I swear sometimes in person, but tend to avoid it unless I'm with a small group of people I'm comfortable with (or who are drunk and won't remember). I rarely swear in writing, since I have all the time in the world to think about how I want to say something, and resorting to profanity just isn't necessary to get a point across.
I'm anti-consumerism, anti-commercialism, etc. There is a basic element in advertising that makes me angry, the emotional appeal. Look, it's someone using a product, and see how happy they are? His kid's are smiling at him, his wife is looking at him amorously. You want a happy family don't you? Don't you love your family? Or maybe it's a man in a labcoat explaining facts to you, while in the background is a chart with numbers and icons on it. See how smart you would be if you used our product? Don't you want to be smart? To use these kinds of appeals to make money is no better than running a whorehouse or a casino, preying on people with poor judgment.
So with the above commentary in mind, here is a quick product review of my newly purchased vacuum cleaner, the Dyson DC14 Animal: Holy shit!
My dog, Heidi, is a Siberian Husky, and just got through a seasonal coat-blow, and basically every fabric surface and every collection point on tile surfaces (corners, running boards, table legs) had hair on them. Trying to vacuum it up, I destroyed what I thought was a decent vacuum cleaner, a Bissel PowerForce bagless, which had until then done a stand-up job.
So yesterday I took a chunk of cash and went to Home Depot and grabbed a Dyson. With one simple jaunt around the living room, all the dog hair was gone, as well as the few outstanding Christmas tree needles, and a sizable amount of dust. With a pair of hose attachments, the stairs, corners, the couch, and my bed's comforter (frequent hangout spot of the dog) were all hair free.
In other news, Stacey got her first pair of glasses this week, and reports being able to see loads clearer. Time will tell if this has an impact on her school work, but I believe it will. Naturally, she still manages to look beautiful with glasses on.
We just got back from Spring break in North Carolina, where I spent most of the week bedridden with flu symptoms. I was well enough later in the week for us to run down to Carowinds and ride some rides and win some prizes. I'm better at the water-gun game (shoot the little target with a stream of water until the car drives to the top of the board), and won a pair of prizes that way. My new approach is to aim low, expect a miss, and be prepared to recover quickly from the miss, which worked for two out the three rounds I played.
Lastly, I've taken myself off of Lexapro. The end results were weight gain (30 pounds worth), higher blood pressure, constant fatigue, and slowed mental functions. I can't work at my job as a computer programmer if I'm tired and stupid, and was beginning to fall behind in my work. After the first few days of having a nasty temper (a know side-effect of withdrawal), I found my calm again, and for now it seems like I remember how to be calm and happy, and feel better than before I started taking Lexapro. I may need to revisit psychoactive drugs in the future, only time will tell. Right now I'm just happy to have a working brain again, normal blood pressure, and 8 of the extra 30 pounds gone. With my recent treadmill purchase, hopefully the other 22 (and more afterwards) will be gone in short order.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Fun with Postfix
The new auterytech.com web/mail server is online and configured to my liking. I decided to go with Postfix instead of Exim to try something new. It was painless to set up, but shortly afterwards I noticed a spam attack that successfully relayed a message using the server by a complex attack involving a bogus auterytech email address that was denied, followed by a blank from address.
It was a good exploit, actually, but it galvanized me into action, and I spent the next couple of days locking down the server against similar exploits and common identifiable spam headers. Since I don’t actually source any emails from auterytech, I was able to take further action and defer outbound SMTP traffic to a hold queue in case I missed something, and to go for broke I blocked outbound port 25 traffic on that server from my router. OK, relay a message now, Mr. Script Kiddie!
Why don’t I send email from auterytech? What’s the point of registering a domain and configuring a mail server to not send mail? Roadrunner. The IP address range for Roadrunner customers (and other services giving machines semi-dynamic addresses) is blocked on a lot of mail servers. I don’t have the money to pipe in my own T1 line, but I do have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
It was a good exploit, actually, but it galvanized me into action, and I spent the next couple of days locking down the server against similar exploits and common identifiable spam headers. Since I don’t actually source any emails from auterytech, I was able to take further action and defer outbound SMTP traffic to a hold queue in case I missed something, and to go for broke I blocked outbound port 25 traffic on that server from my router. OK, relay a message now, Mr. Script Kiddie!
Why don’t I send email from auterytech? What’s the point of registering a domain and configuring a mail server to not send mail? Roadrunner. The IP address range for Roadrunner customers (and other services giving machines semi-dynamic addresses) is blocked on a lot of mail servers. I don’t have the money to pipe in my own T1 line, but I do have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Upgrades
Profession upgrade: IT professional to child care center administrator
I finally took the plunge and hired a lawyer to help me research licensing requirements and grant opportunities to open my daycare. I fleshed out sort of a "manifesto" on child care philosophy, and I wholeheartedly believe that the core beliefs I have about running a business and how to correctly take care of kids will pan out.
My goal is to have funding, licensing, training, and a few possible sites picked out by this time next year, quit my current job by March 2008, and to open the doors on or before June 2, 2008. Here are some basic points that will be at the core of the business:
Body upgrade: Adrian Adonis to Randy Savage
I just spent the last of my annual bonus on exercise equipment that will be delivered this weekend. I've been meaning to hit the gym as frequently as possible for some time now, but it hasn't been happening due to both my own laziness, and my not wanting to be away from my kid for any length of time.
This Saturday will be clean out the garage day to make room for the chin-up bar, upright ab-crunch thingy combo, which will also expose my heavy punching bag, which has been surrounded by boxes for about 6 months.
The treadmill goes in the family room. It's light enough to be dragged out of the way (note to self: maybe move bookshelves to living room) when not in use, and if it isn't in sight all the time, I'm going to forget about it and let it gather dust, so it has to stay in a prominent place in the house. The one I bought is like one you'd find in a gym, complete with incline and a fan to blow on you (I can't decide if I think that's cool or silly).
Webserver upgrade: P2 300mhz to P4 1.4ghz
The auterytech.com server sitting in my closet is on its last leg. The ethernet card does not reconnect after a network outage, and ifdown/up eth0 doesn't fix the problem, and it needs to be rebooted every time. In addition, the hard drive is slowly disintegrating, and each reboot has me holding my breath when fsck runs. A few days ago there was an outage and I just couldn't get linux past the boot sequence. It turns out my keyboard was the culprit, and it was not sending my "control-D" or the complete root password when I was prompted.
So I decided to lay the little bastard to rest and use the P4 that has been unplugged for awhile. This was my Windows XP gaming computer in 2000, complete with the whopping 20 gig hard drive and 56k modem, w00t! To turn it into a decent webserver environment, I decided to go with Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty neat distro, and I'm a fan of the minimalist approach.
I just got apache working correctly (e.g., turned on during the boot sequence) last night before I went to bed, and the remaining steps are to install exim, and copy over the (now archived on a third machine after the earlier fiasco) content files. In the process, I think I'll ditch the encrypted journal, redirect calls to the main page to this blog, and just use it for private content and as a host for smaller images and cgi scripts where my low RoadRunner upstream won't be a big issue. (Of course, speed isn't an issue now, as I get about 5 or so legitimate hits a day). I hope to have everything finalized on the new machine by Sunday night.
I finally took the plunge and hired a lawyer to help me research licensing requirements and grant opportunities to open my daycare. I fleshed out sort of a "manifesto" on child care philosophy, and I wholeheartedly believe that the core beliefs I have about running a business and how to correctly take care of kids will pan out.
My goal is to have funding, licensing, training, and a few possible sites picked out by this time next year, quit my current job by March 2008, and to open the doors on or before June 2, 2008. Here are some basic points that will be at the core of the business:
- Low staff to child ratio
- Well compensated teachers (good pay, benefits)
- Well treated children
- Be the child's advocate
- Provide a healthy environment (good food, cleanliness, first aid supplies, etc.)
- Provide a comforting environment (no prison wardens allowed)
- Be the child's advocate
- Lots of room to play (not overcrowded)
- Child care is not a market.
- Play is a child's job
- Child care is not a market.
Body upgrade: Adrian Adonis to Randy Savage
I just spent the last of my annual bonus on exercise equipment that will be delivered this weekend. I've been meaning to hit the gym as frequently as possible for some time now, but it hasn't been happening due to both my own laziness, and my not wanting to be away from my kid for any length of time.
This Saturday will be clean out the garage day to make room for the chin-up bar, upright ab-crunch thingy combo, which will also expose my heavy punching bag, which has been surrounded by boxes for about 6 months.
The treadmill goes in the family room. It's light enough to be dragged out of the way (note to self: maybe move bookshelves to living room) when not in use, and if it isn't in sight all the time, I'm going to forget about it and let it gather dust, so it has to stay in a prominent place in the house. The one I bought is like one you'd find in a gym, complete with incline and a fan to blow on you (I can't decide if I think that's cool or silly).
Webserver upgrade: P2 300mhz to P4 1.4ghz
The auterytech.com server sitting in my closet is on its last leg. The ethernet card does not reconnect after a network outage, and ifdown/up eth0 doesn't fix the problem, and it needs to be rebooted every time. In addition, the hard drive is slowly disintegrating, and each reboot has me holding my breath when fsck runs. A few days ago there was an outage and I just couldn't get linux past the boot sequence. It turns out my keyboard was the culprit, and it was not sending my "control-D" or the complete root password when I was prompted.
So I decided to lay the little bastard to rest and use the P4 that has been unplugged for awhile. This was my Windows XP gaming computer in 2000, complete with the whopping 20 gig hard drive and 56k modem, w00t! To turn it into a decent webserver environment, I decided to go with Damn Small Linux, which is a pretty neat distro, and I'm a fan of the minimalist approach.
I just got apache working correctly (e.g., turned on during the boot sequence) last night before I went to bed, and the remaining steps are to install exim, and copy over the (now archived on a third machine after the earlier fiasco) content files. In the process, I think I'll ditch the encrypted journal, redirect calls to the main page to this blog, and just use it for private content and as a host for smaller images and cgi scripts where my low RoadRunner upstream won't be a big issue. (Of course, speed isn't an issue now, as I get about 5 or so legitimate hits a day). I hope to have everything finalized on the new machine by Sunday night.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Fork in the road
Judging by what I've seen of her interactions with kids at school lately, whatever slump Stacey was in socially has abated. She seems happy when I pick her up from school, lots of kids say goodbye to her, and kids I don't know are being invited over for sleepovers.
