If only I could have pulled the car over and taken a decent photo. First, I passed the Crazy Buffet — really. That’s its name. This bit of wackiness sits on Camino Real in Sunnyvale. Crazy! Someday I’ll have to go in there and see what’s so crazy about it. Maybe I should wear some kind of protective clothing.
Then, stopping at Safeway to get a sandwich for lunch, I came across what is perhaps the most blatant example of man’s need to tamper with nature for no reason other than yet another product for consumption. Ready for this?
Grape-flavored apples. I am not kidding. Okay, so, apples aren’t good enough as a natural fruit package… so someone had the brilliant idea of making them taste like another fruit entirely? As if this wasn’t insane enough already, get this: it’s artificial grape flavor. Cripes. Just buy some grapes.
Then when I made my way home, I passed a shop that had two signs in the window: one said OPEN… and the other said CLOSED.
Yesterday, Google finally released Google Earth for the Mac, and I was up until 1:30am playing with it. What a fantastic toy! I was zooming in and out, from my new house to my old one, and then spent some time zooming in to some of the spots I had found previously like Wisteria Lane down at Universal Studios and the like.
I might compile all the little places I’ve been visiting and post them soon, and we can all travel the world together.
Twice in the last month I have walked up to a door under a sign that said OPEN 24 HOURS and twice the shop was closed for the night.
1. was Kinko’s which closes at 9pm
2. Safeway on Christmas day
Open 24 hours a day seems clear to me but they must have their own ideas what it means. At the very least if they are going to close shouldn’t they turn off the Open 24 hours sign?
Well, they didn’t say 24 hours in a row, you know.
Don’t go to Crazy Buffet. I went there once with a group of people. I went crazy on the noodles while everyone else went crazy on the seafood.
And then they all had crazy bowel movements.
Some areas have very low resolution images, and some have high — and then some are REALLY high. Take a look at the Google Campus in Mountain View (it’s in the “sightseeing” section). Google’s property is in ultra high resolution, you can zoom all the way in and see individual shrubs and even the handicapped signs in the parking lot. But the detail only exists within their property lines, so they must have bought that imagery for their property. Of course, with this level of detail available to the public, I can only shudder to think of what level of detail is available to, say, the Bush administration…
If you think those pictures are close up, try Windows Local Live Bird’s Eye view:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=37.787879~-122.407795&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1156762
And as for the Bush Admin paranoia, oh whatever. Back in the 1990’s people said the same thing about Clinton. Tin foil hat alert.
That Microsoft map thing doesn’t work with a Mac.
And Clinton didn’t authorize spying against Americans contrary to law, like Bush has. Clinton was savvy enough to get a warrant to do it. ::grin::
One thing that really interests me is the disappearance of those tin-foil hat militias that flourished during the Clinton years. Here we are, in the very environment they were predicting — being tracked by our government, people disappearing into custody indefinitely, being wiretapped, having civil liberties curtailed… and yet, the militias are nowhere to be found. Weird.
The Microsoft map thing works in firefox which works on a mac. Well, it works in pc firefox, I haven’t tried it on my 500mhz Mac. 🙁
Good call – I always did wonder what happen to all those militias. Some say that they faded away after September 11th…
I downloaded Google world about two days ago and have had a combined 2 1/2 hours of sleep since then. Funny, but I did the same thing you did, looked at all the places I used to live. The strange thing is Marion is rather fuzzy, yet my wife’s hometown of DuQuoin, Il (much smaller than even Marion) is clear as a bell. I could even tell that on the day the photo was taken my wife was visiting her mom ’cause I could SEE HER CAR IN THE DRIVEWAY!!!
On the other hand, something about that creeps me out. I wonder who esle is watching….