Maggot Brain

Riding the Duck

I heard that quite a few folks wondered what it is like to take one of those amphibian truck tours in San Francisco. I took the one offered by San Francisco Ducks, there’s another provider called Bay Quackers.

The tour was a mixed experience. The actual ride is fun, and there are some parts that are really entertaining, like going through the Stockton tunnel with a movie theme with the grand finale at the exit. The stuff the guy said while being on the tour was OK, too. The downside is that they try too hard to be funny. You’re wearing a whistle thingie and you’re supposed to try to make funny duck sounds. In particular at fellow tourists outside, so you’re basically doing even more recruiting than sitting in that funny piece of hardware to begin with. The water piece is fun in particular, at least the ducks let the passengers actually drive the duck in the water. I got lucky and turned out to be the last volunteer, so I got a pretty large stint. Going at odd times improves your chances to extra embarrassment with the fun stuff, and extra fun with the driving stuff.

The tour is roughly sketched on this map, and I don’t think it differs a lot between the two offers. I have uploaded a few pictures, too.

The trucks are based on WWII landing vehicles, and are slow as molasses. Which is why they’re called ducks, as you’re sitting there like a duck waiting to get shot. The one I was in was actually a newly built one and just a year old, though.

If you took the Bay Crackers, I’d love to hear what you have to say (or on the ducks, too).

In case you didn’t notice…

I’ve been on vacation, I’m back. What’s the point? If you’re in to South Africa, Cape Town, Garden Route, and Fynbos, there are some 250 photos to go through.

Hello? World?

Some adds just puzzle me.

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

Found on Buildbot-devel, though the archives strip the adds you get in the actual mails.

It’s me :)

I’m getting a whole slew of spam in my mozilla.com account these days titled It’s “Name” :), ’sent’ by Name Surname. I bothered looking at the mail now, just to see what’s happening, and the messages talk about oil, and a company called

Cana Petroleum (CNPM)

Now I’ve been googling and found Reuter’s stock ticker for that company.

1. It seems to work.
2. Sector: Technology Industry: Software & Programming

Excuse me? Hallo, Echo? Anybody home?

Ugh.

Back to life

As my old private blog doesn’t seem to come back up, I’ll start talking about stuff here. Not only about l10n, but even more so about the upcoming shoot-out in RDF-land.