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| Teherán, Azadi Square, Azadi Tower, Írán |
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| Sir Stirling Moss Maserati 250F 1956 Grand Prix of Monte Carlo |
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| L'ascension de la côte de Monte-Carlo par Rudolf Caracciola (Grand Prix de Monaco 1937) |
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| 1933 – Beau Rivage |
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| Inaugural 1929 Monaco Grand Prix |
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| King's College Chapel |
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| King's College Chapel |
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| King's College Chapel |
Google Earth (first image) has become a real pain to use. You can still rotate the view, but the center of rotation is six feet in back of the viewer so you turn the image a couple of degrees and then slide it back and then repeat a zillion times and you can finally get the view you want. There is probably a better way, but it's too early to be learning new tricks.
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| Airport Commerce Center Sign |
We are getting ready to start the 2nd phase of our remodeling project, so we took a trip over to the eastside to visit the Let's Remodel showroom. It's in a strip mall at 122nd & NE Airport Way. Surprisingly, almost the entire mall is given over to construction and remodeling businesses, as you can see from the sign above.
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| Airport Commerce Center |
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| Crowd Management Services |
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| Shower Head Demonstrator |
Next stop was Ferguson's Home to pick out some gee-gaws and do-dads. Lot's of very fancy stuff.
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| Fancy Bathtub |
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| Range with a zillion knobs |
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| Dog washing station |
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| Fancy range with bronze fittings |
I don't think we're getting any of this stuff, maybe some new plumbing fixtures. Some people like fancy cars, some people like fancy houses. We can afford this project because I didn't buy a race car. I would kinda like to have a race car, but I really don't have the time for a big new project. I'm busy piddling around with my computer, going out to lunch and watching Netflix in the evening.
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| Inside or Outside? |
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| Spella Coffee |
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| Aluminr |
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| Moroccan brass double door |
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| 1920s Raised Medallion Brass Elevator Double Doors |
Northeast Hillsboro, where I live, is getting overrun with data centers. Seems like a new, giant, tilt-wall building goes up every week. I wonder if all this investment is going to pay off. I can see how AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be useful for some things. I ask Google questions and it usually can provide a reasonable answer, and I've seen some clever videos made by AI (I suspect the script came from a human), but nothing that could justify the zillions of dollars being spent on these techno-palaces.
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| Hillsboro Data Centers I swear none of these buildings were there last week. |
I suspect the biggest use of AI is going to be running voice chat-bots for dealing with customer service calls. And given that the whiz kids have deciphered human speech and can now reproduce most anyone's voice, we are going to see scamming elevated to the next level. And all those call centers in India are likely going to be replaced by chat-bots.
Also, with the proliferation of AI and the abysmally low level of intelligence of the general population, Artificial Intelligence is going to degenerate into Artificial Stupidity,
JMSmith has a philosophical approach to all this. In his latest post he is talking about Kevin O'Leary and ends with this:
It is obvious that life’s losers do not understand the secrets of success. But it is much less obvious, at least to successful men like Kevin O’Leary, that life’s winners do not understand the secrets of failure. They imagine they understand failure because they have known low points from which they “bounced back,” but the first secret of failure is that a failure does not bounce. Life’s losers hit bottom like a bag of sand and not like a basketball. Losers go plop; winners go boing. Winners think sandbags could bounce if they only tried harder. Losers think winners are bags, or rather balls, of wind.
Competition is Kevin O’Leary’s god, and I suspect he would be delighted if the nation’s motto were changed to, “In Competition We Trust.” But he does not understand that Competition looks to life’s losers very much as Yahweh looked to a trembling Amalkite. He does not understand that most men are not eager to enter a competitive footrace because they are fat, emphysemic, or lacking one leg. Life’s losers exchange loyalty for protection, not for the right to compete in contests in which they are certain to finish last.
Yahweh is the personal name of the God of ancient Israel and Judah, represented by the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and primarily used in the Hebrew Bible. Emerging as a national deity from the Iron Age Levant, Yahweh is identified in scripture as the creator and deliverer of the Israelites, often associated with attributes of power, war, and faithful covenant.
