I wish it were a cold and not hayfever.

Because then I could look forward to getting better. And I wouldn't have to explain to people that I am not contagious.

Questions of the day.

Does the train ever really hit the car? Isn't more along the lines of the car gets in the way of the train?

Weekend Accomplishments

1. Finished "Winning the Loser's Game", which is actually a fantastic read and would have gone much faster had it not been required for this quarter's class.
2. Discovered that while you can caramelize sugar in the microwave, you probably should not. The reason being that microwave-safe bowls do not heat to the same temperature as the sugar, making pouring the stuff out onto the cooling sheet surprisingly difficult.
3. Spent a pleasant hour unsticking the sugar from my teeth. Happy memories of taffy. Would have been a happy memory of peanut brittle, except the store-bought brittle isn't quite so tough.
4. Shopped while fried. Apparently looked so pathetic several women offered to help me on two occasions, both time to take the shopping cart away from me.
5. Sent an electronic birthday card. Added an extra year to the recipient's age because I thought it was 2008 when I computed the difference.

One holiday I dislike...

...is Mothers' Day. Not because I disagree with honoring my mother, but because I disagree with the marketing tactics. If they're right, I'm supposed to indulge my mother with chocolate, chicken, and salmon (to name a few things), and she would very much like flowers, jewelry, chocolate, and electronics (cellphone, not a big-screen TV). And I can call her for free, but only if she's in India.

Maybe I'll get her that big-screen TV after all.

The hunt for the best gift.

In my opinion, the best gifts are "brilliantly useless". When you first take them out of the box, they seem pretty useless. They might waste your time, take up space, or go in the gift closet. They bear no resemblance to anything the recipient had on his/her wish list or registry. Their true value becomes apparent over time (which is why you should never, ever, clear out the gift closet). When they become valuable, they become really valuable. Not necessarily as valuable as, say, a bottle of water would be to you in the middle of the desert, but certainly valuable.

The best example of this I've received is probably a set of coasters. When I received them, I didn't have my own place, and we were inclined to set drinks directly on the furniture anyway. Now that I have my own place, they've become incredibly useful. They even match the decor, which is amazing, because I don't really have much of a decor, but they match what little there is. They get used quite often (although by the end of the evening we usually set the drinks directly on the furniture anyway; it's all in the company you keep).

I'm not sure what would be the best example of a brilliantly useless gift I've given. Possibly "The Field Guide to Stains", because I imagine it probably used up a significant amount of the recipient's time when first received (just flipping through the thing). As the years passed, it probably took up a significant amount of shelf space (it's rather thick). And eventually it because useful for obvious reasons.

For the next gift I give, I'm determined to make it as brilliantly useless as possible. I have already scrapped the first two ideas. The first because the technology is still rather new, and there's a good chance the item will become just useless in a short amount of time. The second I've almost scrapped, but not quite, because I haven't decided just how briliantly useless it will be. On the one hand, the recipient could be so incredibly well-organized and endowed with the right capacity that the item will never, ever achieve its full brilliantly useless potential. On the other hand, it could turn out to be as brilliantly useless as I think it could.

Life's a gamble, isn't it?

Chassis #5

I have replaced everything on this notebook except for the battery.
Let me tell you about chassis #5.
Chassis #5 is almost as lovely as chassis #1. It's clean, except for a bit of dirt on the F3 key. The keys are barely sweated on. There's hardly any hair in the keyboard.
Let's see how long chassis #5 survives.

Question of the day.

You mean, they didn't tattoo that on your rear end when you joined?

Answer of the day.

No.

Question of the day.

Am I studying hard enough for Saturday's midterm?

The best investment advice.

After years of research, trial, and error, I have determined that the best way to build your portfolio is to write a best-selling book about investment advice.

Question of the day.

The press asks a candidate for political office if he/she knows the price of milk to demonstrate said candidate is out of touch with average people.

What would happen if the candidate replied that he/she doesn't know because they're lactose intolerant?

Quiz Time!

You've driven up to the bottom leg of a T intersection. Cross traffic does not stop. You have a stop sign. You normally turn right to get to Safeway. You want to go to Safeway. But today, they've closed the right arm and put up cones and signs to that effect. What do you do?

A) Turn left, go around the block, and turn into Safeway using another driveway.
B) Turn right and mow down the cones in front of the police station. Ignore the shouts of the other drivers as they tell you you're going the wrong way. (It's OK. You're in a minivan, so the laws of physics and the road don't apply to you.)
C) Make a U-turn into oncoming traffic in front of the police station and go back the way you came. (It's OK. You're in an SUV, so the laws of physics and the road don't apply to you.)

