Hmmm

"The CFL in Halifax is one of those unshakeable regional daydreams like the tunnel to Labrador, Turks and Caicos becoming a Maritime province, IKEA in Nova Scotia and the Rolling Stones playing in Moncton.

Oh wait, the Rolling Stones actually are coming to Moncton . . . and that city wants a CFL team, too."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050610.wxcflmaritimes10/BNStory/Sports/

(I hate football, but I love Canadian versions of things. What's a guy to do?)

777

The Boeing 777 isn't that interesting. It's new (well, only ten years old, compared to the 767 (23 years in service) and 747 (35 years in service), its two neighbours in the Boeing lineup), has fly-by-wire instead of hydraulics running throughout the plane to control everything, and the fuselage is perfectly circular. Wooo.

One trivia item: it shares Section 41 of the fuselage with the 767, as shown in this diagram. Weird.

(BTW, I look these things up, very little of it is in my head. But yes, I am still a freak.)

Puns Galore

For those who like puns, or those who like Star Wars, or those who like vegetables: http://www.storewars.org/flash/

For those who hate to have a moral at the end of a story, you may wish to close your browser when there are about ten seconds left.

Best Apple Switcher story ever.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/494040.html

(this guy helped invent Netscape, btw)

Home Improvement Suggestions

Our kitchen project will be hitting high-gear soon. IKEA has charged us for all our cabinetry, so they'll look at delivering it within 2 weeks I think. Our new fridge and stove arrive on Monday. We're talking to a friend about countertop and installation options. But we still have so much to do! It's scary.

- remove old paint from kitchen
- decide on new kitchen wall colour
- paint kitchen
- remove shitty stucco from ceiling
- paint ceiling
- remove old cabinets
- somehow get rid of cabinets somewhere
- assemble all the new cabinets
- install all the new cabinets
- remove shitty linoleum floor
- install new tile floor
- make sure that everything fits back together OK
- install countertop, sink, faucet
- connect dishwasher
- clean everything up

What I'm stressing about is what order to do everything in. Basically, should we paint and do the floor before the cabinets? Or just paint? Paint after the cabinets are removed, but before the new ones go in? It's ridiculous. And of course our kitchen will be totally unuseable for at least a couple weeks.

It's to the point where I want to start right now, just so that I can say we're under way. Even though it might be pointless.

NYC

Joel Spolsky, author of http://www.joelonsoftware.com, and CEO of Fog Creek Software, hired a bunch of interns this summer. He's having them design, program, build and market a complete software product during the summer. It's called Project Aardvark.

I tell you all this to share this excerpt from Ben-from-Indiana's post about New York City:

Joel gave us each a book, Time Out in New York, that lists lots of stuff to do in the city. The book is as thick as AAA guides for some of the states I’ve visited. In the book’s introduction, it states something along the lines of, “New York has a reputation for being this insanely packed metropolis where everyone is always in a hurry and small children end up being shoved off the sidewalk into sewers where they are devoured by rats the size of some of the smaller models of Toyota. This is in fact not the case anywhere, except maybe on Fifth Avenue, and even then only during peak business hours, and besides, many New Yorkers have domesticated sewer rats as exotic pets.”

This is a lie. Not only have sewer rats not been domesticated; the sidewalks really are packed everywhere. At least half of the city generally seems to be on the same sidewalk as I, going in exactly the opposite direction with such rapid speed and with such concerned expressions that I have to assume they have severe problems containing their bowel movements and are in urgent search of a restroom. That, combined with New Yorkers’ love for using their horns to convey such messages as, “We are stopped,” “we are moving,” “my car is turned on,” and “I have a horn” meant that I was pretty much on sensory overload for a few days.