One such example was Haley, who came over with another girl for a Saturday/Sunday sleepover. We didn't do anything fancy, just ordered a couple pizzas and went to a movie. Stacey and the other girls were happy and animated, didn't fight, got very little sleep. It's always nice to see a smile on my kid's face, especially with new friends. As for the staying up too late, they are no doubt paying for it today at school. Fortunately, the week of BS standardized testing is over, so they can afford to only be on their B games for one day.
In other news, I just paid off my credit card, and have vowed to never use it again. I'm struggling now to get my car paid off early, and to increase my emergency account funding from the measly $2000 in there now to an amount that would actually get me through an emergency. If I stick to my budget plan, don't get fired, and the price of gas stays under $5 a gallon for a little while longer, I'll be able to meet all my personal financial goals and still help Stacey with college.
I would consider it easy money, except for the little devil on my shoulder telling me to go take risks. I've been doing some beginning research on day care expenses and crunching numbers, considering everything from liability insurance and taxes to 401k matches and field trips, and I think that I can charge a reasonable rate and still pay the teachers well. Either I'm missing something, or what I've heard about day cares only being able to afford paying teachers kibbles and running a very thin profit line is all a sham.
I want to make my escape from IT and work with kids, which I've been saying for the last 5 years, but I also have financial commitments to my daughter. Her needs outweigh my desires, so I won't take any leaps unless I'm reasonably sure I'll be successful (or at least that I'll be able to recover from). I imagine this is what creates the resentment that some parents have for their children, when they realize that they are the old generation caring for the new, and that their pleasure and freedom has suddenly come to a stop. For me, being wishy-washy about making decisions helps to avoid that potential conflict.
I've been thinking about my escape and future entrepreneurship a lot lately, and will soon make the choice one way or the other to go for it, or to stay secure in the work I know will pay well, or take the unsure road of the work I would much rather be doing. Will I choose the road less traveled by? You know, the one that makes all the difference? Stay tuned.
One such example was Haley, who came over with another girl for a Saturday/Sunday sleepover. We didn't do anything fancy, just ordered a couple pizzas and went to a movie. Stacey and the other girls were happy and animated, didn't fight, got very little sleep. It's always nice to see a smile on my kid's face, especially with new friends. As for the staying up too late, they are no doubt paying for it today at school. Fortunately, the week of BS standardized testing is over, so they can afford to only be on their B games for one day.
In other news, I just paid off my credit card, and have vowed to never use it again. I'm struggling now to get my car paid off early, and to increase my emergency account funding from the measly $2000 in there now to an amount that would actually get me through an emergency. If I stick to my budget plan, don't get fired, and the price of gas stays under $5 a gallon for a little while longer, I'll be able to meet all my personal financial goals and still help Stacey with college.
I would consider it easy money, except for the little devil on my shoulder telling me to go take risks. I've been doing some beginning research on day care expenses and crunching numbers, considering everything from liability insurance and taxes to 401k matches and field trips, and I think that I can charge a reasonable rate and still pay the teachers well. Either I'm missing something, or what I've heard about day cares only being able to afford paying teachers kibbles and running a very thin profit line is all a sham.
I want to make my escape from IT and work with kids, which I've been saying for the last 5 years, but I also have financial commitments to my daughter. Her needs outweigh my desires, so I won't take any leaps unless I'm reasonably sure I'll be successful (or at least that I'll be able to recover from). I imagine this is what creates the resentment that some parents have for their children, when they realize that they are the old generation caring for the new, and that their pleasure and freedom has suddenly come to a stop. For me, being wishy-washy about making decisions helps to avoid that potential conflict.
I've been thinking about my escape and future entrepreneurship a lot lately, and will soon make the choice one way or the other to go for it, or to stay secure in the work I know will pay well, or take the unsure road of the work I would much rather be doing. Will I choose the road less traveled by? You know, the one that makes all the difference? Stay tuned.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Valentine's day & the talent show
If you really loved me, you'd buy me something from my wishlist, or at least read one of my favorite books for yourself.
Valentine's Day was pretty fun this year, both because I have no romantic interest right now, and also because I attended my kid's class Valentine's day party. I was the only fourth grade father to attend a party, and did my best to ham it up, including sitting at an empty desk with an empty boardgame box (Boggle) patiently awaiting my Valentines, and various one-liners. It was also my job to distribute pizza and pop (Cherry 7-Up, since it's red), so I organized the cups into a heart(ish) shape thusly:
The kids, teachers, and other volunteers seemed to enjoy my antics, which is worth the price of playing the fool.
Friday the 17th was this year's talent show for my kid's school. She was in two acts, one with her friends doing "Do You Believe In Magic", like I talked about last post, and a solo medley of three Disney tunes that she and her voice coach have been working on. Both were great, and I recorded them with my new camcorder, and burned my first DVD with the show's footage. iMovie and iDVD both proved to be pretty painless to use to that effect.
I also ended up with two possible images of my daughter in action to replace my outdated "Action Stace" icon used on auterytech.com. The old one was of her when she was 4:
That's been a favorite of mine for 5 years now, but she doesn't look like that any more, so it's time to move on.
A final note on the talent show: Stacey's acts went off without a hitch. The music was loud and clear, and the event was remarkably stress free. Contrast that to what happened last year, which was the final catalyst that sent me to my doctor saying "I don't want to be angry any more". Here is my journal entry from last year's talent show:
Valentine's Day was pretty fun this year, both because I have no romantic interest right now, and also because I attended my kid's class Valentine's day party. I was the only fourth grade father to attend a party, and did my best to ham it up, including sitting at an empty desk with an empty boardgame box (Boggle) patiently awaiting my Valentines, and various one-liners. It was also my job to distribute pizza and pop (Cherry 7-Up, since it's red), so I organized the cups into a heart(ish) shape thusly:
The kids, teachers, and other volunteers seemed to enjoy my antics, which is worth the price of playing the fool.
Friday the 17th was this year's talent show for my kid's school. She was in two acts, one with her friends doing "Do You Believe In Magic", like I talked about last post, and a solo medley of three Disney tunes that she and her voice coach have been working on. Both were great, and I recorded them with my new camcorder, and burned my first DVD with the show's footage. iMovie and iDVD both proved to be pretty painless to use to that effect.
I also ended up with two possible images of my daughter in action to replace my outdated "Action Stace" icon used on auterytech.com. The old one was of her when she was 4:
That's been a favorite of mine for 5 years now, but she doesn't look like that any more, so it's time to move on.
A final note on the talent show: Stacey's acts went off without a hitch. The music was loud and clear, and the event was remarkably stress free. Contrast that to what happened last year, which was the final catalyst that sent me to my doctor saying "I don't want to be angry any more". Here is my journal entry from last year's talent show:
February 26, 2005
I felt rage today like I haven't felt for 10 years, and it was very liberating. It also passed quickly and didn't consume me like it would have at 23. But today wasn't about me, it was about Stacey.
Today was the talent show, and Stacey's first solo act. Grandma and Grandpa drove down from Wisconsin. The ex and I sat together and didn't fight. Stacey had a home-made Annie dress that grandma made and sent down, and an official Annie wig from one of Columbus's only year-round costume stores, and make up put on by an official teenager. Her act was well rehearsed, and she was taking it seriously, and sounding better each week. When it was her turn to perform, the spotlight came on, the song intro played, she spoke her opening dialog... And then the music died.
Trouble in the sound booth, since this was a free event and the Westerville South high school students running the sound couldn't get the music working. And Stacey stood there waiting, and looking nervous and confused. And she looked to the stage hand and turned up her hand questioningly. Of course, I thought, the suburban world that has struggled to beat all the happiness out of our lives raised another hateful fist. Of course many of the kids who Stacey thought were friends asked each other to be in duos and trios, but Stacey wasn't invited to join them. Of course since I was a parent that was not a member of the precious elite inner circle of suburban snobbery then it would be Stacey's solo act that would be the one to fail. And my beautiful daughter, who tried so hard to fit in and make friends and be a happy little girl, of course it would be her that would be crushed on her last attempt to make the world see that she was special and worth something. Of course.
And the rage came. OK, I thought, Stacey can have free reign from now on to be as destructive and anti-social to these bastards as she wants, and God help anyone who hints to me that there's a problem.
But as I said, this wasn't about me, it was about her. My rage came, but hers didn't. She waited for the music, and when it didn't come, she sang.
"I just stick out my chin, and grin, and say
the sun will come out tomorrow,
so you gotta hang on 'till tomorrow
come what may..."
My beautiful girl wasn't hurt, and knew the world wasn't trying to beat her down, and she sang her piece a cappella. She sang, and she played with the audience like her voice coach had practiced with her "Raise your hand if you believe, no truly believe the sun will shine tomorrow...don't be shy". And she sang, and she danced, and she was animated.
And they cheered. And they clapped. And they loved her. They loved my beautiful girl, who was trying to make it work, who did the best she could with what she had. They loved my girl, who was always such a better person than me. The girl that keeps me going. My Anastasia, you make me so proud.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Links of the day
No Autistics Allowed :: Beautifully well written articles and letters by Michelle Dawson describing her struggle for increasing the rights and perceived worth of autistics. Her writing style evokes a lot of emotion from me, due to both its clarity and fluidity, and also for the persistence in her struggle.
Webhosting is a market for lemons :: A thoughtful summary of the webhosting market as viewed from a financial/game theory perspective. It focuses on the concept of information asymmetry.
Well, it's tax season again. Even after adjusting my deductions last year, I'm still getting a sizeable return. Granted I'm happy with getting the money, but my goal was to get all the money I had coming to me in each paycheck, and end up with a zero balance on April 15. I'll have to re-examine my deductions again this year.
Stacey and a couple friends from her class are rehearsing their rendition of "Do You Believe In Magic", not the one by the Loving Spoonful, mind you, but the girly-pop remake by "Aly and AJ", whoever they are. Still, the kids are having fun, which matters more than my love of original versions of 60s tunes.
I decided to take Martin Luther King jr day off from work since Stacey will be out of school that day. She's having a modest-sized sleepover Sunday night (probably 3 other girls), and we'll probably all go hit a movie or something Monday. Should be a fun, hopefully low-stress weekend.
Webhosting is a market for lemons :: A thoughtful summary of the webhosting market as viewed from a financial/game theory perspective. It focuses on the concept of information asymmetry.
Well, it's tax season again. Even after adjusting my deductions last year, I'm still getting a sizeable return. Granted I'm happy with getting the money, but my goal was to get all the money I had coming to me in each paycheck, and end up with a zero balance on April 15. I'll have to re-examine my deductions again this year.
