Black out in Switzerland

I’m so horribly busy with my 7th quarter coming to and end… while I wait for Photoshop to save a ginormous file, thought I’d post this:

August 25, 2008…5:28 pm

Tibetan activist squirrel forces Switzerland to miss Olympic closing ceremony

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Well that’s nutty!

It seems that a power outage caused an 80 minute TV blackout across Switzerland just timed so that the entire nation missed the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

The reason given for the outage was that a squirrel broke into a Zürich power plant and disabled the entire facility. Yes, a squirrel. An Eichhörnchen (am I the only person who can’t pronounce that word while sober?)

Now… I wouldn’t want to be accused of creating conspiracy theories out of thin air… but I must say, this seems pretty fishy to me. For a start, were you or I to enter a power plant, we wouldn’t have the first clue about how to go about shutting the thing down, right? We’d probably manage to turn off the photocopier, or disable a light switch – but a whole power plant? No – this was clearly a highly trained squirrel.

Second, we are not talking about some accident here. This was clearly a Kamikaze squirrel. We are told the rodent actually subjected itself to an 11,000 volt electric shock. That’s commitment to the cause if ever I saw it. No, this was no bungler – this was a fanatical activist squirrel.

Third, we know there have been protests about China’s human rights record in Tibet (and need I even mention the fate of small furry rodents that fall into the hands of Chinese Chefs). This particular squirrel – who I shall codename Bya ma byi (wow.. isn’t there some amazingly useless stuff on the internet!) was obviously part of a highly organised and dedicated gang of suicide rodents.

Their masterplan was carried out to perfection – the timing was perfect. Bya ma byi crept by stealth into the power station and using all the skills he’d learnt at squirrel terrorist training camp, hurled himself into the innermost workings of the switching station at the crucial moment.

The whole of Switzerland was blacked out – nobody could receive coverage of the Olympic closing ceremony.

Of course, it was Bye Bye to Bya ma byi. But then, some technicians in Zürich are probably dining well tonight.

The other side of the Russia-Georgia conflict, cut off

I’ve been more than annoyed lately by the way the US has stuck its nose into the affairs of Russia vs. Georgia.  We’ve made a big enough mess with invading smaller countries, we  don’t have room to talk.

The amount of biased coverage in the US press makes all this seem a little shady – I have nothing against Georgia and hope to visit it someday, but our media here has plastered them as the innocent victims on headlines everywhere.  A one sided opinion is never valid, and I hope people will recognize this.

If you want to see a prime example, here you go.  Russian trying to tell their side of the story and abruptly getting cut off.  Obviously this is not what Fox wanted to hear…

Maybe we can get matching outfits like the team here?

80’s Cartoon spot

SketchUp timewarp

Sketchup – my latest love, hate, and time waster…it has such akward, unprecise controls, yet I love the simplicity of it, the fact that I can build a 3-d model within hours and simulate just what something will look like, down to 3-d squirrel placement!

This has been a fun tool for my retail environment class, where I’m building The Nut House, a cafe set in a park that is part tree house part asylum.  Yes, it serves nut enhanced drinks and beverages.  I love this project, and feel like I’ve really been able to put myself fully into it.

Anyway, before any foam board was cut for a mock up, Sketch Up really help me visualize what was going on here, and I spent way too much time playing with it than I should have…my main complaint is the lack of xyz coordinates where you can plug in values to place your stuff…like in any Adobe program (at least x and y; After Effects has xyz) and all those crazy advanced programs…but it is a simple thing to add with out loosing simplicity.  I do like the user database of components tho, and enjoyed seeing all the 3d crap people made that can be easily imported.  Yes, someone made 3-d snot.  I stuck to 3-d squirrels.

Interning thoughts and ramblings

I doubt more and more these days that I’ll step out the door after graduation and have a job waiting for me.  Far from the hopes I had from my first day of orientation when we were given speaches about grads getting 40 offers at once…but after nearly two years you see those are special cases or those people just had different skills sets, be it in design or shmoozing.

As I haven’t shmoozed with the right people, won any awards or had an internship, I’m aiming instead for the latter after I get out of here.  Maybe it’s better I intern at a time when I can devote every waking hour to an internship…which will be easier than devoting every waking and unwaking hour, as I do for school now.

The only downfall of this strategy is that I’m pretty much limited to places in Atlanta, and hence I’m doing this to get a job, might lead to something permanent here.  Alas, the married, property-owning squirrel here can not just pick up and go anywhere for an internship….tho I guess short term I could. An internship doesn’t justify putting the flat on the market and having my husband look for another job…which we would do with a job in another city, just cuz the hub doesn’t like Atlanta so much, I hate hot weather, and I’ve lived quite a while here – maybe it’s time to see another part of the country.  But, I feel if I get a foot in the door at an Atlanta company, it will pretty much be kept here in Atlanta.  Which can be alright too if we just reframe our thinking.  Right now, tho, we don’t know what to think…

I still look at places elsewhere, including companies in the “less glamourous” cities (in the eyes of design snobs).  Afterall, I can maintain the same standard of living there most likely too (I would never ever have a 3 bedroom flat in NY or SF).  I mean, even this quirky festival in Minneapolis gives me hope – I would live someplace with this kind of stuff going on 🙂  So, there are plenty of other places with fun quirky vibes outside the big superstar cities, I just have to find a job there and get this strategy thing worked out…