2018
That Day. Just... Ugh.
Here's how you know you're in for a bad day. You wake up, and for whatever reason the water in your toilet is black and smells like sewer. A flush solved that problem... I assume something somewhere backfilled... and I moved to take my morning shower. And about halfway through, the head unit of the handheld shower fell off. Completely detached from the hose... or, more correctly, the hose detached from the shower head, as the threaded end was still in place. The hose just... broke.
I should have taken the hint. I didn't. I went to work. And literally as I was walking in, the system died. About 45 minutes later, it started to function again... fitfully, in jerks and spasms... but I wish it had stayed down, because it was serving us nothing but crap. All day. Nothing but crap claims, for eight stinkin' hours, crap claim upon crap claim. I'm going to take a nap. Then I'm going to install a new handheld shower. Then, and only then, might have I have some dinner. Maybe.
I don't want to adult anymore.
UPDATE: The nap was four hours long. It took 10 minutes total to remove the old shower head and put the new one on... mainly because the only pair of locking pliers I own these days could be used as a keychain. Seriously... when it's locked down, I cannot get my thumb into the space in the "mouth." When I purchased it from Amazon for another task, I thought locking jaw pliers, 4" meant the maximum space in the jaws, not the overall length. Oh well, no matter... I has a shower again. 1235am... time for dinner!
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January 28, 2018
That Was A Weekend
I managed to watch or listen to about 16 hours of the 24 Hours of Daytona. Around 4am on Sunday, I really began to feel for the mechanics.
And I got a LOT more sleep than most of them did, in much more comfortable situation. That they could still function after just catching short naps here and there is amazing. I had five hours of sleep (4am - 9am), and I still felt zombie-like. Even after a four hour nap this evening, I'm still out of it. I mean, more than normal that is. I even lost a botmatch in World of Warships for the first time in months.
I don't know what sort of free icecream I'm going to drum up this week, but there should be some... I don't have overtime at work. Sit tight!
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January 23, 2018
Tokyo Snow
Seems that there central part of Japan has received a surprising amount of snow since Monday morning... indeed, it's the heaviest snowfall there since 2014. Something like 15inches is expected to be on the ground in some places in the Kanto region by the time its all over. Schools and businesses were letting out early due to a "heavy snow warning", the Rainbow Bridge across part of Tokyo Bay was shut down with cars stuck on it due to the snow... reminds me of when Lake Shore Drive in Chicago was shut down for the same reason. Tokyo itself was supposed to get four inches by Tuesday morning. Instead, news reports are saying there was half again that amount by 7pm and it wasn't letting up. It's so bad that Universities were postponing their Entrance Exams, and anybody that's watched more anime than DBZ knows how big those are.
When I heard about the snows earlier, I actually thought to myself "I hope Rambalac goes for a walk." I needn't have worried.
Some things are universal. Most people who own snowboards can't stay up on 'em. Snowmen must be made. Snowballs must be thrown. Other than the language, slight differences in architecture and zoning, and kick-arse playground equipment, this little scene in Chiba could just as easily have been from Duckford. A trite observation, of course, but still true. Kinda nice to see, actually.
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January 17, 2018
Wonderduck Is An Idiot. In Other News, Fire Hot, Durian Smells Bad. Film At 10.
Duckford got it's first truly significant snowfall of the winter Monday! Oh, there was an inch or so earlier, sure. A light, fluffy snow began falling last night, and had not stopped at all when I headed out to the Duckmobile. Much to my pleasant surprise, at some time in the recent past one of my neighbors desnowed my car... instead of the three or four inches of snow the SUVs on either side of me had, I had maybe a quarter-inch, and most of that fell off when I shut the driver's door. The drive to work was a little unpleasant as it was clear the snowplows hadn't gotten to the tertiary roads yet but all in all not so bad.
