A pizza made out of a pita?

Swine flu 2.0.

With a recent outbreak of swine flu I started thinking about past flu epidemics, this lead me to search Wikipedia, my favorite source of information. There is a Wikipedia entry on swine flu which also tracks the cases around the world using Google Maps. Here is the link.

Central Park West.

George Washington Bridge.

Old bench.

I-80 West.

Cozy mall area.

Playing outside.

Happy Easter!

Strange fruit.

This is something I found at Walmart. These are strawberry-banana flavored peaches. It seems that peaches weren't flavorful enough by themselves and needed help from strawberries and bananas.

FlashChudder music.

You can find several FlashChudder recordings here. Give them a listen.

Have you seen these guitars?

A very talented local musician was recently robbed. His guitars were stolen. He plays with a band called FlashChudder. They play a combination of jazz and fusion. Their sound is simply amazing which makes this robbery even more tragic. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated. Here is a link to a flier with detailed information.

Pi Day.

Trashy sign.

Since the weather was almost Springlike, we took Lili to a local park. Where I discovered a sign hanging above one of the trashcans. The sign read: "Please take trash to dumpster." I thought that was too much work and threw my trash into the trashcan below the sign.

My car.

This is what my car looks like after the accident. None of us were in it at the time, so we only have to deal with what insurance companies call property damage.

A little bit of everything.

I have been absent from this blog for a while. In fact, this is only my seventh post this month. My excuse for this is work or what I do at work which is sit in front of a computer doing a little bit of editing, instructional design, and writing.

After I get home, I am not particularly inspired to write anything meaningful to post here. So I end up sitting in front of the television watching whatever happens to be on that night or in front of the computer catching up on various sites I frequent.

So my life has been, for the most part, uneventful. That is until yesterday morning when a woman in a white Chrysler van on her way to the gym decided to crash into my parked car. The collision demolished my trunk and almost pushed my car into my neighbor's van.

Now I have to sit at home on Monday waiting for the claims adjuster to tell me that my car is junk. I hope that this will not be the case since it only has 141 thousand miles on it. It's a 1999 Acura and for a ten year-old Japanese car that kind of mileage is nothing.

In the commotion with the car, I almost missed the twentieth anniversary of my departure from the Soviet Union. I did call my Dad to remind him about it, but it was spoiled by telling him that my car, which used to be his, may now be scrap.

It is in times like these that I long to live some place with off street parking and public transportation. Now I have to start thinking about possibly getting a new car. Argh!

Why follow GCal on Twitter?

I have read many blog posts on the topic of using Twitter to increase your productivity. One thing that all these posts had in common was that they directed the reader to follow GCal, or Google Calendar, on Twitter. This would allow you to send direct messages to GCal in order to update your Google Calendar.

This is extremely redundant since most Twitter posts and direct messages are made from cell phones. And GCal already has a mobile option. You can activate it by clicking the Mobile Set-Up tab in the calendar settings.

The number is 48368 which spells GVent. When you send text messages to GVent, a new event is added to your calendar and you receive a verification text message from GVent.

And if you post on Twitter from your computer, there is no need to follow GCal because you can easily open Google Calendar in a separate window or tab. So the answer to the question "why follow GCal on Twitter?" is why would you.

Who's on Twitter?

Twitter has been getting bigger and more popular lately. It seems that anyone who's anyone, which means pretty much everyone, is on Twitter.

This now includes celebrities. There are Wil Wheaton and MC Hammer, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O'Neal and Greg Grunberg.

The only problem with following these people, if they are who their mini bios claim to be, is that they don't follow everybody who follows them. Following somebody who follows you is a matter of politeness.

I guess once you achieve success, politeness becomes an unnecessary concept. This is sad since it is so easy to be polite to people online.

Nirvana day.

Today is a Buddhist holiday known as Nirvana day. It is the celebration of Buddha achieving Nirvana after the death of his physical body. So here is a little lithium to help you achieve Nirvana.

Plastic ruler?

At first glance it would appear that you are looking at a plastic ruler. But after taking a closer look you discover that there are four of them. And then it dawns on you that actually they are made of wood. At this point words fail you as they did me.