Pumpkin pro tip.

White pumpkins rot at a faster rate than regular pumpkins. Last night one of my eyes was crying. Which is odd because the both eyes came from the same pumpkin.

We just have to cancel Halloween for next year because obviously three days is your pumpkin maximum.

Go on with your bad self San Fransisco.

"San Francisco leaders hate Trump enough they voted to limit the city’s water rather than do this".

For months, San Francisco, a hotbed of anti-Donald Trump sentiment, has found itself in the awkward position of being aligned with his administration over California water policy.
On Tuesday, the city’s leaders said the alliance was unbearable.

In an 11-0 vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed in a resolution to support the State Water Resources Control Board’s proposal to leave more water in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries to benefit struggling fish populations. The supervisors’ vote is subject to veto by Mayor London Breed, although the board could override the veto.

The vote splits the city from the Trump administration and instead moves its support to a state plan that its utilities commission warns could lead to severe drinking water shortages for its nearly 884,000 residents.

The resolution explicitly says the city must divorce itself from the Trump administration and its congressional allies such as Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, who’s branded the state plan a “water grab.” The Trump administration has vowed to sue the state if the so-called Bay-Delta plan goes forward, saying it would interfere with the operation of key reservoirs owned by the federal government in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Under the cloud of climate change denial and anti-science populism, the debate around the Bay-Delta Plan has transcended the realm of rational, environmental discourse toward a political and populist, anti-conservation rally cry, fueled by the strategic lobbying of a federal Republican administration aiming to destabilize California’s status as a Democratic stronghold,” the resolution says."

Some things in California are just sorta going off the rails right now. Seriously - like two days ago there was a commercial for a democrat who was trying to align himself with Trump policies, but claim they were not Trump policies. When they clearly are. I was like - what the eff just happened?

Man this guy is tap dancing on the rattle snakes den.

Musk buys $10 million in Tesla stock and plans to buy $20 million more.

I am somewhat bored of Elon.  But it doesn't escape me that everyone is getting crushed by higher interest rates - except Tesla apparently!

I read somewhere a long time ago that China accounted for 17% of Tesla sales. I didn't fact check it, so I might just be making shit up. But China is hurting a lot of people right now too. Except Tesla apparently.

Let him buy all the shares! I mean, Far Away Future just declared they were insolvent. So.... lets see where this goes.

At least I got to see them once.

Holy crap - that's a lot of percent.

Southern California suffers its worst housing slump in over a decade.

"The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold during the month plummeted nearly 18 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic."

The wealth effect is real, and we are in a really bad feedback loop right now. And there are many negatives for which Silicon Valley will amplify.

For example - there are quite lot of people who are sitting on underwater RSU's now. (Restricted stock units. ) This is how Silicon Valley compensates people outside of your salary.

I haven't checked today, but when companies are down say........ 30% like Facebook and Amazon and Nvidia, you are not thinking about buying a house. You feel much poorer even if it was paper money. And if houses aren't moving very fast.... it sort of makes your butt cheeks tighten. Home improvement will be next.

The Turpumpkin.

This might be one of the hardest pumpkin projects we've done and we didn't intend it to be that way. We thought this would be a relatively easy thing to do. Just put one pumpkin inside of another. Right? Yeah, not so much.

I mean, we've done pacman pumpkins and that was not harder than this. We've done South Park pumpkins. Also not harder.  Evil clown pumpkin was pretty challenging and might be my favorite. One of the neighbors said they had to cover it up so their kid could come up to the house. Evil Pumpkin snowman seems to garner the most hits though. Oh! I forgot about zombie pumpkins with candy corn for teeth.

Anyway. There was a point where both of us didn't think we would get this to work at all. There is way more shaping than you would expect. WAY MORE SHAPING. Like cake boss level crap.



This is the point where we thought these looked like boobs, and had an inappropriately long conversation about nipple size. I mean Iris size.



Dry fitting the inner pumpkin.





Pro tip. All of this was made a lot easier with a sawsall. It's the great pumpkin equalizer.

Halloween light crawl.

I'm not crazy about my shots. But, Monday night light crawl is what it is. None of us seem to be that in to it this year.

