Odd Signs & Symbols

Here are two signs I passed on the way home from work, and they're each off a bit. Anne drinks mostly unsweetened iced tea and has shown me that almost every restaurant and fast food place has a little pot of iced tea somewhere off to the side of the fountain drinks.  But there would be no iced tea for her today because this pot was "OUT OFF ORDER", which is a non-functional combination of "Out of Order" and "we turned it off until we can fix it." A few blocks later there was this winner at a congested intersection: "ROAD AHEAD". Okay, if you have a "ROAD CLOSED AHEAD" sign and you open the road temporarily, why not just take down the sign until you need it again?  As it is, I don't know if it was trying to tell me the road was closed, or it isn't, or they had just stashed the sign where they thought nobody can see it.  It sure doesn't look like a road.

As mentioned in a previous post, it's rare for a sign to be "fun".  Usually they are just a kind of legal nagging.  But a routine trip to a local dog park took a big twist when I saw a new sign that I had not snapped a picture of before.  Apparently the city of San Marcos, which has one of the most organized parks departments I've seen anywhere, has setup a scavenger hunt to get people to visit their city parks.  The sign had a barcode which linked to a site with a PDF listing the 8 parks to visit:    It wasn't clear how you are supposed to "return the card" to the Visitor Center to collect the reward, but I figured it would just be fun to find all the signs and get some pictures.  Even if I had "the card", anyone can put check marks on a piece of paper.  I figure having actual photos of all the signs must count as a win somehow, even if it's just for our own personal fulfillment. We made it to 6 of the locations on day one, and I know whe

We stopped at a random burger place (Tom's #22 in San Marcos CA) on Sunday, and it was a spacious, quiet place that was going for an old country diner feel.  There was only one other table with customers, so either we showed up at a good time or the economy was collapsing again -- it's hard to tell these days.  You order up front and then go sit down, which is impersonal but fficient, I suppose.     I ordered a chili dog and a tuna melt, and after some waiting, we were surprised to see a little robot come quietly down the aisle towards us, carrying the food. It was about four foot six with a little screen showing a cartoon cat face.  It slid up to the table, turned and said, "Table 36, your meals are on the tray lit by blue lights."  Something like that, followed by a few notes about being careful getting the plates off the tray.  Then it just stood there with a cat face replaced by a generic UI.  There were two buttons, but neither one said "Finished" or

Walking around the block in this industrial park area during lunch breaks, I can't help but notice how every company's parking lot has a stack of warning signs out front.  They don't seem to care about actual security or have any kind of welcome message, but they sure don't want people parking anywhere.   So, you can't park here, or over there, or over there, and by the way the gate might kill you.  Thanks for visiting us.

By the mailbox at my apartment complex, some more curb painting was done, and yet another parking sign added.   From this angle, the parking rule changes four times in about 50 feet.  We have such a crunch of parking, with the sides of the drive just solid walls of cars after 8PM, that management can't come up with any plan that really works.  I'm pretty sure most of the red "Fire Lane" is false, just a sad attempt to keep one side clear at night.  So here we go from Fire Lane red to the freshly painting white spot about two cars wide: you can only park here to get your mail.  The next sign is the tiny space with red curb reserved for the actual mail truck -- it's only here for about one hour a day, but it would be beyond dumb if they couldn't park in from of the mailboxes they service.  Beyond that is Two Hour Parking by the pool.  Four different rules in under fifty feet. And as the population gets denser, and more and more people have to pack into housing t

I have a knack for finding strange and conflicting signs over parking spaces.  We legally pulled into a handicapped space only to see this sign: First off, it's a handicapped space.  If you're not handicapped you don't get to park here.  But let's assume you could.  How am I supposed to know you're having a child soon?  If you do have a little one, then your hands are full, that makes sense.  But if the stork isn't here yet, there are a lot of assumed psychic powers behind what this sign is asking for. By the way, the sign below is selling bengal kittens, so the stork has landed Somewhere. This just struck me as weird and not entirely thought out.  Considerate, yes.  Practical?  Not really.