The Amalekites were an ancient, nomadic biblical nation known as persistent enemies of the Israelites, inhabiting the Negev desert south of Canaan. Descended from Esau's grandson Amalek, they were branded as hostile for attacking the vulnerable rear of the Israelite Exodus, leading to a divine decree for their eventual total destruction.
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| Boston Athenæum |
We were watching Absentia, a medium grade thriller, last night and someone mentions Boston Athenæum which we have never heard of. What the heck is an anthenaeum anyway? It's a library, and the Boston Athenæum is a private library. So I go look it up and find the above picture on Wikipedia. But I'm not satisfied, so I go to Google Maps to see if I can find a better view of the place. I can't, because Beacon Street is so narrow and the buildings are so tall. This is what I got:
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| Boston Athenæum Front |
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| Boston Athenæum Back |
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| St. Vincent's Hospital Now |
Wrote most of this three months ago just after my hip joint replacement surgery. Taken me this long to get around to finishing it.
Most of the people I saw were pretty women with a variety of personalities. Connected with some, did not connect with others.
Nurse Jerri thinks I sound like Kevin Costner.
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| New Operating Room |
Remodeled operating room. Last time I was here the surgery center and the operating room were all very industrial looking like something out of Star Wars. This time it was all soft pastels like a modern doctor's office.
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| St. Vincent's Hospital Ten Years Ago |
Remodeled exterior. When we arrived, I walked out of the parking garage and saw this big, shiny, new building (top) and I thought 'this wasn't here before'. Turns out they just put a new facade over the old one (above).
Aisles in new garages are narrower than in the old one which is why I prefer to park in the old garage, even though I have to walk a hundred yards farther to the hospital entrance.
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| Masimo Root Patient Monitoring and Connectivity Platform |
Numerous connections while I am lying in bed after surgery:
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| 418 SW Washington St. Portland Oregon |
A couple days ago we heard that the fancy new Ritz Carlton had been reposessed by the lender. Now we hear about this. Things are looking kind of grim for the commercial real estate market. Well, grim for owners, but maybe opportunity for newcomers.
Willamette Week reports:
The Merchant Banker Building—the former home of landmark restaurant Greek Cuisina—has a new owner. . . . The sale price was $1.2 million. . . . The 1898 building is 22,920 square feet. Its last sale price in 2019 was $6.1 million.
$50 a square foot is a pretty good price for a building. No telling what kind of shape it's it, but as old as it is, it is surely going to require some work.
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| Vessel Tower New York |
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| Interior View |
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| Castle Jindřichův Hradec |
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| Interior of the Rotunda in Adam's Building |
Stanislaus von Prowazek (1875 – 1915) was a Czech biologist, zoologist and parasitologist, who along with pathologist Henrique da Rocha Lima (1879-1956) discovered the pathogen of epidemic typhus.
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| Castle Jindřichův Hradec |
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| Sigmaringen Castle |
Sigmaringen Castle was the princely castle and seat of government for the Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. . . . During the closing months of World War II, Schloss Sigmaringen was briefly the seat of the Vichy French Government after France was liberated by the Allies.
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| Sigmaringen Castle |
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| Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, Canada |
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| Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House |
Summary from Wikipedia:
The Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House (also 867 Madison Avenue and the Rhinelander Mansion) is a French Renaissance Revival mansion at the southeastern corner of Madison Avenue and 72nd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Built between 1894 and 1898, it was designed by Alexander Mackintosh of the architectural firm of Kimball & Thompson. Though the house was constructed for the heiress Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, she never moved in. The mansion was converted to a commercial building in the 20th century, becoming the New York City flagship store of the Ralph Lauren accessory and clothing company in the 1980s. The mansion is a New York City designated landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.
American Aristocracy has a page about this building. They give a couple of prices, so I thought I would compare the increase in the price of the house to what gold did in the same time frame. The house did much better.
