Google Street View

/ Shane / 2 Comments

At this point, everybody knows there is weird stuff to find in Google street view. Statistically speaking, if you photograph enough of the world, you’re going to see some interesting things. I’ve even blogged about it before. However, seeing the weird and interesting things that the Google camera captured doesn’t seem to get old. So here’s a nice gallery of some of the interesting things found. It’s called 9 eyes in reference to the disco-globe camera that Google uses to take the pictures. (Note, the pictures are from tumblr, so the links will expire. Enjoy them while you can! Otherwise you can just go directly to 9 eyes and scroll down.)

Pictures of wildlife, prostitutes, and people with guns are always popular. There are also some nice ones of an abandoned baby, an active house fire (notice the neighbors just running outside), the aftermath of an accident (is that a body on the ground?), and a car fire. I love how the Google van just keeps going when he sees some of this stuff. He’s like, “Hey, not my job!” The Google camera van operator must have a story or two to tell. I wonder sometimes if the Google van itself actually caused any accidents? As a side note, some of these are obviously fakes. There is no road through the middle of the viewing tank at Sea World. So if some of them are fakes, can we believe any of them?

The Blizzard of 2011, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the thundersnow

/ Shane / Leave a comment

So the great blizzard of 2011 came and went, and everybody survived, more or less.

My boss called Tuesday morning and told me to work from home. Last time there was a bad snow, it took me 3 hours to get home from work, so I wasn’t going to argue. I took the kids to daycare like normal and worked from home until about 2:30, when the snow and wind started to pick up. Then I picked them and Sara up, and we settled in for the night.

This thing was being billed as hell on earth, so I was actually pretty excited about it. It wasn’t snowing that hard, but the wind was blowing something fierce. I don’t remember a time in my life ever where the wind blew so hard, for so long. It was so windy that the snow didn’t really have time to settle, it pretty much just blew horizontal the entire time. The street lights were shaking, the power lines were shaking, and it just looked really nasty. The power flickered a few times, but never went out.

Our sidewalk was clear when the whole thing started, and when I went to bed it was still clear! The cars were clear too. Obviously the snow was building up, especially in places where the wind was leaving drifts, but I was a little disappointed because there had been all this hype about how much snow we were going to get. But the lack of snow should in no way take away from the impressiveness of the storm. The wind was whipping the snow around so hard, that it would have been impossible to get around in. I would have rather killed a man than had to go out into that storm.

One very impressive thing was that Metra kept the trains running through the storm. I can’t imagine what the wind must have been like up there on the elevated platform. I just think of that long train taking a full gust right to the side. It seems practically suicidal to be running up there, but I guess people were probably grateful to be able to get home. Plus it made me feel a little better: if those train operators felt safe enough to keep the trains running, then how bad could it really be down where I was?

Definitely the best part of the blizzard was the “thundersnow”. I had heard the phrase thrown around and I wanted to be a part of anything that awesome sounding. I had seen some lightning-snow, but I hadn’t yet heard any accompanying thunder until late Tuesday night. Totally made the blizzard! I will admit, there was some fist pumping. (Side note, someone get me a thundersnow parody to ACDC’s Thunderstruck, stat!)

In the morning, I rushed to the window to see how much the snow had built up. Pretty much the same as the night before! Again, a little disappointing. The cars to the left were drifted in, but to the right the road was clear. The sidewalk was still clear. “So much for this crummy snowpocalypse,” I grumbled.

However, sometime Wednesday morning, something like 17 hours after it had originally started snowing, it really kicked it up a notch. (All of the pictures, including those above, were from after this final hurrah.) We ended up with 22 inches on the ground when all was said and done, although, like I said, all the wind made it extremely patchy.

I had the honor of seeing a snowplow get stuck trying to plow the street. That was definitely the first time I’ve seen that one before. It’s nice to know that when a snowplow gets stuck, he just has to try to go forward and back until he gets out, like the rest of us. Eventually he drew a crowd and they got him out with shovels.

I have to say, it’s pretty cool to go through a storm of that magnitude and basically watch it all from the security of our warm house, and then shrug and say, “Goodnight!” I guess we’ve gotten to the point where the weather is somewhat irrelevant.

But did we stay in our nice warm house? Of course not! We took the kids out and played in the snow, and even got a few trips down the sled hill on the Midway. The snow was over my knees in a couple of places, not counting where the plow pushed it up deeper. Snow is kind of a mixed blessing for kids. It’s fun and out of the ordinary for about 10 minutes or so, and then it’s just too cold and wet and hard to walk. Oh well, we still had a good time. I pulled Evie in the sled running as fast as I could, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate and die.

So that’s it! SnOMG defeated. Been there, done that, rode the sled hill.

