There are no comic book shops in Juneau. I came to this depressing realization after living here for a few months. The grocery stores are the only places in the city you can go to and get comic books. The Selections at the grocery stores are minimal and poorly handled by the staff that stocks the magazine racks. You just want to slap some comic book edict into every store employee that walks by.

Last Saturday I forgot about all of that. Last Saturday, everything changed for just one moment. I was at the “Friends of the Library Book Store” by the airport with Hannah. This is a store where people donate old and used book to be resold. Just as we had finished browsing and started to walk out the door I gasped.

“What” said the old lady clerk, startled.

“You have comics?” I said pointing to an old bin with haphazardly placed comics books.

“oh yeah, just that one bin though” she replied.

Transformers Comic Issue 10 - Dawn Of The Devastator

I gently dug through the bin while Hannah waited. Inside I found what was to me, a small treasure. Comics like the first issues of “The Crow” and “Marvel Universe” and “He-Man”. I could not believe it. I kept on digging and found the first few issues to the “Marvel Saga” and “Rawhide Kid”. But then I struck pay dirt.

Transformers! In the bin where a couple of issues of the original Marvel Transformers Comic. One of them was one I did not already own! Issue number 10. Dawn of the Devastator! I have not found an original Transformers comic that I did not already own since my trip to Maui several years ago. I have been trying to complete my Transformers collection forever, and now I am one more issue closer to that goal.

Paul Mawhinney was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the years he has amassed what has become the world’s largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection. [Link]

Microsoft to trot out Bill Gates and enlist Mac user Jerry Seinfeld to shill Windows Vista in ads

“Microsoft Corp., weary of being cast as a stodgy oldster by Apple Inc.’s advertising, is turning for help to Jerry Seinfeld,” Suzanne Vranica and Robert A. Guth report for The Wall Street Journal. [Link]

The Myth of Multitasking - How doing it all gets nothing done

Multitasking has killed my productivity. [Link]

I believe that for day-to-day getting things done, print is a better form of handwriting then cursive. Print is easier to read and I think when you see notes or directions in a format that is easier to read your less intimidated by them. It is so frustrating to be given hand written cursive notes and spending the next half hour trying to interpret them. People write down notes in cursive so fast that the end result is illegible.

If people slow down just a little bit to make sure their writing is legible to anyone who reads it, there is less of a chance of miss understanding notes and directions. The same could be said of cursive hand writing. Slow down and anyone can read it. But my argument is more related to the fact that Print is easier to read then cursive.

This also lead me to think about fonts used on a computer. By default there are very few (if any) cursive style fonts on computers. Can you imagine how strained your eyes would be if the Macintosh Finder or the Windows start menu used cursive fonts instead of print fonts?

Cursive has it’s place in society. I just think it’s home is in typography art.

Like BigFoot and the Loch Ness Monster, my pictures of local porcupines have not been the best. They always seem to jump out of frame just as I get ready to snap a picture of them. But last Friday that all changed. Hannah was out walking her dog when she found a porcupine hiding in a near by ditch. She snapped some pictures of it and here they are.

Isaac Hayes Dead at 65

Isaac Hayes, the unmistakable musician and actor who won an Oscar in 1971 for his “Theme From Shaft” and starred as Chef on South Park, has died at age 65. He was found unresponsive by a family member, having apparently collapsed during a workout. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hame of Fame in 2002. [Link]

Alaska pays residents $1,200 for high energy costs

Alaska’s legislature late Thursday approved a one-time $1,200 payment to nearly every state resident as a way for them to handle the highest energy prices in the United States. [Link]

Apple market value exceeds Google’s

Digital Daily, part of the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital site, is reporting that Apple’s market value is now greater than that of Google. [Link]

Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS

Although I’ve been a Windows power user for years, the transition to Mac couldn’t have been easier and more pleasant. I don’t want to turn this article into some endless rambling about how great Mac is, but as the user of both systems I can speak from my own experience quite objectively. [Link]

