Wow. Is there anything you can’t get from Sears?

More random thoughts for a rainy Wednesday afternoon:

• This amused me far too much this morning when I was stuck in the lab with not much else to do. I’d really like to see a similar one for San Francisco, but it’s not enough of a priority that I’m going to look for one right now, because…
• I’m off to Fresno with my mom tomorrow for an early Christmas with Mark and the in-laws (and also for breakfast at the Chicken Pie Shop). There will be a brief lunch stop to see friends in San Francisco as well.
• As of this morning, the semester from hell is more or less officially over me. The exciting bibliography is turned in, the giant XML file is done, and my contributions to the group project are complete, at least for now. Next semester, we’ll be trying to publish the damned thing.
• Should you find yourself inclined to acquire one, be forewarned: Time Warner’s DVRs are garbage. Biggest pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. We’ve already given up on one and returned it, and the other will probably follow soon. It’s not just the lousy interface; the actual hard drives are no good, either.The great thing about our big switch, though, is that it’s made me realize I don’t watch much TV these days anyway, freeing us to save lost of money by moving back into the land of ghetto cable.
• Off to Dewey’s now for sugar cake and Moravian cookies.

Not to sound opportunistic or anything, but I like it when other people’s mistakes work to my advantage.

For example, last week I finally bought a copy of a long out of print book by Victor Gruen that I’d been wanting for quite some time. I’d never seen a decent used copy for less than forty or fifty bucks, but this one Amazon seller had one for about twenty. It had an intact dust cover, but the seller noted somewhat apologetically that there was writing inside the front cover from when someone had given the book as a a gift. I think that may be part of why it was priced so low.

As I looked at the book yesterday,  I noticed that the signature looked an awful lot like the name of the author, and that the inscription looked an awful lot like something an author would have written. After a quick Google search or two to verify the signature, I realized that I did in fact have a book signed by one of my favorite commercial architects of the 1950s (the designer of America’s first enclosed shopping mall, among other projects) and at a nice bargain price.