More of this.

It's been overcast lately so the colors aren't popping yet. But this is the time of year you have to drive by every day because a good wind storm can make it all go away. Probably not the top shot, but some stuff in the bottom shot is looking pretty ragged this year.

It NOT social media's job to spot warning signs.

It's law enforcements job. I thought threatening someones life was a crime - everywhere. Yet day after day people get death threats over the internet.

If they can have the pedo police - they can have a division that just talks to people about the death threats. And they should get fined or something. It isn't like every flavor of law enforcement isn't on the net. If you have the right post, you will see every division represented.

We need to make examples of a few people to tone down poor impulse control that seems rampant right now. It's not okay to threaten people. You couldn't do that in real life, and the rules should be the same for the net.

This doesn't take away anyones free speech because what they are doing is already a crime.

At the Snarkolepsy household we get easily distracted.

I am suppose to be doing projects. But you can't, not, stop when you see this right? I completely sidled into some guy's car glamor shoot. I'm not sure why he was doing it in this lot. I would have had him out by the vineyards.

I am sorta bored with orange McLarens though.

How would you glue two pumpkins together?

I'm not sure what you are going to get this weekend because I need to complete a few projects to achieve my winter goals. Which basically involves a lot of drinking by the fire in sippy cups, home made candied nuts and fancy cheese. And possibly a lot of bad movies.

It's funny - every time this cheese trend has come around I haven't been into it. This time I'm way into it.

At least that migrant invasion is distracting people from this.

AMZN: -19%
C: -21%
BAC: -21%
T: -23%
INTC: -26%
NFLX: -29%
NVDA: -32%
FB: -33%
BABA: -34%
TWTR: -42%

Blackrock - those people who own all the real estate? In January it was at 590.26. NOW? 391.96.

China and South Korea both down 30% aprox.

Almost everything that I've looked at that got a Trump relief rally, is back to what is was in January.

I bought something from the internet this morning and when I was checking out I noticed they had an option to pay with TWO credit cards.

That doesn't make you feel like we are leveraged to the hilt at all.

That's what I said.

A while back I was saying that one day we'd find out that Uber and Lyft didn't take any cars off the road at all. And now the University of Chicago has done a study which basically says the same.

Just sit in traffic and look at all the Ubers and Lyfts. It isn't rocket science.

"The costs are significant: Cities with high Uber and Lyft usage had more pedestrian deaths, more traffic deaths at night, more traffic deaths on weekends and more traffic deaths overall than the trend would have predicted, compared to other cities. Even drunk driving deaths were essentially unchanged by the presence of Uber and Lyft, Barrios and his team found. 

On total car ownership, more bad news. Cities with high Uber and Lyft activity actually had 3 percent higher new vehicle registrations (see this for New York City’s experience). Uber and Lyft might discourage car ownership among some higher-income riders, but app-based taxis seem to induce more car buying among lower-income people that work as drivers, Barrios found. 

As Streetsblog reported, Uber and Lyft increase congestion partly because drivers spend 40 to 60 percent of their time circling without passengers, also known as “deadheading.” Barrios and his team said, Uber and Lyft’s policies make the problem worse."

Emphasis mine. Source.

All hail the robot arm!

It's the sound of one arm clapping.

Oooh scary job taking robots!

This robot was testing boards. Something that would be a life sucking job for a human. Hunched over all day doing exactly the same thing. We can all agree a robot is better suited for this job. Right?



I told Mr S. a couple of days ago that if I went to my next conference and it was all arms - it will make me want to punch the sky. Because I'm super bored of arms. Mr S. thought I should get a robot to do that, because that is what they are here for.

But, they were able to sufficiently distract me with lasers. And I'm still into that. Apparently pointing lasers over objects make imperfections really noticeable. So the above arm was inspecting this object for imperfections.



I also wanted to get a few shots of the types of power these things need.



The old ABB was back sorting toys with a sucker. But you are going to need to add an air compressor for that as well. Hopefully a quiet one.

Nihlyst's unite.

