Wow

A forum that I participate in for users of digital cameras recently has been running a project to create, using photos submitted by forum participants, some calendars, the sales of which would go to benefiting a charity.

A little earlier in the year I had taken a photo of a flower that I was particularly pleased with, so I decided to submit it to this project for the "Flowers" calendar. I had little confidence that it would be accepted for the calendar, as the forum has many outstanding photographers which more experience than I, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try.

So, I was completely flabbergasted when my photo was in fact selected to be included in the "Flowers" calendar. It will be the October photo.

I'll quote description of the project from the calendar sales site:

A little over a year ago, some forum members from BroadbandReports.com's Digital Imaging forum discussed how to collectively use the photographs that they were taking to help out a charity. The result is Shooting For A Cause. Currently, we have a line of four calendars. Five dollars from the sale of each calendar will go to help The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children®.

Beware of Invisible Cows!

Saw this bumper snicker today:



I found after doing a search on "Beware of invisible cows" that there is a reasonable explanation for it, but the bumper sticker by itself was pretty amusing when I spotted it.

More big fun

Referring back to this post, I need to report the flat tire turned out to not be the only problem created by driving over that box.

I realized something appeared to be dripping from the area of the engine, what with pulling out of parking spaces and seeing some sort of dark fluid being left behind. So, I finally got myself to the dealer's service department I go to first thing last Thursday morning. Turned out the transmission pad and an axle shield were ruined. Ouch, to the tune of several hundred dollars.

Well, at least now I can be confident everything that resulted from that little run-in is now fixed.

License Plate Watch 30

Seen today on a Ford F150: "TROUT 4D".

My first thought was "Trout 4-dimensional? That doesn't make sense." Then it occurred to me the "D" was likely an initial.

So much fun, I could hardly contain myself

The scene: Yesterday, on the way home from work. Took my usual freeway off-ramp, and as I was just starting to brake, saw an object in the road ahead of me that appeared to be some sort of box. Had to make a pretty much instantaneous decision: swerve around it or drive over it. Drove over it. Big mistake.

WHAM! BANG! Felt and heard what seemed to be strong two impacts on the undercarriage.

Pulled into a parking lot as quickly as possible and did an eyeball examination. Nothing appeared damaged; not seeing any leaks. Phew. Continued on and for several seconds of driving all seemed fine, but then I could feel something obviously wrong with the right rear tire. Pull over, walk around to it. Yep, that's what we call a flat.

I recalled there was a Discount Tire store nearby, so after putting on the spare, drove directly to it and purchased the remedy.

I almost started to type that the result of this is a lesson that in future unless something I come upon sitting in the road is obviously harmless I will drive around it. But that's clearly stupid; there's too many variables to say that flatly. One has to take into consideration how much space would be available for going around something in the road, other traffic, weather considerations, and so on and so forth.

At any rate, the car had no problems at all today, so I'll just conclude by saying I was fortunate the only trouble that resulted was one flat tire.

Group day

I visited Balboa Park earlier today to walk around and look for photo opportunities, and found myself noticing several distinct groups.

There were two separate groups of what I assumed were art students.

• One, at the foot of the park's lily pond, that was comprised of younger people, all doing sketches:

• ...and one, on one side of the lily pond, that was comprised of older people, all doing oil paintings:

And there were two separate groups of people with dogs.

• One that was training service dogs:

• ...and one of greyhound owners:

Quotation marks oddness

Bad punctuation tends to bother me, including bizarre uses of quotation marks.

A prime example of that here in San Diego is:



This is a neon sign that has been hanging in a window of a local sandwich shop for years. I have viewed it with much bewilderment every time I stop at the barber shop that is next door to this sandwich shop. I finally remembered today to get a photo of it.

While preparing to write this post, I was pleased to discover a blog that is devoted to just this subject. (I've sent this photo as a submission for the site to the person who runs it. If it is used I'll add a link here. And here is that link.)

Webcomic amazingness

As a follower of several webcomics, I am truly amazed by this.

Ryan Estrada, a webcomic artist and world traveler, not only convinced the creators of almost 50 webcomics to let him do guest strips for them, but he somehow also convinced all of them to show his guest strips on the same day: September 17, 2007.

For whatever reasons, he is not showing on his own site a single list of all the webcomics he did guest strips for, but is instead putting up the actual strips, one at a time, at 5-hour intervals.

But other sites have been attempting to gather the list of all the guest strips he did. The best of these (still incomplete) I've seen so far is here.

This must have taken Estrada a long time to prepare for. Consider it: not only doing that much art and trying to stay in the spirit of each of the comics, but also coordinating with that many sites to ensure they all put his guest strips up on the same day. Truly amazing.

Found Lily

Here's a photo of my own that I'm particularly pleased with:















The story on this - Last week while out for a walk a splash of color on the ground caught my eye as I passed. I stopped and looked at it; there was this (at the time) mostly still fresh lily laying among lots of dead leaves. The contrast between the colors of the flower, the dead leaves, and the concrete really struck me.

