Found Tables

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Found: Green Work Desk Found: Coffee Table Found: White and Yellow Work Desk Found: Plant Stand Found: Typewriter Stand

Above: a bunch of tables I found by the building dumpster last month. People throw out some of the most amazing things. See that last one? It’s a vintage typewriter stand from Metalstand, an old Philadelphia furniture company which used to manufacture aluminum furniture in the 1950s. This piece might just be that old, judging from the layers of dust I wiped off it. I don’t use typewriters anymore, of course, but the stand makes a great end table.

That, and the coffee table, now sit around the gCouch, forming my living “room.” The white/yellow work table has replaced the old, creaky, cockroach-ridden oak table which served as my kitchen extension, while the plant stand is now a printer-and-media stand in my work area. I put the green work desk up for sale on Craigslist, but no one really wanted it, so it’s just extending my dining table right now.

So check out the dumpster every once in a while. One man’s trash is another man’s free apartment furniture — after a thorough spraying, dusting, and wiping down, of course.

Di Ka Nag-iisa + 22

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I’m over a week late for this, but August 21st was the twenty-second anniversary of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, the Filipino politician who stood up to the Marcos dictatorship and faced death in his imprisonment by Marcos and on his return from exile, because he believed that “the Filipino is worth dying for.” Ninoy’s assassination as he arrived in Manila in 1983 would fan the flames of the People Power Revolution which ousted Marcos in 1986, placing his wife, Cory Aquino, in the presidency.

(Sadly, as I have said before, the Philippines has yet to prove itself truly worthy of Ninoy’s sacrifice.)

Deebeedee recently visited Ninoy’s cell, where he (Ninoy, not Deebeedee) was imprisoned, after Marcos declared Martial Law and used his powers to clamp down on his critics and political enemies. Country Studies has a page on Ninoy Aquino and People Power in its Philippines section.

Hurricane Katrina Heads for New Orleans

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Update, 8/30/2005: What they feared would happen came true a day late: levees have broken and water is rising. Large portions of New Orleans are underwater and getting worse. The mayor has ordered a mass evacuation of the entire city.

Update on Katrina’s aftermath here.

Update, 8/28/2005: Katrina has weakened to a Category 4 and veered slightly east, sparing NOLA a direct hit. This will still be a catastrophic storm, but no longer the ultimate doomsday scenario that was previously predicted. New Orleans is spared becoming New Atlantis for now, hopefully.

Weather news from the South is looking pretty scary: Hurricane Katrina, plowing north as it is fed by warm Gulf waters, is now a Category 5, aimed straight at New Orleans. Large parts of the city and surrounding areas are several feet below sea level, protected from flooding only by levees which would be ineffectual against the massive storm surge of a Category 5 hurricane. Current predictions have Katrina hitting New Orleans just after high tide, with surge submerging some places as deep as 28 feet. The whole city is being evacuated. All of you New Orleaners, I hope you’re getting out okay, and take care. You have our prayers from here up North.

Category 5 is no joke. (That’s on the Saffir Simpson Scale, and is comparable to Signal #4 on the Philippine Signal Scale.)

The hurricane may exact an economic and environmental toll as well as a human one: New Orleans is a major port, and that area is responsible for a significant portion of our oil import and production. Refineries and plants may spike the floodwaters with all sorts of toxic chemicals, not to mention the danger of floating fire ant balls.

More links:

To Think They Call What You’re Sitting In a Car

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(CarAd.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)

This is a subway billboard at Metro Center. I often comment to myself about how car companies pay ad agencies thousands of dollars to implicitly insult the public’s intelligence with unsubtle condescension, but this BMW campaign takes it a step further by insulting the target audience outright. “OH YOU POOR IDIOTS, SITTING IN YOUR SUBWAY ‘CARS,’ TOO MIRED IN POVERTY TO BUY THE WAY COOL EXPENSIVE BMW ON OUR SIGN!”

Firetrucks at Hotel George

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(Firetrucks at Hotel George uploaded by brownpau.)

I was not quite asleep yet when the smell of burning rubber filled the apartment building, and a fire alarm sounded from a few buildings down. I peeked out the window to see people streaming out of the Hotel George, so I got my camera and trotted down the street to get photos — just as an army of firemen arrived on their trucks, and started putting hoses on hydrants and extending a ladder to the roof of the hotel.

