Blathr Wayne Lorentz

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Showing blathrs with the tag “Protips.”

You wrote “cut the cheese”

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022 Alive 18,802 days

A pizza vending machine

What kind of a person eats pizza from a vending machine? Well… me.

Thereʼs a pizza ATM across the street from my home now, so I tried it for lunch, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't excellent, but it's pizza from a vending machine, not a bistro in Ischia Porte. I don't think anyone who knowingly buys pizza from a vending machine is in a place to complain about quality. Not even on the internet.

There are seven pizzas to choose from. I went with pepperoni because it's a good basic benchmark.

After three minutes, the machine ejects a pizza, like a 1981 Sanyo VCR. The result is not perfect, but it's perfectly edible.

There wasn't much pepperoni flavor. Perhaps some of the other choices are a little more pronounced. But the crust was quite good. Overall, it reminds me of pizza from the California chain Pieology.

The downside is that all you get is a pizza. If you don't already have a drink, that might be problematic. I happened to have a bottle of water with me, just like I knew what I was doing.

Enjoying a fresh pizza on a bench in an alley surrounded by old lady county employees sucking on Swisher Sweets.

I took my pizza to the Harris County Employee Smoking Lounge (a.k.a. the alley by the sally[port]), and it managed to stay hot and crispy the whole way there.

I suspect the vending machine isnʼt doing too bad. I saw someone leaving with a pizza as I was walking toward it. When I was waiting for the bake, someone asked me about it. And when I was coming back from eating, there was a young couple waiting for their Hawaiian pie to cook. Thatʼs three customers in about 40 minutes. Not bad for an out-of-the-way location with zero advertising.

There's a slot on the machine that has cello-wrapped plastic knives. Take one. The crust is pre-sliced before the pizza bakes, so the cheese runs across the seams, and you'll have to cut the cheese to get pie-shaped wedges out of it.

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Dangerous wet dogs

Friday, July 30th, 2021 Alive 18,357 days

The monsoon has been generous this year.

I never thought I would miss the smell of creosote, but I will. When the rain falls on tumbleweeds, it makes a weird wet dog smell. The outflow boundary from the thunderstorm carries the smell far and wide, and is a much more reliable indicator of rain coming than radar is.

If you're ever in a slot canyon or a dry gulch, and suddenly you smell a wet dog, run. I've lost count of the number of stories I've seen in the newspapers this year about hikers and homeless people killed in flash floods. Dozens, at least. Always under blue, unsuspecting skies. The news helicopters sometimes follow a flash flood coming off one of the mountains as it weaves through the gullies and washes. Once, KTNV showed a car speeding down the road trying to outrun the water. It didn't.

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Your slip is showing

Thursday, May 14th, 2020 Alive 17,915 days

A Grace Digital web page leaking JavaScript all over the place

Looks like someone at Grace Digital applied strip_tags() in a location where marketing wanted to track some people with JavaScript.

You donʼt need JavaScript to keep track of your customers.

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You donʼt have a dog

Thursday, December 19th, 2019 Alive 17,768 days

Try to hold your farts until you feed the dog. Few people can smell a fart over the stench of dog food, and if anyone says anything, you can still blame the dog.

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Robotic leverage

Sunday, January 6th, 2019 Alive 17,421 days

A self-driving car on The Strip

Always get behind the self-driving cars. Computers know which lane is the fastest.

Self-driving cars in Nevada have special license plates that start with “AU.”

A sample autonomous license plate from the Nevada DMV web site. For some reason it shows “AD,” when it should read “AU.”
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Sunday, October 7th, 2018 Alive 17,330 days

Rain in Monument Valley

If it doesnʼt rain where you live, rain on vacation is entertaining, not annoying. Or at least thatʼs the lie I keep telling myself.

You can sometimes salvage a bad weather photography day by going black-and-white.

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