Work went about as I expected, poorly, with an added side of "I feel a little under the weather and it's getting worse." I mean, I've felt like I've been fighting something off for a couple of weeks now, I hope my immune system didn't just throw up its flippers and say "screw it, time to go to the bar." That would be bad... I need my immune system. Anyway. Every time I got up from my desk, I would take a gander (nyuk nyuk, a duck taking a gander, see what I did there?) outside, and the snow which the weather nabobs had said would stop in the morning... never did. All day long we had light fluffy snow. By my back-of-the-burrito calculations, by the time I left work it may very well have been coming down for 24 hours straight... and if not, it was darn close to it.
Still, I didn't think there'd be any problem getting home. Duckford would have had their plows out all day, main roads and busy secondaries would surely be clean! It was with such thoughts in my head that I left work and promptly ignored the main roads and busy secondaries and took my normal way home. You know, all rural roads and more hills than a list of British F1 Champions. Why would you do that, you may ask. In reply, I say to you, "look at the title of this post." I should have turned around after I made the first turn onto the route home... and nearly went into a ditch. Nope! On a road I normally do 50-55mph on, I was doing 30 or less, depending on the wind, because when the wind blew, visibility sort of went away. Still, while unpleasant, none of this was beyond the norm for a Duckford winter. And then came the weirdness.
The turn I needed to make to get on the road to Pond Central isn't all that well illuminated. There's an overhead light at the entry to the power substation that you'd go into if you turned left at the intersection... I need to turn right. Still, it's bright enough that there usually isn't a problem. Monday night though, a car was coming from the right, and another from dead ahead. When combined with the blowing snow, I had a moment where it looked for all the world like a 3'-0" tall snowdrift had crossed the road. To call this "disconcerting" would be an understatement. I immediately began slowing down, praying for my lights to pick out the impediment before I hit it... but it never came. It was all light and shadow... I've never seen that before, and it was spooky as all hell. It did give me better insight into how the Flight 901 disaster occurred, I'll tell you that. The rest of the drive home was spent on the ragged edge of adhesion, on a road that had only been driven on, not plowed. Pulling into Pond Central's parking lot was one of the most relaxing events I've experienced. I was home!
A few hours later, I was alternately burning up and chilled to the bone. The whatever-it-was I've been struggling with finally overwhelmed my immune system and ignited a fever in my brain. I had the heat turned up nearly as far as it could go in Pond Central, was covered with two comforters and a couple of blankets, a pair of sweatpants, a long-sleeved jersey AND a sweater, and socks... I never wear socks in bed... and I was still cold. Until I was ridiculously hot and opened the window. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sometime during the night/early morning, like maybe 4am or so, I fell asleep. When my alarm went off at 730a, I dragged my carcass out of bed, washed down a bottle of tylenol with some sprite, took a shower, got dressed... and then called into to work sick and went back to bed. I probably shouldn't have gone in today either, as I still have the headache pounding away in my skull, but... well, look at the title of this post. Go me.
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January 10, 2018
Add Maybe Another Thing To The List
We know that The Duckmobile is getting long in the tooth... she's legally able to drink, for heaven's sake. We know that in a perfect world, we'd have a better computer chair here at Pond Central Battlestation. And I've noticed that there's an odd thing going on with the computer monitor where in videos, all blacks are... um... I don't know how to describe what they are. Solarized, maybe? Black patches all look like they're backlit somehow, have an odd sort of glow to them that I don't see anywhere else.
But I didn't expect to be putting "a new computer" on the list anytime soon. Oh, to be sure, my current one, Nori, is four-plus years old, but it's not like software has outrun it or anything like that. It has been coughing up the occasional error every now and again... not too often, but not "never" like it maybe should be. But tonight, as I awoke from my nap, I pressed the power button, everything spooled up, I got the HP "I'm working on it!" screen like I always do, and then it just... turned itself off.
