Yesterday was a crazy day, and I didn’t get a chance to post my normal Saturday Stew. Luckily, stew can cook a little extra without going bad, so here’s something tasty for your morning. Note that I left a few ingredients at work — I’ll save them for next week, and you likely wont’ miss them here.
- Tunnel Under the Hills. I commute the Sepulveda Pass every day. Luckily I have podcasts, for the slog itself is a traffic-filled nightmare. That might change. Metro is exploring a new sales-tax measure (as if it isn’t high enough) that might result in a toll-tunnel under the Santa Monica mountains. There would also be a private rail line. I’m not sure I’d want to drive through a tunnel of that length, but depending on the wherefores of the rail line, that might entice me out of the van.
- An Empty Airport. If I was to ask you what the most eerily-empty airports was in Southern California, you would likely answer Ontario (which LAWA seems to want to kill). But that wouldn’t be the right answer. San Bernardino has turned the former George AFB into an airport, and it has an even emptier terminal.
- There Ain’t No Flies on Me. An interesting science article that I was hoping to form into a groupathree. It appears that zebras do not have stripes as camouflage, but to keep off the flies.
- Stop Staring. Here’s the second article in the incomplete groupathree: It appears that more cereal boxes are sold when the characters on the box stare directly at consumers. Further, children’s cereal boxes are places to stare at the kids.
- Bad Streets. You think your street is bad? Here’s a list of the 15 worst streets in Los Angeles, in terms of maintenance. It is interesting to note that most of them are in the Valley, with Sepulveda and Van Nuys at the top of the list.
- Getting Off. If you read the papers, you’re probably sick of being told to get off of Windows XP. As it stands, I have three XP machines at home, with only one still in regular use (it is my print server for an old HP Laserjet 4, and I only wake it up when I need to print on the attached printer). So it was with interest that I read that Best Buy will be offering $100 gift cards when you trade in an old XP system; the card is towards the purchase of a replacement system. That might entice me to replace one of the systems.
Michael you don’t know bad roads until you have experienced spring break up in Canada. The road we take to Little Harbour, NS is so uneven and pocked marked with crater sized holes that it is impossible to use the road without bottoming out; even with a pickup truck. 🙁