It’s the first day of summer here in the northern hemisphere. Nothing all that special about it. For me, the first day of summer is when I set up the air conditioning, and that happened over the weekend.
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| Mono Lake |
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Today continues the slow leak of pictures from my trip to San Francisco with the rest of the good pictures taken out the airplane window. The whole collection is here, by the way. First up is Mono Lake, which is darned picturesque from the ground, I’m told, and pretty darned easy to spot from the air, too. There were actually people coming over to the left side of the plane to get a look at it as we went past, even though there was no announcement by the captain.
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| Cargill’s Bay |
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Next up, is Cargill’s Bay, at the south end of San Francisco Bay. The colors are striking from the air, and are the product of algae living in the brine. Apparently the different colors indicate different levels of salinity, with red being the saltiest. And then there’s Moffett Field. The longer of the two runways is 9200 feet long, and they’re both 200 feet wide. It’s neat the perspective you get from the air. The huge airship hangars look pretty small from a plane coming in to SFO.
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| Moffett Field |
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On a more current note, I was pretty productive yesterday. Plowed through a lot of work in the morning, before the storm yesterday afternoon, when the nearly continuous rumble of thunder convinced me to shut down my computer until the weather had passed. More work in the afternoon and evening, combined with strategically-timed outings, and I got through about half of the backlog I’ve been working on around the house. Today should get me nearly caught up, though I’m sure I’ll think of more things that need doing before the Saints get home on Friday for a weekend home-stand. And tomorrow, I’ll start in with the pictures from San Francisco itself. I’ll probably continue to trickle them out over the rest of the week and maybe even into next week.
- The Libertarian Party has an article about Your contribution to the Spanish-American War every time you pay your phone bill. Yes, we’re still paying the
temporary tax
. [fark!] - The feds would like to have Your ISP as Net watchdog over you, and are encouraging ISPs to retain logs for longer. The spooky part is that they’re talking about requiring it by law, too. [claire]
- The recent Credit data breach reveals weak links in the credit card processors. The system
is mainly designed to extract fees from consumers and businesses
not security. [press-patch] - Airline security is surreal: Drop those nose hair clippers, soldier! But hey, the M-16? That’s just fine. Soldiers on a chartered airliner heading to Iraq had to surrender their fingernail and nose hair clippers, as well as cigarette lighters. [schneier]
- Karen Kwiatkowski was a real conservative In Rumsfeld’s Shop of neocons, and had an interesting story to tell back in December 2003. She’s still at it, telling things as she sees them, rather than buying into the spin. Further, she’s suggesting murdering the state, in self-defense.
- A news story from the war that you couldn’t read until now: A Nagasaki Report is reporting done by the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945, which was censored at the time.