RobotSkirts

Memories of the Mega Force toy series by Kenner recently popped back into my head. Premiering in 1989, the line had two different warring armies and didn’t specify which was “good” and which was “evil”. I’ve always been a fan of giant sci-fi vehicles (mechs and whatnot). I think that’s what the real draw for me was; I mean this thing had planes… that you could land planes on! The smallest units were diecast metal so they had a nice weight to them and didn’t feel cheap and plasticy like many toys from that era. Pictured above was my favorite vehicle of the four we owned. Its helipad is spring loaded and would pop up at the push of a button. The mechanism withstood a lot of abuse and all of the large vehicles featured some sort of action like this.

Of course, I couldn’t remember the name of this series the other day so I IM’d my parents to check the toy box. They actually found the checklist that used to be included with each toy and sent me a scan: front and back. You can find more pictures of the toy line on Toy Archive and here’s one of the commercials.

When I was 17 in the summer of 1998, my twin sister and I dug a fish pond in front of our house. I thought I’d share a little bit about it since it wasn’t that difficult to construct. It sits in the front yard and has about 3 kiddy pools worth of surface area (yes, that’s a unit of measure).

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Pictured are the largest urinals west of the Mississippi (if the east coast pair even exist anymore). Pride of the University of Nebraska’s Architecture College, the Hinsdale urinals were installed when the building was built in the 1890s. The urinals were relocated in 1985 during a renovation which attached the old law college building. Every year the architecture college has a celebration around the Hinsdale’s patent date (which is near Halloween, so they combine the two). Thanks to Lane for this picture. Here’s the inscription:

“Many a Zen master envies the Hinsdale’s serene ability to teach the eternal truth that it is in loss that one gains and that, here in the solitude of the Hinsdale is most certainly where men come to find themselves.” – Rodger Welsch November, 1986.

On the way back from the DMV, I stopped at my local Kwik-E-Mart to pick up some The Simpsons Movie promotional items. It was packed in there with lots of people buying 3 of everything.

This one goes out to magic. No, I wasn’t trying to corner the market in lolmules; I was actually out taking lots of pictures of the farm. You can see them all on Flickr. [picture made with LolCat Builder]

It’s been a year since I got Tiny plant and I finally upgraded him to a bigger pot (which he probably should have had since day one) It looks like he’ll need another one by the end of summer though.

My coworker Ryan is moving to LA from Ohio and stopped on his way through yesterday and today. Pictured is his massive companion Deuce.

I was bumping around tagging the Midwest when I remembered that quirky cable based railway in Dubuque, IA. Wikipedia has a great collection of funiculars around the globe.

Mom grew some massive potatoes this year. Dad is cutting it with a cleaver normally reserved for watermelon.

I originally saw the story of Niall Kennedy teaching Microsoft a hard lesson in hot-linking on SeattlePI. Well, I guess it was supposed to be a lesson in IP licensing. A Microsoft blog direct linked one of Niall’s Creative Commons (CC) licensed images on Flickr without giving credit (violating the license). They also didn’t link back to Flickr, a requirement that is spelled out every time you copy Flickr HTML for embedding. (more…)