Today I was trying to drown out the world with the stereo on 11 and I thought I heard a honk. So I look to my right and this guy is smiling at me. Like a lot. So I smile back and I can see he is reaching for his window button. So - I roll down my passenger side window.

He says - I like your plate.

Which really made me happy because this is the first thing anyone has said about it. I was sort of nervous of the response I would get. I also figured most people didn't even know what it meant and hoped I be safe with that. I think the small portion of people who get it will think it's funny.

You are going to get about a week of this.

This is the time of year my city really becomes beautiful after months and months of nothing but brown town. We get a splash of color. Then in a few months it turns into green acres.

It's still a bit early, but I have to start taking shots now because one good wind storm can screw everything up. And these shots aren't great yet... but I couldn't get out there in the morning so the sun was against me.

It's kinda of a nice hidden secret we have, because you can't see these areas from the freeways. I bet a ton of people who live around here don't even know it gets so pretty.

We should just move all of our homeless camps right next to the border. That way when the illegals get here they might just turn right around. Our homeless problem is seriously third world. And those people trying to make it to the border look way cleaner than most of the homeless I see. And wait till they find out they have to house 50 of them in a Tuff Shed because housing so expensive.

Far away future.

Faraday Future confirms layoffs and wage cuts as struggles continue.

Mr S. had taken to calling this company Far Away Future for the past few months. Which always made me laugh.

Sometimes I scare myself.

I was reading Zero Hedge today where he talks about how the Khashoggi killing could blow up Softbank. Which made me laugh because a few months ago I'd made a post basically saying that nothing better happen to SoftBank or The Valley would be screwed.

When they started taking a stake in companies like Nvidia I started getting nervous. Because why would Nvidia need their money anyway?

So I had to find my post so I could make sure of what I said because it was months ago. And OH MY GAWD. I had to laugh  so hard. This is my post in it's entirety written on April 25th 2018.

"WeWork documents reveal it owes $18 billion in rent and is burning through cash as it seeks more funding. "

I've been completely fascinated by these "incubators". They don't seem to be producing much. Yet I see one site in Fremont that is basically vacant and just storing cars in the parking lot. I've been meaning to go and check it out more closely. They seem to be a direct to customer used car company that I haven't heard of before and forget the name of. But every time I drive by there - there seems to be more and more cars. I just don't get it. 

All I know if that if something happens to Softbank the Valley is going to be a little screwed. They own a little of everything around here." Original here.

I just didn't think things would blow up this way. But that's the funny thing about life.

In the wild.

Lidar is still my jam.

Mostly because it's still fun to play spot the sensor.  I guess I hadn't realized that Lidar really was born out the of the Darpa Grand Challenge. And I guess Jamie knew a lot of these guys.  My picture isn't great. But I guess he is working on a an autonomous emergency rescue vehicle for when it's too hazardous for humans.



Velodyne is pretty scrappy. I wasn't sure how things were going to work out for them after solid state Lidar started coming out. (Solid state basically means the Lidar doesn't spin)



This car had some extra cameras I think.



And honestly I'm loving that front cameras are coming "a thing". I'm one of those girls that has my seat all the way to the front and up all the way because I'm short. I can barely see the right front quarter panel. I should have put an arrow but it's right under the Lexus Symbol. You also get a fairly good shot of my reflection.



I also got a chance to ride in one of these. And at first I was excited, but then found out they were only doing a loop in the parking lot. Which is where I became bored and ditched it.





The car stuff is cool, but the real exciting Lidar stuff is happening in uncovering what's on the Earth. Like when they find ancient cities and unknown landslides.  Both of these links are pretty ad intensive, but that stuff is super cool.

I guess Tom Tom is still a contender in the map wars.

Honestly, I almost drove right by this car. Right when it got to my pheripherial vision my brain was like - what the hell is that. Then I slowed down and got behind it. But since I was driving solo, the pictures could be better. They have quite the rig though. Two downward pointing lidars, and two spinning lidars in the tower with a 360 degree rig.

That's all I could see from freeway speeds in stop and go traffic. It was easy to keep track of him when our lanes diverged though. You can spot that tower from far away once you knew it isn't a bicycle on a roof rack. I was able to drive slow enough to get the second two shots.