Guess and Check

So I noticed that my 2009 AR1000 tax form lines 53 and 54 have smilies.

No joke.

(click for large)

It’s clearer on their downloadable PDF form (as opposed to my screenshot of my TurboTax version here).

Today I’m going to be talking about the ABC television program Castle, starring favorite Nathan Fillion. No spoilers will follow, since I haven’t watched the show yet. (I’ve been aware of it since he mentioned it in an interview a while back when he said his mom had a Google Alert for the show (Hi Mrs. Fillion!), and it’s been on my to-watch list.)

While glancing at the show’s Wikipedia entry last night, I noticed the title card for the show. It immediately struck me as odd for a number of reasons.

Two landmarks are easily identifiable, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building. So first, I think “Okay, Empire State Building, this is a view of the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn side of the bridge.” However, that doesn’t work because a picture taken from around Empire Fulton Ferry State Park (which is where it would likely need to be taken from to get that angle of the bridge) wouldn’t have the Empire State Building in the background, since that’s way up at 5th Avenue and West 34th Street. It would also have all of the tall downtown buildings in the background, which it doesn’t.

CC-by-2.0 photo by morrissey

At this point, I also notice that the East River is wrong, as we can see the reflection of the first bridge pillar in the water, but if we were really on the Brooklyn side that pillar closest to us is on land, so we couldn’t see a reflection. So if that pillar closest to us is reflected in the water, the image of the bridge must be from the Manhattan side.

CC-by-nc-sa-2.0 photo by FromTheNorth

The Brooklyn skyline from that area doesn’t look like the one in the title card either, and I still haven’t figured out where that’s from.

So basically, what we have is 1) an image of the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge taken from the Manhattan side of the East River with a skyline in the background that doesn’t jive with the actual background of that area and 2) the Empire State Building plopped in.

What I can say though, after all this research, is that they fixed issue 2 in the second season’s title card.

That’s progress. Though I do wonder what precipitated the change.

I finally got around to reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

Great book, of course, but now I want baseball season to start already.

I think it’s bad that I find it hilarious to learn that these particular apparent gangbanger/skinhead/redneck/excessively-tattooed dudes drink things like Peppermint Lattes and Caramel Macchiatos.

On this week’s 30 Rock, the Borders worker in the window holds up Liz’s book to show her the “if your man is over thirty and still wears a nametag to work, that’s a dealbreaker!” line before the camera pans to reveal that he’s apparently over thirty and wearing a nametag.

In the brief moment he holds the book up, we can see a bit of the rest of the text on the page. From what I could make out, here’s what it said (lowercase use reported faithfully as used on screen):

he has a job that he’s passionate about the chances that he will stalk you when you break up lessen. A busy man doesn’t have the time or patience to try and figure out that the password to your email is awesomesexylady09.

The flip side is that if you do date a guy with a good job he can hire a professional to stalk you [continues off screen]

Other career deal breakers include

governor
comedy writer
charlie sheen
break dancer
repo man
drug mule
las vegas anything
[list continues off screen]

Clearly the comedy writers on the show make these kind of jokes just for me, as no one else has apparently reported it yet. Or (and this is probably more likely) other people noticed but just didn’t feel the need to report it.

I recently finished The Time Traveler’s Wife, and while it was a good book, I didn’t really like the way the author (Audrey Niffenegger) did the time travel bits.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I don’t like the idea that you can’t change things in your past or future. I’m much more on board with the Star Trek way(s) of doing things, and how in any of those ways interacting with and changing the past/future can happen.

Though I did like her use of alternating first-person perspectives that are also at times unreliable narrators.

I made this for Kasey’s birthday. It’s the frame that makes it work.

(This one is a straight Subversive Cross Stitch.)

I guess when you drive a ~$130,000 Aston Martin Vantage, you don’t have to get it exactly between the white lines.

Note that this is the second one I’ve seen recently.

I shot the moon today. Tiger Woods wasn’t happy.

Photos from my trip to Dallas and Monday’s Yankees/Rangers game are in an album. It was a great trip.

Today we’ve got some chocolate cupcakes made with Cupcake Project’s recipe for the cake and just a general confectioners’ sugar/butter/vanilla extract/salt/milk combination for the vanilla icing.

Amblyopia (aka lazy eye) came up as a topic of conversation yesterday, and I was able to input that the eye-patch treatment of amblyopia is one of the most rewarding in medicine. This is because without medication or surgery or hospitalization a child can be given eyesight in an eye which otherwise might have no sight.

Where did I learn this? From this Peanuts comic:

Thank you Charles Schulz, Linus van Pelt, and Sally Brown.

My quick trip to Kansas City went well, select pictures are in an album.

Here is today’s Chocolate Layer Cake, made via Gale Gand’s recipe.

Hey, you know that AT&T commercial where the two partners are trying to sell beer? The one guy that came up with the beer and seems to be in charge of infostructure and planning keeps receiving phone calls from the guy that’s out on the road pitching the beer to bar owners and getting them to agree to stock and order his beer. During all this, the voiceover guy (Stanley Tucci) is telling you how great the blah blah and blah blah is, and then he mentions AT&T’s marketing slogan:

“More bars in more places”

Yeah, I just got that it’s also a play on words for the situation the two guys are in, since AT&T is helping them get their beer into more bars in more places.

Aww man, Joe Ades died.

That guy was awesome.

Via Valerio.

Census Tract 143 in New York County, New York has a population of eighteen people.

That’s Central Park!

Too bad the Met doesn’t have its own census tract.

Via the U.S. Census Bureau.

I got started on Firefly and Serenity and I’m through with both; now on to all the commentaries and comic books.

Here is today’s glazed chocolate-pumpkin bundt cake, via this recipe.

I made this one for Andrew’s first birthday.

It’s the old man with the wooden sword from The Legend of Zelda. I wrote on the back, “Andrew, It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this. –Uncle Tom”