Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Scooter Woes

    Well, not really woe per se. I’m just hard on scooters. For most kids, a scooter is mostly a toy. For my Brooklyn girls, it’s the primary method of transportation. And it has become my primary means of transportation as well.

    When your commute and 90% of the places you need to go are with a 1.5 mile radius circle, a scooter is the perfect thing. At least in Brooklyn. No parking issues, easier to store than a bicycle and for short distances almost as fast as a bike. My commute is 1.5 miles each way, 10 minutes on a scooter. When I’m not with my girls, I can get aggressive and use bike lanes, zip in and out of traffic, up and down sidewalks, etc.

    But that is hard on a scooter. Danielle is on her second Razr A5 and I just had to order my third. Between riding more distance, riding more aggressively and outweighing her by about 100 pounds, I beat the crap out of a scooter. And Saturday my scooter bit the dust.

    But with Amazon Prime, my new one arrives today…

  • Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

    In an example of why Google rocks, the degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon has been built into Google search.

    Type “bacon search” + a celebrity name and Google will tell you how many degrees of separation.

    I actually had a hard time coming up with celebrities with a higher number than 2. Other than Johnny Carson (4) I haven’t come up with anyone that works and has a higher number than 2.

    Non movie celebrities don’t seem to work (bacon search tiger woods just does a regular search).

    Seriously fun at parties…

  • RIP Ping

    On the heels of a typically impressive Apple launch event, quiet proof that Apple is actually fallible…

  • One World Trade

    The new one, from Brooklyn Bridge Park near my office.

    1WTC-9-11-12

  • Bird Poop

    A bit of mathematical levity on an otherwise somber day. The what if? site takes on a very important question:

    If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?

    For those to lazy to click the link (or check the math) the answer is, on average, 195 years.

  • 11 Years Later

    I have no additional wisdom eleven years later. Here’s a link to an old post remembering the friends we lost:

    We’ll raise a toast to them later today.

  • What Time Is It…

    …at the North Pole?

    I love questions like this. Reading a mathematical NY Times article, the answer was:

    it’s all times

    Wikipedia has a great answer:

    Polar expeditions may use any time zone that is convenient

    So not all times, just whatever the hell you feel like.

    ask.yahoo.com gives the very boring answer:

    Both the North and South Poles officially use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time

    I would argue this is why Yahoo is dying…

  • College Football as a Liberal Plot

    Can someone please explain this George Will column to me? I mean, I know he’s a baseball fan but really?…

  • Florida State +70

    This information is purely for entertainment purposes. Oh my, what a point spread…

  • If you hate Obama…

    I’m sure you won’t vote for him, but check out these pictures. Of course there are the obligatory ones of him with kids and Michelle, but how often do you see the president with a pirate?