Downtown LA

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 

Emptying out as darkness falls…

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Posted at 19:05:42 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlaces

Rental Chick Magnet

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 

Everyone knows nothing attracts the ladies like a powder blue camary! The guys in the black thing and the midnight blue Volvo, they’re going to have to pay for it, but in a baby blue camary you pretty much have to keep the windows up and the doors locked, at least at intersections.

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Posted at 12:53:50 GMT-0700

Category: photoRental cars

A week of tweets: 2009-07-26

Sunday, July 26, 2009 
  • Fast trip to SFO. Inexperienced british family nearly stopped me at security. #
  • Uh oh, non english speaker in exit row. Learn at least “yes” if you want to keep you exit row seat. #
  • Getting dinner at baby blues venice. Bbq, yum. #
  • Baby blues venice #
  • near 34.000125, -118.46546 http://tinyurl.com/nshkyx baby blues… http://twitpic.com/b2vbv #
  • Driving from santa monica to glendale in a convertible, 71F to 94F! #
  • Chp ticketing aggressively on 580 today. #
  • Off to ORD then YYZ today. Short stay at home this week. #
  • Same FA on UAL ORD YYZ flight as cough syrup incident; UAL asked her about the cherry bourbon, she said embarassing. My contri to aviation. #
  • And JD on flight today. Everyone who flies is welcome. I may not be competent to test fly a B1 (props to x pilot LAX), but I do what I can. #
  • Extra jack from ual. Subcompact friom hz. Arranged future pref for “weird.” Rain in YYZ. Firepit on hurontario: nom. #
  • Poo. Home network is down again. Last time Lineman said he gave us the last working pair in the cable to the CO. 9040′ of new wire pl … #
  • YYZ-ORD-SFO today. Nice people here at YYZ, even with all the rain. #
  • On the plane again… Just can’t.. Well, at least there is plug in power. Home soon but no dsl ’till mon. Maybe the old pipeline 75 works #
  • Wow, same crazy woman as last flight: making tea (brought hot water?!?) Carries parasol for (not so) fair skin: hat bad, sunscreen toxic? #
  • Literally 20 min diassembling and stowing luggage. Non-stop monologue. Asking everyone for help. Now has stuff in 3-4 different overheads #
  • Just explained to old guys behind her “I think rules are meant to be broken, no fun to follow the rules…”. Special kind of crazy. Taser? #

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Posted at 02:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter

OMG! Acceleration SlideWalk Is Operating at YYZ!

Thursday, July 23, 2009 

Super cool. The fast section isn’t much faster than regular, but the slow section is much slower. They may have it in test mode, as they’ve been actively working on this thing for years.

Note that the dark spaces compress together to decelerate both in the floor and the railings. Very cool idea. Even cooler with the disco LED moving foot illumination (see video)

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Video

Posted at 22:44:10 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlacesTravel

Rental Mustang Convertible

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 

They gave me a nice red Mustang convertible at Hertz. They’re pretty nice cars, a little floppy over bumps due to a weak structure, but fun to drive. My day took me from meetings in Santa Monica at the beach (71F) to Glendale (94F), so I had the top down and AC on max.

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Posted at 16:55:45 GMT-0700

Category: photoRental cars

FreeBSD 7.2 Buildworld Stop

Sunday, July 19, 2009 

I got an error doing Buildworld in s_fma.c which caused an error code 1 stop on an AMD64 build on a quad EM64T Xeon Cranford-based IBM x366.

The compile flags I used were: CFLAGS= -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -funroll-loops -ffast-math

/usr/src/lib/msun/src/s_fma.c:187: error: unrecognizable insn:

(insn 439 438 440 54 (parallel [

(set (reg:SI 168)

(fix:SI (reg:XF 171)))

(clobber (reg:CC 17 flags))

]) -1 (nil)

(nil))

Change the flags to: CFLAGS= -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -funroll-loops -Wall

Build world runs to completion. -O2 sets most of the go-fast options anyway and AMD64 builds turn on more by default. The x366 runs nice and fast.

Posted at 23:57:26 GMT-0700

Category: FreeBSD

A week of tweets: 2009-07-19

Sunday, July 19, 2009 
  • Power out at 22 and valencia. No traffic lights. #
  • Spork for dinner, but no spork on the table. #
  • Off to la again. Just there on friday. Just for the day this time. #
  • WTF?! United flight 877 is on a TED plane! That’s just WRONG. #ualfail #
  • Grilled lobster at The Lobster in santa monica. http://twitpic.com/ae7qw #
  • One more plane today. #
  • Plane load of lawyers in suits on last lax sfo flight of the day. #
  • About 1000 Angels just rode by on foothill, quite a parade. #
  • UAL Small Package Delivery saves the day (for a price) but came with free starbucks mocha. Bonus. #
  • Smoking smashed car on 980 exit from 580. http://twitpic.com/ausf2 #

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Posted at 02:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter

A week of tweets: 2009-07-12

Sunday, July 12, 2009 
  • A week of travel starts with SFO-ORD-YYZ. I will not fly Tuesday this week. Seat power works! Yay electrons aplenty! #
  • near 43.626256, -79.680301 http://tinyurl.com/m4mz9m dinner at the fire pit. Nom. http://twitpic.com/9karq #
  • near 43.683591, -79.606884 http://tinyurl.com/lr4v77 leaving yyz for a short night in oak. #
  • At ord in the rain, early. Quick trip to RCC to dump email on something faster than YYZ’s maple leaf’s data valet’s 4 baud wifi. #
  • At sfo again. Off to lax. #
  • At lax again after another fun-filled visit to the santa monica office. #
  • Home again. Hi SFO. #
  • near 37.771923, -122.423639 http://tinyurl.com/mhpwrm Nom! Nom! It’s dinner at It’s Tops! #
  • Going to 7:30 bruno at alameda theater. Yay. #
  • Bruno!! Now to American Steel. #
  • Giving Vale a bathroom break at the ReSearch booth. Come buy a book! #

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Posted at 02:11:00 GMT-0700

Category: Twitter

Ford flex rental

Thursday, July 9, 2009 

Only 33 miles…

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A little odd on the outside, fairly neutral on the inside.
Posted at 10:54:20 GMT-0700

Category: Related LinksRental cars

Jim Beam Red Stag Cough Syrup

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 

On a recent evening UAL flight I asked for a Jack on the rocks, as I sometimes am wont to do. The FA returned sadly with a little square bottle: the shape was familiar but the label wasn’t. “This is all we have,” she said apologetically. I gamely gave it a try.

It turns out it was Jim Beam’s new Red Stag Black Cherry Bourbon. It tasted a lot like cough syrup to me, sickly sweet and alcoholic. I’m not a big fan of Jim Beam to begin with, but it is tolerable straight or on ice. This concoction was not. I returned the unconsumed portion.

I’m not a sweet liqueur person to begin with, and this even less so. UAL very kindly assures me (from the Catering Manager) that Jack is supposed to be on all flights so this was, fortunately, an anomaly.

Posted at 21:32:16 GMT-0700

Category: NegativePlanesReviewsTravel