Free Rice

There's a national crisis nobody is addressing: freerice.com. I ran the numbers. At roughly 24 cents of donated rice per hour against minimum wage, you'd do more good shoveling your neighbor's driveway.

Days Until....

Nine days until Rainier, seventy-four until McKinley, one hundred twenty-seven until Half Dome. I'm thinking about crevasse rescue, how to shave for a month without hot water, and whether q-tips have been quietly ruining my ears.

Florida

I think Google Maps is trying to find the geometric center of the Florida-shaped polygon, maybe? I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm switching back to MapQuest. 1998, here I come.

Pining for the Fjords

A Monty Python parrot sketch, reworked for the PC store: a man returns BeOS half an hour after buying it, insisting it's dead. No no, says the clerk, it's not dead, it's pining for the fjords. Beautiful boot time.

Consolation

Nothing consoles like a box of mountaineering gear in the mail. Snowshoes with re-designed bindings (does that mean they messed up the first time?), carabiners, booties, a Petzl helmet, and mitts marketed as absolute zero.

Another Conversation with a Recruiter

A recruiter calls, mangles his own name and company, pitches an opportunity he won't describe, then asks if I have friends who might want it. Do these people ever actually make placements? It's hard to believe.

The Deafening Silence (update: now with humor!)

In Adirondack Park the silence each night was a deafening ring, a static with no noise at all and no internet to blog about it. Also, I passed the FCC Element 2 exam: I'm officially KC2SUS. Now I just need a balloon and helium.

Lackey

I was minding my own business on the train home when a guy sat beside me and pulled out a Zune. I scanned for logos to categorize him and spotted a Microsoft jacket. The one Zune user in the world is a Microsoft employee.

Expendability

Click to enlarge.

The Long Voyage Home

My MacBook Air just left Shanghai. Expedited shipping apparently means five days. Uggh.