Stacey and a couple friends from her class are rehearsing their rendition of "Do You Believe In Magic", not the one by the Loving Spoonful, mind you, but the girly-pop remake by "Aly and AJ", whoever they are. Still, the kids are having fun, which matters more than my love of original versions of 60s tunes.
I decided to take Martin Luther King jr day off from work since Stacey will be out of school that day. She's having a modest-sized sleepover Sunday night (probably 3 other girls), and we'll probably all go hit a movie or something Monday. Should be a fun, hopefully low-stress weekend.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Interesting commentary style on arstechnica
The arstechnica.com website is, so I believed, a tech news site similar to Wired or any of the Ziff/Davis fare. I rarely surf these sites directly, but instead read individual stories from these sites that are linked to from sites like Slashdot.org. I read an interesting story today written by Ryan Paul, that contained an unusual amount of opinion mixed in with the normal reporting. The article was on Internet censorship in China, and is available here.
Here are some of the more interesting comments that pepper the article:
Like most other communist states, China and its government have very little respect for civil liberties and personal autonomy.
Censorship of Internet pornography is rarely effective.
I doubt that censorship and oppression in China will end any time soon,
It's almost as though I'm reading my local paper, The Columbus Dispatch. This article appears today listed on arstechnica's front page under the column "From the News Desk". Despite being declared news, most of the aritcle is either opinion or factual declarations without sources being cited (e.g., "the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority").
So my question is, did Mr. Paul get paid for this? If so, where can I submit my stream of thought opinions for some extra cash?
Here are some of the more interesting comments that pepper the article:
It's almost as though I'm reading my local paper, The Columbus Dispatch. This article appears today listed on arstechnica's front page under the column "From the News Desk". Despite being declared news, most of the aritcle is either opinion or factual declarations without sources being cited (e.g., "the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority").
So my question is, did Mr. Paul get paid for this? If so, where can I submit my stream of thought opinions for some extra cash?
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Fun with Firefox extensions
We've had a little downtime at work since the end of the year is approaching, so between emergencies I've been exploring the world of Firefox extensions. In standard open-source style, there are a few projects that are useful and are well-written, and many that are either whimsical or provide functionality that can be found in better quality apps elsewhere (calendar apps and web accelerators, for example).
The three I've installed so far are Adblock, NoScript, and Performancing (which I'm using to write this blog entry). Adblock does what the name suggests, blocks advertisements. Give it a pattern, such as http://*.falkag.net/*, and data that comes from that source is blocked. NoScript lets you block JavaScript (and applets like Java and Shockwave), but enable it on sites you trust.
Performancing links into a few blogging services, Blogger being one of them, and provides a little HTML editor about as sophisticated as the old Composer app from Netscape 3.0 Gold, one of my favorite editors from pre Y2K. Highlight the right blog, type your post, click Publish, voilá. The main drawback, which I can live with, is a slightly wacky rich text box. It reminds me a little of this (IE only, and try the right-click menu) editor I was working on several years back, one of my many abandoned projects.
Christmas went OK. The ex had Stacey, so she and I opened some presents a few days before Christmas, and I saved some for when she gets back from visiting Grandma and Grandpa up in Wisconsin. She was still in town Christmas day, so I picked her up in the afternoon and we saw Chicken Little, which was suprisingly good.
I had Friday and Monday off from work, and didn't have the kid, so I slept about 10 hours a night for 4 nights in a row. I'm a new man.
The three I've installed so far are Adblock, NoScript, and Performancing (which I'm using to write this blog entry). Adblock does what the name suggests, blocks advertisements. Give it a pattern, such as http://*.falkag.net/*, and data that comes from that source is blocked. NoScript lets you block JavaScript (and applets like Java and Shockwave), but enable it on sites you trust.
Performancing links into a few blogging services, Blogger being one of them, and provides a little HTML editor about as sophisticated as the old Composer app from Netscape 3.0 Gold, one of my favorite editors from pre Y2K. Highlight the right blog, type your post, click Publish, voilá. The main drawback, which I can live with, is a slightly wacky rich text box. It reminds me a little of this (IE only, and try the right-click menu) editor I was working on several years back, one of my many abandoned projects.
Christmas went OK. The ex had Stacey, so she and I opened some presents a few days before Christmas, and I saved some for when she gets back from visiting Grandma and Grandpa up in Wisconsin. She was still in town Christmas day, so I picked her up in the afternoon and we saw Chicken Little, which was suprisingly good.
I had Friday and Monday off from work, and didn't have the kid, so I slept about 10 hours a night for 4 nights in a row. I'm a new man.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Merry Christmas
Hello, fair readers, I hope Christmas finds you well.
Here's a randomly generated ASCII tree for your enjoyment:
And the perl source code for generating it:
Here's a randomly generated ASCII tree for your enjoyment:
**
***o
******
||******
**********
*||***o**|**
o*****o*******
*****||*****o***
*o****|***********
**********o*o****o|*
********o***|****o*o**
|o|o****o**|***|******|o
**************************
**|************o************
****o**o*o****o*****|*|*******
*****o|o*|**o**o****************
********|**o******************o*o*
o***************o***||*********o****
***o****o***o|*******|****************
******o*******************|****|****||*|
****o*o********|***o**|***************o***
******|****|*************************|****||
***********************||******|*****o********
**o*||******o*o|**|****|***|**|*****************
**************************o*******o***************
_||_
And the perl source code for generating it:
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub symbol {
my $r = rand;
return '|' if $r < .07;
return 'o' if $r < .15;
'*';
}
my $width = shift || 30;
for my $cnt (1..$width/2) {
print "\n", ' ' x ($width/2 - $cnt);
print symbol for 1..2*$cnt;
}
print "\n", ' ' x ($width/2 - 2) . "_||_\n\n\n";
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Christmas 2005
To-Do List:
- Visit relatives :: done
- Presents for relatives :: done
- Activity for Stacey and her friends :: done
- Presents for Stacey :: done
- Presents for Roomie :: done
- Presents for Mentee :: done
- Presents for dog :: done
- Buy tree :: done
- Bake cookies :: done
- Decorate tree :: in progress
- Wrap presents :: not started
Everything Christmas has progressed on schedule this year, and yet I feel that I'm really cutting it close. I think it's just the unwrapped presents that are gnawing at me, and possibly that Stacey has had a lot of activities that I had little choice in, such as singing exhibitions with her school choir and voice coach's theater group, a trip with her "Able and Talented" math class.
The main stressor on top of the crazy schedule was the one big event I tried to schedule in the middle of all that, the dinner/movie/sleepover with 6 of her friends. Strangely enough, that went off without a hitch. All but one of the girls who were invited were able to go, plus a friend of one of the neighbor girls who everyone thought should tag along to use up the extra movie ticket. Dinner was at Buca Di Beppo, a very good Italian restaurant close to my favorite theater, the Arena Grand. At the theater, I had balcony tickets for the girls to see "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", which was great (and had most of the girls crying at some point or other).
At the sleepover everyone stayed up until about 3:30am playing singing and dancing games, and bickering as they got tired, standard fare when a bunch of little girls get together for a night. I came off looking like the cool dad I am, and plus that can count as Christmas presents for everyone, releaving us from an obligation that is still ill-defined in popular American holiday culture: gifts for neighbors.
Last night Stacey and I baked some homemade cookies that turned out great. I used a recipe from the Food Network show "How to Boil Water", of all things. The recipe was as follows:
1 cup + 6 tbs all purpose flour. (This amount is puzzling, but I do what I'm told)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix:
1 softened stick of unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown to, um, kick it up a notch)
1/2 cup cane sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
Mix until creamy
Mix in dry ingredients
Chop up 6oz of bittersweet chocolate (not chips) into yeah-big pieces (I used 4 because that's the size of the bar I had, and that worked fine). Mix chocolate with other stuff. Roll into yeah-big spheres and squish down just a little. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.
Good cookies, not much prep time, and we both had fun mixing, rolling, and squishing. Try it.
- Visit relatives :: done
- Presents for relatives :: done
- Activity for Stacey and her friends :: done
- Presents for Stacey :: done
- Presents for Roomie :: done
- Presents for Mentee :: done
- Presents for dog :: done
- Buy tree :: done
- Bake cookies :: done
- Decorate tree :: in progress
- Wrap presents :: not started
Everything Christmas has progressed on schedule this year, and yet I feel that I'm really cutting it close. I think it's just the unwrapped presents that are gnawing at me, and possibly that Stacey has had a lot of activities that I had little choice in, such as singing exhibitions with her school choir and voice coach's theater group, a trip with her "Able and Talented" math class.
The main stressor on top of the crazy schedule was the one big event I tried to schedule in the middle of all that, the dinner/movie/sleepover with 6 of her friends. Strangely enough, that went off without a hitch. All but one of the girls who were invited were able to go, plus a friend of one of the neighbor girls who everyone thought should tag along to use up the extra movie ticket. Dinner was at Buca Di Beppo, a very good Italian restaurant close to my favorite theater, the Arena Grand. At the theater, I had balcony tickets for the girls to see "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe", which was great (and had most of the girls crying at some point or other).
At the sleepover everyone stayed up until about 3:30am playing singing and dancing games, and bickering as they got tired, standard fare when a bunch of little girls get together for a night. I came off looking like the cool dad I am, and plus that can count as Christmas presents for everyone, releaving us from an obligation that is still ill-defined in popular American holiday culture: gifts for neighbors.
Last night Stacey and I baked some homemade cookies that turned out great. I used a recipe from the Food Network show "How to Boil Water", of all things. The recipe was as follows:
1 cup + 6 tbs all purpose flour. (This amount is puzzling, but I do what I'm told)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix:
1 softened stick of unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown to, um, kick it up a notch)
1/2 cup cane sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
Mix until creamy
Mix in dry ingredients
Chop up 6oz of bittersweet chocolate (not chips) into yeah-big pieces (I used 4 because that's the size of the bar I had, and that worked fine). Mix chocolate with other stuff. Roll into yeah-big spheres and squish down just a little. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.
Good cookies, not much prep time, and we both had fun mixing, rolling, and squishing. Try it.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
MythTV
Well, I finally got MythTV up and running on my Linux box. That would be this box:
This is the box I set up back in 2002 to be my main gaming and Linux desktop system. Since I spend more time on the iMac now than any other system in the house, I figured I'd put this one to good use.