As the monitor said "no signal, going to sleep" and went to sleep, I sat here in the dark and actually said out loud "well, that's not supposed to happen." The Mutsu figure I have here by my keyboard said nothing, but I know she agreed with me. I pressed the power button again, and this time the startup went perfectly fine, though slower than normal. That's actually common... when it turns off without shutting down (for example, a power outage), the next reboot takes longer. But, and this is the important part of the story, that wasn't supposed to happen in the first place.
I'll admit to being concerned about my girl. But I also admit to needing a computer I can trust to work, too... I mean, it is my main form of entertainment, and how I do most of my shopping to boot. Losing it would be very grumpy-making. So, I suppose, onto the big list of new things goes "computer." Preferably one with an actual graphics card, this time.
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January 09, 2018
Here Comes The OGRE...
Back in 1986, Origin Systems, the company that would bring us the amazing Wing Commander and Ultima series of computer games, took a little foray into something a bit larger scale. Instead of a party of adventurers or individual starfighters, they sat down and cranked out the videogame adaptation of Steve Jackson's OGRE.
I played the heck outta that game on the C64. It wasn't great: the graphics were nothing special, even for the time, and the AI... well... it was 1986. But I could still play OGRE alone with it, and that made it good. For a long, long time I've wondered why there was never a remake... it's not like Steve Jackson Games doesn't have a history with computers, after all. Around Christmastime, friend Ben from Midnite Tease said to me "I've been playing the new OGRE videogame." To which I replied "Huh??? WHAT new OGRE videogame???" I'm not a clever duck when I'm surprised.
Holy crepe. Holy crepe! It took me very little time to add it to my Steam library... $20 for heaven's sake!... and went through the tutorials to get used to the interface. It's not the most intuitive system, but it works well enough. Once that was done, I called up a skirmish match against the computer and went at it. And lost.
In fact, the computer handed my feathered butt to me and made me wear it as a hat. So I started another game... and it all came back to me. I danced GEVs around the Ogre, pummeled the thing with heavy tanks, pounded it with howitzers...
...the above picture was essentially the last view my command post saw. Well, I'll be damned. I was pretty good at OGRE back in the day... good enough that I expected to win every time I sat down against a human opponent. I didn't, of course, but I knew I could win and had a good shot at doing so. And here this computer game is, kicking me up and down the map like I didn't know a superheavy from a light GEV. COOL!!!
The AI isn't perfect... I've seen it make some seriously stupid moves... but it's more than good enough. And once it stops giving me a challenge, online head-to-head is available too. There's a single-player campaign to go through as well, which might prove interesting. And, of course, any of you squishies that wanna go up against the Duck. Better make sure to make your sandwiches using rye bread though... since I'm going to knock you down and take your lunch, you may as well make it something I like.
I never thought I'd see the day.
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January 05, 2018
Yay Weekend
I left Pond Central at 850am to head off to work. I had an 11.50 hour day ahead of me, and the earlier I could get in, the earlier I could go home. Or I could extend my lunch break-slash-nap time, one of the two. Whichever was more important, y'know. In truth, I was kinda looking forward to this... particularly because I had read that the bone-breaking cold that Duckford has been in for the past two weeks was finally coming to an end! Fantastic, I was sick and tired of wondering if the Duckmobile was going to start both in the morning and at night when it was time to go home. For the record, she was a rock, only once giving me a scare... this past Wednesday morning, in fact, when it went down to -17 overnight. Turned the key in the ignition, and... all I heard was a whirring sound. The engine finally began cranking, and once it started it might have been idling at about 50rpm, but she started. So I left Pond Central with my head up and a warm glow in my heart.
Fsck. Really, I don't know why I'm complaining, it was only -9. Getting the frost off the windshield was... really, an exercise in futility. For whatever reason, I would scrape off one side, move to the other, scrape that side clean, by which point the first side was already slightly fogged. Cold and damp. Oh, and as it turns out, a wind chill advisory though at least my building's parking lot is at the bottom of a not-insubstantial hill. Between that to the north and the apartment building to the south, and much of the rest of the complex to the west, I've seen 20 mph winds blowing the tops of the trees around while it was dead still on the ground. Nice trick. Turns out that the cold is supposed to break on Sunday. I hope so... I'm too old for this.
