Yesterday was the first day of our tourist season here. The first cruise ship of the season came in; the Norwegian Star. Only one ship for the day, so it wasn't too crowded. We can get up to 5 of those things in at once. With an average of 2000-4500 people per ship, the population of the town doubles or triples when they are in. For example, the Norwegian Star has 2,240 passengers and 1,100 crew for a total of 3,340 people. During a tourist season, we get over 800,000 visitors by cruise ships here in Ketchikan, Alaska.
I just got a jury summons for the month of June. I've been summoned once before, but I got out of it because I was taking classes at the local college. This time I have no excuse, and actually I'd like to go through the experience at least once.
It would appear that I dodged getting sick from either of my parents. You may recall an earlier post that I made about this, when I was sure I'd get sick. There was one night my body was acting like it does when I'm sick, but I didn't feel sick. When I'm sick, my body reacts very quickly to any little thing like a scratch or pimple. I think it might have something to do with a higher white blood cell count. Anyway, hopefully that was what my parents had, and I just fought it off differently.
I hate being sick (who doesn't?). Last time I was sick was last summer, I ate a deli sandwich and got food poisoning. I was throwing up for 3 days. I lost about 8 lbs during that, and took a couple months for the weight to come back; my usual weight is a very constant 160 lbs.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
«Tourist Season Begins»
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
«Laser Drawing»
I did a minor change to the layout, if you've been here before you may have to clear your cache and refresh (or hold Shift and click refresh to do a forced-reload). You'll notice black horizontal lines on both sides of the main blog body.
My dad got a new camera. So for once I finally have a camera at my disposal that allows me to do long exposure times. So, naturally, I get out my green super laser and draw stuff on the wall with it. I got my laser from Wicked Lasers (Yes, that's a referral link. If you buy something using my referral I get a percentage in store credit.)
It's very simple to do:
The only downside is you can't see what you're writing as you're writing it. Since it's a blank wall, you don't even have a point of reference. So anything you draw looks like a little kid's drawing.
That last one is an example of what I use to draw as a kid. It's the capital letter "G" turned into a head with a long nose... and nose hair.
And no Monique, these are not worthy of Doodle Page...
Monday, April 28, 2008
«Motivational Monday: Kids»
Here's one of the many reasons I don't want to have kids...
Sunday, April 27, 2008
«Musical Taste: Wolfsheim»
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
When I was looking for the right videos, the Internet connection at my dad's wasn't keeping up with streaming a simple YouTube video. We're getting about half the speed we should. Turns out the reason is the microwave link off the island is maxed out. I was surprised to hear it is only 40mb/s... For the entire town!
In line this week is Wolfsheim; yet another German band. What can I say? I guess I like German music. Touch is one of my favorite songs by them.
Touch
Wolfsheim - The Sparrows and the Nightingales
Wolfsheim - Youth & Greed
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
«Un-Pimp the Auto»
You know it's a good commercial when it gets put up on YouTube and gets millions of views... I like the 3rd one best.
Volkswagen: Un-pimp Your Ride I
Volkswagen: Un-pimp Your Ride II
Volkswagen: Un-pimp Your Ride III
Believe it or not, they actually used a trebuchet to throw a car for that 3rd commercial. It wasn't computer generated.
VW Unpimp Behind the Scenes
Thursday, April 24, 2008
«Random Pictures»
Because I don't have time today to do a proper post... Click an image to view its full size.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
«Speaking With God»
God: I've been waiting for you.
Me: Really?
God: Not really, but it makes a good pickup line.
So I was speaking with God, and I found out a few interesting things:
The universe, Earth, and life were all created by Benjamin Franklin.
God is a 5 year old robot in California.
God is not a psychic.
God has a stimulating relationship with Himself. (He said it)
The Earth is 6 billion years old, but the universe is under 40. God says it doesn't defy the laws of physics.
God even believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
God admits it, he does not know everything.
Well, that was more productive than praying anyway...
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
«Ketchikan Street Photos (Photo Heavy)»
On Monday I went for a walk and took a few pictures, mainly of different roads in town (just for you, Monique). Ketchikan, Alaska has a few unique roads... Click on any of the photos to see their full size; at least what blogger will allow. I have larger versions. All of the photos in this post were taken by me on April 21, 2008.
This first one is a crudely stitched together image of the 3rd Avenue bypass. I was having a hard time getting a good perspective of the landscape around the road with a single photo... Sorry for the poor stitch job, at least 3 of the 4 photos were from different angles. (This is the only stitched photo in the bunch.)