It was a painful stretch of several days, trying to steal away a few minutes here and there to work on it, and overcoming one obstacle over another. I had purchased a WinTV PVR-150 model 1045 to set this up with, and had a lot of problems recognizing the tuner, and getting versions of MythTV and the Linux kernel, PVR-150 drivers (from both the ivtv website and my install CD) that all worked well together. I ended up with the following:
KnoppMyth R5A16
Linux Kernel 2.6.11
manual compile of ivtv 0.3.8
edit /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv to add line "options bttv card=80 tuner=6", and add "/sbin/modprobe bttv;" as first paramater after "install ivtv"
Seems pretty simple, but I was starting from scratch with how the modules interacted, where config files were, and how video4linux indexed my tuner. It was a bear, and I was about 1 or 2 reboots away from taking my tuner card back. Now things are up and running pretty smoothly and I'm able to record, download schedules, read the news, etc. This is only day 1, though, and I expect more problems to tackle as time goes on.
In other news, tomorrow morning starts the new schedule with me and Stacey. I'm up before dawn to get ready for work and cook breakfast, then dropping her off at a neighbor's house to be taken to school, and I'm getting home in time to pick her (and occasionally her friends) up from school. Cheaper than day care, I beat rush hour traffic to and from work, and I get to spend the critical first hour after school with my kid every day for the rest of the school year.
Last in the news of the week is this Thursday Stacey and probably an assortment of her friends will be heading out to a pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins, buy farmer's market goodies, run through corn mazes, etc. It should be a hoot.
This is the box I set up back in 2002 to be my main gaming and Linux desktop system. Since I spend more time on the iMac now than any other system in the house, I figured I'd put this one to good use.
It was a painful stretch of several days, trying to steal away a few minutes here and there to work on it, and overcoming one obstacle over another. I had purchased a WinTV PVR-150 model 1045 to set this up with, and had a lot of problems recognizing the tuner, and getting versions of MythTV and the Linux kernel, PVR-150 drivers (from both the ivtv website and my install CD) that all worked well together. I ended up with the following:
KnoppMyth R5A16
Linux Kernel 2.6.11
manual compile of ivtv 0.3.8
edit /etc/mythtv/modules/ivtv to add line "options bttv card=80 tuner=6", and add "/sbin/modprobe bttv;" as first paramater after "install ivtv"
Seems pretty simple, but I was starting from scratch with how the modules interacted, where config files were, and how video4linux indexed my tuner. It was a bear, and I was about 1 or 2 reboots away from taking my tuner card back. Now things are up and running pretty smoothly and I'm able to record, download schedules, read the news, etc. This is only day 1, though, and I expect more problems to tackle as time goes on.
In other news, tomorrow morning starts the new schedule with me and Stacey. I'm up before dawn to get ready for work and cook breakfast, then dropping her off at a neighbor's house to be taken to school, and I'm getting home in time to pick her (and occasionally her friends) up from school. Cheaper than day care, I beat rush hour traffic to and from work, and I get to spend the critical first hour after school with my kid every day for the rest of the school year.
Last in the news of the week is this Thursday Stacey and probably an assortment of her friends will be heading out to a pumpkin patch to pick some pumpkins, buy farmer's market goodies, run through corn mazes, etc. It should be a hoot.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
My mom moved out. More details available on request. The biggest impacts this has on me is requiring me to spend more time with my kid, a good thing, and requiring me to keep close ties with my neighbors, another good thing.
I picked my first lock today. It was the Kensington cable lock that secures my laptop to its docking station at work. I attempted to pick the lock Monday; I left work early and needed to take my laptop with me, but couldn't find the key to the Kensington lock. I actually failed to pick the lock, and after some more searching I found the key. I didn't want to get caught in that situation again, so I examined closely how the mechanism worked, and read about exploiting that type of lock on the net.
My tool of choice for picking the lock is a thin plastic strip used in the packaging of boxes of printer paper. Snip a small segment off, feed it into the lock, and twist. This is an improvement, in my opinion, over the other popular attacks, namely the scissors and paperclip, two paperclips, and the toilet paper roll and duct tape attacks. My best time so far with the plastic strip is slightly under a minute. Locksmithing might be a fun hobby, I'll have to put that on my to-do list.
Unfortunately, my to-do list still has items from 1987 on it.
I picked my first lock today. It was the Kensington cable lock that secures my laptop to its docking station at work. I attempted to pick the lock Monday; I left work early and needed to take my laptop with me, but couldn't find the key to the Kensington lock. I actually failed to pick the lock, and after some more searching I found the key. I didn't want to get caught in that situation again, so I examined closely how the mechanism worked, and read about exploiting that type of lock on the net.
My tool of choice for picking the lock is a thin plastic strip used in the packaging of boxes of printer paper. Snip a small segment off, feed it into the lock, and twist. This is an improvement, in my opinion, over the other popular attacks, namely the scissors and paperclip, two paperclips, and the toilet paper roll and duct tape attacks. My best time so far with the plastic strip is slightly under a minute. Locksmithing might be a fun hobby, I'll have to put that on my to-do list.
Unfortunately, my to-do list still has items from 1987 on it.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Road trip fun
A few minor goings-on. I won a Voit wristwatch, probably worth about $10, from a video game at a truckstop on the West Virginia Turnpike. I fed the machine a single dollar, figuring I'd get some mindless entertainment while my daughter and mother looked for knick-knacks.
The game was from a new breed of prize games that lets you play for a while and win a small prize, and have the option of continuing and playing for a more expensive prize, or stopping and getting the chintzy one. The actual game was a cheap knock-off of "Snake", where you navigate a snake on a board who gets longer when he eats food that appears randomly. I wasted the first of my two games figuring out the timing, which was unusual, as the snake sped up dramatically the further the joystick was moved. I quickly crashed after only picking up a few bites of food, but used that experience to easily win the second game, opting to stop at the chintzy prize level rather than continue. I couldn't figure out how to select which of the low-end prizes I wanted, hoping for the small teddy-bear on a keychain for my daughter, when out popped the wristwatch.
My mother is a little irritated that I've taken to wearing the watch, since she bought me one for my birthday that cost her more than the dollar mine cost me. Heh.
We were on the West Virginia Turnpike because we were coming back from spending Labor Day weekend in North Carolina with our family down there. Stacey and I missed the annual family reunion because of a commitment to practice that weekend for an upcoming outdoor musical show put on by her voice teacher. She was missed at the reunion, and I promised my Grandmother that we would at least come down for a visit later.
Another odd event that happened was at a Wendy's in Zanesville Ohio, about an hour away from home. We stopped in for a quick dinner, and since it was after dark, all the hooligans were out. Four teenage girls showing off their midriffs and party clothes were at a table being impressed by the antics of a short teenage boy sporting rich-boy-trying-to-look-ghetto clothes, talking on his cellphone to some sort of antagonist. He yells at the phone for a while, and finishes the call with "you want some, punk? Here I come," and then hangs up and turns around to leave, smacking right into me.
He politely mumbles "oh, excuse me, sir," before returning to the table of girls to reiterate that he really-really is going to go fight this guy now, because "this guy thinks he's tough, and I'm sick of it!"
"Be careful," one of the girls worriedly cautions him. Then he leaves. The event was comical, amounting to the same thing as a high-school shoving match done mainly for the spectators to see how vicious and crazy the two "combatants" are. However, I was upset that the boy was so polite to me, and didn't seem to consider it a problem leaving the four girls in an otherwise empty restaraunt with me (my girls were at the connected gas station looking for candy and pop, so for all chumpy knew, I was alone). What am I, not a threat any more? I guess that means I'm getting old. "Excuse me, sir," indeed.
The game was from a new breed of prize games that lets you play for a while and win a small prize, and have the option of continuing and playing for a more expensive prize, or stopping and getting the chintzy one. The actual game was a cheap knock-off of "Snake", where you navigate a snake on a board who gets longer when he eats food that appears randomly. I wasted the first of my two games figuring out the timing, which was unusual, as the snake sped up dramatically the further the joystick was moved. I quickly crashed after only picking up a few bites of food, but used that experience to easily win the second game, opting to stop at the chintzy prize level rather than continue. I couldn't figure out how to select which of the low-end prizes I wanted, hoping for the small teddy-bear on a keychain for my daughter, when out popped the wristwatch.
My mother is a little irritated that I've taken to wearing the watch, since she bought me one for my birthday that cost her more than the dollar mine cost me. Heh.
We were on the West Virginia Turnpike because we were coming back from spending Labor Day weekend in North Carolina with our family down there. Stacey and I missed the annual family reunion because of a commitment to practice that weekend for an upcoming outdoor musical show put on by her voice teacher. She was missed at the reunion, and I promised my Grandmother that we would at least come down for a visit later.
Another odd event that happened was at a Wendy's in Zanesville Ohio, about an hour away from home. We stopped in for a quick dinner, and since it was after dark, all the hooligans were out. Four teenage girls showing off their midriffs and party clothes were at a table being impressed by the antics of a short teenage boy sporting rich-boy-trying-to-look-ghetto clothes, talking on his cellphone to some sort of antagonist. He yells at the phone for a while, and finishes the call with "you want some, punk? Here I come," and then hangs up and turns around to leave, smacking right into me.
He politely mumbles "oh, excuse me, sir," before returning to the table of girls to reiterate that he really-really is going to go fight this guy now, because "this guy thinks he's tough, and I'm sick of it!"
"Be careful," one of the girls worriedly cautions him. Then he leaves. The event was comical, amounting to the same thing as a high-school shoving match done mainly for the spectators to see how vicious and crazy the two "combatants" are. However, I was upset that the boy was so polite to me, and didn't seem to consider it a problem leaving the four girls in an otherwise empty restaraunt with me (my girls were at the connected gas station looking for candy and pop, so for all chumpy knew, I was alone). What am I, not a threat any more? I guess that means I'm getting old. "Excuse me, sir," indeed.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Girls, Girls, Girls
I've been around little girls so much over the past 9 days that I've been soliciting my male neighbors to talk about football and monster trucks in an effort to achieve normality. I took a week off of work to celebrate Stacey's last week of summer break before school starts again, and I found myself hanging out with her and her friends a lot more than I imagined I would.
First was the rock-climbing birthday party, a raging success, but a lower turnout than I expected. We had 8 kids total, and missing were 3 who had confirmed and 2 I thought would definitely show since they had in the past. Had they all showed, though, the party would have not gone as well since we had just enough adults to belay the climbers that showed up. Everyone had a good time and got thoroughly exhausted, and then managed to go through 4 large pizzas and most of 2 birthday cakes. Stacey got lots of loot and lots of attention, so she was happy. She's also a good climber, the first to make it to the top of the climbing structure.