I had my camera with me, so I took several pictures, and this is the one I thought came out best.

I am planning to get it commercially printed and mounted on a display board in order to enter it in next year's photo contest at the San Diego County Fair, aka Del Mar Fair. (The original exposure out of the camera is twice the size of what you see in the linked page. I set the camera to give me it's maximum exposure for the lily pictures, as it did occur to me at the time I might want to get a real good print made.)

License Plate Watch 29

Seen today on a Ford F250: "BOLTS 56". The obvious assumption is the reference is to the San Diego Chargers' current #56, Shawne Merriman. (I tried searching for previous holders of #56 for the Chargers, but am not coming up with proper word combinations to get that result.)

Comic-Con 2007

For job-related reasons I was only able to attend the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con on the weekend sessions (July 28 and 29). After last year's nasty experience with the Saturday session, I knew I didn't want to do that again any time soon. So, I made an on-line registration for July 29.

Related to that, I was pleased to see in the final information booklet the Comic-Con organization mailed out for this year's convention that as a direct result of the many complaints they had received about conditions during Saturday sessions they had created a new registration choice: A three-day registration option for the Thursday, Friday, and Sunday sessions. This new option includes eligibility for entry to the Wednesday preview night in the exhibits hall, which previously was only available to those who registered for all four days.

Assuming I do have the time available next year, I will definitely use the three-day registration option.

Now, getting to what occurred July 29. The one panel I definitely wanted to go to was one in the morning that was going to discuss the life and work of the late comics artist Jack Kirby. I was especially attracted to this panel because it was going to include Neil Gaiman, who has become one of my favorite writers, both of graphic novels and prose novels and stories. I have recently read his graphic novel Eternals, which is based on ideas and art by Jack Kirby.

I must admit to not having experienced (to my knowledge) Kirby's art, but the Gaiman tie-in was enough of an attraction to make me interested in this panel.

The panel was composed of writer Mark Evanier (who moderated), Gaiman, artist Erik Larsen , writer and artist Darwyn Cooke, and the attorney for Kirby's estate, Paul Levine. Gaiman has a reputation for normally dressing entirely in black, and that held true here. Here is a photo I took of Evanier, Gaiman, and Larsen:


(Apologies about the bad photo - turned out I had my camera incorrectly set for the lighting in the room.)

Before starting the panel discussion Evanier went into the audience to introduce a few people who knew Kirby in person, including his daughter Lisa, who is executer of his estate.

The discussion was very interesting for the fondness and enthusiasm the participants very clearly have for Kirby and his work. Gaiman talked about his working from concepts and characters Kirby had created to write the script for Eternals.

I was interested to note before and after this panel that the area that most of the rooms that panel discussions are held in had been set-up with an eye to improving the flow of foot traffic - this was new for 2007. This area has four corridors that run it's length; they were set-up to alternate as entry and exit corridors, and convention center and security personnel were enforcing their being used as such. I saw there was still a tendency (which I had seen in previous years) for groups to stop and congregate in the corridors for discussions, which can be somewhat disruptive to foot traffic, but I think the basic idea of alternating entry and exit corridors was working.

After completion of the panel about Jack Kirby I went to the Convention Center's Sails Pavilion to sit down at the large number of tables and chairs that are always set up in one area for Comic-Con and ate the lunch I had brought with me.

My plan was to then venture down to the exhibit hall floor and browse the large booths a couple book stores set up each year. One of those booths, for Mile High Comics (which has the same prime location in the exhibit hall every year, right inside some of the main entrance doors) was full with a solid wall of people. The other one, for Comic Relief, was much less jammed so I entered it to look for titles I was interested in, and found nothing. I had thought it likely that was going to be the case, what with all the previous days people would have had to go through the stock these stores had brought, but had thought I might as well try. After that I decided to do some wandering of the hall to see what might catch my eye for photo taking.


The crowds seemed to be just about as heavy as I've experienced in the exhibit hall in previous years.


Full-size statue of Jabba the Hutt, with a model posing as captive Princess Leia.


It's Batman. Made entirely of Legos.


I guess some people just had to touch it to prove to themselves those were Legos!


A Legos Transformer.

One resolution I made after this visit to the exhibit hall is that if I do indeed use the three-day registration next year, I'll probably get the bulk of my shopping and looking around the hall done during the preview night!

After that the only other plan I had was to go to the playing of a video record of the convention's annual masquerade, which occurs Saturday night each year. The manager of the masquerade and some people who work for him took a few questions and complaints (and responded to them) from people who had participated in it the night before, then ran the recording. This was fun, but during it I developed a really nasty headache for some reason, and decided to leave before it ended.

That wraps up this report!

Telephone Directory Follies

Last week the annual update of phone number directories from AT&T was delivered to my condo complex. All well and good, I just need to remember to get the old directories to recycling.

Then this morning I step outside to get to work, and what do I see. Another delivery of the new AT&T directories. Oh joy, now I'll have twice as many directories to get to recycling. (Sigh)

So, what brought this about? Right now I can think of two possibilities, both of which seem far-fetched, but nothing else occurs to me:

1. The contractor AT&T hired to make the deliveries to my area somehow lost track of where they had left the new directories and went back over areas they had already covered.
2. AT&T has more than one contractor making deliveries to overlapping areas.
   

