Just got back from the polls. When you’ve got multiple offices where the only two choices are “Democrat” and “Democrat”, you know it’s going to suck, but at least there wasn’t a line at this time of day. I can only hope that there are enough sane people left in California to shoot down the worst of the jaw-droppingly bad propositions, but I can’t say that I expect it.

[Update: expectation fulfilled; there is no law too stupid to pass in California.]

Over the past few years, my email exchanges with Steven Den Beste dropped off, to the point that the only time he wrote this year was to tell me the comments were broken on my blog. As with most of his online friends, most of our interaction was in blog comments, here, there, and elsewhere.

The last long email I received from him was in March, 2012, and it was a technical question about photography. He’d come across some pictures and couldn’t figure out how the photographer was pulling off the trick focus.

In his typical way, he explained precisely what the effect was and how it would be accomplished with view camera movements, but he couldn’t figure out how someone had done it with a live model in a public place, as part of an otherwise unexceptional glamour shoot. Surely he hadn’t set up a heavy camera and tripod and gotten the naked girl to hold still while he painstakingly tilted the focus plane.

In answer, I sent him a link to Lensbaby, a product he hadn’t heard of.

I don’t think I still have those (NSFW) photos, but here’s something I was saving for a cheer-up-Steven day: the ultimate anime cheesecake figure.

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It is reported that Steven Den Beste has passed away. No further details at the moment.

There’s a hole in the Web where there used to be a friend.

[Update: I was saving this picture for a slow day when I wanted something that would amuse Steven. There will be memorial cheesecake later, but meanwhile…]

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NASA reports that September, 2016 is the new hotness, beating out September, 2014 by 0.004 degrees Celsius.

So, exactly how many different measurements taken with different equipment at different times and places do you have to combine to compute the world’s average temperature to 1/250th of a degree, which by my calculations is approximately the amount of hot air expelled by the opening sentence of a presidential debate?

If they hadn’t already convinced me that they’re just blowing (cool, dry) smoke up our asses, this would do it.

Upon hearing the “news” that Donald Trump once talked dirty in a locker-room conversation, six women who would never have voted for him decided not to vote for him. Two million unemployed blue-collar workers replied, “that all you got?”.

I’d repeat some of the things I heard while working with the janitors at a public school district, but my keyboard would melt.

I just got an ore ore scam call at home, from someone with a thick hispanic accent saying “It’s me, grandpa, your oldest grandson”. I could hear other scammers working in the background, but the connection was so bad that I made him repeat it five times until he get the whole sentence across uninterrupted.

Then I yelled into his ear that he was a dumbass con artist and hung up.

Youtube link, because Sony doesn’t like embedding.

Also, new slogan: “Stand up for Hillary! She can’t do it alone!”.

The Soberanes Fire is still going strong, with 95,716 acres burned, and still only 60% contained. Almost all of the active fire area is deep in heavily forested mountains, and for extra fun, there’s apparently a heck of a lot of poison oak in that area, which is affecting firefighters despite their precautions.

Still no word on catching the clowns whose illegal campfire started it.

Air quality is good in my area; I think everything that’s still burning is on the other side of the mountains now, and the winds are pushing the smoke and ash southeast.