There were no visible flames, though, and soon after the firemen had gone into — and behind — the building, they re-emerged, reboarded their trucks, and left. The smell has subsided. I’m going back to sleep now, and the guests of Hotel George appear to be doing likewise. More photos here. I got video too, but it’s too late to import and edit.

Google Talk

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(Google Talk uploaded by brownpau.)

Google Talk, Google’s new instant messaging and voice chat service. Sadly, the Google client is Windows only, but Adium X on Mac OS X 10.2.8 is hooking up to Google’s Jabber server just fine, so I’ve at least been able to message other eager early adopters. (Screenshot is of my desktop, with a notice from “gmail.com” that talk.google.com is now working.)

Update – I agree with Darren Rowse: “It doesn’t add anything to my life as a Mac user.”

King’s Dominion and Manly Cherubs

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Amy and I spent Saturday at King’s Dominion in VA, with Jeff and Stacey from church.

This was kind of a momentous theme park visit for me, because before last Saturday I could count the number of times I’d been on roller coasters in my life on one hand: starting with Great America’s Tidal Wave in 1982 (yeah, a bit too intense for a kid of six) and ending with the Matterhorn in Disneyland in 1990. I then decided that roller coasters terrified me, and abstained from any rides more intense than a ferris wheel for the rest of my puberty and young adult life.

So yesterday was my first time back on the wood and steel rails in over a decade, and after riding rides like Rebel Yell, Hurler, Ricochet, Avalanche, Scooby Doo’s Ghoster Coaster, Ricochet, and Shenandoah Log Flume (links to rides here), I’ve concluded that I’m over my initial dislike, and I now enjoy roller coasters, though Ricochet and some of the bumpier wood ones were a bit rough on the neck; I’ll have to brace harder next time to avoid whiplash. We’ll try the more intense rides next time we’re there — hopefully when lines are a bit shorter.

Here’s the full King’s Dominion photoset.

Oh, and here’s a bit of weirdness from the carousel:

Amy was trying to figure out if it was a cherub head stuck on a muscular man’s body or if the cherub had just been working out.

Affordablehost Going Down the Drain

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Over the weekend, Affordablehost lost data to a hard disk crash on the server which hosts my site. There were backups, but they were three days old, so not only weblog entries from Thursday onward were lost, but also a weekend’s worth of forum entries on TheBereans.net, and possibly email on two other clients’ sites as well.

Affordablehost’s service has gone completely downhill since they were bought by dotCanada: slow access, slow support, constant downtime, and now this hard disk crash. Once upon a time, Tina Peters’ old Affordablehost would have expressed regret for the loss of data, and perhaps thrown in a free month of hosting for the trouble — or they would at least have emailed an apology to customers. The new Affordablehost has extended no such courtesies to me.

I was able to restore my site from my own cache in Offline Mode, but it’s definitely time to get out of here before Affordablehost does any further damage. I’m browsing WebHostingTalk for feedback, and I currently have an eye on Site5. Anyone else have recommendations for a good managed reseller hosting package with unlimited addon domains for under $25/month?

Update: Special Axishost deal for Affordablehost refugees! Axishost is Tina Peters’ new web hosting venture.

Flickr and Yahoo Logins Merging

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Flickr is merging logins with Yahoo. That makes me quite sad and dejected, not because of the convenience of having one less login and password to deal with, but because someone else got “brownpau” on Yahoo long before me, and whoever it is has not answered my polite requests and offers of financial recompense for the name. For now, I will refrain from merging the accounts — unless someone at Flickr or Yahoo with some clout can negotiate a favorable transfer? (Wink, wink.)

Update: An update from the Flickr Blog makes it clear that Flickr screen names will not be changed, which is some relief, but my point is that I want the account “brownpau” on Yahoo! :(

Update: Related discussion in the “Flick Off!” group. Looks like Yahoo is adamant about those usernames. :(

Google Earth Updates, Unblurs

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Looks like Google Earth has updated a few locations. The US Capitol and White House are now unblurred, and Mount Everest looks exquisite!


(google-earth-capitol uploaded by brownpau.)


(google-earth-whitehouse uploaded by brownpau.)


(google-earth-everest uploaded by brownpau.)

Also check out this fun “Cliffs of Insanity” effect, which happens when you scroll across the terrain faster than the Google Earth server can update the bump map:


(THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY! uploaded by brownpau.)