"You read it here first: despite its famous "Don't be evil" mantra, we can exclusively reveal that Google is planning a SPECTRE-style operation co-ordinated from an extinct volcano aimed at the complete subjugation of humanity by means of "orbital mind control"."
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
Ah, memories. That was a fun project.
- Amit Patel
...do you happen to own a white cat, Amit? And does your den have a map of the world with various glowing lights on it...? #enquiringminds
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
Do people actually read the Register? I mean .. MUST BUY ANOTHER NEXUS 4 .. it's just a rag
- Mo Kargas
i used to read the BOFH thing on Register. it was better back in the Irregular Striped Bucket days, tho.
- Joe Silence
I do have a white cat. And my den has various glowing lights. Mo: I don't normally read the Register but if they write about my work then I'll read it ;)
- Amit Patel
"For those times when you have a few – or agonizingly many -- hours between flights and you just want the world to go away, one airport invites you to go to bed right there in the middle of the terminal. Abu Dhabi International has just unveiled sleeping pods – chairs that convert into flat beds, complete with sliding shades that can fully enclose the slumbering travelers inside and isolate them from noise, light and curious fellow passengers. Still in the launch phase, the pods will ultimately feature Internet access, storage for luggage and charging stations for electronic gadgets. All those creature comforts and amenities come at a price, of course. Fliers can rent the chairs for about $12 an hour using a credit card. The airport says it’s the first in the world to use the Finnish-designed “GoSleep” pods. “(It’s) the very latest passenger experience that embraces the latest technology,” said Mohammed Al Bulooki, chief commercial officer of the Abu Dhabi Airports Company, in a statement. Ten pods are already in place in two of the airport’s terminals, with 35 more to be added later this year."
- Anne Bouey
from Bookmarklet
Father's Day visit to my parents, and to brother Phil's house in Elk Grove. Loved being with them plus my sister, and my brother Rob's family. Happy Father's Day everyone.
Carrie getting some much deserved attention. "Ms. Grimes is an Internet-age statistician, one of many who are changing the image of the profession as a place for dronish number nerds. They are finding themselves increasingly in demand — and even cool. “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
Great article, but it left out that statisticians need some CS muscle to effectively operate on large scale data. It's the combination that make Carrie -- and others like her -- 'Internet-age' statisticians.
- Michael E. Driscoll
And didn't you just approve them all... I mean, isn't that how it works??
- Georgia
Oh, do I have to accept them? I don't use LinkedIn much except to accept friend requests and see where former co-workers end up. (Although our HR team auto-posts a lot of jobs under my profile, apparently.)
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Yeah, I think you have to post them to your profile. I assumed you used it more because of all the job posting, funny that's it an auto post thing!!
- Georgia
Up until yesterday, I walked my kids to and from school each morning, which (combined with the morning routine) was good for around 3,300 steps by the time I got to work. Now school is out, and I'm weekend dad. I miss the morning walk.
I need a new morning walk routine. I tried walking to the nearby cafe, which is nice, but I don't want to make it a routine -- too expensive.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
Can you experiment with the route? Maybe instead of a "destination" walk, you go around the block where the cafe is, or take different streets?
- Russian Space Lizard
Thanks, Tam and Steve! Steve, the class had a beach-themed potluck breakfast for the graduation today, so she was a bit more islandy than normal (but she prefers to dress like this anyway).
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
Thank you Louis, J., Yvonne, Stephan, Anne and Victoria! Just dropped her and Sammy off for their last day of school. Then their mom takes them camping and I won't see them for a bit. I'm proud of them and miss them already. *tears up*
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone
Okay, first "real" day with the Fitbit (i.e., off the couch and back at work), and on reflection I think I'm glad I got a One instead of a Flex. I do like having a display on the device itself, the altimeter is kinda neat (I don't care if it's incredibly accurate), and it's completely out of my way clipped to a pocket.
If I had an iPhone I might have preferred the Flex, but since it won't sync with my android phone I like being able to see numbers on the device. I'm syncing with my iPad, which is usually handy enough to sync periodically with no effort but isn't on my person all the time.
- Jason P
If I got off the train a stop early this morning so I could log some more steps, does that mean it has its hooks in me already? Is this like that orgasm game from Star Trek TNG that took over the crew?
