Surprise Inconvenience

A source inside the Sacramento county administration building reports on suspicious signage:

Our whole County building is under construction, and now all the handicapped restrooms are blocked by construction walls, so that there is only one in the entire administration building. On the doors to all the other ones, which are now blocked off, there is a huge poster meant to explain the delays. The poster says, “What happened to the ADA restrooms? Remodeling projects always have surprises…” and then goes on.

Oh, that’s what it is? A “surprise?” As in, “Surprise! You wheeled yourself all the way over here to go to the bathroom but now you have to go down 5 floors and wait in line for the one that’s available.” That’s a pretty crappy surprise. Also I love how they’re specifically referred to as “ADA restrooms” as in “the restroom you only get to use because of a court order, not because we care about accommodating handicapped people.”

Email Rant

We have a running joke at work that involves mass emails. From time to time we’ll receive a message that is well intended and genuine, but invariably one person (to start with) will click “Reply All” when they should have just clicked “Reply.” This results in a flood of idiocy (my new band name, if I, like, had musical talent, and a band) with one reply all after the other trying to stop insanity. For example:
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Apple Hill, CoolDMZ-style


Originally uploaded by cooldmz.

The CoolDMZs made their way up to Camino for some apple tasting this weekend, inspired by sac-eats’ (or was it?) official Sac Rag unofficial guide. Needless to say, the apples were a-poppin, and a good time was had by all.

I have pictures (one of which is of a pig on a spit) and snarky things to say (if you didn’t assume that)…

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Airport of choice?

I was reading this article from the Sac Union today (that’s right, “The Union is back…watch US GROW).” and wondered what the H E double hockey sticks they meant by this:

This figure represents the number of people who have chosen Sacramento International Airport as their airport of choice in the 12-month period from September 2004 through August 2005.

So these 10 million people don’t just live in town, but drove from locations far and wide to fly out of our fair “international” airport?

At any rate, I’ve been making frequent trips to SMF as of late and I must admit that it is easy to get to, easy to pick up/drop off, and not nearly as far away as Denver’s. Holy cow, what a mess that place is.

New Crime Blotter

I’ve been enjoying the Chico State online newspaper as of late. Mostly because they have a great blotter. Such as:

4:59 a.m. Mentally ill person reported on the 100 block of West 17th Street. “Reporting party is at a pay phone saying we need to send the government or someone may get hurt.”

2:34 p.m. Disturbance reported on the 500 block of Orange Street. “Male subject outside waving his hands in the middle of the street and talking about Jesus.”

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The “Boo” Initiative

Remember chain letters? You know, those letters that were sent to a number of people asking each recipient to send copies with the same request to a specified number of others. These evolved into chain emails pretty much requesting the same thing usually promising some great fortune or misfortune as it were. Well, my friends, it is time to discuss a Halloween tradition in the Arden/Carmichael area known as “boo”-ing.

Boo-ing is, and I quote from myfolsom.com (what the…you say? me, too):

A Boo-Gram is a mysterious note, left on neighbor’s doors in the middle of the day. The note is usually a poem of sorts, and a large “Boo!” decoration for their front door. The decoration serves as a means of communicating to other neighbors that this house has already been “hit”. By Halloween, it is not uncommon to see Boo-Grams lining up and down the street on all the doors in some neighborhoods!

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A “Vintage” Snack in East Sac

On our way uptown this evening I spotted Big Spoon Yogurt, a fro-yo establishment recently installed in the plot formerly occupied by the genius-ly (you heard me) titled Art of Party. Pretty dead inside Big Spoon from what I could tell, though perhaps that’s mainly just because nobody had access to a time machine to go back to 1989 to eat frozen yogurt.

Public Safety is Wasted on the Young

Hilarious story last night on KCRA about police action in a South Sacramento neighborhood after construction crews reported shots fired. Miguel Almaguer reported that the police response consisted of a “small army” of SWAT teams and his producers stopped short of including stock footage of Nazi storm-troopers. Miguel’s spin? As it turns out, the police resources were wasted on something as harmless as… guns being fired randomly in the direction of people. The link is considerably toned down from the broadcast version, unfortunately.

So I’m curious, Miguel. How many police officers should it take to subdue 5 armed men in their own home? One? Two? Five? I think the Sac PD would appreciate your sage advice.