I'm sure that we'll all miss her so
What've you missed on my humor blog the past week? Among other things:
- My December 2015 Scraps File, this week's major piece. Fewer scraps than you might think.
- The Unix Tool I Now Long For based on one I didn't understand right.
- The Most Alarming Paragraph I’ve Ever Read On Wikipedia This Week courtesy indirectly of the Worst Episode Ever podcast about The Simpsons.
- Returning To Sad Normality: December 2015 On My Humor Blog, as I lose the Apartment 3-G bonanza around here.
- Why My Hands Are Rubbed Dry All Winter: Several Scenes From Inside My Head which is basically all so.
- Statistics Saturday: Twelve Sentences Of 2015, a guide to a year on my humor blog!
- This Is Getting Not To Be A Joke Even, as Margaret Shulock publishes another baffling strip.
- My Poor Wrist, last week's major piece, about a pinball-related injury.
And now some pictures of rides at Conneaut Lake Park. Many of them were even working!
The Music Express, one of the rides not operating at Conneaut Lake Park that day. I haven't found the reference photographs from earlier visits to prove it but I believe that last year it didn't have any of the cars on the track. So this represents progress in getting the park to normal operations.
The miniature golf course (left), the Bessemer steam railway path (front), and the Blue Streak roller coaster (right, back) at Conneaut Lake Park, and in fine autumnal form.
The station at the Bessemer steam railroad, with the Blue Streak roller coaster in the background. This is from earlier in the day, when we saw the railroad running and figured it'd be safe to ride anytime. The engine had been damaged in the fire at the beach house (if I haven't got their fires mixed up) and this was the first time we saw it running.
Would you ride this very twisty antique railroad? Panoramic shot from the train station. We didn't ride it just then, trusting that we'd have time later in the day. Later in the day the train wasn't running, although they got it fixed just in time for us to get a last ride of the day in on it.
Blue Streak train returning, as seen from the Bessemer railroad station. The roller coaster is a touch duller from the front on this return leg, but it's more fun in the back seats. And it's quite worth riding in any case and I'm looking forward to the next time we can.
Trivia: By 1857 there were seven hundred miles of canals grown off the Yuba River in the Sierra Nevadas alone.
Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg.
Trivia: The patents on Hollerith's census machines were issued 8 January 1889.
Source: Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing, Geoffrey D Austrian.
Currently Reading: Sizesaurus, Stephen Strauss.
PS:
Reading the Comics, January 4, 2015: An Easy New Year Edition, which it only kind-of was.