A poker tournament Sunday evening.
We had too many people for one room, so we broke it up into two tables of six.
Aw, some of the players saw this kitten on the street on the way here and decided to take it to the vet the next day. Poor thing was in pretty bad shape, but it did like sleeping on my giant teddy bear.
Somebody left this from the last video game tournament. Another guy and I decided to try it out. By far the worst beer either of us had ever had, and it gave us both a pretty nasty headache, but it did get us really buzzed for cheap.
They both have three of a kind, but the one guy caught another pair for a full house.
Big cards.
Flush on the table.
Straight on the table.
I would not be happy if I had folded a 10 of spades pre-flop.
Another hand where everyone had big stuff.
I wouldn't mind an ace right now.
The only time I would kill for 2/7 hole cards.
The night's winner. He actually had over $300,000 in Vegas for a while, although he's taking a break now.
Someone threw their old mattresses out on the street. How inconsiderate.
I'm guessing they're cheaper than the movers with professional vans.
Not sure what this means. Maybe their name is Flynn? Or it's flying?
I wanted all chocolate chip cookies, but half are raisin that just look like CC. Yuck.
Some pretty homes with pretty lawns around Beverly and Larchmont.
Big tree.
This one is right on the corner.
Ooh, the blimp is over here today.
A man with an interesting outfit.
Pretty good graffiti.
A giant tree towering over the road.
I was in a thrift store and saw a Nintendo 64 system under a bunch of boots in the glass case at the checkout. I asked the clerk to pull it out and it had all four controllers in really good shape for only $30! Normally that would sell for at least $60. He said I was lucky it was mostly hidden under the boots because they get snapped up pretty quickly.
A giant eagle above a car dealership.
I watched the transit of Venus. Can't see it in this picture, but you could see it with the solar glasses. I let every patient and staff member take a look, too.
Bling on the license plate. Actually, I wonder if that's legal.
It's so annoying when people park in an actual lane to drop stuff off, like this guy in the right.
Usually I hate when people on bikes are on the same roads because they slow everyone down, but in this case, he's going just as fast as traffic.
Nine in Nails? Ninja?
Ugh, Keyes on Van Nuys. Everyone hates their commercials.
Big houses up on a hill with a beautiful view.
USC professor.
The green area is a bike lane. This jerk was driving in it to get around traffic.
Cool dome thingies.
This guy was panhandling just past the drive-through at McDonald's. Good place, since a lot of people just got change.
A big line of buses.
Some more neat graffiti.
This is a big open area by the Marina del Rey beach. They just started charging to park there. It's a bit of a pain to find parking around here, so it might be worth it. However, it was $10. I'd do it if it were only $5, but otherwise I'll just drive around a bit. And I actually found a bunch of open spaces just a few blocks farther away.
Da ocean.
Poker at David and Joanna's.
A friend was using these eye drops. "Homeopathic?" Oh, good grief.
David just won a big pot.
Marie Grace got four aces, crazy.
And David was the big winner of the evening.
I keep seeing all these DDR pads for the PS2, and a ton of PS2 consoles, but they only have one pad at a time.
Yep, that's so the opposite of the donut I want.
I wonder what these handcuffs are for?
Jerks parking all crooked even though the people around them parked fine.
Haha, I can squeeze in here. Thankfully I'm skinny so I can still get out of the Jeep with the door barely open.
Aw, I actually would have bought this, but it's just an empty box.
Nitro University of San Diego? Interesting that it has a Minnesota plate.
Oh please, do Angry Birds have to be everywhere?
Ooh, a PlayStation 1.
But it's not version 1001.
Ugh, bad memories. We had this modem in Berkeley and it was always a ton of work to keep going.
Very neat old pinball machine.
Wow, that's a nice pool table to be in a thrift store.
I went to a big warehouse type place to pick up some shelves. Good luck to them selling all these CDs.
Another PS1.
And again, not 1001.