- Jason P
I was considering the flex until I noticed the lack of display also. I wonder why the don't make a nice wrist band similar to flex that you can skip the One into
- jtf
from Android
In 1991, I was taking Hapkido martial arts classes through the U.C. Berkeley Martial Arts Program. For one of our fundraisers, we would clean up Memorial Stadium on the Sundays after football games. October 20, as we were finishing picking up trash, half the sky grew hazy and filled with thick smoke. It was the Oakland Firestorm. #saturdayff - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
I was living near the evacuation area in a rented house with two friends, Barbara and Nick. I made my way home as quickly as I could, making it past the roadblocks by using back roads. The cemetery on the hills near our house was being used as a firebreak.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
My neighbors told me that our street was not being evacuated, but we could tell from the TV coverage that we were only a block or two away from the mandatory evacuation zone. It was a hot October day already, but the fire now raging out of control -- only a mile or two away -- took the temperature up over 100. Black ashes started to pile up in our yard. My friends hastily packed a couple of boxes of irreplaceable items and took off. I did the same.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
We ended up at my friend John's apartment in a high-rise near Lake Merritt and 880. From the window, we could see the helicopters scoop up buckets of water from the lake to use fighting the fire. The KTVU coverage now showed the flames as having engulfed our street, so we thought the house was gone.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Fortunately, that turned out not to be true -- the map was off.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
A group of us stayed up all night watching the news coverage. I went to work but kept the radio on all day. The fire wasn't contained from our side until late Monday. After work, there was no way to know if I had a house to return to or not. As it turned out, our street had been untouched. But some of my friends weren't as lucky -- some of the families of kids I knew from coaching speech and debate lost everything.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Two days later, the landlord of our rental house called us. He had lost his primary residence in the fire. And he was retaking his rental for his family. So Barbara, Nick and I were being evicted.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
I moved back to Berkeley. The Hapkido club continued to pick up trash at the stadium sometimes, but no other pickup days were as memorable as that day.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Random side observation: Memorial Stadium has no trash cans for attendees to use. So every kind of leftover food trash ends up under the seats and on the benches and on the ground. It was difficult to clean up -- brooms can't sweep the area very well, so most of it has to be picked up by hand.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
As you hunch over, picking up popcorn and soda cans and peanut shells and leftover hot dog bits and chicken bones, the stultifying nature of the task plays tricks on you. Picking up trashed food items, even disgusting ones, your brain can't help but imagine eating it. No matter how hard you try to suppress the thought, you still imagine putting that discarded piece of gum into your mouth.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
So on the days where I picked up trash, I was nauseated and had no appetite the rest of the day. Especially on the day of the hill fire -- I don't think I ate at all Sunday or Monday.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Some other friends of mine, Sam and Erin, ended up buying a house in the Oakland hills a few years later. It was a beautiful new Craftsman, built on a spot where a home had burned down in 1991. Each time I visited them, driving up the windy narrow streets, I thought about how difficult it must have been for the fire trucks to make their way up to the affected area, and how easily people would have been trapped.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
That must have been awful, following the news and not knowing for sure whether there was something to come home to...
- Stephan Planken
from iPhone
Stephan, it was just a rental, and I had few things of value left behind. If the house was gone, I could live with friends if need be, until I found a new place. I felt worse for the people being shown on the news who knew that they had lost their home and all their belongings and in some cases pets and loved ones. In the early coverage, some news reports put the death toll at over 100, so I was more focused on that. (Wiki says the actual number of fatalities was 25.)
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
I remember that period well because I was 'commuting between Chicago and San Jose in those days. As we flew near Oakland on the way to SJO, the sky was dark with smoke from those fires. I remember how warm it was for October. I was also struck by the fact that such an event could happen "in the middle" of a major metropolitan area. Fires are scary.
- Jkram|ɯɐɹʞſ
Thank you for your story. I couldn't imagine the amount of stress on the people in the affected area.
- Janet:#TeamMonique
from FFHound!
I was living a block from the lake, on Harrison. One of the staging areas for the various fire departments was across the street at the middle school. Even a mile & a half from the fire line, it was terrifying.
- Starmama
from FFHound(roid)!
The knowing everything about everyone comment was a delicious bit of irony
- Todd Hoff
from Android
LOL, Todd. Google clearly has employees who are fighting the good fight in their words and deeds, protecting their account holders from government overreach. But we haven't heard the end of this yet. PRISM is something distinct from cable taps [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world...] and *somehow* gives the NSA capabilities for "Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers:..."
