I’m not sure all people are aware of it, but a little program on my blog (called Statcounter) shows me how often people look at my site, and quite often, what brought them to it. Mostly I write this blog for my friends and family, and, yes, for myself, but it’s nice if it serves [...]
On Saturday, our family strolled down to take part in the re-opening of San Jose’s Pearl Avenue Branch library. Since 2005, we’d effectively been library orphans. It’s been hard on me, because I am quite the library rat. When it first closed, the nearest branch was the Vineland library, one of the first new (or [...]
When we went downtown to visit Peter and have fun on Friday, Kelly and I got off a different light rail stop to see if it was any different to get to the office. As it turned out, the sidewalks in front of the Tech Museum were being closed off an we had to wander [...]
Peter surprised me with tickets to see a new (well, new to me) comedian, Don McMillan, at San Jose’s spiffy Improv comedy club. You can always see the comedian well from any seat in the club, and it seems curiously heckle-proof. You can always hear what the person on stage is saying clearly, but anything [...]
My favorite radio station is XM Ethel, a satellite station that purports to play current alternative music. And about half the time they do. The other half of the time, they play Nirvana. It puzzles me, because Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1993, effectively ending the band fifteen years ago. And personally, I was already [...]
It was my birthday on Friday. In the afternoon, Peter came by to pick me up to party the rest of the day away. Once again, he had made me an amazing birthday cake, this one in the shape of a pyramid: I thought it was because Charybis & Scylla’s next unit of history is [...]
I work out regularly and consider myself in pretty good physical shape, but I have to say Comic-Con kicked my butt, even though I was, at best, a part-time attendee. I’m swearing to myself that if I do this again, I should prepare myself for it physically and mentally specifically for the task. Off-hand, I [...]
Until this year, I haven’t seen any overt political messages at the San Diego Comic-Con. It’s usually about pop culture, which when it’s good transcends politics. So I was flabbergasted when I saw this t-shirt for sale at a vendor’s booth: Better writers than me have already commented the cult of personality type of imagery [...]
On Sunday morning, as I was running over to our hotel to get something for the booth, I saw this truck driving around the area near the convention center, clearly meant to promote the movie Joyride to the Comic-Con audience: This really gave me pause. It had a decapitated head and various disembodied body parts [...]
There is really only so much volume and stress any system, even one as well-managed as the San Diego Comic-Con can endure. After 4 days of activities staring at 7 am and running to 3 am; of crowds gathering as early as 4 am and filling every available space around the San Diego convention center; [...]
