Category Archives: Uncategorized

California Taxes, Uncategorized

Massive Powerball and Mega Millions Jackpots! Do You Think You Can Win?

The multi-state lotteries now have a combined jackpot of over 1 billion dollars. Yes, that’s Billion with a capital “B”.

Mega Millions and Powerball Jackpots
Gigantic lottery jackpots are luring hopeful buyers out of their 2 dollars.

With the Mega Millions jackpot at 625 million dollars and Powerball at 550 million dollars, the prize money is real. The odds of actually winning however are not ever in your favor.

The odds of hitting all 5 numbers and the Mega Millions number to be able to bring home the estimated cash value of $458,800,000 of the Mega Millions lump sum winnings are 1 in 302,575,350. The odds of winning the full jackpot in Powerball are a slightly better 1 in 292,201,338. As Han Solo would say, “Never tell me the odds!” But seriously you are more likely to kiss an actual Wookiee than win one of these jackpots.

Space Flight, Uncategorized

SpaceX Falcon 9 Manned Launch Scrubbed Due to Weather

The first manned spaceflight from US soil since the Space Shuttle program ended was scrubbed today due to weather. The next available launch window is this Saturday. Check out the launch on NASA Live: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

The last manned spaceflight from US soil launched on July 8th 2011 with Space Shuttle Atlantis mission STS-135. After retirement, Space Shuttle Atlantis was set up in its new home at the Kennedy Space Center.

The last mission patch of the Space Shuttle era.

This Falcon spacecraft also will not launch today due to excessive ice cream melting heat in Silicon Valley.

A
Star Wars Millennium Falcon Ice Cream Sandwich prepares for launch into my belly above a
Millennium Falcon French Fry Bucket
Uncategorized

Happy 2020! Is your NTP time still synched?

Well it is now the year 2020 and the only flying cars we have are Teslas on Autopilot careening into barriers on the freeway.

Sometimes Teslas follow seams in the concrete instead of the actual painted lines on the road, causing the Tesla on autopilot to veer into barriers at the edges of the freeway. That’s why drivers of these semi autonomous machines need to stay awake with their hands on the wheel. Because real self driving cars are not here yet. Not until that comet from Maximum Overdrive swings by Earth again.

Uncategorized

Disney Wonder Halloween on the High Seas 2019

Here are a few photos from the cruise so far.

The Pumpkin Tree on the Disney Wonder Halloween on the High Seas cruise

2019 Halloween Merch on the Disney Wonder

Uncategorized

Miss KFOG? Try This Station

Well, the venerable rock station KFOG is officially dead, even the call letters are retired. As over the air broadcast radio becomes an increasingly desolate landscape with the transition to web based entertainment, we are forced to turn to the web as well.

This internet radio station broadcasts high above those bloated indifferent cumulus clouds:  https://thirdrockradio.net/

America’s Space Station inspired by new rock discovery. Give it a try.

Uncategorized

Happy Friday the 13th!

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

Enjoy tonight’s micro moon, which is also the harvest moon. The next time a full moon will fall on a Friday the 13th will be 30 years from now.

For me this Friday the 13th was a workday. Had to wrap up some work that wasn’t very Silicon Valley like. It wasn’t Agile, or DevOps-y, or Machine Learning or even anything important at all by tech standards. But it was part of a contract deliverable to a customer so such is life. These things are sometimes unavoidable in the tech biz driven life. Maybe I’d rather just be sipping an ale and eating chicken vindaloo while watching old reruns of Red Dwarf. But the skutters won’t have it. They would have me transferred to an unimportant hollogram in an instant.

Uncategorized

Happy Lunar New Year! Year of the Pig 2019

Happy Lunar New Year Silicon Valley!

Today marks the start of the Year of the Pig. You can celebrate with some famous pigs like Pua, Tigger, Hamm, Porky the Pig and of course Miss Piggy.

Check out these cute piglets running in slow motion:

And of course don’t forget about Geico’s Maxwell the Pig:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swlC1Y4U0KE

Uncategorized

Happy New Year Silicon Cali!

Happy New Year Silicon Cali and the rest of the World!

May the year 2019 bring you peace and prosperity, but always remember those that didn’t make it to 2019.

 

Random Tech, Uncategorized

Why does the Red Cross keep calling?

The Red Cross, though they do good things, has a problem. Their computerized phone system has a glitch and continues to call my cell phone multiple times a day at all times of the day. Always from the same phone number, 800-733-2767, which is the main number for the Red Cross. When I try to answer these random calls there is just dead space. No messages have ever been left from 800-733-2767. When I tried to call the number back, it just goes to the main menu system for the Red Cross which I didn’t have time to deal with.
Finally, I got tired of the incessant calling and called the main Red Cross number, 800-733-2767, and waited through the menu options. I pressed ‘2’ for blood donations because I assume that is how they got my number. Waited on hold briefly and a nice female voice answered. I explained the problem with the relentless calling. She had heard this before and explained that the call system is glitchy and they are in the process of fixing it. She verified my information and flagged my phone number so the system would stop robo calling me. So far I haven’t received any more calls from them. Time will tell…