UPDATE: Completely apropos of nothing, I LOVE BASEBALL. Wonderduck needed this.
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January 04, 2018
Flying Start
I have a small confession to make. See, I had me a great idea for a bit of fiction and I thought I'd have it done by now. Except I forgot just exactly how much mandatory overtime we had to do this week, and as a result, my goofing off on Tuesday has come back to bite me in the tucus. Instead of having five hours of OT to do by Friday, I actually had NINE hours to do.
So, yeah. This week, not going as well as I had hoped. Still, Ben from Midnite Tease and I completed a simultaneous runthrough of Go Go Nippon!, and it was as hilarious as I expected, so that was worth the time. Only 3.50 hours left to go!
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January 01, 2018
New Year's Day, 2018
So. First day of a New Year. Helluva party, huh? Who's cleaning all this up?
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December 31, 2017
New Year's Eve, 2017
So what do we make of 2017? Sure, there were the physical problems... my left knee simply doesn't bend well anymore... but I actually did fairly okay at the job. The F1 season wasn't all that much of a much, and the Cubs weren't as good as they were in 2016, but I have a hard time criticizing either of them on the whole. Even The Pond sorta just chugged along at a middlin' pace.
So is that it? Do we declare 2017 "The Year Of The Meh"? I'm really struggling to think of anything particularly outstanding about the past 365 days as a coherent whole. There were good times, there were bad times, but I think 2017 was like vanilla ice cream... it's not bad, but it could have been red bean mochi.
But I did have you, the Pond Scum, and that makes all the difference, doesn't it? Here's to a better 2018, for myself, for The Pond, and for all of you, my lovely readers. Now it's time for the funny hats and noisemakers... happy new year, everybody!
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December 29, 2017
GD's 3WA
Something I feel I've been remiss about this... well, this whole year... is a project that my brother in feathers Greyduck has been working on. He called it "3WA"...
...is that how we're going to play this? No, not the Worlds Welfare Works Association, but the Weekly Word Working Assignment. And before you ask, no, no Kei and Yuri. In this case, GD decided to make himself write to a schedule: one post per week for the entire year, talking about, and I quote, "a bunch of the animated stuff I like best and why you might (possibly) like it, too." And an eclectic collection it is, too. From Aardman to ARIA to Aang to Animaniacs, he's all over the map... when he bothers to stick to a map at all. I had heard of most of the things he talks about, and understood his reasoning for many of those. Daria, however, was a bit too far, but the fact that he talks about a MTV-based animation from the '90s in the same project as Blast of Tempest and... yes, Kanon '06... gives you an idea of the scope of this project.
While I was composing this post, I actually went back to his Entry #1 and reread the entire series. It maybe took me an hour, tops. This is some good, fast, reading that's entertaining as hell and might just get you to look at some shows you wouldn't have otherwise. Not a bad way to spend a year, that. Here's the entire category entry for you, but I'd recommend starting with the previously mentioned Entry #1 and working your way up the calendar. Better do it quick though... he's about to start the next 3WA project, and this one will be truly special: music.
But really, GD... Daria?
EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "truly special," that doesn't mean THIS 3WA project wasn't special. It simply means that I've been immensely impressed by GD's musical leanings over the years, and have learned that if he suggests a band or album to me there's at least a 50-50 chance I'll love it. Think about it... how many people do you know that have that good of a track record with something as uniquely personal as your musical likes? I can't wait to see what is, essentially, his Top 50 album list.
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December 28, 2017
It Really IS Rocket Science!
It's moments like this that make me think about how humankind has progressed in my 50 years on this earth.
