Day 286 - Zoidberg

With the addition of Doctor Zoidberg, the ratio of serious to funny entries on the corporate pin board is further declining. Also, Futurama ftw.

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Day 285 - Table Flip

Today I came across this delightful example of abusing unicode characters to tell a story: The angry table flip. Now I want to put it on a shortcut somehow and use it whenever appropriate :).

Elsewhere in the hilarious world of abusing other languages' characters, there's also the Look of Disapproval (thanks, Alan, for pointing it out!).

Oh, the unicode code space is a wonderful place.

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Day 284 - Streuselkuchen

What delight! I found what looks like authentic German Streuselkuchen (crumb cake). Granted, Starbucks isn't exactly a first-grade cake place (funny, nor a first-grade coffee place ;)), but as an expat one has to appreciate the small successes!

(I wonder if Ether's German Bakery has Streuselkuchen. Must check.)

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Day 283 - Wenzel Camp Pad

Came to the office today to find this label on my desk: It's a Wenzel Camp Pad! It is lightweight, durable, AND has a convoluted surface for extra comfort! ZOMG!

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Day 282 - Balanced

I recently bought a scale that frankly looks like the kind of tool people in the movies use for their drug trade... I use it for slightly more boring purposes: Making sure I use a consistent amount of coffee per espresso shot. I go for approximately 10 grams per shot, which is pretty much half-way in between a standard (7 gram) and a double (14 grams) shot.

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Day 281 - Jammin'

Two street musicians, jammin' in Mountain View. As you can tell by the leaves in the front, I was super sneaky about it. Though admittedly, I could've done without the part of the tent visible in the top-left corner. Ah well.

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Day 280 - Fox News Fan Shop

Why does no better place come to mind for this than a Texan airport? Houston (George Bush Intercontinental) Airport has a Fox News Fan Shop. I was pondering getting something as a facetious gift for one of my friends, but then couldn't stomach the thought of paying part of Bill O'Reilly's salary any more than I already do via my cable bill ;)

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Funny, topical as always, and subtly critical of Firefox's rapid release cycle: A Geek and Poke comic called "Hyperinflation".

I love G&P. To my great dismay, I was not able to use one of them in my master's thesis a few years ago, even though it would have been right on the money. Worse yet than referencing Wikipedia in your academic paper, printing a web comic as an illustration of the underlying problem that sparked the research might have blown my respected Alma Mater's mind, and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we.

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Day 279 - Firefox Altar

Last day of PyCodeConf: As a conference sponsor, Mozilla got to put up a big Firefox banner, which was being held in place by two big vases, so it ended up eerily looking like an altar. No-one decided to sacrifice their proprietary browsers there (in a hugely dramatic act), but many seemed so inclined.

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Day 279.5 - Live Jazz

Yeah I know I posted a picture today already, but I liked this one too much to let it go. (Yup, my project, my rules.) Here's a half-day photo. We had dinner at a restaurant that turned out also to have some really good live jazz. It was a pianist and a bassist, both of whom weren't only good musicians but also looked kinda like Steve Jobs, so we dubbed them "the Steves".

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