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Cake day: July 3rd, 2024

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  • It could have been an accident or incident that resulted in a death. They may have been collecting evidence. There are even some police in my area that uses conventional land surveying equipment and rapid high density laser scanners. Precise measurements of things like skids marks and other evidence of how the vehicles came to rest can be used to estimate initial speeds and confirm or refute the testimony of witnesses.

    It could also be something more mundane like an actual land surveyor collecting data to support future design work or verify completed projects.

    Neither of these are jobs that can be done at night or at times more convenient for your car.



  • Nobody else grow up on tuna casserole?

    I don’t know the exact recipe, but it was basically canned tuna, frozen mixed vegetables (diced carrots, corn, peas, and Lima beans was the favorite in my house), and macaroni and chees. This all goes into a casserole dish and is cooked somehow (probably overn, I don’t know, child me didn’t worry about such trivialities). The crumbles at the end of a bag of ruffles would be sprinkled over the top of this before baking to add a bit of crunch.

    I couldn’t count how many times we ate this growing up. It’s been a few decades, and the nostalgia is real, but I still have no inclination to make it for myself. If lower middle class had a flavor it’s that mélange of canned tuna, fake cheese, and lima beans.





  • My smartphone isn’t a phone with “extra” features to me. My smartphone is a portable personal computer with extra sensors, a GPS receiver, and wireless internet, which also happens to have a phone app. I don’t want to carry an extra “dumb” phone. I would prefer my smart watch to be the communication and identity hub for me and my devices: holding the SIM card, acting as a wifi hotspot, routing calls and internet to my handheld brick or laptop, etc. Instead of acting like a third party add-on, it would be a mostly distraction free core. Let me use a smartphone, laptop, steam deck, cobbled together cyber deck, or whatever else have you as my local screen, storage cache, and/or proper desktop. Then I can put the screens down or leave them behind without feeling cut off or potentially stranded in a world that practically requires it to navigate with any ease. I want a smart watch that enables me to leave the house without car keys, driver’s license, and credit cards; essentially with nothing but my watchphone. I want to be a cyberpunk Dick Tracy. What I want, with the freedoms and open standards I want, with the privacy I want, without being locked into a single monopoly walled garden, is probably a pipe dream. I want what is probably the next evolution of the “year of the Linux desktop”. But a kid can dream.







  • 1979: Ridley Scott directs “Alien”.

    1981: James Cameron works as a production designer on a Roger Corman “cash-in” of Alien called “Galaxy of Terror”. It’s mostly awful (mostly due to the giant maggot rape scene), but some of the production design is WAY better than anything in this movie has any right to be.

    1986: James Cameron directs “Aliens”.

    I’m using the release years here as opposed to production for simplicity, but Aliens is really just a cash-in of a cash-in of Alien.