Some random person in Los Angeles, using a broadcast-quality camera in a hand-held communications device connected to a datasharing system that can be accessed world-wide, has recorded the flight of a reusable rocket 160 miles away, then shared it with potentially millions of people that, using equipment that is considered commonplace but in reality is more powerful than the combined processing power of entire nations when I was born, can view with amazing clarity the spectacular launch of a true reusable rocket into space carrying 10 communications satellites that will become part of an orbiting network that can be seen from your backyard without the use of telescopes, and nobody even blinks an eye about it and goes on looking for cat videos.
My god I do so love living in the future.
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December 27, 2017
'Net's Misbehavin'...
So ever since late Christmas night my intarwebz has been, to be blunt, suckin' like a thirsty vampire with a really thin straw. It's up for a minute, then down for five, then I may as well be receiving data via morse code for all the good it's doing. I've been informed that it's affecting all of the buildings in the back of the Pond Central Apartment Complex... and my building is the backiest of the back that's ever backed. No, seriously... Pond Central's building is the farthest south in the complex, behind me is nothing but a large expanse of lawn, a row of trees, then corn. Lots and lots of corn. Not right now of course... now it's lots and lots of not a whole lot, honestly... but yeah. I'm being affected.
They say it should be back up "soon." When I pressed them on that, they said it'll be up by 2018... which is their way of saying "shaddap."
So if you don't hear from me much, it's not my usual lack of blogging... it's that I'm being forced to not blog. If you see this message, that means Hooray, I hit the save button at the fraction of a second my internet was working! If you don't... well, no real need to get into that, is there?
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December 24, 2017
Christmas Eve 2017
May you find what you want under the tree tomorrow... or, at least, have a good day off. Whichever. I'm not judging.
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December 21, 2017
Them's The Brakes
So Saturday morning rolls around, and I get up early to receive the expected phone call from Midas. See, if you schedule an appointment on their website they're supposed to call you back in one business hour. Since we had hit the website Friday night after closing, and the site clearly says "we'll call you back in one business hour", it seems reasonable to assume that they'd call back, at the latest, an hour or so after start of business on Saturday, yes? So, not wanting to miss the call and a chance to get my car's brakes repaired, I was up and out of bed at 715am when they open at 730am on Saturdays. As I write this, it's very late Tuesday Thursday evening and Midas has yet to call me back.
I'm starting to get the impression that they don't particularly want my business. I got tired of waiting around 930am and called a local place that has great reviews and that I've heard good things of in the real world... they answered after two rings. They told me to bring it on in, though they surely didn't recommend driving it there. In that, they had my full agreement: it's one thing to be driving a car missing half or more of its braking ability in light traffic on a Friday morning. It's a totally different story altogether trying to drive a crippled car in heavy traffic at one of the city's busier intersections... so many more things to hit. There would have to be a tow.
As it turns out, I have towing coverage on my insurance and they were happy to set me up with a company here in Duckford. After a few dozen questions ("Are you in a safe place? Are the keys in the car? Are you allergic to shellfish?"), they let me off the phone. Shortly thereafter, I received a text message from the towing company: we'll be there in 90 minutes. At this, I called Ph.Duck, who had been a stabilizing force for good when it comes to my car-related panics, and he would pick me up at Pond Central in 60 minutes, 10 minutes to the parking lot at work, bish bash bosh all is swell. At the 55 minute mark, I put on the weather-appropriate zip-up fleece and head down to the Official Parking Lot of Pond Central.
After a couple of minutes, the tow truck driver calls and says he's "five minutes away". I explain that I'm not there, but I should arrive in about 15-20 minutes. "Can't wait that long, I'll just load it without the keys." Whatever you say, buddy. Ph.Duck then texts to tell me that he's running late and will be picking me up in about 15 minutes. Fair enough... the tow truck will certainly be loaded by that time, so we'll just head to the mechanic's shop and give them the keys. And thus did it occur. I run into the place, note the remarkably clean shop floor, introduce myself, tell them the car should be showing up any moment, they promised to call when they figure out what's borked, and we're good to go. This all took about 15-20 minutes: there were a couple of people ahead of me. No tow truck. Hm. I call the number the insurance company gave me, and the driver says "I'm about 15 minutes away from the car right now."