- Tinfoil 2.0
I saw Peter today and he mentioned Yonatan's post when I asked him about the whole kerfuffle. I had already read it - felt very cognoscenti.
- Laura Norvig
Yonatan is a very good guy. He was incorrectly listed as Google's chief architect. He is chief architect of Google+.
- Louis Gray
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : Largest Tornado on Record: the May 31 El Reno, OK EF-5 Tornado | Weather Underground - http://www.wunderground.com/blog...
"The largest tornado in recorded history was Friday's May 31, 2013 EF-5 tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma, the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma announced on Tuesday."
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
"The large, main vortex had EF-4 winds of 185 mph, and the satellite suction vortices moved across the fields at that speed, and rotated on their own at speeds of up to 110 mph, giving a combined wind speed of up to 295 mph in some of the satellite vortices."
- Amit Patel
" The 295 mph winds of the El Reno tornado rank second only to the world-record 302 mph (130 m/s) winds recorded in the Moore, Oklahoma tornado of May 3, 1999. However, the Moore tornado's winds were measured at an altitude of 105 feet (32 meters), so the winds near the surface may have been higher in the El Reno tornado."
- Amit Patel
That looks like a modified twitter bird.
- OMG 404 Joe
(I'd use other words but I don't wanna come off all creeper-sounding.)
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Basic question: Assuming I don't wish to acquire a man-purse, how the hell do you carry around reading glasses? The case is too big to fit comfortably in my pocket.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
Get a smaller case? Or, if you don't mind the old nerd look, get a rubber tube thingie so it hangs on your neck?
- Arlan K.
Word of advice from my uncle the optician: nevernever lay your glasses on the table "right side up". Place them with the ear hooks pointing up. It helps prevent strain on the frame and keeps the glasses from warping.
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
Get a more flat slip case with a pocket clip. But get a semi-hard, leather case because frameless glasses need protection.
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
fwiw, likely you'll only need to deal with this problem for awhile - give it a few years - might graduate to wearing them all the time. #guywithglassesjustsayin Oh, and I vote for a chain for hanging them around your neck.
- Kevin Johnson
Just get contacts. I only switch to my glasses in the evenings but I need them to see everything. Looking good!
- Zulema ❧ spicy cocoa tart
from Android
They look sharp! Folks who say you'll wear them more and more are accurate. I've had bifocal readers for about seven years: 1.5 on top for desktop screens and store shelves, 2.5 on the bottom for reading, phones and viewfinders. For distance I look over the top.
- Mary B: #TeamMonique
from iPhone
Looking good Stephen! I have similar frames, sticker shock when you need new lenses- fair warning :)
- Janet:#TeamMonique
from FFHound!
John says you look distinguished! =)
- Yvonne
from FFHound!
Long time, no see, FF peeps. I've been getting a few DMs and such so I thought I'd check in. Lot going on with me, but for the most part, all's well. Will be moving on from New Orleans this summer (but I'll be at ALA in Chicago next month!). Thanks for keeping an eye on me!
Yep. Onward and upward. I've learned a lot here, went to school here, earned a degree and became a librarian here. Grateful for all I've been privy to as a result.
- Derrick
At this point, where I'll end up hasn't been determined. Applying for jobs and interviewing across the country and keeping an eye open on possibilities. Hence, my absence and lack of participation around here lately. It's been a little stressful, but I'm looking forward to new things.
- Derrick
Yes, good luck in your new future. To me, it seems like just yesterday you were nervous about moving across the country to New Orleans.
- DJ Stevie Steve
Hai, D! Here's hoping you land someplace perfect! Glad you're back here, too!
- Mary B: #TeamMonique
from iPhone
hope to see you in Chicago - and thanks for checking in!
- ellbeecee
It's great to see you 'round these parts again! Sending good thoughts your way that you land the best job, wherever that may take you. *hugs*
- Russian Space Lizard
Good luck, Derrick - I'm sure you'll do well wherever you go.
- teleken
from BuddyFeed
Good to hear from you and best of luck!
- laura x
from BuddyFeed
So glad to hear from you, D. You've been in my thoughts often. Best of luck with the job search!
- Kelli H.
from Android
Good luck with everything, Derrick. I'm looking forward to hearing about how it all turns out. The next chapter is going to be amazing :)
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
One of the three pregnant goats at Rancho San Antonio gave birth last week. They're so adorable, these kids. Very wobbly.
- Stephen Mack #TeamMomo
from iPhone