And this is the view from below the 3rd Avenue bypass...
... it's visible from the shoreline...
... and here is the view above it (from the Rainbird Trail).
I like how the Schoenbar Road hill just looks like a drop-off from the top, with the caution signs and such.
An interesting little find at the bottom of the Schoenbar Road hill, the text in the concrete reads: NO SUCH THING AS CAN'T
Believe it or not, this wooden boardwalk counts as Bayview Street...
...the other end of Bayview Street, and the rather short Barber Street; no more than a stairway. There's a lot of boardwalks in town that for some reason count as streets.
A section of our main road through town. Yup, it's a viaduct, built over seawater.
Here's our tunnel. It has a road around it as well as through it. I didn't think to get a picture of the houses on top of the tunnel.
And here's 2nd Avenue / Water Street, built on piling, hanging off the side of a cliff. (FYI: the picture was taken from the top of Elliott Street; another boardwalk.)
Monday, April 21, 2008
«Motivational Monday: In Case of Fire»
In case of fire:
See the rest of “Motivational Monday: In Case of Fire”»
Sunday, April 20, 2008
«Don't be Surprised if I Get Sick»
Once I knew my dad was sick I was constantly washing my hands around him and wiping things down. But people are contagious before they show symptoms. Now I've came over to my mom's house to find her sick as well. I don't find it too likely that I'll be able to dodge it at both places. My dad's feeling better at least.
It's some sort of bad flu that's been going around town. If I do get sick, I'll at lest try to make a short post every day just to let everyone know I'm still alive and to maintain my one-post-a-day quota (at least).
Here's a story that's kind-of odd... It happened on Saturday, when my dad was sick. He went to bed to rest, and had brought a glass of water with him. Well, he rolled over and tried to grab the glass, but ended up knocking it over and spilling it.
Pretty soon, I hear a knock on the door. I answer it and it's the state troopers, they told me they registered a 911 call from our house and couldn't call us back. I was sort-of stunned. He asked for the names and ages of everyone in the house, and to see our phone. I handed the phone to him and it was dead; no dial-tone (I still had DSL Internet).
After he left I went down and told my dad what happened with the phone. We figured out the water he spilled shorted out a DSL line filter, and it must have somehow dialed 911. Once the filter was unplugged our phones came back.
We told the story to our neighbor (who is retired from the phone company), and he told us that happens quite often. The arrangement of the pins in the phone line can sometimes cause 911 to be called if it's jiggled just right. He's had 911 called from his boat when the only thing in the boat was a dog.
DSL uses a different type of signal than the analogue voice on a phone, so that's why the phones could be shorted out and yet I still had Internet.
«Musical Taste: Rammstein (100th Post)»
Parts: 1, 2, 3, and 4.
For some reason I felt pressured to make some grand post for my 100th. I even was out doing Google searches for other people's 100th post to get some ideas. You know what I found in my searches? More-or-less bland posts trying to hype up the importance of 100. So whatever, I'm just going to continue as I otherwise would.
This next one isn't so off-the-wall strange. It's Rammstein, a lot of people like them. (Oh, look, another band from Germany!) I usually don't like music quite this "hard", but sometimes I'm in the mood for it. The videos are worth a watch if nothing else, they have some very interesting videos with their music.
Rammstein Engel
Rammstein - Benzin (HQ)
Rammstein Mein teil : )
Saturday, April 19, 2008
«Caturday: Let's Try This Again»
My dad's sick, so I'm not putting much into today's post. Maybe I'll make up for it tomorrow. Unless I get sick as well.
Friday, April 18, 2008
«The Game»
Congratualtions. You are now playing the game (if you weren't already).
The Game is very simple.
- You are always playing the game.
- You cannot win. You can only lose.
- You lose whenever you remember the game.
- Whenever you remember the game, you have to announce out loud "I lose".
- After you lose, you have 30 minutes during which you can remember the game without losing.
- As soon as you mention the game to anyone, they begin playing as well.
- The goal of the game is to have everyone on Earth playing.
Sometimes people put a lot of work onto making people lose the game. For example, take the image to the right. It just looks like a bunch of dots. It's actually a hidden code.
To decode it, assign a 0 to each blue dot, and a 1 to each red dot. You'll get a matrix that looks like this:
00000000
11101111
01110111
10000000
01000010
10101011
00001000
00101111
Now, take each vertical column, and write it out...
01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01100001 01101101 01100101
Now decode the binary into text (you can use an online binary converter.)