Good Weekend / Bad Weekend

/ Shane / 6 Comments

We had a really good weekend. And yet, we also had a really bad weekend. It’s funny though, because this bad stuff kept happening, but somehow it didn’t really ruin anything.

On Friday, I went outside to take the kids to the library, and I found out I had a really low tire. I have a compressor, so I put air in and went to the library, no problems. However, when I got home, as soon as I opened the car door, I could hear the air coming out. It was pretty loud, in fact, you could hear it all the way up to our back door. The tire had gotten wet from melting snow, so you could pinpoint the source of the leak pretty easily. However, we didn’t really need the car anymore on Friday, and on Saturday I got it repaired for $15. No real life disruption whatsoever!

Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of our trouble.

Saturday morning, Sara was using the microwave, and it was acting funny. As she demonstrated it for me and we played with it, starting and stopping it, the power to the microwave suddenly went out. This was followed shortly by the stove, and then later by the refrigerator.

What I know now is that something in the wall came loose, causing a small electrical fire (which I smelled at the time, but assumed was the microwave). Since the microwave was on, it fed back power to the stove, frying the control module and all the outlets on that circuit. The refrigerator is on a separate circuit, but they share a common ground (which is apparently common, and correct), which blew out the outlets on that circuit, but did not fry the refrigerator.

The whole thing is very frightening! From what the electrician said, it was just a random thing that could have happened anytime, anywhere. Luckily, there wasn’t too much damage. We have to pay for the electrical repair, a new microwave, and a repair for the stove. But it’s not as pricey or disruptive as a house fire, that’s for sure!

In fact, it didn’t even disrupt our plans for the day! We went ice skating.

Neither Sara and I are ice skaters. I think I’ve gone 2 or 3 times in my life, and I mostly remember them as being full of pain and humiliation. I was going for Evie’s sake, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it. As it turned out, I was something of a natural! I never fell a single time, and after the first time around the rink I was passing people, skating around people, doing triple lutzes, etc.

Nobody was more surprised about that than I was. I don’t know if it was just because I was trying it for the first time as an adult, or if it is because one time I had this awesome dream about ice skating and when I woke up I knew I could totally ice skate.

Even Sara ended up skating. She wasn’t even going to come, originally. After Oliver woke up from his nap, she ended up coming over to take some pictures. Finally, she ended up borrowing Ron’s skates, and we took a turn around the ice! I was really glad about that, it was a lot of fun. A mom even commented how nice it was to go skating with your sweetheart. Awww! And even despite that comment, I think Sara had a good time.

Now I’m kind of jazzed to go again. We live close to a skating rink that only costs $6 for skate rental (no charge for skating), so we’ve kind of been wasting the opportunity. Evie didn’t like it at first, but she went around a few times anyway and was disappointed when it was time to go home. Her two favorite parts were 1) the hot chocolate, and 2) in an attempt to make her laugh to keep her from getting frustrated, I called her “scissor legs” which she found endlessly hilarious.

The other big highlights of the weekend were teaching Evie how to play and then actually playing a rousing game of sardines around the house, and the most elaborate game of Wizard of Oz I could imagine. There were costumes and scene changes. Since my mom more or less knows the movie line by line, it was very specific. I have a bad feeling we will be reproducing this one for a long time to come (and with Evie, that means doing everything EXACTLY THE SAME as the first time).

So it was the worst weekend in a long time, in terms of bad things happening. But when I look back on the weekend, I only remember it being a good weekend! Not too shabby!

Quote Monday is somewhat unpredictable

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “Can I have two cookies?”
Sara: “No.”
Evie: “We’ll see…”
Sara: “No!”

I guess that was the answer she was hoping for…

::We had been playing mermaid and Evie was bummed we had to go somewhere in the car::
Me: “Lets pretend everything we see is something underwater. I see a seahorse swimming by!”
Evie: “I see…a cat swimming underwater!”

Me: “Evie, why is this light on? I told you not to turn it on.”
Evie: “…because I forgot to turn it off?” – meaning, she turns it on every day during her relaxing time, and then turns it off before we come down to get her. Her honesty is…refreshing?

Me: “Pull up your pants, your panties are showing.”
Evie: “Ooh la la!”

After 36 years at General Motors, my dad is officially retired

/ Shane / 1 Comment

For the first time in 36 years, my dad will not be punching a clock at the plant today.

36 years, man. I can’t imagine doing anything for 36 years, much less going to work for the same company that long.

I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in yet. Talking to him about it the other day, it kind of reminded me of talking to someone with post traumatic stress disorder. My dad also pointed out that, at one point or another, practically every member of his family has been connected to GM in some way, and he’s the last one left working there. There’s not much of his life that doesn’t completely revolve around that place. I’m just not sure what he’ll do without it (without GM, but also without working in general).

As much as I can’t imagine doing something for 36 years, I especially can’t imagine giving it up after doing it for 36 years.