I went to Los Angeles last weekend, visiting my friends Brian and Anne. While there I used my camera for the first time in months, and I post some of the better shots below.
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I was only there for four days, so I don’t really have a large sample size, but driving in Los Angeles did seem somewhat less pleasant than in the Bay Area. This might be simply because there’s more of it, but it might also be because of incidents like this one:

I was on the interchange between Highway 101 and Highway 110 South, which requires a very quick shift from the extreme right of the highway to the left, crossing about four lanes in a short amount of time (and space). I made this lane shift without any problems and was in the rightmost lane of the three lanes for my exit. In front of me, I saw a car try to change into my lane very late—not going over the the unbroken white dividing line that means “don’t change lanes”, not going over the wedge of unused asphalt after that, but actually driving/sliding down the raised and slanted grass verge separating what were at that point essentially two different highways. I do have to give them this, though: at least they were indicating.

Travelling from the Connolly stop to the Museum stop, I overheard teenagers in conversation that seemed interesting, partly because they were from a demographic that I would have tried hard to avoid when I was a teenager.
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I did some driving here today, having managed to get myself added temporarily to my father’s car insurance policy. This meant dealing with the whole “other side of the road” thing.
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Yesterday’s apparent prevention of a major attack on UK-to-US flights is on my mind right now.
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Accent has always been an issue for me in Ireland, because I don’t sound Irish, despite seventeen years of living here. Ireland gets tons of American tourists, so the natural assumption of people that I encounter here is that I’m a tourist. This bothers me, although I’m not entirely sure why. [more...]

That’s right—I’m talkin’ about snacks on a motherfuckin’ plane.
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