The New Pornographers remain my Favorite Band of the moment, and here is one of the 30+ reasons why.
In your ultimate dream house, what does your favorite room look like?
I won't post full details, but it does have a bidet.
I believe The Island is on TV right now and... there's Ethan Phillips. Was it geeky of me to respond to the TV, "Of course you're crazy, Neelix!"?
It sure was.
When you go out to eat, how do you pick where to go?
Submitted by Kristine.
In SF, I pretty much ask all of you on Vox.
I've also found Chowhound and Yelp to be invaluable - lots of good advice there, although there have been a couple of bum recommendations (ie, lousy Chinese.)
Also, don't forget the Wheel of Food! The first time I tried it out here it recommended a place I'd already been. At least it was a good choice.
I've been consciously trying to avoid chains whenever possible but this isn't a hard and fast rule. I've generally had good food experiences here, and only one or two "meh"s.
In Chicago, we stick to our favorites and/or friends' favorites!
Yesterday I was looking at the United Airlines site, and noticed that the Super Discount Wowee Saver tickets cost 25,000 frequent flyer miles. This is the same amount I've seen on UAL's site forever - including a few days earlier when I was booking a flight.
Jeani, however, claims that the day before yesterday the site showed 15,000 miles as the cost for the Incredible Cheapo Super Duper Saver tickets. She's convinced that the price was increased by United.
Can anyone out there confirm this? I've never seen 15,000 miles out there as a price, but it would put our minds at ease to have some verification!
It was kind of funny: when I went to Coffee to the People earlier this week, I ran into dozens of San Francisco Houses. You know the ones... like the ones above. Touristy to photograph, I guess, but it was still pretty neat to see - these things are quite gorgeous.
It'd be like coming to Chicago and photographing bungalows, I guess.
Two in one:
1.
On Thursday I stopped by an ice cream shoppe (yes, it was a shoppe) to get a milkshake after lunch. It was great - the people were friendly, the ice cream was tasty, and the milkshake was equally tasty. A curious thing happened when I was paying though: the woman ringing up my order asked, "Liquid lunch?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Liquid lunch?"
"No, no, this is dessert."
I thought it was a little odd. I guess given the time of day it was all right though; it was about noon, as I had taken an early lunch. But still, a milkshake for lunch?
2.
Sometimes it's the little things.
My MacBook, like all modern Apple laptops, includes the handy "put two fingers and flick your trackpad" scrolling mechanism. This, I love. It is a brilliant way to scroll versus having a dedicated scroll wheel (still fantastic). It works just about perfectly: put down two fingers, glide, scroll. There you go.
My work PC, an hp laptop, includes a scroll area on its trackpad. Originally when I got it I thought, "Huh, same thing!" so I just did the same two-finger scroll. That didn't work quite right. Turns out that within the scroll area (designated by white parallel horizontal lines), one just needs one finger. Okay. Fine. Still handy. Oh, and the pointer on screen changes into a little pointer working within a little scrollbar. Over the top. Unnecessary ("gee, I'm scrolling?!")
Oh, but it's finicky. If my finger falls out of the scroll area on the trackpad (possible, I am klutzy) then I stop scrolling. Worse - much much worse - is that the thing I want to scroll must have focus on the screen first. This is insane. The fracking OS knows where my mouse is pointed - why doesn't it just scroll the thing? And yes, the Mac implementation requires that the window has focus - that makes sense - but not the control itself.
So if I want to scroll my message list in Outlook, I can't just hover over the list and scroll. I have to move to the list, click it (selecting a message in the process, something I don't want to do), and then scroll. This extra step might seem small but it is, in fact, an enormous inconvenience.
It makes perfect sense from a programming standpoint, but just about zero sense from a usability standpoint. Awesome.
3. (a bonus)
I'm pleased that my rental car still has new car smell.
This past week Chicago essentially said, "Yep, we want the Olympics and we will use public funds to do so even though we said we wouldn't." The thing that bothers me about this whole Olympics business is the speed at which it happened. It was very, very fast.
In the meantime, the CTA is crumbling quite literally: not enough trains, rickety old stations, poor service... and that can't be fast-tracked?
Listen. I was able to get up at 4 this morning to be ready for my 5 o'clock cab to get me to the airport in time to board your plane. The least you could do would be to have a plane ready to go. You know?
Getting impatient,
- Paul
ps: I take this all back because you got me there on time. I still love you.
