Maytag Repairman, Meet The Apple Security Guard

On Saturday night I was returning to my hotel room after the Camac St. block party, part of my softball weekend. I was staying at the Sheraton at 17th and Race. Walking along Walnut St. towards 17th, I passed by the Apple store that opened up a few months ago. I couldn't help but notice it was rather bright inside the store. For a moment I thought it was open. Then I saw that it wasn't, obviously, and I noticed the one person who was inside -- the security guard. Playing around with an iPad. Now that's a job for me...if you can guarantee no one would ever try to break in and shoot me in a robbery attempt, that is.

It was a pretty fun weekend, although our team lost 4 out of 5 games -- we went 1-2 in the round-robin portion on Saturday, then lost twice more (once Saturday, once Sunday morning).

A few more odd pictures. Well, the first two pictures aren't odd, but the reason I took them is.

This is, as you can see, Suburban Station. All SEPTA Regional Rail trains pass through here (the train platforms themselves are actually underground). So you'd think it's quite a busy place.

Busy enough, in fact, that you'd think the doors would be open for anyone trying to catch a train.

You'd be wrong. At least on Sunday.

More S Words

I have a couple of photos I took during yesterday's trip to Center City to buy comics, but my phone (or Virgin Mobile, or something) refused to let me post them to Twitter (via Twitpic) or Facebook. So here they are -- both subjects start with the letter "S" -- just like this previous post -- and not only that, the titles of all three books I bought yesterday started with "S." (Insert "Twilight Zone" theme here.)

Shirtless Thugs II: For this first one, taken at Rittenhouse Square, I tried to Twitpic it with the caption, "Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY???" This graffiti seems to be a phenomenon. It's the second time I've seen it. It's also been mentioned on another blog, but that blog recently took a condescending and possibly anti-gay shot at the creator of one of my favorite blogs, Streets Dept., so it gets no link from me.

Yesterday was a bit too damp and dreary for people to be shirtless, anyway. (But at least there wasn't a tornado in town, like there was up in the Northeast, about 3.5 miles from my house! It's really rare for a tornado to touch down in Philadelphia. The last reported twister was in 1999. But this one yesterday wasn't much of one. It was EF-0, the weakest on the scale, and only traveled about 300 feet according to the National Weather Service. A few roofs torn off, a little debris, and that was pretty much it.)

Saxbys: There's a new one that just opened at 20th and Walnut. I'm not one for coffee but

Twitter Trending Topics

On Twitter the "Trending Topics" feature -- the list of the most-discussed items on Twitter -- has been a source of amusement and annoyance to me. Amusement because it's interesting to see what subjects are being talked about. Annoyance because made-up "topics" lead to a greater volume of sometimes inane, sometimes stupid posts in my Twitter feed. Example: right now one of the leaders in the United States is #nowthatsghetto -- so there are a series of posts such as:

"yo moms got empty Henny bottles around her bedroom............#nowthatsghetto"
"#nowthatsghetto the fact that I can get my hair gel, toothpaste and a #6 Chinese food combo all from the same quick mart"
"claiming you have celebrity friends when in reality, you're just they're Facebook fan ......#nowthatsghetto."

All of those are actual tweets I found during a search, but at times they'll come up in my feed if someone I'm following decides to run with it. (I'm looking at you, injured Eagles offensive lineman Shawn Andrews!) Sometimes they're clever, but often they're just variations on the same idea and I find it more annoying than anything else.

Anyway, Twitter has tweaked its service so you can set the Trending Topics that show up on your page to a specific location. You can see what's trending worldwide; in the countries of Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, the United Kingdom or the United States; or in one of 15 cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, São Paulo and Washington, D.C. Nice to know Philly made the cut, so I thought I'd do a comparison of what's trending here as compared to the hot topics for the USA, Canada and the world. (Some other time I may do a comparison between various cities.)

Worldwide:

* #nowplaying
* Haiti
* iTampon - According to Twitter: "People are making a joke due to unfortunate word associations in the name of Apple's new tablet, the iPad." (No, really?)
* #cbb7 - (No Twitter explanation but if you see the item directly below, you can guess what CBB stands for.)
* Davina - "Davina McCall, host of Celebrity Big Brother (UK), entered the house tonight in disguise."
* Union (for President Obama's State of the Union speech tonight)
* Don’t Ask
* #apple
* Ugly Betty (canceled by ABC, those bastards!)
* Don't Tell

It's not an exact science -- Twitter is separating the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" topic (Obama is reportedly going to call for the anti-gay military policy to be repealed in his speech tonight -- I wonder why this is in the top 10 worldwide but not in the USA?)

United States:

* #itampon
* #ipad
* #nowthatsghetto (See above.)
* Apple iPad
* iBooks
* MaxiPad (See iTampon)
* Union address
* MadTV
* iTablet
* Howard Zinn

Canada:

* #itampon
* Apple iPad
* MadTV
* #Haiti
* Ugly Betty
* Multitasking
* #yeg (Huh?)
* Canadian
* Mass Effect
* Olympics

Philadelphia:

* #itampon
* #applesnextproduct
* #NewAppleProducts
* Apple iPad
* Haiti
* Ugly Betty
* Tyra
* Oprah
* Apple
* Device

Again, probably a Twitter issue that all of the variations on "Apple" are appearing separately instead of as one topic...and how is "device" a topic?