The resulting text: The Game
No, The Game was not my idea. But I have been playing it for a while, and now so are you...
See the rest of “The Game”»
Thursday, April 17, 2008
«I Hate Copyright»
I don't know if anyone noticed, but in yesterday's post (titled Lots of Google Images) for the question about my current mood I answered "troubled". This is because of something that happened with a picture in the It's Caturday! post. [#removed for privacy] Blogger DMCA Complaint received
Apparently, one of the pictures in that post was copyrighted. Instead of simply contacting me requesting its removal (my email can be found in the About section), they reported it as a copyright infringement to Blogger (I would have immediately removed it upon request).
I mean, seriously... It was just a stupid picture of a cat sitting behind a laptop with the caption "they r make fun of me". It's not like it was even a commercial use of the picture. How do I know it was that picture? Because when I went to check that blog post the picture had already been removed. I then checked the Picasa web album blogger creates and it was still there, so I deleted that one.
I get pictures from all sorts of random sources. There's no way I'd know if they are copyrighted or not. Please, if there's something of yours on my site, email me first. Inform me first, and I can take it off or give proper credit, whichever you prefer.
So anyway, that's what's troubling me at the moment. Here's the email I received from Blogger support, with things I removed for my own privacy in italics:
Hello,
Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your images allegedly
infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly
infringing images may be found at the end of this message.
The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information
removed, may be found at the following link:
(link removed for privacy)
Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on
the above page.
The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for
online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. We
are in the process of removing from our servers the images that allegedly
infringe upon the copyrights of others. If we did not do so, we would be
subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits.
See http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=254 for more information
about the DMCA, and see http://www.google.com/dmca.html for the process
that Blogger requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.
Blogger can reinstate these images upon receipt of a counter notification
pursuant to sections 512(g)(2) and 3) of the DMCA. For more information
about the requirements of a counter notification and a link to a sample
counter notification, see http://www.google.com/dmca.html#counter.
Please note that repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in
further remedial action taken against your Blogger account. If you have
legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal
counsel. If you have any other questions about this notification, please
let us know.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Affected URLs:
http://mastermarf.blogspot.com/2008/04/its-caturday.html
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
«Over-Response»
Ok, we all know it's best to have too many emergency vehicles respond to something than not enough. But sometimes they seem to needlessly over-respond. I just witnessed such a case at 4 PM today.
There's a daycare below my window at my mom's house. A little girl got her foot stuck in some of the playground equipment. For some reason, they treated it like an emergency and called 911 (or the local number for the fire department, I'm not sure).
Who responded to the little girl's "emergency"?
1 Ambulance.
1 Firetruck.
2 Pickup trucks from the fire department.
All with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. I mean seriously, there were like 10 guys that rushed over to the little girl. One went back to a truck and got a crowbar and freed her. She was fine. I fail to see why such a response was needed.
«Lots of Google Images (Image Heavy)»
I got the idea for this over at Escape Hatch. This is one reason I put in the post truncation; this is a very long post.
So here's how it works, for each of the things below you search your answer in Google Images and post the first picture (at least the first picture that's safe for work). I've replaced a couple of the ones from Escape Hatch that didn't really apply to me.
If you hover your mouse over each image, you should be able to see what my answer for each question was. Some of the images match up pretty well, while others are unrelated to my search.
The name of the state where you were born:
The name of the city/town:
[image removed by request of owner]
Age at next birthday:
Your first name:
Your middle name:
Your favorite food:
Your favorite drink:
Your favorite smell:
Your favorite color: (the first few were NSFW)
Your nickname:
Your relationship status:
Your current mood:
Computer name: (My replacement for "Your pets, by name:")
What is your combined computer screen resolution: (My replacement for "What do you drive:")
What do your want your combined computer screen resolution to be: (My replacement for "What do you want to drive:")
What did you do last night:
What are you doing today:
The name of your love, or passion: (the first picture was actually of a mac laptop, but I hate mac and couldn't bring myself to have that as my love or passion pic)
Your bad habit: (no, not pit stains)
Your ideal employer: (My replacement for "Your first job:")
What you are thinking about right now:
What makes you laugh:
What are you going to do after this:
Your best feature:
Wow, that's a lot of images for a blog post. Does this mean my next few can be without images to make up for it? I think I'll talk about "The Game" in more detail in a later blog post.
Any copyrights on any of the images above belong to their respective owners. I claim my usage of them here under the US fair use policy.