Google Maps almost failed me this morning. That's never happened before. Those "M" guys used to get things wrong so much that I couldn't rely on them at all; they even managed to leave out a major state road once, telling me that I could exit the interstate and get onto such-and-such road that was miles and miles away. And those "Y" guys led me ( Read more... )

Google Art Project appears to be collecting high-quality images from art museums around the world. I haven't explored much yet but it looks like it'll be nifty.

I thought this picture from APotD of the moon and Venus over Switzerland was a painting rather than a photo when I first saw it. Pretty ( Read more... )

Thanks for all the good wishes, everybody. I will be seeing my doctor tomorrow morning to get checked out. Today's aches and pains were pronounced but not as bad as I had feared, fortunately. But I am learning more about which muscles are involved in seemingly-innocuous activities ( Read more... )

The easiest way to describe what happened to us this afternoon is ( Read more... )

This afternoon I was in a meeting when someone else said the room was shaking. I hadn't noticed but did after she pointed it out. I figured it was a large truck rumbling by outside; she said it felt like an earthquake ("but smaller", I said). Who knew that a magnitude-5.0 earthquake on the border of Ontario and Quebec could be felt in Pittsburgh ( Read more... )

Dear Pittsburgh CLO: I gave you my phone number so you could contact me if there were problems with my theatre tickets. You lost points by calling to ask for a charitable donation, and you lost lotsof points when your agent argued with my labelling of the call as a ( Read more... )

For certain commodities I have no brand loyalty and buy based on price or convenience. Thus, I recently bought a package of Scott Super Mega bathroom tissue, because with the coupon I had it was the cheapest per square inch and not known to be bad ( Read more... )

Quote of the day #1: "My parents visited a planet without bilateral symmetry and all I got was this stupid F-Shirt" (from bitsy_legend and Fred).
A few weeks ago BitDefender, my antivirus software, stopped working -- attempting to run a scan emitted a very unhelpful error message. Some time with Google showed me that lots of people were ( Read more... )

Last Monday, our choir had its annual pot-luck dinner, once again hosted by the people who used to host practice, back when their daughter (who's in the choir) still lived with them. That hasn't been true for a while, but they like hosting us anyway. We don't get to see as much of them as we used to, so I'm glad ( Read more... )

I bought a new calendar today and, to my surprise, among the candle-lighting times on each page it lists Pittsburgh. (Usually we don't make the cut.) While looking at this I noticed that sunset in September is moving by about 12 minutes per week, but that in March it only moves by about 8 minutes a week. Shouldn't it be symmetrical? (The delta ( Read more... )