Question of the day.

Isn't it silly that trans fats have turned saturated fats from evil to good?

It's delicious.

J should be getting her birthday gift soon. It will probably arrive a few days after the actual date. This is fine. This will be the closest I've gotten it in years.

How much did it cost to send it? $6.66. Will it arrive on time and intact? With a price like that, does it really matter?

Question of the day.

Where are my grades?

Question of the day.

What are chocolate covered strawberries but a race against time?

Statement of the day.

Isn't that the definition of insanity?

It's a website. I am trying to update something on it. It takes a long time to come back with a non-error. That is, it's an error and the thing didn't go through, but the page telling me that doesn't exist, so I get a page not found error. There are no other buttons, like "save" or "modify" that are relevant to my desired action. So I keep clicking the same button, "update", expecting something different will happen.

I'd stop clicking "update", except when I was clicking the other button for a different action, it also kept failing until it finally went through.

Things I didn't need this week because finals are on Saturday.

Team member bailing out of doing the presentation, even though he insisted all day that he was up to the task.

Kitchen flooding. The drain pipe thingy has decided it doesn't want to drain into the sewer line anymore. It has decided the floor is a much better place.

The knowledge that if I didn't have finals, I'd probably diagnose and fix the drain problem myself. It would just take a few hours and a trip to the hardware store. Instead, I have what looks like an expensive date with the plumber and no sense of accomplishment.

Sending e-mail to the wrong disti list.

Report, due Saturday, in less than decent shape, given all the questions we have for one of the teammates.

The real possibility that this quarter's projects could be rendered null and void for want of real communication.

Another Comment.

As fun as it is to bash PowerPoint, it makes me sad to think about all the hours people have spent deliberately defeating PowerPoint's default layouts, only to end up with the results they ended up with. Well, except for the ones who insisted on foils. We may not agree with the colors or layouts PowerPoint chose, but there really are times users can't do better than the designers.

Cataloging the Worst Presentations Ever (rankings and better names to follow sometime later).

Picture Guy:

He was an avid lover of nature and decided to incorporate photos of nature from his state into his presentation. These weren't his photos; he used some from a professional photographer. He spent a significant amount of time describing the picture instead of describing his work. Normal people would have dropped the photo into the side or the middle of the slide. He made the photo the background and changed the font color to match. I have yet to decide whether the white text on yellow grass (yes grass), green text on green grass, or the black text on snow and deep red grass was the least legible.

The Paper Might Have Been Shorter:

She recognized her accent was somewhat thick and the audience may have a tough time understanding her. That was no excuse for pasting entire paragaphs (probably from her paper) into the slides. The text became so dense and small as to be difficult to read, so she had to recolor some of the text to highlight the salient points. She failed to recognize that we couldn't read her slides because of the text size, not the color. She also spent too many slides defining her terms and not enough on actual analysis, a fatal flaw for a 20-minute presentation.

Imagine That:

He failed to recognize why much of the world moved to Excel and PowerPoint a decade ago. His foils required spending 20 minutes tracking down a light projector. Because he didn't completely understand how his mathematics package worked, he hadn't resized the fonts before printing and he couldn't properly plot one of his performance graphs. He told us to imagine the line shifted upward because his performance was really better than that shown. I wished I'd thought to do that during my own presentation: "Imagine these numbers, but 20% better."

Why Bother:

Like Imagine That, he also failed to recognize the brave new world of the 90's. His foils contained numerous paragaphs and quotations clipped from his favorite authors. He didn't expect us to actually read the slides, he just put them up to impress upon us that he knew about these authors. His foils also demonstrated the limitations of foils. Namely, that if you forget to add something, you have to write it in with Sharpie, which doesn't work so well if your Sharpie is wearing down, you have terrible handwriting, and the thing you want to add is another paragraph.

(In fact, I would like to flog anybody who pastes paragaphs into their slides, but I saw so many of those on Saturday that I realized it would take too long to take care of all the offenders.)

(Also, after The Paper Might Have Been Shorter, I realized that pasting in paragraphs from other authors' papers is slightly less egregious than pasting in paragraphs from your own paper, which forced about a dozen presentations off this list.)