Who knew shopping carts could be so complicated? Sure, you want people to use common sense putting their kids into a shopping cart, and common sense it not that common after all.  So, there are those notes to avoid injury.   Then there is the constant battle of people stealing carts, for which we've had wave after wave of security devices over the years, and we still see carts in ditches miles from any store.  Almost every store, every and every company providing all these devices has its own style of signage.   The simplest security system is just a big pole stuck onto the cart that won't let the cart fit through the door.  Here's a system that detects whether the cart passed a valid checkout point, probably with RFID tags, and locks the wheels if someone tried to sneak it around.  In this system , there's a wire under the pavement around the lot that locks the wheels. Gatekeeper Systems has the best summary I could find of the costs and ordinances involved in loss o

My last post about the signage at the local dog park was from last weekend.  We stopped there today and there were a few new signs.  These were not the frustrating type, the first one would fall under "obvious and a bit sad".  Here you go: A few months ago, some donors helped set up a little training course at the park.  And now the teeter-totter is broken and someone stole the bar from the little ankle-high dog jump setup.  Seems to me that the caution tape on the teeter-totter should have been sufficient, and the jump equipment without the bar was more surreal than upsetting.  But good people contributed to this, and not-good people screwed it up already. The sign itself was not well written.  It sounded like the whole park was going to be closed, but it was just those few things.  It should have been written as some kind of Maintenance notice.  Here are the broken parts: The other sign was a rare "fun" sign, announcing a scavenger hunt across all the city's p

It's hard to believe we need this many rules just so a few hundred people can visit a dog park each day.  There's a sign giving rules for the overall park, then the rules for dog park inside that park, an attempt to talk about responsibility, even a warning about not screwing with the water fountain. I know there are legal issues around any public space, and how triggered people can get, and how many people sue companies and towns and states and individuals if even the slightest thing goes wrong.  It just seems pointless for towns and owners of shopping malls to declare they're not liable for their visitors having things stolen from their cars.  Our car was only there so we could use that public space, and the knowing the cars will be there must attract some number of thieves ... it's complicated.  Don't tell me that just because a sign was posted, every base is covered. And conversely, if you go someplace that's packed with dogs and you are end up being hurt or

I know graffiti is a problem, and most of it is either hideous, or some kind of advertisement for local gangs, or both.  But sometimes, it adds a tiny spot of light to the day.  Look at this little character: Someone had to go out into the middle of that four lane divided highway and tag a little face on there. Two weekends later, it was gone.  Just a boring reflector again, for road safety. Update 5/31/2024: About a year later and a few blocks away, the person who drew the puppy face on that orange diamond-shaped reflector is back, and tagged two more of them.  I'm sure they will be gone soon, but it does raise the question over whether it's still graffiti or vandalism if it's harmless and just wants people to smile as they drive by.

I see an odd sign every few days, and have a lot of photos I have yet to talk about.  But it's hard to concentrate, hard to find time.  Here's a sign that wouldn't stop moving.  I couldn't even catch up to it.  I figure it's a good metaphor for not being able to find time for my trivial hobbies. As a construction crew was painting some new Bike Lane lines, it was pretty hard to miss. I bet there are going to be tire tracks through those lines anyway.  But they get points for effort.  It's such an elaborate machine, full of smaller gadgets and tanks and machines.   Before this, the city had repaved about a mile of side streets.  I wish I had gotten some photos of the in-between period where crews had crudely spray-painted in all the lines and arrows that needed to be added properly.  Some of those were very cartoony and weird.  But there was no safe space to stop, I'm always late for work, or trying to get home exhausted and don't get to play.  But here&#

This is not a sign of the "bunch of words" type.  It's more of a "sign" of strange things going on. On the way to work around 9am, I was just coming off the 78 freeway when I saw a blur across the street.  It was a long traffic light, so why not?  Here's a shot of the guy who was behind the fence at the edge of the freeway, juggling some white pins. Maybe he was getting ready for a job interview, or just fell off of a passing circus truck.  I can't think of any reason for a person to be there at all.  I don't think I've ever seen ANYone back there, even though the fence isn't really keeping people out.   Maybe we're all missing out but NOT juggling in the mornings, maybe it's some new kind of therapy...

We still try to get out and see a movie every other month or so.  The new crazy way the theaters work has the one perk that we can check right before the show to see how empty the theater is -- if there are more than a handful of people we just give up.  Don't need the germs.  And the near-private screenings are very nice. I don't even remember what movie we saw last month, but I don't think this sign made it any easier: