Rain stalks the Ramp of Doom!
A light pole was knocked down, lying inside the curve of the ramp. It may have been there already, but I hadn’t noticed it before.
Three cars were stopped along the side of the bridge. No obvious damage.
A tow truck sat in the left lane, surrounded by traffic cones.
People stood around on the side of the road, talking on cell phones (presumably calling insurance agents, police, or more tow trucks).
Two SUVs were in the middle of the bridge, one facing forward with its right front wheel assembly ripped off. It was leaning forward, resting on that corner, debris scattered around it. The other was facing backward in the far left lane, aimed slightly toward the center divider. This is an odd pattern: SUVs facing backward in the left lane on that bridge. I think there must be something about their balance that makes them likely to start spinning when drivers take them out of the turn and try to merge left.
Although in this case, the tow truck driver was stopping traffic so that the backwards SUV could turn around. As the driver swung the car around, I saw a huge dent in the rear passenger side door. It became clear that, whatever led into the accident, the other SUV had rammed it, losing its own wheel for the trouble. Now that I think of it, this isn’t the first SUV I’ve seen lose that wheel on this ramp.
Protected: Laz-E-Bay
Smoke
It’s not particularly smoky or even hazy in the Irvine Spectrum area. It does, however, smell like a campfire outside. Just slightly east of north, a huge plume of smoke is rising from the hills, drifting west in a band across the entire northwestern sky.
Last night on the way home we could just barely see the silhouette of those same hills, outlined by a faint orange glow almost invisible against the glare of street lights and traffic signals.
I took some photos at lunch. I’ll try to post them tonight, along with some that alenxa took yesterday morning. Yesterday was really strange, because it started out foggy. The fog had mostly lifted by the time we left for work, but the beginnings of the smoke from the hours-old fire seemed to blend with the remnants of the fog.
Meanwhile, the LA Times has posted some impressive photos of the smoke and, closer up, the efforts to contain the fire.
Edit: Photos are up at K2R.
Crisis and Retconning
There’s an easy way to keep things simple: Either build on earlier stories without changing them (or change only the obscure stuff), or start over.
Retcons are like epicycles, the sort of secondary orbits that astronomers invented to explain discrepancies in planets’ motions when they thought the planets all had circular orbits and revolved around the Earth. The epicycles got more and more complicated until enough people noticed that you could get rid of most of them if you assumed the planets revolved around the Sun. Then they realized that you could get rid of the rest if you assumed the orbits were elliptical instead of circular.
If you *totally* reboot a series, like Wonder Woman after COIE or Legion of Super-Heroes after Zero Hour and again last year, things are simple. It’s just like launching the Justice League cartoon — it’s a totally separate continuity from the previous version, so contradictions aren’t a problem.
When you revise *parts* of history, things get complicated. Wonder Woman herself might have had a simple reboot, but the Justice League and Wonder Girl (Donna Troy) were still around, and their histories had to be revised. Donna has gone through *how* many origins since then? Origin-wise, she’s hardly recognizable. They actually did a better job with Power Girl by saying “Forget all the retcons, she really is the cousin of Earth-2’s Superman”
Sorry about the rant…
WTF weather
It’s 82° outside. That, in itself, is not terribly bizarre for SoCal in January. What’s bizarre is the fact that it’s 15 degrees cooler inside.
Around 11:00 this morning I was seriously considering turning on the heater, until I decided to check the temperature outside. It was 65° in the living room and 78° on the balcony. So I opened all the windows I could. The living room has warmed up, but due to our floorplan, the back room with all the computers hasn’t much.
What makes absolutely no sense is the fact that our apartment has lousy insulation. We would never get this effect on a summer day that reached 78° by 11:00 and 82° by 2:00 when we might actually want it. (Although 65° is a bit extreme.)
The More You Know
Apparently, live plants conduct electricity well enough that you can shock yourself when touching them.
Corporate niceness has gone too far
The office is switching to a new payroll company and direct deposit hasn’t kicked in yet, so I stopped at the bank at lunch to deposit my paycheck. I actually ended up at a different branch from the one I intended to visit, since I missed the freeway exit but there was another branch near the next one.
The greeter asked me what they could help me with or something customer service-y sounding, I said I just wanted to make a deposit, and she said, “Would you like to fill out a deposit slip?” while gesturing to the small stand with three different kinds of deposit slips. It was clearly meant as “Deposit slips are over here, fill one out before you get in line.”
But the phrasing — who do they think they’re kidding? And what’s wrong with a simple, “Please fill out a deposit slip.”
By the time I left, I’d lost count of the number of “Have a nice day,” “Have a wonderful afternoon,” etc. types of comments, and I was beginning to feel like I’d been banking in Stepford. It was seriously creepy.
Oh, and the teller thanked me for filling out the deposit slip.
Ugh.
5:00 on a Friday afternoon is not an appropriate time to think to yourself, “All right! I can finally get started!”
Today was Office clean-up day. I junked a bunch of old, unused computer parts, tried to put more memory in my brand-new computer — which refused to boot until I took the memory out again, cut a bunch of wires from our old phone/network so I could get the crap out of my cubicle (some panels and jacks have been sitting in the corner since we installed the new network, still attached to the wires coming out of the column), answered email, installed the WMF security patch on a bunch of computers, updated software on a couple of servers, dusted the artificial plant, adjusted the paper clips holding the real vine in place, put a bunch of stuff into a cabinet, moved papers around so I could wipe off my desk, made tea, looked through everyone else’s discarded junk for anything usable, shredded some of the old papers, spent an hour trying to un-jam the shredder… with the occasional trip to the web for sanity’s sake.
I think I’m going to just have to send what I’ve got on this review document and come in for an afternoon on the weekend to deal with the actual programming. I was going to stay late anyway today, but how much can I really get done in 1.5 hours?
Hint taken
This morning I looked at the vine that I’ve routed along the top of my cubicle wall and thought it was just getting long enough to warrant a new paper clip to hold it in place. (I have clips at two to three-foot intervals.) Just now it flopped down off the wall to hang in front of my calendar.
Hint taken, plant! New clips are in place.
Merry Christmas!
Seeing the light(s)
Monday night, as I parked the car in the “garage”, I noticed the light looked funny. Sure enough, one of the headlights had gone out. I didn’t have time to pick up a replacement bulb on Tuesday, so I grabbed one last night, picked up some work gloves that weren’t all covered with gardening dirt and plant bits, and called alenxa to ask whether we had any safety glasses since the bulb package had a warning about how it was pressurized and could explode in your face if handled incorrectly.
Now, you probably haven’t noticed this unless you’ve watched me turn into a driveway, but the front left turn signal is white instead of yellow. This is because when it burned out a year(?) ago, the store only had clear bulbs of the right type, and I had somehow gotten it into my head that the glass in the turn signal assembly was amber (it isn’t). I went with what I had, and checked back at the nearby auto parts store a week or so later to see if they’d gotten the amber bulbs in. Once I had them, I let them sit on my desk for a year because I didn’t feel like messing with it, and hey, the signal worked, didn’t it?
So I figured as long as I was replacing the headlight, I’d take care of the turn signal at the same time. Only one problem: I’d bought the wrong bulb. I needed 1157NA, and picked up 1156NA. The bulb was the right size, but it had the wrong number of filaments, the wrong number of contacts, and the pegs on the base were in the wrong spot.
So the car has a full set of headlights now, but the turn signal is still off-color.
Meh.
Christmas Coffee Calypso
I’d forgotten about it overnight, but today was the office building’s annual holiday party. This means that they set up a cappuccino cart, a pastry/fruit tray, and a calypso band playing Christmas songs on steel drums and a keyboard out in front of the building. (There’s also one in summer, not connected with any holidays, with smoothies instead.)
I just grabbed a plate, since I was carrying a travel mug of coffee from home, and the line for coffee was about 5 times as long. Unfortunately this meant I had extra food, which I forgot to put in the refrigerator. Not a problem for the raisin bread, but the yogurt’s probably toast. Oh, well…
Ended up grabbing a chai at Starbucks after lunch (and reminding myself why I usually don’t get chai there), which led to a conversation in the elevator with someone who works on the same floor. This was unusual on several accounts, since I don’t always take the elevator and when I do, I rarely talk with anyone beyond “What floor?”
Work itself involved a lot of frustration, a tale that I’ll have to tell in another post.
Chain of Coincidence
Woke up early (for a weekend) yesterday and went out to breakfast. As we’d been out last night watching Harry Potter and alenxa was up even later baking cookies and scones for today, this was a more difficult feat than you might imagine…
Spent most of Saturday helping sekl and non_seqvitvr move, with largely the same crowd as the night before. Chances are most of you reading this were there, so there’s not really much point in describing it. We ended up bailing around 7:00 since my brain was starting to shut down.
The plan for the evening was to grab something at Starbucks, get home, at which point I’d go straight to bed while Katie got in a long-delayed round of Puzzle Pirates. It didn’t quite work out that way. First, while packing up the remnants of the home office, she’d found Jim & Stacy’s copy of the “Once More With Feeling” soundtrack. So she fired up the iPod on our drive back, and we listened to our copy. Second, I checked the mail when we got home, and found a box from Amazon… containing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Chosen Collection.”
“You won’t believe what showed up in the mail.”
“Um… okay…”
“Wanna watch ‘Once More with Feeling?’”
So we watched the Buffy musical. Then Katie hunted for the outtakes (which are only on some seasons, and the booklets don’t tell you which special features are on which discs, though you can at least tell which discs have special features by picking the ones that only have three episodes) while the caffeine vanished into the ether and my brain slowly turned off again, and I dragged myself to bed at the (for yesterday) late, late hour of 10:00.