Goodwill saying they sell stuff on Amazon.
Hard to see, but the computer screen is advertising sending Goodwill items to troops. Yeah, I'm sure they want a bunch of broken, dirty crap that other people basically threw away. There is some nice stuff at Goodwill, but there is a ton of junk, too.
This guy on the right was taking like 15 minutes to figure out which pieces of jewelry he wanted, tying up the register.
Almost every other car is parked poorly, but I can't get too mad here because the parking spots are way too small. They all say "compact," but even a compact car would be tight.
Neat chair.
Fairly large line of cars at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's open house.
I was a bit annoyed when they told me to go park in the back instead of the front since I figured I'd have to walk all the way up front again and there was already a giant line of people there. Instead, they had just started directing cars to the back and had an entrance here, so I was third in line. Nice.
A map. Gotta plan out what to see in what order because the lines will get really long fairly quickly.
The line behind me right before they opened.
And I'm in! This guy was really nice and excited to talk about his projects.
Quarter-scale model of Cassini.
Cassini predecessors.
I love stuff like this.
The microdevices laboratory.
The room where they test out future rovers.
That's not the eating and drinking before a sports game tailgating.
A 3D movie on the JPL satellites around Earth.
Life-sized rovers.
Going over some rocks.
Another one.
And another one. So, apparently, the only thing special these all do is these go over rocks.
Some 3D pictures. However, the movie used polarized 3D glasses while these used red/green ones.
Pretty eating area.
Future missions. Some kids were throwing things at the screen, and I was going to yell at them, but apparently they were stickers of spaceships and you were supposed to throw them at the screen.
An area with a bunch of different exhibits.
Astronomers answering questions.
Infrared camera of the audience.
A rover driving over kids.
Now the lines are starting to get long. I think I'll skip most of this stuff and just check out the areas without lines.
Full-scale model of Galileo.
Various exhibits.
Some more.
Explorer 1 was the first satellite successfully launched by the US in 1958.
One guy dressed up as Spock.
Postcards and other collectibles.
Some coins.
They really don't want people in here.
The spacecraft assembly facility.
More rovers going over rocks.
These guys are a bit different.
Right before he started taking pictures, another guy made sure everything in the suit to keep the guy inside cool was working. He has lots of fans and even some cold-water belts around his body.
OK, this is the one long line I'm willing to stand in. You can't skip mission control, right?
The line went under this tent...
... around the corner...
... and up the street.
Thankfully it moved pretty quickly, and once you got in the tent, they had various exhibits set up, like this monitor that shows some of the satellites they control.
Mission control. Usually you can only see it from some windows above and behind here, but today they let us walk on the floor. I kind of wanted to check out the computers, but I'm sure too many people would mess with them.
Their logo.
Now it's a 50-minute wait...
... for a 5-minute movie. Glad I hit this right at the beginning; I was in the very first group with no waiting.
The flight projects center.
It looks like they have their own power plant.
The labs from a hill nearby.
I couldn't stay at JPL all day because I had volleyball with the Los Angeles Beach Volleyball group to get to.
Troy is the organizer.
Taking a chocolate-chip cookie break. I don't know who brought the cookies, but they were half-melted from the heat, and they were so good.
This is new. Sign-up sheets for the different courts. At first I didn't really like the idea; it seems to constricting.
But it actually worked out well. It had different courts for different skill levels and it made it so different teams didn't get angry about both thinking they had the next game on a certain court.
This route has a ton of red whereas the other is all green and yellow. So how can they be the same time estimate?
Almost all downloads now try to get you to install other crapware along with their program. This is pretty slimy, too, since normally advanced installation really does mean advanced, like you have certain settings you want to change. Advanced should not mean "don't install the crapware."
And another one in the same download. Ugh.
Wait, why is this coming up in my search?
Sneaky. They wrote a ton of different words that people search for in white so it shows up in searches but not when you look at the page.