I Believe Two Things

Vehicle Power Interface with the Doors Open

If you have an extra $75,000 saved up and you’re looking for a good Valentine’s Day present, you could buy the “Vehicle Power Interface” for the Hubble Space Telescope on eBay!

According to the auction’s description, the console weighs 2,750 pounds and was used to provide power to the telescope and test its on-board power systems while the telescope was still on the ground. An accompanying log book includes details of the equipment’s usage.

On the other hand, the eBay seller has no obvious affiliation with NASA and has only four reviews (all positive), so I’ll probably save my $75,000 for other completely impractical pieces of NASA equipment that may become available in the future. Ideally I’d like to hold out for a Canadarm.

(via Boing Boing)

I love scientific analysis of unscientific things — like when Wikipedia takes on the high five:

The gesture takes its name from the “five” fingers and the raising of the hand “high”. This is opposed to the “low” five which has been a part of the African-American culture since at least World War II. It’s probably impossible to know exactly when the low first transitioned to a high, but there are many creation myths.

The best part of the article is a helpful series of photographs clarifying the proper manner in which to perform the “too slow” variation:

"Too Slow"

Zoom in on the facial expressions for Victim misses and “Too slow”. I don’t remember anything like that in The Encyclopedia Britannica we had back in the dark days when learning about something took more than 30 seconds.

Fun fact: the high five was invented in 1977.

[Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Glenn] Burke, waiting on deck, thrust his hand enthusiastically over his head to greet his friend at the plate. [Leftfielder Dusty] Baker, not knowing what to do, smacked it. “His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back,” says Baker, now 62 and managing the Reds. “So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do.”

Another fun fact: Glenn Burke was gay. Grade school bullies inclined to shout out homophobic insults and then high five about it should just keep that in mind. (Wikipedia cites that fact to a book titled Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgenders, which is at once the most awesome and the most horrifying book title ever.)

When I travel by bus I always bring a suitcase, a carry-on bag, and a park bench.

Traveling with a Park Bench

(At South Station in Boston about two years ago.)

“Inline advertising” is an attempt to link the content of an article to relevant products or services you might want to purchase. If I wrote about not wanting to wash the dishes, that word might link to a site selling new dishwashers, for example.

It does not always work flawlessly:

Breakfast at Replica Tiffany Jewelry

From American Express:

If your Card is lost or stolen, we’ll replace it — sometimes in as little as 24 hours. Call American Express or visit one of over 2,200 American Express Travel Services locations worldwide. If you need assistance, call the number on the back of your card.

That number will be easy to find because I always have my card with me!

Wait… what?

Fidelity announced some enhancements to its website and published this helpful diagram to illustrate them. If I’m reading this correctly, the most significant change is that I now have $1,148,150.96 in my account.

Fidelity's Enhanced Portfolio Positions Page

I have to go shopping now.

Sunshine Canyon

I enjoyed careening down Sunshine Canyon on this delightfully quaint dirt road yesterday. The snow and ice already on the ground, the 10°F temperatures (much lower with windchill), and the lack of guardrails all made the experience particularly excellent.

I appreciated most that a road crew had taken the time to install (in lieu, I suppose, of a guardrail or some roadside reflectors) a sign saying “Stay on Road”.

Thanks for the tip! So, you’re saying I should not veer suddenly off this cliff, killing us all?

See if you can guess on Progressive’s graph of our speed throughout this trip which part was on the snowy cliffside dirt road and at what point we reached more level pavement:

"Careening"

Fun fact: The several points where we stopped momentarily all represent when someone in an SUV came racing down the mountain behind us at easily triple our speed and I had to stop to let them pass.

Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas

ABC Family is advertising (honestly) a “Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas”.

So, they have a 25 Days of Christmas event, effectively counting down to Christmas. But since that’s not here yet, for the last ten days of November they’re having a countdown for when they can have their Christmas countdown. But even that isn’t here yet, so all they’re doing right now is advertising that they’re going to have a countdown until the other countdown.

And what will really eat at you if you think about this is that somewhere at ABC there had to have been a meeting where someone said, “So, how many days until we can start airing the promos for the Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas?”

I asked Google Maps how long it takes to get from LAX to Disneyland. Its answer suggests driving right into the theme park and onto Main Street USA:

LAX to Disneyland

And they don’t even have Street View in there!

Here are some headlines from the City of Longmont’s news feed:

Live Raptors at the Museum

Wait, go back to that last one. Live raptors in a museum? I’ve seen this in a movie! I assume everything will be okay if we can find a kid who knows UNIX.