Fogging Things Up
- When I got out of bed, alenxa said, “Hey, there’s fog out there!” A half an hour earlier, when she’d gotten up, it had been clear. By the time we left for work, all that was left was just enough haze to maximize glare and make the broken sun visor and lack of sunglasses a problem. We did get a great view of one of the ex-marine base blimp hangars where the near end was perfectly visible, but it faded into the fog so that the far end was completely hidden. (Naturally, by the time I dug the camera out, the light turned green and we didn’t get a picture.)
- There’s something fascinating about the high-tech/low-tech contrast in surgery where the instruments consist of a styrofoam cup and a long Q-tip. OK, the cup has to be full of liquid nitrogen, but it just seems so simple.
- Last week I got into work and said to a co-worker, “Is it just me, or do people not know how to drive in the rain?” “I think they just don’t know how to drive.” I spent nearly 10 minutes at a turn signal this morning because some idiot didn’t notice it turned green, and the next car was a big two-piece truck with no acceleration capability whatsoever. And then there was the freeway…
- Amazon’s shipping decisions just don’t make any sense. Last week I placed an order for three items (so I could hit that magic $25 and get free shipping). I checked the box to lump everything into as few shipments as possible. So of course they decided to just ship two of them. Then they shipped the third the next day. Yesterday, the second shipment arrived, but I’m still waiting for the first. Edit: The first package arrived today. It seems holiday shipping is already in full swing, because the UPS guy showed up around 7:30.
- Server room is freezing. This is good. When it isn’t, my boss says things like “You can smell the electronics trying to die!” And things crash. And we have to spend half the day fixing things that crash.
- Speaking of things that crash, I’m getting very annoyed at Microsoft’s decision in MFC 7.0 to stop hiding menus and toolbars in Print Preview mode.
Manic Monday? Pfehhh!
While I can’t predict how crazy today will be, I already know tomorrow’s going to be nuts, what with…
- The election (all you Californians are planning to vote, aren’t you?).
- A deadline at work.
- Microsoft Patch Tuesday.
All this means that I can’t stay home with the cold that I picked up on Saturday!
(Reminder to self: must remember to blog when happy.)
The Ramp of Doom Returns!
Usual spot at the SB 405 – NB 133 interchange, just after the ramp on the 133’s bridge over the 405. Three cars, including a Jeep that looked OK from behind, a car in front of it that had completely flipped over, and another car in front of that one that I couldn’t see very clearly, because I was watching the guy standing out in front waving his hands to make sure people slowed down and didn’t plow into the scene. It had clearly just happened, since neither police nor ambulance had arrived.
At least I hope that’s why he was waving his hands. It certainly looked more like “Hey, watch out!” than “Please, stop and help!” Damn, I didn’t even think of that until just now.
Lunch Lessons Learned
- Smoothie-and-sushi, while an excellent combination under summer and fall weather conditions, is less than ideal for a cold, wet day.
- Even if you’re convinced that it can’t possibly start raining enough to warrant an umbrella in the next 45 minutes… bring it anyway.
- Check the soles of your shoes once in a while so that you discover they no longer have any tread before you find yourself slipping every few steps on a wet sidewalk.
- With #3 in mind, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf isn’t particularly close to the food court at the Spectrum. It’s really too bad they kicked out the Diedrich’s instead of, say, moving them into the food court.
- Frosty doesn’t know how to pronounce the word chaste. As I got out of the car, they were having a big argument, with listeners IMing in to tell him that Heidi and Frank were pronouncing it correctly and Frosty insisting that he had heard the word more often and therefore knew how it should be pronounced.
Back to UCI (sort of)
I went to see my allergist this morning for a re-eval. I was actually supposed to go in during the summer, but I forgot about it and misplaced the “you’re due for an appointment!” postcard until earlier this week. As it turned out, she had a medical student from UCI shadowing her today, so I got to be both patient and teacher’s aid. (They asked me up front whether it was okay.) It was an odd experience, partly because there was an extra person, partly because she looked like she was close to my age or maybe younger, and partly because my allergist was narrating everything.
While I was there, I got this year’s flu shot. I don’t remember having to sign a waiver last year. Actually it wasn’t so much a waiver as a “Yes, I’ve been informed of the possible side effects, and I know it’s produced using eggs, so if I’m allergic to eggs, I’ll just stop and not get the vaccine, thank you very much.” It may be explained by the fact that the flu vaccine has been added to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. I didn’t know this program existed. (Ain’t the intarweb grand?)
Ganging Agley
alenxa and I had everything planned out for Saturday afternoon and evening. We were going to catch Mirrormask for the second time at 4:30, have dinner, then see Serenity again at 8:00-ish. Then if we were up to it, we’d catch a late-night showing of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Yeah, right.