Next was the Monday sleepover, followed by the Tuesday babysitting of all her friends who's parents were at work, followed by a somewhat costly trip to Dairy Queen with all the girls who slept over plus one straggler. Nothing required an inhuman effort from me to manage, it was just an all day affair with giggling girls dancing to pop music and playing with Brats dolls, the new Barbie. I jumped in occasionally, teaching the kids the correct way to do some old school dances like the robot and the swimmer, and showing them the one my posse made up back in the early 90s, the "readin' the book".
After that was the Hillary Duff concert. A neighbor had tickets she couldn't use and asked me if I wanted to take Stacey. I said sure, and brought two of her friends with us. The girls were giddy, doing their makeup in the car, and running around with their little purses and sashes. At the concert I decided to be extra generous and blew my extra spending cash on concert T-shirts for all 3 of them and some drinks and popcorn. They all had a blast, shrieking until they were hoarse. I still have a slight ringing in my ears from the whole ordeal.
Last was the lemonade stand and cleaning up the fallout from it. The girls and I went through a car wash, and then they helped me vacuum out my car, very nice of them. Afterwards I chaperoned them going to a local grocery store to buy poster board, lemonade mix, and pop, most of which they purchased with their own money. After a quick stop at the pet store for them to play with hamsters and a puppy, we went back and they started work on their advertising, and set up their stand early the next morning.
After spending all day out in the heat selling drinks and failing to make back their expenses, they were all at each other's throats, and I tried to heal any emotional wounds by taking them all out that evening for ice cream. Again. That went moderately well, and I expect they'll be best friends again sometime soon.
Now I've had enough little girl activities to last me a long while, and Stacey had a busy week with her friends with lots of ups and very few downs. A good last week of summer vacation.
First was the rock-climbing birthday party, a raging success, but a lower turnout than I expected. We had 8 kids total, and missing were 3 who had confirmed and 2 I thought would definitely show since they had in the past. Had they all showed, though, the party would have not gone as well since we had just enough adults to belay the climbers that showed up. Everyone had a good time and got thoroughly exhausted, and then managed to go through 4 large pizzas and most of 2 birthday cakes. Stacey got lots of loot and lots of attention, so she was happy. She's also a good climber, the first to make it to the top of the climbing structure.
Next was the Monday sleepover, followed by the Tuesday babysitting of all her friends who's parents were at work, followed by a somewhat costly trip to Dairy Queen with all the girls who slept over plus one straggler. Nothing required an inhuman effort from me to manage, it was just an all day affair with giggling girls dancing to pop music and playing with Brats dolls, the new Barbie. I jumped in occasionally, teaching the kids the correct way to do some old school dances like the robot and the swimmer, and showing them the one my posse made up back in the early 90s, the "readin' the book".
After that was the Hillary Duff concert. A neighbor had tickets she couldn't use and asked me if I wanted to take Stacey. I said sure, and brought two of her friends with us. The girls were giddy, doing their makeup in the car, and running around with their little purses and sashes. At the concert I decided to be extra generous and blew my extra spending cash on concert T-shirts for all 3 of them and some drinks and popcorn. They all had a blast, shrieking until they were hoarse. I still have a slight ringing in my ears from the whole ordeal.
Last was the lemonade stand and cleaning up the fallout from it. The girls and I went through a car wash, and then they helped me vacuum out my car, very nice of them. Afterwards I chaperoned them going to a local grocery store to buy poster board, lemonade mix, and pop, most of which they purchased with their own money. After a quick stop at the pet store for them to play with hamsters and a puppy, we went back and they started work on their advertising, and set up their stand early the next morning.
After spending all day out in the heat selling drinks and failing to make back their expenses, they were all at each other's throats, and I tried to heal any emotional wounds by taking them all out that evening for ice cream. Again. That went moderately well, and I expect they'll be best friends again sometime soon.
Now I've had enough little girl activities to last me a long while, and Stacey had a busy week with her friends with lots of ups and very few downs. A good last week of summer vacation.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Party
Tomorrow is Stacey's birthday, W00t! However, it will probably rain. B00t!
In a week or so, provided people have a good time, I'll have some pictures out on my photo site of the event. This year we're doing a climbing party at a place called Summit Vision, where the kids (and maybe some adults) will climb a climbing tower and various other things. Seemed like a cool idea.
Go buy some jewelry.
Butterfly Lane Creations
Yes, this is a shameless plug. The above link is for the website of a friend of mine who I used to work with. I helped her tweak some CGI and HTML, and had a chance to see some of the bracelets and such close-up. Good stuff.
Working on the site gave me a chance to brush up on my CSS a little bit, and I'm adding another item to my to-do-when-I'm-not-feeling-lazy list, writing a template for this site that I'm more happy with. Maybe one day I'll get around to it.
In a week or so, provided people have a good time, I'll have some pictures out on my photo site of the event. This year we're doing a climbing party at a place called Summit Vision, where the kids (and maybe some adults) will climb a climbing tower and various other things. Seemed like a cool idea.
Go buy some jewelry.
Butterfly Lane Creations
Yes, this is a shameless plug. The above link is for the website of a friend of mine who I used to work with. I helped her tweak some CGI and HTML, and had a chance to see some of the bracelets and such close-up. Good stuff.
Working on the site gave me a chance to brush up on my CSS a little bit, and I'm adding another item to my to-do-when-I'm-not-feeling-lazy list, writing a template for this site that I'm more happy with. Maybe one day I'll get around to it.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Coathanger = po man's plumber
I learned everything I need to know in life not in Kindergarten, but by watching Macgyver. I'm also close to dead broke right for various reasons, so when my kitchen sink backed up last night, calling a plumber wasn't an option I was ready to entertain. Buying a $5 bottle of Liquid Plumber was also not going to happen if I could avoid it.
After debating for a few minutes with my roomie on the best approach for using a coathanger to unclog a sink, I went to work threading an unwrapped hanger down the sink, through the side of the garbage disposal, and down to the grease trap. After twisting the hanger around in the grease trap for a while, I gave up and decided to take the sink apart.
So I took all of our miscellaneous cleaning supplies and placemats out from under the sink, and found a good container to bail with. As soon as I put the container in the sink to remove the first scoop of water, the water started to bubble and swirl and make the unpleasant sucking noise that only kitchen sinks can, and all the water drained out normally.
I was unhappy about that, as I had stolen myself to the task of dismantling the sink, dismissing everything else I wanted to do that night, and now the task was taken away from me. My unhappiness was short lived, of course, as was the idea that the sink was deliberately spiting me. My current theory is that the coathanger actually did the trick, and I just needed to be more patient.
So now I saved $5 on a bottle of Liquid P and a possible $50 or so on a real plumber by sacrificing a 5 cent coathanger I wasn't using anyway. Now more of my hard earned cash can go to buying the last round of birthday presents for Stacey's party, which is this Saturday!
After debating for a few minutes with my roomie on the best approach for using a coathanger to unclog a sink, I went to work threading an unwrapped hanger down the sink, through the side of the garbage disposal, and down to the grease trap. After twisting the hanger around in the grease trap for a while, I gave up and decided to take the sink apart.
So I took all of our miscellaneous cleaning supplies and placemats out from under the sink, and found a good container to bail with. As soon as I put the container in the sink to remove the first scoop of water, the water started to bubble and swirl and make the unpleasant sucking noise that only kitchen sinks can, and all the water drained out normally.
I was unhappy about that, as I had stolen myself to the task of dismantling the sink, dismissing everything else I wanted to do that night, and now the task was taken away from me. My unhappiness was short lived, of course, as was the idea that the sink was deliberately spiting me. My current theory is that the coathanger actually did the trick, and I just needed to be more patient.
So now I saved $5 on a bottle of Liquid P and a possible $50 or so on a real plumber by sacrificing a 5 cent coathanger I wasn't using anyway. Now more of my hard earned cash can go to buying the last round of birthday presents for Stacey's party, which is this Saturday!
Monday, August 08, 2005
Picture Perfect
Every once in a while a two hour block of your life seems like it is dragged directly from a Disney film, a Norman Rockwell painting, or a chapter from a Leo Buscaglia book. This morning was like that for me.
Stacey had been with me for three weeks, and is going back to her mom today. My task this morning was a simple one I've done hundreds (thousands?) of times before: get her up, in the shower, feed her, drop her off at day care. Today my heart really wasn't in it though, because I was still exhausted from yesterday's activities.
Yesterday, Stacey, my mentee Dave, and I went to COSI to see the Titanic exhibit, and did much running around there and walking in the hot sun, and walked about a mile from COSI to the closest Mongolian Barbecue to eat dinner. After dropping Dave off at home, Stacey and I got Heidi (her dog) and went down the dog park for about an hour to let her run around. Basically we were both beat by the end of the day.
So I attempted to get Stacey up for a couple minutes, and decided to give up and try again later, so I crawled into bed beside her. She stirred a little, and scooted over to me and put her head on my shoulder, all with her eyes closed lest I accuse her of being awake. Heidi promptly got jealous and jumped on the bed and laid down on Stacey's other side and scooted in close so the three of us made a giant Stacey sandwich.
I vaguely remember Stacey talking to the dog after that, and the sounds of running water. After that I remember Stacey pulling at my arm and trying to jerk me out of bed. "Daddy, we're going to be late to Roya's."
She had gotten up, taken a shower, got dressed, and combed her hair, all while I snoozed. I took my shower, we brushed our teeth together, and said goodbye to the dog, and headed to McDonald's for some drive-through breakfast. We talked on the way to day care, and I told her how pretty she looked and how proud I was of her for taking care of herself and being mature (yes, while I snoozed, shush! I'm telling a story here!)
At the day care, the teachers were all glad to see her, and some of the younger kids' faces lit up and they ran over to her with whatever little toy they had. I took my goodbye kiss and left her to enjoy herself with her little toddler and preschool friends, where she no doubt acts like a substitute mommy.
I couldn't have made up a more poignant story of a great kid and her early morning antics. Stacey was already the best, but she just keeps getting better all the time.
Stacey had been with me for three weeks, and is going back to her mom today. My task this morning was a simple one I've done hundreds (thousands?) of times before: get her up, in the shower, feed her, drop her off at day care. Today my heart really wasn't in it though, because I was still exhausted from yesterday's activities.
