Ah yes, the wonderful life of the IT nerd; 20 hour days when servers fall down.
Pigeons fluttering through a hole in the ceiling of a Spanish cathedral led an art restoration team to discover a hidden Renaissance fresco of winged angels that had been covered by a false ceiling for more than 300 years.
People have been freaking out about gmail. The storage space, the privacy issues, and more recently, about the usability of the web client. People were offering up gmail invites as prizes or favors. It is all a bit silly.
The gmail link has been sitting on my blogger account page for months now. I finally decided to give it a go. I can now say Google is by far the best web email out there. Uncluttered interface, keyboard shortcuts, great search features on your own email, and a whole lot of space. I can see it being my primary web mail account..
Delta, Continental, America West, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines secretly turned over sensitive passenger data to Transportation Security Administration contractors in the spring and summer of 2002. In addition, two of the four largest airline reservation centers, Galileo International and Sabre, also gave sensitive passenger information, including home phone numbers, credit card numbers and health data. Nothing to see here, just the government compiling secret databases on Americans.
About time: Black Box Voting has formed a nonprofit consumer group that plans to investigate election officials who may have conflicts of interest with voting companies.
My bus stop is near a seniors center downtown. That is a good thing. However, there is no outside seating for the center. This means that the seniors who still smoke (and there are a lot of them) come over to hang out around the bus stop. Uhg. This morning I counted 10 people smoking within a 15 foot area. When you add in the exhaust from Broadway it becomes one of the most unhealthy places around. It is sad that the people who pollute on the low end of the scale (regular bus commuters) have to sit around the most pollution (smoke, exhaust, noise).
In San Diego and LA there are a lot of cell towers that resemble bad plastic palm trees. They sort of blend in.. the shape and color is quite odd when next to a real palm. Well, apparently use the camo technique in Europe as well, including antenna disguised as crucifixes. Haha. Jesus Christ, this reception is horrible!
Story on Imperial County, where more people from San Diego are moving. I just can’t imagine living out there, but for some people it is a sacrifice for their family.
“To have somebody who is literally following you a foot and a half away everywhere you go … it seems to be getting a little carried away,” said Obama as Warfel held a camera inches from Obama’s face. “It’s this kind of incivility in politics that turns people off to politics.” Man, Jack Ryan sure is an ass.
Finally watched City of God last night. I had heard great things about the movie, but finally got around to renting it. The movie is about a photographer growing up in the infamous ‘City of God’ slum in Rio de Janeiro. I thought it was extremely well done; beautiful and disturbing. The subject matter involved a lot of kids, and the kids they got to portray them were quite amazing.
A great story from NPR and Slate; First Into Libya. A group of 16 American tourists, the first to tour Libya in a long time. They did a good job on the story, it seems like an amazing place.
Our main goal was to create a voice to prove that San Diego was not a cultural void-or maybe that it was a void but that with our combined goodwill and heart we could make it something bigger and better. Whether that happened or not remains to be seen. SD Fahrenheit is dead. Now we get to enjoy even more of the plastic surgery ads in sdreader.