I admit to having gotten a little het up at this point. It's not like there wasn't any stress going on in my existence at the moment or anything after all. Turns out the person I was speaking to was the OWNER of the towing company, not the driver I had been talking with... he was still on the tow he'd been on when he called the first time. So the owner, who "wasn't even supposed to be working today", decided to do the job. Ph.Duck and I then drove back to my employer's parking lot to meet him. He showed up, eventually, got all positioned and stuff, then pulled the car onto a flatbed... after dragging the muffler approximately one mile in the process. "Do you have a suspension problem?" No, the muffler and exhaust of the late '90s Camry hangs rather lower than you'd expect. Eventually he chained the car onto the flatbed and drove away. A rather impressive puddle was left behind, all of it in line with the right side tires. Yeesh. Ph.Duck and I went off to have some lunch, and then we drove back to the mechanic's shop to get the news.
The plumbing for the late '90s Camry's brake system, seen in the diagram above, is... um... convoluted. It appears that each brake has a dedicated line, with a number of valves, pumps, gears, turboencabulators and widgets on each one. But they also appear to SHARE a major line between the brakes as well. I have no idea what was going through the designer's head when they did that. The line to the right-rear brake had blown out, dumping most of the system's fluid out upon the ground. The brakes still worked... just... but there was very little brake fluid remaining and whatever stopping power still existed would have disappeared awfully soon. He thought he could get it fixed in the two hours before they closed. By all means, please go ahead... I bid Ph.Duck adieu and sat down in the rather pleasant waiting room. Oh dear god no...
I've changed my mind. I'd rather drive away in a car with failed brakes than watch The Phantom Menace again. After about 90 minutes of hell, the mechanic working on my car, Terry, came in and gave me the news: he had replaced the failed line, filled it with brake fluid, gave 'em a test... and another brake line blew out. This was both annoying as hell and totally expected... he had even warned me that could happen. In truth, he was rather pleased that only one more had blown; it appears my oil leak worked in my favor for once, as all the gunk had coated some of the hardware, keeping them from rusting and wearing out. So I had that going for me. Which is nice. The plan going forward was simple: "soak" the remaining brake lines all day Sunday looking for bleeders, then repair what needed to be fixed. We'd play phone tag / text message on Monday.
By mid-morning Monday the news came down: she's all fixed up. The rest of the brake lines held together, hooray! They have the potential to fail at any time, but they held together! A few hours later, I picked up the car and everything was back to normal. I think the moral of this story is quite simple: don't trust Midas for anything. Ever.
Epilogue: ...and then a meteorite impacted. The end.
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December 15, 2017
...That's Not A Good Sound...
This morning I went to work as I normally did, with one difference. I needed to grab some cash to pay for an upcoming lunch at work... all the lasagna I can eat!... so I took a different route. No huhu, I used to take it to the Bookstore about half the time anyway. I decided that I wanted to get off the main road to the gas station however, so I'd turn at Wendy Ave (note: name changed to protect the innocent) and sneak in the back way. Brilliant! Except Wendy Ave is sort of impossible to see until you're right on it, and its very rare for me to do this anyway. So even with me keeping a sharp eye open, it still snuck up on me. Whoops! Need to slow down for the left-hand turn, and not a lot of space to do it, so I stepped on the brakes. Not particularly hard, it's not like I panic-stopped or anything.
Three things then occurred in quick order. First, I either heard or felt (I'm still not sure) a *thump* sound. Second, the brake pedal sank to the floor under the pressure of my foot. And third, I watched Wendy Ave go past me. Sh*t oh dear.
The good news is that waaaay down there at the end of the brake pedal's run, there was some brake authority. Okay, cool. To the gas station! Pulled up to the red light, giving myself extra space to come to a halt, and success was had. Not great, but driveable. Light turns green, I pull away and accelerate to a bit below normal road speed until I came to the gas station. Again giving myself extra room I did the whole brake thing again... and it felt like the back of the car was drifting to the right. What the hell...?