Yesterday, Stacey, my mentee Dave, and I went to COSI to see the Titanic exhibit, and did much running around there and walking in the hot sun, and walked about a mile from COSI to the closest Mongolian Barbecue to eat dinner. After dropping Dave off at home, Stacey and I got Heidi (her dog) and went down the dog park for about an hour to let her run around. Basically we were both beat by the end of the day.
So I attempted to get Stacey up for a couple minutes, and decided to give up and try again later, so I crawled into bed beside her. She stirred a little, and scooted over to me and put her head on my shoulder, all with her eyes closed lest I accuse her of being awake. Heidi promptly got jealous and jumped on the bed and laid down on Stacey's other side and scooted in close so the three of us made a giant Stacey sandwich.
I vaguely remember Stacey talking to the dog after that, and the sounds of running water. After that I remember Stacey pulling at my arm and trying to jerk me out of bed. "Daddy, we're going to be late to Roya's."
She had gotten up, taken a shower, got dressed, and combed her hair, all while I snoozed. I took my shower, we brushed our teeth together, and said goodbye to the dog, and headed to McDonald's for some drive-through breakfast. We talked on the way to day care, and I told her how pretty she looked and how proud I was of her for taking care of herself and being mature (yes, while I snoozed, shush! I'm telling a story here!)
At the day care, the teachers were all glad to see her, and some of the younger kids' faces lit up and they ran over to her with whatever little toy they had. I took my goodbye kiss and left her to enjoy herself with her little toddler and preschool friends, where she no doubt acts like a substitute mommy.
I couldn't have made up a more poignant story of a great kid and her early morning antics. Stacey was already the best, but she just keeps getting better all the time.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Taking a breather
I just finished with a significant haitus from writing (hence no journal entries for a while), and a week's vacation from work where I didn't do a damn thing but sit around the house, watch TV, and play with my kid and my dog. It was wonderful.
I finished off the week last night by chaperoning Stacey and all but one of the neighborhood girls in a trip to the movies and a sleepover. They paid back my kindness by staying up until 4am shouting and giggling. In hindsight, Sunday may not have been the best day to plan that.
This morning, after sleeping for almost a full 3 hours, I woke to find them all camped out in the living room, sleeping in a big row, curled up in different shapes, and looking very cute. That was certainly worth missing a full night's sleep.
The only things I accomplished in the past 9 days were paying some bills, putting air in a low tire on my car, and improving my Joust game. I can now regularly hit 120,000 points in a game, and have 6 games over 200,000 points, a score I never managed to hit in the arcades back in the 80s when the game was still popular. With a little work on handling multiple pterodactyls and multiple blue guys, I'll be able to hang in there for several more waves regularly.
Unfortunately my Joust game and hanging out with gaggles of chatty little girls will have to wait a while, until I can catch up on real world stuff like keeping my job.
I finished off the week last night by chaperoning Stacey and all but one of the neighborhood girls in a trip to the movies and a sleepover. They paid back my kindness by staying up until 4am shouting and giggling. In hindsight, Sunday may not have been the best day to plan that.
This morning, after sleeping for almost a full 3 hours, I woke to find them all camped out in the living room, sleeping in a big row, curled up in different shapes, and looking very cute. That was certainly worth missing a full night's sleep.
The only things I accomplished in the past 9 days were paying some bills, putting air in a low tire on my car, and improving my Joust game. I can now regularly hit 120,000 points in a game, and have 6 games over 200,000 points, a score I never managed to hit in the arcades back in the 80s when the game was still popular. With a little work on handling multiple pterodactyls and multiple blue guys, I'll be able to hang in there for several more waves regularly.
Unfortunately my Joust game and hanging out with gaggles of chatty little girls will have to wait a while, until I can catch up on real world stuff like keeping my job.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Don't say it if you haven't verified it
One of the worst of my old bad habits that I've been trying to rid myself of over the years is repeating unverified bits of trivia that sound interesting because they come from sources I thought were reputable. Often verifying them proves them urban legend or just a misunderstanding.
There were some good ones from my old high-school chemistry teacher, Ed Shay, for example:
- It takes more energy to produce a solar cell than the cell will ever return as electricity.
- The thick plastic cups on the bottoms of two-liter bottles are there (were there) because the bottles are too flimsy normally and would otherwise collapse under their own weight.
As a high-school kid, my chemistry teacher sounded intelligent and well-informed, and his confidence led me to believe the above nonsense. The latter was easy to test, which I did out of curiosity some time ago. With the bottom cup removed, the bottle, while certainly more unbalanced than the modern redesign, was not in danger of collapse whether the bottle was open or closed.
The solar cell issue, however, is hotly debated, and I don't trust any of the opinions or numbers I've seen so far. It was probably true when solar technology was younger, and if it is still true today, which I feel is doubtful, it will not be true for long. Whether true or not, the fact is that I was happy to repeat it without having ever tried to check my story.
I tried to stop doing this once I heard some ridiculous notions like "if you tap your breaks right when the cop hits you with the radar beam, your headlights confuse the radar gun, and it can't get a reading" passed off as fact by some work acquaintances. "Yeh," I retorted, "and I hear that you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up." It's amazing how sour people get when you tell them they're full of crap.
A pair of myths I've repeated often that I've looked up recently are "Newt is dead" and "QWERTY was a marketing gimmick", neither of which are true.
"Newt" refers to one-time actress Carolyn Henn, who played the character Newt in Aliens. Alien 3 brings us the shocking realization that Newt died in her hypersleep chamber when the ship crash landed, making all the hubub at the end of Aliens very moot. The word on the street was that the actress had herself died in a car wreck shortly after the release of Aliens, and was hence unavailable, and the producers decided to re-write the script to cut her character out.
In actuality, Ms. Henn decided (mistakenly, in the mind of many fans) that acting wasn't her bag, and went on to get a teaching degree and now teaches primary school, and has grown into an attractive, wholesome looking woman.
"QWERTY was a marketing gimmick" refers to the fact that all the letters that spell the word "typewriter" appear on the upper row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard. The myth is that this was done deliberately so that traveling salesmen could demonstrate how to operate the machine by quickly keying out "typewriter" without having to learn how to type for real.
I've heard variations on this, too, like typewriters were configured with a clumsy key layout to make it harder for people to type fast, so that the arms wouldn't jam. This has a grain of truth, but the real story is that the layout helped increase speed, but for reasons that are not apparent based only on key placement.
The first typewriter was two rows laid out alhpabetically, and was very prone to jamming. Changing the layout to three rows helped some, but jamming still occured frequently when common letter combinations that occurred on the same inner wheel were struck. To correct for this, the layout was changed so that the internal mechanisms were in better position, and common combinations occurred on separate inner wheels. The net effect is that typing speed increased. Or at least, that is my current understanding based on some lite research.
But don't take my word for any of this, and don't repeat it until you go look it up.
There were some good ones from my old high-school chemistry teacher, Ed Shay, for example:
- It takes more energy to produce a solar cell than the cell will ever return as electricity.
- The thick plastic cups on the bottoms of two-liter bottles are there (were there) because the bottles are too flimsy normally and would otherwise collapse under their own weight.
As a high-school kid, my chemistry teacher sounded intelligent and well-informed, and his confidence led me to believe the above nonsense. The latter was easy to test, which I did out of curiosity some time ago. With the bottom cup removed, the bottle, while certainly more unbalanced than the modern redesign, was not in danger of collapse whether the bottle was open or closed.
The solar cell issue, however, is hotly debated, and I don't trust any of the opinions or numbers I've seen so far. It was probably true when solar technology was younger, and if it is still true today, which I feel is doubtful, it will not be true for long. Whether true or not, the fact is that I was happy to repeat it without having ever tried to check my story.
I tried to stop doing this once I heard some ridiculous notions like "if you tap your breaks right when the cop hits you with the radar beam, your headlights confuse the radar gun, and it can't get a reading" passed off as fact by some work acquaintances. "Yeh," I retorted, "and I hear that you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up." It's amazing how sour people get when you tell them they're full of crap.
A pair of myths I've repeated often that I've looked up recently are "Newt is dead" and "QWERTY was a marketing gimmick", neither of which are true.
"Newt" refers to one-time actress Carolyn Henn, who played the character Newt in Aliens. Alien 3 brings us the shocking realization that Newt died in her hypersleep chamber when the ship crash landed, making all the hubub at the end of Aliens very moot. The word on the street was that the actress had herself died in a car wreck shortly after the release of Aliens, and was hence unavailable, and the producers decided to re-write the script to cut her character out.
In actuality, Ms. Henn decided (mistakenly, in the mind of many fans) that acting wasn't her bag, and went on to get a teaching degree and now teaches primary school, and has grown into an attractive, wholesome looking woman.
"QWERTY was a marketing gimmick" refers to the fact that all the letters that spell the word "typewriter" appear on the upper row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard. The myth is that this was done deliberately so that traveling salesmen could demonstrate how to operate the machine by quickly keying out "typewriter" without having to learn how to type for real.
I've heard variations on this, too, like typewriters were configured with a clumsy key layout to make it harder for people to type fast, so that the arms wouldn't jam. This has a grain of truth, but the real story is that the layout helped increase speed, but for reasons that are not apparent based only on key placement.
The first typewriter was two rows laid out alhpabetically, and was very prone to jamming. Changing the layout to three rows helped some, but jamming still occured frequently when common letter combinations that occurred on the same inner wheel were struck. To correct for this, the layout was changed so that the internal mechanisms were in better position, and common combinations occurred on separate inner wheels. The net effect is that typing speed increased. Or at least, that is my current understanding based on some lite research.
But don't take my word for any of this, and don't repeat it until you go look it up.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Kids and Zombies
Stacey is gone for two weeks, and I'm bummed. Summers are pretty hard because I don't see her at all when she is with her mom. During the school year, I see her after school every day, and she usually spends the night when her girl scout troup meets.
Summers are harder when she isn't around, but more fun than usual when she is around. Take the last two weeks: School just ended and all the kids are excited. We set up a pool in the backyard, got a dog, and when the kids aren't swimming, they're helping Stacey and I run the dog until she gets tired. Afterwards everyone stays for dinner, and I then go back to the store and stock up on my emergency surplus of macaroni-n-cheese and various box dinners that can quickly be thrown in the oven and ignored for 20 minutes.
We're having some filter problems now, so I had to close the pool until I figure out what's going on, so as a substitute Stacey and a girl across the street went out with me to the Rec Center pool, and another day to an outdoor pool with her mom. This obviously takes time out of the other mom's and my day, but during the summer it's a given that kids are going to need entertainment, so parents' plans become penciled in for three months.
