You heard about the 5.4 earthquake that struck southern California this morning, right? Well, in Burbank the TV cameras are always rolling, and Ain't It Cool News has kindly posted some video clips of people caught in the moment of reacting to the quake.

Ever wonder how you'd do in an earthquake? Hmmm, I'm not sure if my pectorals are quite, uh, rippling enough... (Watch the first clip, you'll get it.) What exactly is the risk of a Big One striking Windsor in my lifetime, anyway? Must remember to ask Maria sometime -- after all, she can see the universe in a grain of sand.

So I read on the news that today was the big unveiling of White Knight Two ('EVE'), the new semi-spaceplane that Virgin Galactic will be using to loft rich tourists 65 miles up at $200,000 a pop. Hooray! Now, if only I could see what the thing looks like… Unfortunately the website is totally slashdotted, so it'll have to wait until Google News catches up. Also, Richard Branson should be paying me a fee for continuing to promote his businesses on my blog. Just because I'm easy doesn't mean I have to be cheap.

Now, here's a question… Has anyone ever bought a new alarm clock and not missed their alarm time at least once? Mine was off by an hour. The culprit was a switch on the back that conveniently switches daylight saving time on and off, and is supposed to save the rigmarole of pressing the hour button 23 times (or more likely 47 times, since I always overshoot). The bad news is, it seems like it changes the alarm time back and forth by an hour as well. How does that make sense? The whole point of daylight saving time is that you spend the whole summer doing everything exactly an hour earlier, including responding to your alarm. If you change the alarm time along with the clock, they stay synchronized, which is the same thing as the alarm being an hour late. (It's actually not as confusing as it sounds.)