As near as I can tell they’ve stopped watering the grass in the back half of this park. The grass around the edges, near the playground, and near the clubhouse is green but scraggly. I’m not sure how they’re watering the trees, but most of them seem to be finding enough water to have put out leaves. Away from the street view, the ground is mostly dirt and dead grass now, but you can really see where the runoff collects.
It’s weird to look back on all the posts I made agonizing about whether or not to buy a netbook.
It was never anything I would have used on a regular basis, and I knew that (which is why I never went through with buying one). It would have been something I used on trips, mainly conventions, and only to overcome the shortcomings of late 2000s smartphones.
Mainly: photos and typing.
It’s still painfully slow to type anything of length on a phone, but tablets have emerged since then and are a lot easier to type on. Hybrids like the Surface Pro and add-on keyboards make it even easier.
Touchscreens have solved the crappy trackpad problem netbooks had.
Faster phones and cell networks, and a more mobile-friendly web, have made a lot more things possible directly on the phone.
Netbooks, meanwhile, are pretty much forgotten, at least in the form they existed in at the time. Chromebooks are doing OK, at least in schools, but they aren’t quite the same thing. You’d think “netbook” would refer to something more like the network-dependent Chromebook, but it typically referred to the tiny form factor of a mini-laptop.
Looking back at the Tori Amos signing that I mentioned in the series’ first post: These days I probably would have taken the pictures directly on my phone and posted to Instagram within minutes. As for the blogging, I might have powered through on the phone and added the pictures directly, or I might have done so on the tablet and added the pictures that would already have synced from the phone over WiFi.
I wouldn’t carry a laptop of any size around the convention floor, that’s for sure. And I probably wouldn’t bring one on a short trip at all unless I was planning on working during the evenings.
Admittedly, they do both involve stabbing things, but I’m not sure they combine very well…
Sure, there are a few things that don’t have peanuts in them (or at least aren’t supposed to). And there are potato chips too.
I’ve taken to bringing my own string cheese and keeping it in the fridge. It’s one way to be sure there’s something I can eat safely.
I always feel like this logo is warning you not to buy in the tsunami zone.
I think the tree is an Indian Hawthorn. It’s got the same leaves, bark and flowers as the bushes that are all over the place in this area, and Wikipedia says they can be pruned into trees.
Last year’s WonderCon went well enough that when our five-year-old said he wanted to go both days this year, we figured sure, let’s do it! Famous last words…
(TL;DR: full photo album)
We had another thing going on Saturday morning, so we got in around noon and went to get lunch as soon as we had our badges. Then we stood in line at the food trucks for over an hour. By the time we made it into the convention proper, it was almost 2:30pm. On Sunday, we brought sandwiches with us, though we did wait in line for cotton candy shaped like Baymax’s head (cotton candy being the exception to the rule about not eating things bigger than your own head).
Unfortunately things didn’t work out as well as last year, kid-wise. He’s old enough to find cool things to do at a con — meet the Ninja Turtles, check out toys, play retro video games, stuff like that — but hasn’t quite mastered the art of “let someone else have a turn” or “let’s start walking so we can get to this other thing before the room fills up.” The first day of a con is overwhelming for anyone, and that goes double for kids (and parents). Saturday was so exhausting that we left early and I dropped into bed fully dressed.
As many people as there were, I never felt crowded. We didn’t have any problems with the RFID badges either. They had a new system where you had to tap your badge on a scanner to enter or leave the main hall, or one of the areas where events were being held. Our badges scanned just fine. J. insisted on tapping his as well, and was disappointed that the scanner didn’t respond. (He really likes the idea of having his own ticket to things, even when children get in free.)
