Category: Strange World

Posted on
by

My iPod ran down its charge over the weekend, and I had to plug in the car charger this morning and start over at the beginning of a playlist. I usually leave it on shuffle on a reaaaaaally long list so I get lots of different songs.

It started up with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bohemian Polka,” which was a fun, off-kilter start to the week. When it followed up with “Jurassic Park,” I didn’t think much of it. Twofers by artist, and even by album, aren’t that uncommon.

When “Living in the Fridge” started up, I got a little suspicious.

Sure enough, when I stopped the car and checked, shuffle was set to “off.” I figure the playlist must have been sorted by album the last time I synced, with Alapalooza the first on the list.

I’m still not sure whether it switched off shuffle when the battery ran down, or I just had it off before and didn’t notice because the last playlist I was listening to was pre-shuffled. Still, it was — appropriately — weird.

The Weird Al/T-Rex silhouette from Alapalooza.

Posted on
by

I’m floored.

Absolutely floored that 4-day passes for Comic-Con International 2010 have sold out.

I mean, it’s the first week of November, and the convention isn’t until next July!

Tickets with access to Wednesday’s Preview Night sold out a few weeks ago, but at the time, CCI didn’t provide any information about how many regular 4-day passes were left. This Monday, they posted a progress gauge at 70%. The last time I looked yesterday, it was up to 89%.

Today? Sold out completely.

I can’t help but think it would have taken longer if they hadn’t provided a gauge to let people know just how scarce a resource memberships were going to be. There’s nothing like the fear of a shortage to get people to run out and buy up what’s available (and create a shortage). But I also can’t complain, because without that feedback, we might have kept putting off plunking down the $200 for the two of us, and we might have missed our chance.

Single-day tickets haven’t gone on sale yet, so it’s still possible to go if you haven’t already bought your tickets. You can of course buy more than one, it just means standing in line each morning to pick up the next badge. (Even the more relaxed WonderCon, run by the same organization, doesn’t let you pick up a Sunday badge on Saturday, as we discovered last year.)

If you’re planning on going to San Diego next year, keep an eye on the website. Four-day passes went insanely quickly, and I would expect the one-day passes to do the same.

Update 2019: Seeing how surprised I was is almost nostalgic, now that the entire con sells out within minutes every year. This was the tipping point.

Posted on
by

The Great Park Balloon in Irvine, California, all dressed up as a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween. I was hoping to get a shot of it aloft, but it landed as I approached the park.

It looks really eerie lit up at night, floating off in the distance. Or just floating above office buildings.

It’s not as good a picture as the one I found on Flickr last week, but you can see the whole face.

More of my own photos of the balloon on Flickr, including this non-zoomed shot, showing the big empty field and Saddleback in the background:

Posted on
by

What genius decided dark green on black was a good way to mark up parking spaces? To make matters worse, some of the spaces actually are 20-minute spaces…only they’re labeled on the ground, in the same color green paint. I was almost into the space before I noticed.

Judging by the commercial, Ford’s hybrids are hippier than the Prius. And I say this as the happy owner of a Prius. Seriously…the size of a tree indicates energy efficiency? The Prius has a bar graph.