It’s Cyber Week
And thanks to the readers who bought the netbook and the shoes. Every bit helps keep this blog going.
Category Archives: General
It’s Black Friday
At Amazon
Some Like It Hot
But not me, and today is the hottest day of the year in Redondo Beach. It’s eighty degrees on the lower floor of the house, and much warmer upstairs (it’s apparently 109 downtown LA). I know that eighty doesn’t seem that bad, but one of the reasons we like living here is that this kind of heat is rare, which also means that we have no air conditioning here. It may be hot sleeping tonight (last night it never went below seventy outside). There’s supposed to be one more day of this, then a cool down on Wednesday, when things go back to normal. It’s ironic that the hottest days of the year in LA didn’t come until fall. I blame George Bush.
[Update later afternoon]
Wow. According to Accuweather, it is currently 95 in Redondo (not clear where they take that reading) with a day high of 105, then cooling down to 63 (a forty-point plunge) overnight. That’s how dry it is here, with an off-shore wind. This is the first time I can ever recall triple digits at the beach. The record is 106 (back in 1964) and the normal for this time of year is 76.
Sean O’Keefe
This AP story doesn’t say who’s aboard, but I’m hearing other reports that he was aboard the plane that crashed in Alaska.
He’s a former administrator, so it will have no effect on policy, obviously, but condolences to his friends and family if he and/or his son didn’t survive.
[Update a while later]
More over at NASA Watch.
Unwarranted Assumptions
This writer has some tips on finding the best seats on a plane, but there’s an apparent bias:
Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn’t full, you’re likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back.
…I love 767s because there’s only one middle seat per row. This means that your chances of getting one are less than on any other two-aisle aircraft: A 767 can be 86 percent full before anyone gets stuck in the middle. Two-aisle planes tend to give you bigger seats, more legroom, and larger overhead bins than one-aisle aircraft.
…Unless I’ve achieved my personal nirvana of an aisle seat in an exit row, I always ask the gate agent if a better seat is available. Preferred seats (e.g., aisle seats up front) often open up at the gate because the elite-level or full-fare passengers who were occupying them get upgraded at the last minute.
Emphasis mine. Note that there’s an apparent assumption on her part that a) middle seats bad and b) aisle seats nirvana, for everyone. But why would I ask for an aisle seat when I don’t like aisle seats? I prefer windows, a word that doesn’t appear in the article. I actually almost prefer a middle seat to an aisle, because there is one less person to have to let out during the flight, and I’m not constantly getting jostled by passengers or flight attendants walking up and down the aisle. The only reason, to me, to prefer aisle is for safety (get out a little faster, unless you’re in an exit row), or a desire to get up occasionally and walk around (either for leg stretching or nature calls). My preference is to just cocoon at the window, where I can look out, and not be bothered by anyone else’s needs.
Yes, obviously, if you like aisles, then a two-aisle airplane is preferable. But if you prefer windows, wide-bodies suck, because they provide the lowest window-seat/seat ratio in the sky. My favorite plane, actually, is any variation on the old DC-9 (nowadays B-717 or S-80), because with only five seats per row, forty percent of them are windows.
Miniquake in LA South Bay
…or a foreshock of something worse? The house just had a sharp jolt — a couple actually. It got the cat’s attention. And she didn’t warn me beforehand.
[Checking out USGS…]
Wow, it was right off shore.
Pickup Line Du Jour
“Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?”
[Via Ruth Waytz]
Cereal Wars
I found Lileks’ Bleat more amusing than normal this morning. What an eye for cultural detail.
Yeah, We Felt It
We were at Lowes, buying some casing for a new front entryway that I installed last weekend, and you could feel the entire concrete slab that the store was on start to gently roll. It went on for many seconds, and equipment hanging overhead was gently swaying. I told Patricia, “That’s a big quake, somewhere, many miles away.” When we got to the car, and turned on the radio, we heard that it was down in Baja, probably about 180 miles or so southeast of us. They got a lot bigger jolt down in San Diego and the other border towns, I’m sure. I haven’t exinspected the house here for damage, but I’d be surprised if there was any.
[Update a while later]
For those interested, it was at the Lowes in Hawthorne, at the end of the runway of the airport. And SpaceX is right across the street (Crenshaw) from it.
To All Of My Christian Readers
Have a happy Easter.
[Update a few minutes later]
Not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but just to make some readers aware who are reciprocating, in case they weren’t — I’m not a Christian myself, or even a theist.