Daniel Pawtowski's Journal

9:31pm: Egads
And to follow-up my question from the May 4th post of "Who will buy that mailing list next?"; the answer is......

Michele Bachmann!!

6:57pm: Garbage collections....
Awhile ago, I answered an online survey from the rabid homophobic nutjob Eugene Delgaudio. I used a disposable address from spamgourmet; so it's one and only appearance on the net was in that survey.
Afterwards, he flooded it with fear-mongering, hate-sputtering garbage.
Then, around the start of the year, an amusing turn of events: The address started receiving Ron Paul campaign ads.
Now, this week, another turn: It's been receiving ads from Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and another from some sort of right-wing anti-union group.

Wonder who'll buy that mailing list next?

8:13pm: Pour it on
Here's a shot of an "interesting" event from Norwescon, when a water main broke in the ceiling above the Cascade 13 function room. Feel free to insert water-themed puns here; we had a flood of them at the time:

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9:27pm: Come to the Over-ripe side...
Apparently, Vader is attempting to upgrade from disposable Stormtroopers....

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11:23pm: All is stuffed
Norwescon Stuffing Party was pretty much uneventful: 3124 bags stuffed into 280 boxes. Fewest boxes in years, actually.

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6:57pm: It's starting
First official Norwescon 35 Move-In event: Picking up the giveaways for the Movie Previews and some of the Family Programming materials:
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5:30pm: Technicon this year was a bit of an odd one, in terms of the number of odd failures of stuff.
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9:14pm: This is familiar.
Good one; I've heard my parents say all of these. Some of them incessantly...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/

7:25pm: Anybody need to make a call?
Went on a NWSFS outing to the Museum of Communications today.
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7:50pm: Stop and go
Amusing incident driving home just now:
Got behind a City of Lynnwood van that was towing one of those radar-equipped trailers that normally sit by the side of the road with a sign for "Speed Limit 25; your speed is [LED SIGN]:" At first, it was mildly amusing following a moving speed limit sign. Then the van halted at a stop sign. The moment it stopped moving, the big LED sign lit up, measuring the speed at which I was approaching the trailer. It cut out when the van started moving, then lit up again when it stopped at a red light.
Methinks they're supposed to turn those things off when moving them. And I guess the radar got confused when the whole world was "moving".

1:31pm: Yay weather
First time I've had to maneuver my lawnmower around a lump of snow while cutting the grass.

10:15am: Writer's Block: People’s Choice

Stephen Colbert

3:23pm: This Great Old House
Curious item: A 200-year old house from Ipswitch, Mass. was recently disassembled, moved to Washington DC, and re-assembled inside a large museum on the Mall. Sounds oddly like the start of a Lovecraftian story....

2:04pm: Err, that's nice....?
Got a package in the mail today. A nice, shiny one from Boeing. Consists of a DVD titled "From Dream to Dreamliner" and a bag of 787-themed microwave popcorn. The DVD itself seems to be a rather bland video from Marketing; I've only watched the first bit on the "early years" and it doesn't even mention the Sonic Cruiser. I can't really figure out what this is supposed to be for.

9:58pm: 8000 + 13 miles
Amusing tidbits from a story at work today:
One of the new 747-8's just completed an 18-hour endurance test that overflew all 48 states. Air Traffic control kept trying to optimize their course, and they kept declining since they wanted a route that long. And one of the flight-test engineers who happens to be a marathon runner managed to jog 13 miles looping through the aft section in her spare time.

9:29pm: That was nice
Have been sending stuff to Occupy Wall Street & Occupy Seattle by ordering gear from Amazon and having it shipped directly to them.
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11:23am: Who does this remind me of.....
Lego man to stay in police custody in Florida

11:12pm: Wrestling for a signal?
Went to eh Puyallup fair today. A wide variety of stuff, as is typical. Was somewhat disturbed by the vendor who was selling Cell Phone accessories and luchadore masks. Err?

11:06am: Mecha tossed salad
Was watching an excavator shred the old cafeteria at work this week, with the claw attachment that effectively gives the digging bucket a "thumb". Impressive dexterity by the operator. A particularly nifty move: The claw was holding one end of the old salad bar, and he wanted to change grip to hold it from the other end. So he tossed it up, the salad bar spun around, and he grabbed the other end out of the air.

9:26pm: Woosh, old-school
Overheard from a co-worker:
"Thought I'd seen everything fly out of here. But the Me262 was new".

Didn't see it myself; I'm on the wrong side of the building. Paul Allen keeps one at his private museum on the other end of the field; but this was most likely a reproduction. He's also got a flight-capable Zero in there, but I don't think anyone's dared to fly it in years.

9:13pm: Lines from an RPG log....
"While fighting through legions of Cybermen aboard Kagato's flagship on their way to the Gate Room, padawan Ahsoka showed remarkable enthusiasm for the use of Dalekanium grenades......"

9:25pm: Big blue
As expected, Crater Lake is indeed quite pretty to look at. Unfortunately, all of the official tour activities and boats were still closed due to the snow, but there's quite a lot to see from the rim.

5:55pm: No, Mom, I mean it......
This will only make sense to those familiar with my family history. Mom called to tell me to call Dad. I told her no, on advice of my shrink, I'm not talking to him again. She told me to get a different shrink. I hung up.
I feel much better now. :-)

3:44pm: Every convention needs more Minions!
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10:44pm: That was stuffing....
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