I looked at the car, everything appeared to be okay... no visible problems, no tire flopping around, no unexpected fluids appearing on the asphalt. Right. I did my stuff, then drove the rest of the way to work. Again with that sickening drifting feeling. I could still stop the car, but... wow. After parking, I called Ph.Duck... university professor, go-to car problem guy, bon vivant, man about town... and he came out to take a test drive after I was done with work. After driving it a bit, then taking a look underneath, he leveled his diagnosis: failed brake line. Both right-side tires were apparently drenched in brake fluid, but the left-side was fine. That'd explain the drifting feel: no brakes on the right side! Whee!!!
So for the sake of safety, I left the car in the parking lot at work. We'll see about getting it into a shop in the morning. Merry Christmas everybody!!!
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December 13, 2017
RIP Pat DiNizio
Most, if not all of you, my lovely readers, are looking at the title of this post and wondering just who the heck Pat DiNizio was. This was Pat DiNizio:
Lead singer and main songwriter for my favorite straight-out rock and roll band, The Smithereens. They never did much on the charts, topping out at #37 on the Billboard Top 100 with "Too Much Passion," off 1992's A Date With The Smithereens. But it was their earlier albums, Especially For You, Green Thoughts, and particularly 1989's 11 that made them their fans.
My favorite Smithereens moment was when the band was accused by Rolling Stone magazine as "sounding too much like the Beatles." Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but from where I come from, sounding like the Beatles is a compliment, not a pejorative. However, I disagree that they sound all that much like the Fab 4, if only because they're better instrumentalists.
Their tunes routinely showed up on movie soundtracks, and "Blood And Roses" was used in an episode of Miami Vice, would you believe? Sadly, I never got to see them perform live, thought the opportunity appeared twice. The first time was up in Minnesota; they were playing in Minneapolis at First Avenue, but I had a cast on my foot from an unfortunate incident involving gravity and a loading dock. The second time was when they played at Duckford's annual music festival, On The Waterfront. Sadly, the radio station I worked for was broadcasting live from the event and they wanted their best board operator at the controls. Since she wasn't available, they asked me to do it. Of course I said yes. In a way though, it was okay... the Mobile Boombox (yes, really) was positioned near the rock stage, and I could hear 'em through the microphone feed back to the station.
When the band was... um... "on record label hiatus", he had a small solo career, but they never stopped touring together. Of late, he had been suffering from ill health, and passed away earlier today. He was 62. And I'm bummed out.
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December 11, 2017
I Had No Idea This Was A Thing...
...but I'm really glad it is! Back in the old days, one of the things that high-level railfans did was wrangle a cab ride from some friendly engineer, set up a video camera, and record the trip in such a way that the viewer could believe they were really really there. Often, these vids would end up being licensed by one company or another and sold out of the back of Trains or Model Railroader magazines. More recently, cable channels like RFD-TV will actually broadcast such things between bull roping, the farmer's weather report, and (my favorite) the Annual Classic Tractor Show and Parade. Such videos are much easier to make these days, and of course the visual quality is better to a stupid extent. It was while watching one of these detailing the London DLR run from Lewisham to Bank that a yootoob suggestion caught my eye... "Night Videowalk in East Shinjuku, Tokyo." Intrigued, I took a look.