Exhaust Them so They Don't Ask Questions:

She shrank the margins and line spacing, but not the font size as much, so she could fit more text on the slide. The result was the first and only presentation I'd ever attended where I actually got tired reading the slide. If she hadn't worked for a government agency and could productize this, she could put all those sleeping pill manufacturers out of business.

Why I'll never be a TV chef.

Ingredients
1 lb. spiral pasta
~2 pints grape tomatoes (purchased from Costco, where pints have no meaning)
8, possibly 10 medium to large mini sweet peppers (lost count)
1 normal can diced tomatoes
1 to 2 tsp. each dried basil, roasted garlic flakes (they had shaker tops)
pinch salt
black pepper
7.5 oz. part-skim ricotta (1/2 the 15 oz. tub) (it might have been 2/3 of the tub)
splash vodka
olive oil

Method
1. Boil water for pasta. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a pan. A wok will do, but I guess normal people use a skillet or saute pan.
2. Add raw tomatoes and peppers to the oil. Cover and bring heat down to medium. Stir once in a while, until some of the tomatoes burst.
3. Add canned tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, and pepper to the vegetables. Heat through and keep at a simmer.
4. Stir in ricotta. The mixture will turn pink. Turn heat down to keep at a simmer.
5. Cook pasta. Stir vodka into the sauce.
6. Drain pasta, dump the pasta into the sauce. This is why a wok works well.
7. Serve with parmesan.

Ideas for what to name this dish?

Question of the day.

How effective can the traffic reports on the news really be if the backup just keeps getting worse?

Question of the day.

Don't people pee in the river?

It sucks.

Both projects suck.
The team sucks.
The inability to add alternate paths to the diagram sucks.
This cramp sucks.
The lack of sleep sucks.

Question of the day.

What's wrong with the West Coast?

Question of the day.

Where's Z?

Answer of the day.

"Gift closet."

Question of the day.

Why does there need to be a law about that?

Question of the day.

Do you suppose J knows the scripts on her blog are broken for some users?

Question of the day.

At what point did they decide Valentine's Day should be more like Christmas and gifts, gifts, gifts all the time?

Question of the day.

Why don't they make learners and new drivers in the US display a red "L" on their bumpers like they do in the UK and HK and possibly other locations?

chassis #4, disk #2, battery #1

It took three sanitizing wipes to get chassis #4 up to speed. The wipes came up disturbingly yellow after sweeping between the keys. I think #3 only required two wipes, but #2 required many more. Many, many more. The previous owner of #4 was hairy and balding, but not as badly as #2. #4 is clearly Asian, probably male, and did not like pastry. Still undecided about whether #4 will require vacuuming.

Which leads me to the following questions.

1. What is the TCO of Apple notebooks? What would be the IT implications?
2. Most of my coworkers have lush heads of hair. So why do I keep getting the chassis that belonged to the balding ones?
3. How has my battery managed to stay intact while everything else has broken down at least once?

Aw hell. #4's display has the flickering lines problem. Not as bad as #2, but #3 managed not to have it. This is a bad omen.

Question of the day.

Dear IT,

How can you put "use your network cable" as an option for when you can't make the wireless work if you don't make sure the network drops actually work in the conference rooms?

rambling about winter

Winter quarter has always been my worst quarter. I feel a compelling need to nap all day long for no apparent reason. It's not like I'm getting less sleep (if anything, I sleep less in the summer), or I'm not sleeping as well (sleeping is more difficult in warm weather). It's not the weather, since I feel this urge to nap even in sunny weather. Even more disturbing is the lack of tolerance to cold. The weather is downright balmy compared to the winters I grew up with, and yet it's freezing. Or I think it's freezing. Other people are out in t-shirts and shorts. Not me. The only reason I'm not in the wooly sweaters is it would just look strange next to the t-shirts. I wonder if we'd be more productive if we could figure out a way to relocate everybody to Australia during the winter months.

The magic of books

I am eagerly awaiting delivery of a couple books. They are for a class. I would like to start procrastinating as soon as possible. Therefore I have been tracking the progress of the package online. They are shown below. Keep in mind, the top record is actually the most recent one. This means, amazingly enough, my books have the ability to go back in time, even before their publish date.

December 31, 1969
03:59:59 PM
US
Arrival Scan

January 31, 2007
05:39:00 PM
RICHMOND CA US
In transit

January 30, 2007
---
US
Carrier notified to pick up package

Question of the day.

Why can't I set a breakpoint where I want to?

Question of the day.

If the nude jogger were physically attractive, would there be as many complaints?

Question of the day.

