ericfaller.com Pithy Quote Goes Here

Seattle Forecast

Looks like this week it is: rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, and rain.

Destroyed Cup

One of my plastic cups fell down to the bottom of the dishwasher and was melted by the heat. It looks kind of weird:

Pirates

My cousin is getting married tomorrow and today at the pre-dinner the most absurd thing I have ever seen at a wedding occurred.

After dessert we heard a loud siren coming down the street and there were several loud bangs that sounded like gunfire. I was afraid it was some sort of gang fight in the middle of this quiet little Everett suburb. Fortunately that fear was quashed when a gigantic pirate ship drove up to the back yard, firing its 'cannons':

The Seattle SeaFair Pirates all jumped out of the ship/truck contraption and 'captured' the bride (upper left, below) and all the bridesmaids and drove off. The groom and his friends hopped in a car with their plastic swords and chased after the pirates.

At this point everyone in the wedding party and all of the neighbors were in total shock and disbelief about what had just happened, until somebody explained what was going on. In the end the pirates came back, returned the captives, and we all had a jolly good time with their pirate rum.

All in all, definitely the most bizarre experience of the weekend.

Zero stars

Whenever I see this apartment ad on the way to work I think, "wow, zero out of five stars, why would they advertise that?"

Obviously they're trying to say that it's a "five-star" apartment, but in the age of Amazon starred reviews and iTunes ratings, the "outlined star" symbol has come to mean "empty star" or "missing star". Interesting to think about..

Wallmonster is all stressed out today

How do you pictorially represent a headache? I guess a lightning bolt to the brain works.

Denver Street Views

Google Street Views has patchy imagery of Denver, with pictures at lower resolutions than their San Francisco imagery. Even so, I was surprised to be able to find lots of pictures of familiar places:

My parents' house (obstructed by a tree):

Old school bus stop:

High school (shudder):

Old job (Sun Microsystems):

University of Colorado:

Across the street, my old apartment (not really visible):

Dead watch battery

My watch battery just died after only a year and a half. The watch itself was not very expensive, but now I see why - they want to charge $30 to replace the 75 cent battery. It's like the printer companies and their $50 ink cartridge refill scam.

Supposedly the battery can only be replaced by mailing it to an "authorized technician" or else the waterproof seal will break and the warranty will be voided. I already tried getting it open but I don't have the right tool to unscrew the back. If anybody has a watch-unscrewing clamp tool, I'm in the market..

Venus

By the moon

Point-and-shoot cameras don't seem to work very well for astronomy photographs