OTOY Developing Server-Side 3D Rendering Technology

Imagine you could play video games - and immerse yourself in virtual worlds - with 3D graphics comparable to those found in blockbuster films like Transformers or WALL•E. And then imagine you could experience and control those graphics in real-time from any internet-enabled device, whether it be a desktop computer, set-top box or even iPhone. [Link]

Body proves Bigfoot no myth, hunters say

A policeman and a former corrections officer say that on Friday they will unveil evidence of what they claim is their biggest find ever: the body of Bigfoot. [Link]

You can save Google news, as well as any Google news search as an RSS feed. This is hands down a very useful feature for people who visit their local newspaper website everyday because they don’t offer an RSS feed.

Living in Alaska, I have found myself wanting to read more about the local happenings and goings on. I am not a fan of visiting the Juneau Empire news papers’ website. The website has a horrible design that is hindered by the fact that I actually have to go visit the site and not just subscribe to an RSS feed like so many other websites these days allow.

I was just playing around with Google news the other day and saw the RSS icon show up in the URL bar of my Firefox browser. So I thought “Wouldn’t be cool if you can rss your searches?”. So I searched for Alaska in the google news search bar and sure enough, after the page loaded I saw the RSS icon. I click on the Icon, selected the RSS feed, and added to my Google Reader. It worked!

Unfulfilled space funeral for “Scotty”: words from his son.

There have been many attempts to send my father on his way. On Saturday, the latest launch attempt by SpaceX, with a portion of my father’s remains aboard, failed to achieve orbit. While there are many complicated reasons why this is a disappointment, mine is simple: I’d like to finish saying goodbye. [Link]

How to: Be an uber blogger, by Cory Doctorow

For the last few weeks I have become very entertained with Chuck Norris Facts. These facts can be found on the internet if the tubes are not to backed up.

An example of one of these Chuck Norris Facts would be: There is no ‘ctrl’ button on Chuck Norris’s computer. Chuck Norris is always in control. or Chuck Norris counted to infinity, twice.

With zingers like these I can’t help but laugh about it. Other people around me can’t help but laugh about it either.

My boss and I will be having a meeting about a client that needs us to address an issue with their computer systems. When the meeting gets to be just a little to serious I will drop something like, “Did you know, Chuck Norris can eat just one Lay’s potato chip?” That would be followed with a short pause before we both brake up laughing.

Hannah and I would sit down for dinner and she would ask me “Hows dinner?” and I would look up at her and say “Did you know that Chuck Norris once went into a Burger King and ordered a Big Mac, and he got one.”

Now I have been doing this for the last few weeks. At first Hannah thought it was funny and I would get a chuckle or a smile out of her. ( Really? I mean, who knew that Chuck Norris new the what the last digit in Pi is?) But now I just seem to get an immature look from her when I tell her a Chuck Norris fact joke.

Last night I was reading to Hannah from a book title ‘Shantaram‘. I had just finished up a paragraph when she leaned over to me and said “Did you know that Chuck Norris has read the end of the ‘Never Ending Story‘?” I was just like, “Whoa.” and sat stunned for a moment before we both busted out laughing.

“That has to be the greatest Chuck Norris fact ever! Did you make that up on your own?” I asked

“Yeah.” she said still laughing about it.

That whole thing thing just gave me the giggles and made reading the rest of the night near impossable. I eventually put the book down and said that she should submit that to the Chuck Norris Facts website. But today I have not been able to find any links on the site for submitting your own Chuck Norris Facts. How sad.

Sucker Hole

When I first moved to Alaska I kept hearing the term “Sucker Hole” all around me but had no idea what it meant. I finally asked one of the guys I worked with and he told me that a sucker hole is when the clouds over head brake apart enough to let some light through and all the suckers in town follow the light around for as long as it lasts.

Wikipedia describes a sucker hole as:

A colloquial term referring to a short spate of good weather that “suckers” sailors into leaving port just in time for a storm to resume at full force.

I thought i might share this with everyone since the weather here has been so bad and as I looked out of my office windows I was treated to a bref shower of sunlight.