Occasionally there are things which look weird in real life, and look even weirder as a photo.

Posted by Nica @ 01:38 AM PST [Link]

On the way up from the Seattle Metro Bus Tunnel, Pioneer Square stop, my husband and I found a dead pigeon. I was very young, still with its pin feathers, and lying on the smooth stone surface. It's reflexive to look above for a nest when this happens, and we saw a crow killing its nest-mate on a ledge.



I didn't realize crows would attack and consume baby pigeons, but there it was happening right in front of me. Curious world, the world of birds.

Posted by Nica @ 01:52 AM PST [Link]

Claudius, my white and crippled bird, has got himself a sore on his tummy. A couple days ago I noticed a bruise, and now there is lots of swelling. I took away a little wooden platform he enjoyed using as his perch. He can't use a normal narrow perch because his legs are so limited. As much as he liked the elevated view, I think this wood platform was doing much of the harm to his underside. Getting on and off the thing was probably banging him up.

He doesn't seem to be in pain, but I worry since he really has to scoot about on his tummy much of the time. I've given him a shallow cardboard box with a little padding (napkins) which I hope he will use to take pressure of his bruising and swelling.

Posted by Nica @ 11:15 AM PST [Link]

It's old news that I was wrong about Saddam Hussein being dead. Atlas, I'm not always correct.



However, I do seem to have been correct about the cause of that big blackout in the northeast. Slashdot referenced this article concerning the event.

Posted by Nica @ 02:06 PM PST [Link]

Today at my work we had a false fire alarm in the early afternoon. The alarm went off with accompanying strobes in a couple of the parking garage levels and the food court. Fortunately the engineers got word to me that the alarm was false within a few seconds, so I could call the alarm company and tell them not to send fire trucks.

After the fire system was reset, and all was calm again, I decided to review the video feeds to see how much of a disturbance this caused in the food court. See the footage was really interesting. We don't have an audio feed, so I don't hear the alarm on playback, and since the frame rate is only about 5 fps and the strobes flash only about 1/2000 of a second every few seconds, the strobes are rarely captured on video. So I just had the people's behavior to indicate the alarm going off. The interesting thing was there really wasn't a response from anyone. It looked like any other lunch hour in the food court. I guess we get pretty numb to alarms here in the city, or maybe we just don't like to get distracted from our food.

Posted by Nica @ 10:38 PM PST [Link]

I'm in a good mood. Farscape is returning!



There is a little bad news. It's coming back as a miniseries, that most dreadful of artistic forms. Something about the format makes scriptwriters stupid and overwhelmingly boring. But then again, the SciFi Network did a good Battlestar Gallactica miniseries which I was sure would be terrible.

Posted by Nica @ 11:38 PM PST [Link]