We've also got big plans like my vacation week, Stacey's Girl Scout camp, and Grandma and Grandpa coming down to camp for a few days. All of that helps alleviate the depression that comes with the periodic absence of the person I love most in the world.
I went to see "Land of the Dead" as a pick-me-up; zombie movies have always been a favorite of mine. The semi-recent "28 Days Later" and the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead" were just fantastic, and "Shaun of the Dead" was so funny it damn near made me spit soda through my nose about a dozen times. "Land of the Dead" was directed by Romero, and had the interesting concept of zombies becoming slightly organized, so my hopes were high.
** Warning -- spoilers! **
The first thing I noticed was that the zombies returned to their meandering gate. 28 and the remake of Dawn introduced the concept of zombies being much more terrifying by being able to run quickly, and having a sort of scared, confused look on their face... as they ate you. This was a nice change, and added a lot more tension as they didn't have to sneak up on you while you were doing something stupid in the open, but could just run you down at any time. But, Romero's original zombies shuffled and poked along, so he's being consistent, so I can't fault him for not accepting the new paradigm.
The movie did also have some noteable good points, like a general disrespect for the people who were now undead, for example instead of just killing them, soldiers would string some of them up to use as target practice, and entertainment entrepreneurs would stage fights between them, or chain them up to have people pose for pictures with them.
I didn't like the thing with fireworks being a distraction, but a did like how a pack of zombies could immediately tell when their current set of victims were all dead and would turn as one and start mozying towards new victims.
Ultimately, Big Daddy wasn't cool. Is he a mutant zombie? Does he teach his fellows, or are they evolving as a whole and he's just doing it faster because he's Big Daddy? Why are they getting smarter? Why, if a single bullet to the brain kills them, and they are clearly breathing can they survive underwater where brain damage would be done due to lack of oxygen? These were interesting concepts, but were just kind of left out there as "sure, why the hell not."
It was interesting, but it's not going into my book of great zombie flicks. It wasn't the pick-me-up I was hoping for, so I'll have to find another way to pass the remaining 13 days.
Summers are harder when she isn't around, but more fun than usual when she is around. Take the last two weeks: School just ended and all the kids are excited. We set up a pool in the backyard, got a dog, and when the kids aren't swimming, they're helping Stacey and I run the dog until she gets tired. Afterwards everyone stays for dinner, and I then go back to the store and stock up on my emergency surplus of macaroni-n-cheese and various box dinners that can quickly be thrown in the oven and ignored for 20 minutes.
We're having some filter problems now, so I had to close the pool until I figure out what's going on, so as a substitute Stacey and a girl across the street went out with me to the Rec Center pool, and another day to an outdoor pool with her mom. This obviously takes time out of the other mom's and my day, but during the summer it's a given that kids are going to need entertainment, so parents' plans become penciled in for three months.
We've also got big plans like my vacation week, Stacey's Girl Scout camp, and Grandma and Grandpa coming down to camp for a few days. All of that helps alleviate the depression that comes with the periodic absence of the person I love most in the world.
I went to see "Land of the Dead" as a pick-me-up; zombie movies have always been a favorite of mine. The semi-recent "28 Days Later" and the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead" were just fantastic, and "Shaun of the Dead" was so funny it damn near made me spit soda through my nose about a dozen times. "Land of the Dead" was directed by Romero, and had the interesting concept of zombies becoming slightly organized, so my hopes were high.
** Warning -- spoilers! **
The first thing I noticed was that the zombies returned to their meandering gate. 28 and the remake of Dawn introduced the concept of zombies being much more terrifying by being able to run quickly, and having a sort of scared, confused look on their face... as they ate you. This was a nice change, and added a lot more tension as they didn't have to sneak up on you while you were doing something stupid in the open, but could just run you down at any time. But, Romero's original zombies shuffled and poked along, so he's being consistent, so I can't fault him for not accepting the new paradigm.
The movie did also have some noteable good points, like a general disrespect for the people who were now undead, for example instead of just killing them, soldiers would string some of them up to use as target practice, and entertainment entrepreneurs would stage fights between them, or chain them up to have people pose for pictures with them.
I didn't like the thing with fireworks being a distraction, but a did like how a pack of zombies could immediately tell when their current set of victims were all dead and would turn as one and start mozying towards new victims.
Ultimately, Big Daddy wasn't cool. Is he a mutant zombie? Does he teach his fellows, or are they evolving as a whole and he's just doing it faster because he's Big Daddy? Why are they getting smarter? Why, if a single bullet to the brain kills them, and they are clearly breathing can they survive underwater where brain damage would be done due to lack of oxygen? These were interesting concepts, but were just kind of left out there as "sure, why the hell not."
It was interesting, but it's not going into my book of great zombie flicks. It wasn't the pick-me-up I was hoping for, so I'll have to find another way to pass the remaining 13 days.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Headline Highjinks
The following are a sample of news headlines concerning the Detroit Pistons recent game 6 NBA finals win over the San Antonio Spurs:
Pistons force Finals finale
Tim comes up short in chance to stand tall
Pistons drive to stay alive
Not a slam Duncan
'Sheed's deeds silence critics
Rasheed keeps Pistons pumping
Spurs' stars sputter, fizzle down stretch
Detroit motors to rare Game 7
Rundown: Detroit dials long distance to save season
The last is in reference to good three-point shooting, the rest are attempts at poetry, alliteration, or double entendre. Watching this series has allowed me to hear at least three comparisons between the name 'Duncan' and the verb 'dunk'. You know what, sports commentators and journalists, you just aren't that witty. And why do you need to fill every moment of a game with speech?
"I think the team to win this game is going to be the one that scores the most points."
"You're right, Bob, and I also think good defense is going to be the key to keeping points from being scored."
"Good observation, Joe, and as you'll note, Ben Wallace has tamed his wild afro into his 'road hair' again for this game."
"Road hair?"
"Yes, 'road hair', where he styles his hair in corn-rows for road games."
"Ah, why do you think he does that?"
"Well, it may be superstition, or it may be that it makes him look like less of a criminal, since we know how all the Sheriff Lobo's down in Texas have that itchy trigger finger."
"Good observation, Bob."
My new solution to all that nonsense, and to help get through the boring parts of the game is to let my Tivo record the game for awhile, and play it back on 1.5x fast forward, which silences the commentators and helps you to see patterns that would otherwise be subtle, like how the Spurs in game 6 were moving slower and holding onto the ball longer, and how a three point score on one side was usually followed by an attempted three on the other side.
In the Autery household news, most of the neighborhood kids (5 of them) went with me and Stacey and the dog to the local middle school, where we took turns running with Heidi in an attempt to get her tired out. She loves all the kids, and didn't try to bite any of them when they fell down, which is a good sign. We also finished setting up our inflatable pool on the deck last night, with some of the kids helping us with leaf removal and smoothing out wrinkles while it filled up.
The dog and the pool are helping to make our house a popular summer hangout, which makes it a little more difficult to follow the "nobody leaves hungry" rule, and much harder to just sit and be alone when I want to. Such are the trials of being a good daddy. Those being my biggest problems, life ain't so bad.
Pistons force Finals finale
Tim comes up short in chance to stand tall
Pistons drive to stay alive
Not a slam Duncan
'Sheed's deeds silence critics
Rasheed keeps Pistons pumping
Spurs' stars sputter, fizzle down stretch
Detroit motors to rare Game 7
Rundown: Detroit dials long distance to save season
The last is in reference to good three-point shooting, the rest are attempts at poetry, alliteration, or double entendre. Watching this series has allowed me to hear at least three comparisons between the name 'Duncan' and the verb 'dunk'. You know what, sports commentators and journalists, you just aren't that witty. And why do you need to fill every moment of a game with speech?
"I think the team to win this game is going to be the one that scores the most points."
"You're right, Bob, and I also think good defense is going to be the key to keeping points from being scored."
"Good observation, Joe, and as you'll note, Ben Wallace has tamed his wild afro into his 'road hair' again for this game."
"Road hair?"
"Yes, 'road hair', where he styles his hair in corn-rows for road games."
"Ah, why do you think he does that?"
"Well, it may be superstition, or it may be that it makes him look like less of a criminal, since we know how all the Sheriff Lobo's down in Texas have that itchy trigger finger."
"Good observation, Bob."
My new solution to all that nonsense, and to help get through the boring parts of the game is to let my Tivo record the game for awhile, and play it back on 1.5x fast forward, which silences the commentators and helps you to see patterns that would otherwise be subtle, like how the Spurs in game 6 were moving slower and holding onto the ball longer, and how a three point score on one side was usually followed by an attempted three on the other side.
In the Autery household news, most of the neighborhood kids (5 of them) went with me and Stacey and the dog to the local middle school, where we took turns running with Heidi in an attempt to get her tired out. She loves all the kids, and didn't try to bite any of them when they fell down, which is a good sign. We also finished setting up our inflatable pool on the deck last night, with some of the kids helping us with leaf removal and smoothing out wrinkles while it filled up.
The dog and the pool are helping to make our house a popular summer hangout, which makes it a little more difficult to follow the "nobody leaves hungry" rule, and much harder to just sit and be alone when I want to. Such are the trials of being a good daddy. Those being my biggest problems, life ain't so bad.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
News of the day
I've been reading lately about Stetson Kennedy, the anti-bigotry activist who infiltrated the post-WWII KKK. His claim to fame was giving the producers of the Superman radio show information about the Klan, such as passwords, rituals, and coded speech used to identify fellow Klansmen while traveling. The information promptly made it into a four-part "Superman vs. the KKK" series, which humiliated the Klan.
Interesting man, outspoken and a little full of himself, which I find likeable in this case. I was just reading through an essay of his about us gearing up for war against Afghanistan and Iraq at http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/terrorist_hunt.htm. Interesting read, and I don't agree with all of it, but he makes a number of good points.
On the lighter side, some of today's Google news headlines eerily match some popular television shows:
Interesting man, outspoken and a little full of himself, which I find likeable in this case. I was just reading through an essay of his about us gearing up for war against Afghanistan and Iraq at http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/terrorist_hunt.htm. Interesting read, and I don't agree with all of it, but he makes a number of good points.
