Tuesday, December 20, 2005

google earth

Spent a while downloading and then zooming around Google Earth. It’s pretty amazing—seeing places I know from above.

But I wonder how old the data is? I know some of it has to be more than two years out of date since the house I grew up in still shows a big elm tree in front—but the tree came down maybe ten years ago. Seeing my sister’s house in Natick, MA was cool—but I can’t see ours since Fairfield County is this green blob—no buildings are visible. I wonder why. It’s pretty disappointing not to be able to discern our house in the blob. I can see the houses of most of my relatives, but not my house or my parents’ house.

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This is my sister’s house in Natick, MA. See how clearly you can see the house! [click to enlarge]

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And this is the view of our house in Norwalk. A green blob. You can’t even see the school next door, which is a fairly large building. [click to enlarge]

The other weird thing is some of the data is wrong. The house I grew up in, in Southgate, MI (now the mall capitol of southeastern Michigan), is shown two doors up from where it actually is (the target is over the wrong house—the Franklins lived there when I was growing up!) My youngest sister’s house, in Dearborn Heights, MI, looks wrong. She lives in a small house, with a small garage behind it but the image shows some big buildings there. I forget what her cross street is—will have to ask her to see if it’s even showing the correct corner lot.

So, an interesting start, but disappointing (and useless for seeing where you need to go) for those of us who live in Blob Land. Google directions, the last time I checked (like two months ago) leave a LOT to be desired (like accuracy), at least here in Fairfield County, so maybe when they update the imagery they’ll also update the directions. Or vice versa. When it’s working properly, I’ll start thinking about integrating it into the websites we manage, at least the ones with storefronts.

But it is so FUN to fly over the country!

posted by lee on 12/20/05 at 10:37 PM
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

tv time

We’re tv junkies. We have a tv in our bedroom, the guest room, our living room, and our office. We have just about everything cable has to offer except the porn channels (though we’d dump the forty or fifty sports channels in a heartbeat if we could). We’re faithful viewers of many shows (though it’s getting harder and harder to figure out when they’re on these days) even when a show has jumped the shark (except for Nightline. The new format, frankly, sucks the substance right out of it, so we don’t pay attention to it much any more except when Martin Bashir is on).

So, we decided a while ago, when the tv in the living room finally went, we’d get a bigger one. That tv is one I bought more than a dozen years ago, and the picture was starting to get a little weird, so we knew it was just a matter of time.

By bigger, we initially discussed a 36-inch tv. But we saw one, and decided it was too big and decided to get a 32-inch one instead to replace the 25-inch Zenith.

The Zenith finally died. Off we went to Circuit City, where Stanley scoped out a 32-inch Magnavox on sale for $268 plus tax. Not a hi-definition tv or a flat panel or any of those fancy new formats. Nope, you don’t get enough bang for your buck to justify the cost of those tvs and I think the picture on most of them isn’t very good. We’ll wait a few years for one of those, when the price hits the sanitysphere and the quality improves considerably.

We wanted the Magnavox because they have a sound feature that keeps the commercials, particularly the local commercials, at the same volume as the show. It irritates me to no end when the commercials blare out at the decibel levels found on a runway during take-off, particularly since the tv volume is already loud because I’m so deaf.

The Magnavox is so BIG. We’re overwhelmed by the size of it. We live in a 200-year-old house with small rooms, and the telly now dominates the east side of the house. It’s amazing what just seven diagonal inches adds to the size of the screen. We agree that we should’ve gone with the 27-inch screen—that would’ve been plenty. But it was so much trouble setting up this tv that we’ll keep it. Though we agree that we have to figure out some way to, I don’t know, ameliorate the impact of its size somehow. Maybe if we lower it or something, or move things around a bit—I don’t know.

I really LIKE having such a big screen—it will be great when we watch DVDs. But it’s so big ... it didn’t seem so big in the store.

posted by lee on 12/21/05 at 03:59 PM
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Friday, December 23, 2005

traffic, oh my

It took us longer to find a parking spot at Best Buy this afternoon than it took us to go in and find the items we were looking for, stand in line to pay, and then leave.

And we noticed that people are certainly abiding by the no cellphone while driving law that went into effect in October. Not.

Other than a lot of rude drivers (all these self-important twits around here driving SUVs too big to handle or that idiot in the beamer with his ragtop down—that guy must have a really SMALL dick), shopping wasn’t too godawful this year. We did all of it (the stuff we don’t do online, anyway) in Norwalk and Westport, mostly Westport. In the stores themselves, clerks were mostly pleasant despite being tired except for the pushy jerks at Brookstone.

But we’re ready—got everything done, the dog is bathed and smelling like good soap and all fluffy—will pack, watch Jeopardy, then head for Natick this evening. We got good sandwiches from Wild Oats to eat on the road, made some good trail mix, coffee, we’re all set. Hope the trek won’t take too much longer than it usually does (about 2.5 hours), but traffic on the highways doesn’t look too bad—much heavier earlier today.

Wasted some time getting Ginger’s entry on Dogster up: http://www.dogster.com/?238239 (it was fun!)

posted by lee on 12/23/05 at 10:55 PM
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Wednesday, December 28, 2005

well now, that’s a relief

Christmas was fun—besides a burr grinder, Stanley gave me a Kodak Duaflex III camera and I managed to find film for it (am waiting for it to arrive) and Maureen, Jeff, Kate, and Ben gave us a dvd recorder. Everybody seemed pleased with what they received.

Maureen was getting dinner ready when Dad called. Dad and Mom are down in Panama City Beach for the winter. Dad said he had to take Mom to hospital because she woke him up Christmas morning and told him she was having chest pains. So he bundled her into the car immediately and got her to Bay Medical, their local hospital which, fortunately, is a very good one. Her electrocardiogram was a bit abnormal and her blood pressure was off the charts, so they admitted her. Since it was a holiday on Sunday and on Monday, nothing was done until Tuesday, where they gave her a chemical stress test since she couldn’t handle the treadmill stress test (her hip hurts too much).

She got the results this morning, which showed no heart damage, and they discharged her. I’m relieved there was no heart damage, but would really like to know the diagnosis for the chest pain, which lasted more than two days. I wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t the heart, but suspect the extraordinary stress she’s been under the last month or so triggered something. Dad’s carotid artery roto-rootering and then the packing up and driving down to Florida from Michigan after his docs gave him the all-clear didn’t give Mom much of a chance to de-stress. I know with me the stress creeps up on me and knocks me on the ass after the crisis has passed—I would imagine it’s probably the same deal for Mom.

She’s home (at their condo) now—I hope she can de-stress. Maybe sit in the Florida sunshine and just let the worries slip away.

posted by lee on 12/28/05 at 06:28 PM
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ruins and a good photographer

Stanley sent me a link to Opacity, where “Mr. Mott” has posted a couple of thousand photos of urban ruins. The Buffalo Central Terminal is particularly interesting, and so are the various insane asylums and prisons. There is a lot to see here and I don’t dare investigate the urban ruins ring because I do have to get some work done today.

posted by lee on 12/28/05 at 06:45 PM
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