...and it's exactly what it says on the tin: someone walking around in East Shinjuku with a 4K digital camera on a stabilizer-crane mount. That's all. And, much like the Jackson Hole livecam, it's wonderful to watch, in a voyeuristic way. Sometimes it's in a densely packed urban area, sometimes he's walking on Mt Fuji, or the Imperial Garden in Tokyo, or Comiket. And he doesn't ever say a word, so it's all natural sound. There are others doing similar things, but their videos aren't as long... Rambalac, the person I've been watching, makes his a hour long, more or less. And to bring it full circle, one of them is of the JR Railway Museum in Saitama. Sadly, that one isn't in 4K... but this one is:
Turns out there are plenty of other people out there doing similar things in other cities. New York's Times Square, or Kolkata, or even Chicago, for example. But yeah, I'm a geek... Japan for me! Amusingly, I already knew what some of the places looked like... thanks to Go! Go! Nippon, which blew my little mind. I mean, I'm never going to get to go to Japan, so... well, it's a poor second, of course, but it's better than nothing. And there's some startlingly beautiful scenes to boot. Pour yourself a drink, settle in, and give one a watch... you might be surprised at how much you enjoy yourself.
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November 30, 2017
Returning For A Visit
Why does the internet go insane? Every now and again, something will grab the attention of The Web and, for a couple-three weeks or so become kinda obsessed with it. Usually the item at the center of attention is among the stupider things one could think of. But occasionally, the internet sets its sights on something that's actually kinda interesting.
Last year, the town of Jackson Hole Wyoming became internet famous when a live-streaming webcam focused on the "town square" was inundated by visiting yootoobers. Apparently, one of the troglodytes that inhabits 4chan posted in that den of iniquity something to the effect that there was going to be something interesting occurring at such-and-such a time. Of course, some ridiculous number of people showed up to watch whatever it was... I don't even know if the something even happened or not... but then something strange happened. People kept visiting. And visiting. And visiting. Then the mainstream media "discovered" the story, and then there was another surge of visitors. At any time, there could be upwards of 3000 - 4000 watching.
Amazingly, a complex backstory arose... or maybe not that amazing, this being the internet and all. The Arch, centered in the above picture, became a mythological... almost religious... thing. One spoke of The Arch in reverent tones, its wonders to perceive. For example, The Arch was the bringer of the new day, which was signaled by the stop lights shifting from normal to flashing red. The Arch must also be fed, accomplished by people... well... walking through The Arch. Om nom nom. But the best known reaction would have to be "RED TRUCK."
This is Wyoming. The pickup truck may as well be the state bird. Most of them, however, are black. Or silver. Or some neutral color like that. I imagine that, the first time, there had been a parade of pickup trucks, all alike... and then came a splash of color among the utilitarian blacks and silvers. "Red Truck," someone pointed out in chat, and it stuck. Lemme tell ya though... I was actually watching one time when a red 18-wheeler drove through the intersection, and it was like all the important figures of every human religion ever suddenly appeared and did a Rockettes number in the center of the square. Good times, good times.
In the end, however, the appeal of the webcam died off, people went away, and things returned to normal... except there's always been a couple hundred viewers hanging around. A couple of nights ago, I found myself visiting the webcam for the first time in a half-year at least. It felt like I was the only one who remembered those times, as I had to explain what The Blessed Arch was, and the Red Truck, and... and...
Why did we do it? Was it the voyeur in all of us, watching without being watched ourselves? Was it an attempt to be a part of something both unique and mundane? Was it to connect with others watching as well? Did we want to see something peaceful? Or was it just The Internet being The Internet again? I don't know. I will probably never know. But I will be going back.
The yootoob livecam can be found here.
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November 23, 2017
Post-Turkey 2017
Hey everybody! Did y'all have a happy Thanksgiving? Or, for those members of the Pond Scum that aren't in the US, did you have a good Thursday? Mine was... actually not so bad at all. I'm not going to the Old Home Pond for The Meal until Saturday, so I got to do something I've wanted to do for a long, long time: I watched football on Thanksgiving.
That I had no rooting interest in any of the six teams that played today is of no importance at all. In fact, that made it better in that I didn't care about the results, so could just watch and enjoy. I watched the entirety of the Vikings/Lions game, listened to the Chargers/Cowboys which wow was awful, and gave up on the Giants/Redskins somewhere in the second quarter and took a nap. Not a bad day at all, that.
What about you folks?
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