On the lighter side, some of today's Google news headlines eerily match some popular television shows:
| Miss. jury split 6-6 in 1964 murder trial | - Cold Case |
| Democrats playing politics with Bolton | - West Wing |
| Intruder fatally shot in US courthouse | - The Insider |
| Rigases sent to prison for looting cable firm | - Law and Order |
| Cruise to sue water squirters | - Nip/Tuck |
| 15 Iraqi police die in suicide bombing | - Over There |
| FBI Chief Won't Mandate Terror Expertise | - The Closer |
| Justices fault defense lawyers for not digging deeper for evidence | - CSI |
Friday, June 17, 2005
Odds
I finally purchased some life insurance, and my policy just came in the mail yesterday. My work gives me twice my salary, which is nice, but wouldn't send my kid to college after paying off the house and my other debts, so I opted to buy some more. $250,000 more, to be exact.
So what is the likelihood of someone like me dieing in the next 20 years? Thanks to my insurance company and some unresearched assumptions, I have a rough idea that it's about 1 in 125. Here are the basic facts:
I am a 34 year old white male.
I don't smoke or drink.
My blood sugar and cholesterol are normal.
My resting heart rate and blood pressure are normal.
I am a parent.
I live in the suburbs doing white-collar work.
I excercise moderately.
I don't have any diseases.
I don't have a criminal record.
I haven't been involved in a traffic accident in the last 10 years.
I have had two traffic citations in the last 10 years (one speeding, one running a stop sign).
Apparently that profile is good enough to qualify me for "preferred", but not "super preferred", which would require me to be a little younger and skinnier, and a slower driver. I came to my 1 in 125 estimate by running the numbers and guessing at the insurance company's expected profit.
$300 per year buys me a 20 year term of $250,000.
$300 * 20 = $6,000 to the insurance company at the end of the term.
$250,000 / $6,000 = about 42.
So basically to make any money off of this policy, it would need to be sold to myself and 42 of my peers, and only one of us dies in the next 20 years. They would do little more than break even after holding our money for 20 years, which I doubt is good enough for them. No, they want to make 5% a year or more on our money. Let's run the numbers that way:
$cash = 300;
while (++$counter < 20) { $cash *= 1.05; $cash += 300 }
$cash ends up being 9919.78623086652, according to my trusty perl interpreter.
That makes about $10,000 per policy that they want to have after 20 years from our $6000 per policy investment, for a profit of $4000 per policy. A little basic algebra gives us:
6000x - 250,000 = 4,000x
2000x = 250,000
x = 125
The insurance company can only make 5% a year on our premiums if it sells to 125 people like me, and only one of us dies. Hence, my peers and I have a 1 in 125 chance of dieing in the next 20 years. Assuming that my wildly slung together numbers and my insurance company's life expectency estimates have anything to do with reality.
So what is the likelihood of someone like me dieing in the next 20 years? Thanks to my insurance company and some unresearched assumptions, I have a rough idea that it's about 1 in 125. Here are the basic facts:
I am a 34 year old white male.
I don't smoke or drink.
My blood sugar and cholesterol are normal.
My resting heart rate and blood pressure are normal.
I am a parent.
I live in the suburbs doing white-collar work.
I excercise moderately.
I don't have any diseases.
I don't have a criminal record.
I haven't been involved in a traffic accident in the last 10 years.
I have had two traffic citations in the last 10 years (one speeding, one running a stop sign).
Apparently that profile is good enough to qualify me for "preferred", but not "super preferred", which would require me to be a little younger and skinnier, and a slower driver. I came to my 1 in 125 estimate by running the numbers and guessing at the insurance company's expected profit.
$300 per year buys me a 20 year term of $250,000.
$300 * 20 = $6,000 to the insurance company at the end of the term.
$250,000 / $6,000 = about 42.
So basically to make any money off of this policy, it would need to be sold to myself and 42 of my peers, and only one of us dies in the next 20 years. They would do little more than break even after holding our money for 20 years, which I doubt is good enough for them. No, they want to make 5% a year or more on our money. Let's run the numbers that way:
$cash = 300;
while (++$counter < 20) { $cash *= 1.05; $cash += 300 }
$cash ends up being 9919.78623086652, according to my trusty perl interpreter.
That makes about $10,000 per policy that they want to have after 20 years from our $6000 per policy investment, for a profit of $4000 per policy. A little basic algebra gives us:
6000x - 250,000 = 4,000x
2000x = 250,000
x = 125
The insurance company can only make 5% a year on our premiums if it sells to 125 people like me, and only one of us dies. Hence, my peers and I have a 1 in 125 chance of dieing in the next 20 years. Assuming that my wildly slung together numbers and my insurance company's life expectency estimates have anything to do with reality.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Batman Begins
This movie is a nice compromise between the darker Batman comics, and the farce that was the preceding 4 movies in the franchise. In this movie, Batman employs stealth, dropping from above to grab a badguy and quietly drag him to the shadows without giving his position away. He uses more believable martial arts. The Batmobile is a good hybrid of the previous movies and the behemoth used in the graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns".
The movie departs from the Michael Keaton Batman storyline in that the murderer of his parents is not the Joker (dance with the devil by the pale moonlight, indeed), and he actually obtains his training and gadgets as part of the storyline rather than just background noise that is unimportant to the plot. Obtaining things didn't matter that much in the Keaton movies, for example, Danny Devito as the Penguin just happened to have schematics of the Batmobile laying around. How did he get them? Not important.
This was gritty enough to appeal to fans of Frank Miller, with just enough lowest-common-denominator standard Hollywood BS to appeal to standard moviegoers, and of course cross-eyed, obese fanboys sporting their Spock ears and alt.jar-jar.die.die.die t-shirts will have a roaring good time nitpicking the movie to death. Good fun for all.
I hope that this will begin its own franchise and my fellow old-school comic fans can pretend the earlier Batman movies never happened.
Go see it.
The movie departs from the Michael Keaton Batman storyline in that the murderer of his parents is not the Joker (dance with the devil by the pale moonlight, indeed), and he actually obtains his training and gadgets as part of the storyline rather than just background noise that is unimportant to the plot. Obtaining things didn't matter that much in the Keaton movies, for example, Danny Devito as the Penguin just happened to have schematics of the Batmobile laying around. How did he get them? Not important.
This was gritty enough to appeal to fans of Frank Miller, with just enough lowest-common-denominator standard Hollywood BS to appeal to standard moviegoers, and of course cross-eyed, obese fanboys sporting their Spock ears and alt.jar-jar.die.die.die t-shirts will have a roaring good time nitpicking the movie to death. Good fun for all.
I hope that this will begin its own franchise and my fellow old-school comic fans can pretend the earlier Batman movies never happened.
Go see it.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Timing is everything
Columbus Ohio is getting to be a big city. The population of Columbus and its surrounding suburbs is close to 1,500,000 as of 2000 according to a few minutes of census Googling. The office building I work in is 32 floors with a 7 floor parking garage. The drive from my house is approximately 17 miles, most of which becomes congested with traffic during morning and afternoon rush hours.
At 34 years old, I have all the grey hair I want for awhile. Working 9 to 5 would be nothing short of a nightmare for me. My day would consist of dodging other people in the house to make breakfast, competing for shower time, getting stuck in traffic, waiting in the garage for people in front of me to find parking spots, being aggressively hustled past as they attempt to save a minute or two going into the main building, pushing my way into an elevator and watching it stop on every floor on the way up to mine, and doing it all in reverse at the end of the work day. By the time I got home I'd have murder on the brain and no love to give to my family. And it would repeat, day after day after day, until it broke me.
Fortunately, I'm a morning person, following the sage advice of my grandmother of getting the worm, and becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise all with the simple chore of going to bed and getting up early.
I'm the only adult I know who falls asleep at 9pm, but it works out perfectly for me. I roll out of bed at 5am, having slept a full 8 hours. No one else in the house is awake, and I have an hour and a half to make breakfast, check email, watch a little TV, and take a shower. An hour and a half of "me time" every day, uninterrupted, first thing in the morning. Nothing does more to keep me sane.
The ride to work is usually pretty calm, but at 6:30am some of the roads are already getting full. One particular bottleneck through some freeway construction can make you stop and wait to merge onto the freeway even that early. After that one bad spot, it's just me and my audiobook of the week, and clear sailing. After work, the book is eagerly waiting for me to listen to more of it, and I get home just before rush hour gets going.
Because of all this, I'm happier, have more love to give the family, and more energy both at work and home since less of it is being sapped by waiting in traffic. By the way, listen to these audiobooks (ranked by my preference, links take you to the Westerville Ohio public library catalog):
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Faster, James Gleick
Hegemony or survival, Noam Chomsky
The Minority Report and other stories, Philip K Dick
The Neil Gaiman audio collection
Between Good and Evil, Roger Depue
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Electric Universe, David Bodanis
Matchstick Men, Eric Garcia
Edenborn, Nick Sagan
Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King
At 34 years old, I have all the grey hair I want for awhile. Working 9 to 5 would be nothing short of a nightmare for me. My day would consist of dodging other people in the house to make breakfast, competing for shower time, getting stuck in traffic, waiting in the garage for people in front of me to find parking spots, being aggressively hustled past as they attempt to save a minute or two going into the main building, pushing my way into an elevator and watching it stop on every floor on the way up to mine, and doing it all in reverse at the end of the work day. By the time I got home I'd have murder on the brain and no love to give to my family. And it would repeat, day after day after day, until it broke me.
Fortunately, I'm a morning person, following the sage advice of my grandmother of getting the worm, and becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise all with the simple chore of going to bed and getting up early.
I'm the only adult I know who falls asleep at 9pm, but it works out perfectly for me. I roll out of bed at 5am, having slept a full 8 hours. No one else in the house is awake, and I have an hour and a half to make breakfast, check email, watch a little TV, and take a shower. An hour and a half of "me time" every day, uninterrupted, first thing in the morning. Nothing does more to keep me sane.
The ride to work is usually pretty calm, but at 6:30am some of the roads are already getting full. One particular bottleneck through some freeway construction can make you stop and wait to merge onto the freeway even that early. After that one bad spot, it's just me and my audiobook of the week, and clear sailing. After work, the book is eagerly waiting for me to listen to more of it, and I get home just before rush hour gets going.
Because of all this, I'm happier, have more love to give the family, and more energy both at work and home since less of it is being sapped by waiting in traffic. By the way, listen to these audiobooks (ranked by my preference, links take you to the Westerville Ohio public library catalog):
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Faster, James Gleick
Hegemony or survival, Noam Chomsky
The Minority Report and other stories, Philip K Dick
The Neil Gaiman audio collection
Between Good and Evil, Roger Depue
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
Electric Universe, David Bodanis
Matchstick Men, Eric Garcia
Edenborn, Nick Sagan
Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King
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