I sat down outside the building to enjoy a small cigar. A woman sitting a few feet away said excuse me, did I know if the trains took cash?

I said I thought they might, but they certainly took cards.

Oh! Credit cards?

Yes.

I thought you had to have a special train card.

Nope! But I started checking the website to be sure.

Okay. One more question, do you know how much it costs to get to the airport?

I’m checking that right now, I’m on their site.

Oh! Thank you.

It’s . . . two dollars.

Really? Only two? I thought it would be, like, ten, and then I’d just Uber.

An Uber would be more than ten. More like $20.

Oh! Well, when does it leave?

Checking . . . four minutes.

Oh I’ll never make that.

It’s just a block and a half away, you might. But there will be others coming along soon.

Thanks, she said.

And she got out her phone and started checking Facebook.

 

Boring insider behind-the-scenes stuff here, but I’m starting work on the 2019 Bleat, and I think I have divined a solution to some things that vex me. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the paths for some of the images, but you’ll see things like lileks.com/bleats/archives/18/09/01/bw/bw1.jpg, and you might think “that’s a lot of work.”

It’s not. I have this thing tuned like a machine! When I duplicate a Monday page to lay out the next week, everything drops into place after I globally search/replace “01/bw“ with “02/bw”. There’s always some jiggery-pokery to move around the video clips and resize the images, but in general, it works.

It’s not perfect, though, and mistakes tend to multiply. So the only way I can really make life easier for myself . . . is to layout the site months in advance. This will take a weekend. But, you say, how will you know what links to add at the bottom? The site updates. You - you haven’t done all those updates already, have you?

Friends, I am working on the 2020 updates. I regret to tell you that you’ll have to wait until 2020 to get the Full and Complete Adventures of Mr. Coffee Nerves, rest assured I am working on it now.

Until then, carry on.

Anyway, template drift: Friday is turning into a nightmare, with just a stack of stuff a mile high. Detritus, Construction, Lance, Audio - and I’m about to add another.

NCL in BRAZIL.

So Friday will just be a mess, like this one, but hey: lots of stuff is better than a wall of text groaning and grinding about this or that.

Note: next year is going to be fantastic. And I know I said that about this one, too.

 

   
 

This game was going around on Twitter. I wondered how my 10th photo could possibly be relevant.

Well . . .

   

That's usually how it works out.

 

 

Oh, look! It's everyone's favorite Friday adventure. Incremental girder addition!

It's here. I always figured they'd build an addition to the back of the Thrivent, aka Lutherna Brotherhood. The stone panels are intended to echo the Government Center on the other side of the street, a building that is . . . not visible from the back.

It's not a big project. The footprint is big but the height?

We'll see.

 

 

Lance, do you mind taking a break from constant smoking to work on some crime?

Well, below me down. Solution here.

 

 

Some cues from Dimension X, beginning with something that made everyone sit up and pucker. Then we have two cues that will sound familiar: the first sounds a lot like Star Trek TOS cues, and the second . . .

   
 
 

. . . well, something else with Star in the title. No?

   
     

 

Instead of the swank old sounds of Goodwill albums, this year we're going to share bad 1960s pop music. The second- and third-tier tunes.

1969. They churned this stuff out in endless quantity, hoping some of this hippy-dippy stuff would hit the mark.

   

Least exciting opening of the year.

 
   

 

 
 
   

1949. Have you driven one lately?

 
   

 

That'll do! See you on Monday. A new addition to the Gallery.

It's pretty dark.

 

 

 
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