Joe's Random Ramblings

I was chatting with a friend about Legos and Legoland. I remember being at a Legoland in northern Germany as a child.
When I tried to look up the name of the city this Legoland was in, I was surprised to not find any hint on that on the Legoland website or on Wikipedia. They all only point to the Legoland in Guenzburg, in Bavaria, that was opened just a couple of years back.
Eventually, I did find this link. It says:

Opened in 1973 as Legoland Sierksdorf, the second Legoland after Legoland Billund. After only a few years the park was sold and became Hansaland.

That was the Legoland I went to as a child.
Guess I'll have to update the Wikipedia page about this
Actually, the German Wikipedia page about Legoland had the info already. Just the English Wikipedia page didn't.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/30/heres-the-problem-with-the-sun/
I needed the laugh.

Now getting thirsty

Recently, I parked next to a car with a rather interesting California license plate:
The car was apparently converted to use natural gas, and the license plate read SCRWOIL (I snapped a picture with my cellphone):

I had to laugh, but on reflection, I was actually surprised that the CA DMV let this go through. I thought they would deny vanity plate applications that contain swearwords. In this case, I don't mind much, of course...

Yesterday, GM CEO Wagoner announced that GM is closing several plants that build SUVs. He also said that they may be looking at selling the Hummer brand. Good riddance. This is way overdue. And as usual, GM and the other American car manufacturers are late in recognizing changes. Years back, GM killed the electrical car EV1, and with a complete lack of long-term vision, focussed on gas-guzzling trucks converted to SUVs. They apparently wanted to get customers who needed the oversized SUVs as penis enlargement. Meanwhile, the Japanese car manufacturers once again ate their lunch.

Anybody who is active in the Open Source community knows about the ridiculous claims of The SCO Group, formerly known as Caldera Systems (now in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy) against Linux. Go to Groklaw for all the details...
Anyway, on an investor forum somebody posted a very fitting analogy about the minuscule stock price movement and the impending demise of The SCO Group (TSG, not to be confused with the Santa Cruz Operation.)
It had me laughing quite a bit. The main part of the post:

This indicates that SCOxq.pk has some slight brain functions. Not enough to do anything useful, but it means we can't harvest the organs yet.

If the bid and ask move up and down without volume, that doesn't mean the patient moved in their sleep and certainly not that it is waking up, just that someone adjusted the electric hospital bed.

If the price moves up, with volume, look for hidden wires. Someone is using the nearly lifeless body as a puppet.

If the price moves down with volume, get away, and wash your shoes. SCOxq.pk's vital fluids are leaking out through old injuries that aren't healing. The stuff that comes out may be infectious.

Hopefully the lab reports will come back from Dr. Kimball. Then Dr. Gross can move the patient into operating theater #7. That is where they will prepare organs for transplant, if any of them are healthy enough for transplant.

Dr. Gross will supervise the organ removal. The autopsy will happen in the same operating theater. The whole thing will be dissected. Everything will be carefully documented. Samples of everything will be kept for future legal action. The entire set of CxO's will be kept.

It is a big operating theater. There will be many spectators watching the organ removal and autopsy. Some of them will be able to vote on how Dr. Gross should proceed. It will be complex and slow.

The most complex procedures will be the disgorgements.

Some of the professionals have not been paid yet, and they aren't complaining. I think that means they'd rather avoid the discomfort of disgorgement.