License Plate Watch 28

Saw today the most straightforward personalized plate I think I've ever seen: "2002 S4."

It was indeed an Audi S4.

What was all that about?

I observed something a few minutes ago I need to make note of.

I have previously mentioned San Diego's fire-fighting helicopters and their base of operations.

A few minutes ago while taking a walk, I observed one of them approaching said base. I saw it trailing a spray of water behind it, and it also had it's hose for taking on water extended.

As it was getting close to it's landing spot at Montgomery Field, when it was perhaps 10 feet above the ground, I saw it hover and release a considerable amount of water from it's tank - which really startled me because there had definitely been no sign of smoke or other indications of fire from that spot.

After the copter released the water I lost sight of it as it went behind a building and presumably landed.

Only explanation I can think for releasing water from the tank just before landing is it's simply not allowed to land otherwise. I hope they at least dumped the water on some plants!

License Plate Watch 27

Seen on a Ford Explorer: "SHOTS 4U". Which is certainly open to interpretation.

I suspect...

...the person who owns this truck is really, really enthusiastic about helicopters.

Yea verily, what comes around...

...truly does go around.

In this case, please refer first to this recent post of mine.

Now, yesterday evening I stepped out of my condo and found on the ground just outside the door a packet of Avon sales materials. And I'm certain the name of the sales rep that is shown on the materials is the same person whom the shipment that came to me should have gone to in the first place.

That gave me a good laugh!

That was quick, or, good work, oh city

I've been noticing for a several days that a traffic light on my usual route to my workplace has not been displaying the red. It's a redundant light, so I haven't been real worried about it. (There's another one just a few feet away that points in the same direction.)

But this morning I decided it was time to report it to San Diego's Street Division via the City's web site. (This page links to ways to report problems on city streets; I've used it before to report pot holes.) So, I sent that in shortly after getting to my job.

Just a few minutes ago while I was out for an exercise walk, I went past the intersection this traffic light is at. I looked at it, and whoa! The red was displaying. That startled me, but I must assume reports of problems with traffic lights are treated as high priorities.

License Plate Watch 26

Seen on I-15 today on a Ford Explorer, on the way home from work: "HAS LEGS."

Which of course leads to the question: What has legs?

UPS Follies

So, I come home from work today and see four boxes at my door.

• Which baffled me because I am expecting a delivery, but not before tomorrow, and it definitely won't run to four boxes.

I got closer and saw the boxes were labeled "AVON".

• Which further baffled me because I (trust me) have never and will never use Avon products.

Then I looked at the address label on the top box.

• Some genius of a UPS driver had left me boxes which should have gone to the same condo unit number across the street.

Sheesh.

From what I could make out from the boxes, they were all Avon sales materials. And they were all not heavy, so I just carried them across the street and left them at the proper door.

License Plate Watch 25

Seen on a Honda Accord today: "KT(heart)2SK8"

(For explanation of (heart), please see this previous post about special symbols on California vanity license plates.)

When parking at a curb...

...please try to get within hailing distance of the curb. Thank you.

License Plate Watch 24

Seen today on a Volkswagen Beetle: "O BUGGA"

Thought for the day

If a group of fish is a school, what's a group of surfers?

License Plate Watch 23

It's a PT Cruiser two-fer, both seen today:

First one: "MS CRSR"

Second one: "LOONY QT"

License Plate Watch 22

Seen today on a Volvo: "LV4PAR".

Golf, anyone?

Sorry, but

Spotted this flyer under windshield wipers of a few cars while out walking and used my camera phone to get this photo of it on one of those cars.



I was very amused at seeing that it actually apologizes about itself, then launches into an incredibly florid "Once in a lifetime" sales pitch. Complete with invocation of Donald Trump!

Apparent misspelling of the day, or...

...who is this Hugh and why are you selling him?

Upon further consideration

I have previously written about use of self checkout, and my finding it a generally acceptable alternative in the implementation being used by the supermarket Albertsons.

No more do I find it acceptable. I ran out of patience with the Albertsons system when it developed a very easily triggered tendency to go into an error loop that can only be stopped by manual intervention by the clerk who minds the self checkout stations.

How does this error loop occur? For example:

• I remove an item from the bagging area (because that area is getting too crowded) when it is supposed to be OK to remove items from that area.
• The station's audio prompts start complaining about "Item unexpectedly removed from bagging area. Return item to bagging area." (Or something similar.) I return the item.
  
• The audio prompt then starts complaining about "Unexpected item in bagging area." I remove the item.
• The audio prompt returns to complaining about "Item unexpected removed from bagging area...."
• And so on and so forth ad nauseum until the clerk intervenes.

Bah. I don't have the time to waste. I've quit using the Albertsons self checkout system until and if they bring in something else entirely.

I still don't have experience with other self checkout systems to comment on them.