What would the world look like if everybody were an engineer?

Question of the day.

Will they ever run out of people willing to appear on reality TV and the likes of American Idol?

Question of the day.

****. What's the password for the class ERES site?

Question of the day.

What would you do if you had one extra hour every day?

Question of the day.

You call that washing your hands? A quick spritz with cold water followed by a brief shake?

Question of the day.

In light of the iPhone, could new consumer hardware have the power to transform the business policies of the network it uses? Because my phone already offers a lot of features, most of which I don't care to use because I don't like being charged for each message, byte of data transferred, etc.

Statement of the day.

There has got to be an easier way to cream butter.

A dilly of a pickle.

1. I really want to serve as bridesmaid. I've known the bride for half my life, after all. I'm honored she asked. She's smart enough to know what she's gotten herself into, and boy howdy, it's something. Well, she knew that when she asked me.
2. Unfortunately, no matter how I finesse the schedule, I will have to skip a day of classes. That's equivalent to missing two sessions of each class, since we have double sessions.
3. Fortunately, the wedding date is two weeks before finals, so the only real potential conflict is maybe a project deadline. Which I can bust my butt to finish early.
4. Fortunately, the two classes scheduled are economics and finance, which are more numerical. I can handle that. Discussion? Bah.
5. Unfortunately, I am the best note-taker in the class, so I wonder what will happen if I borrow someone else's notes. Fortunately, I am the best note-taker in class, so that should compensate for missing a session.
6. Fortunately, I am sure several of my classmates owe me once since I've shared my notes with them.
7. Unfortunately, most flights to Toledo require two stops. You have to pay an extra $300 for the privilege of removing one stop.
8. Unfortunately, Toledo is quite far from other cities with bigger airports, so flying to a bigger, more moderately priced city is out of the question.
9. Unfortunately, given the sheer number of stops, I am not confident the airlines will get me into town on time. This means potentially landing at 1AM, which is probably not a good idea if you're supposed to be on time to a morning service.
10. What can I do with a full day in Toledo that won't drive the bride completely mad? Homework? Never mind that ticket will cost an extra $100 plus a night of hotel.
11. Hey, maybe I can visit the famous Tony Packo's. That should kill the whole day and a tank of gas. Heartburn? Bah.

Question of the day.

I am coming down with a cold. Is it OK for me to come to the office with it, since I caught it from my co-workers in the first place?

Question of the day.

Is it OK to be a weenie about the weather? It's not raining, it's not snowing; it's gorgeous and sunny but a touch windy and quite cold, but downright balmy compared to what other parts of the country get.

Question of the day.

How do you know how much the machine costs if you haven't bothered to spec it out? It won't cost $2K just because you say so.

Long weekend musings.

8-9 hours of sleep per night is a beautiful thing.

I'm thankful my family is not hung up on holidays. This means we can visit each other during less stressful and expensive times of the year.

Waiting in the cold and dark and braving the crush of shoppers is not worth the few dollars saved. Luckily, I have mountains of homework as an excuse.

Who needs turkey when you can have dim sum? And give me crispy chow mein any day.

Sean Connery is still the best Bond, Diana Rigg is still the best Bond girl, and "Live and Let Die" still has the best Bond opening song. That said, "Casino Royale" is thoroughly enjoyable and even has a plot despite the mushy bits.

Although I'm sorry I won't get to see "Flushed Away" this weekend, I'm glad I saw something.

Question of the day.

Where did November go?

Too much TV.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The Inland North
Boston
North Central
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Question of the day.

Isn't the point of air guitar not to hear how you sound?

Advice for the day.

Never enter into a family cell phone plan if your family is not comprised of your dependents. It is a giant pain in the butt.

Question of the day.

Is the guy in the next cube covering his mouth when he coughs every other minute?

Question of the day.

What do you do to alleviate writer's block?

Question of the day.

Why are so many people willing to eat chicken fingers but not chicken feet?

Statement of the day.

If you are able-bodied and in a six-storey building, you should not take the elevator down.

Statement of the day.

I can't wait for the elections to be over so the TV can go back to selling me junk food.

Question of the day.

When people say things really ought to be a certain way, at what point is it love for the human condition, and at what point is it arrogance?

Example 1: You have zero ability to tolerate alcohol. Your pal, who can tolerate alcohol, is having a wonderful (by all objective measures) glass of wine and insists you take a few sips. Either your pal is enjoying the experience and wants to share it with you so that you can experience what they're experiencing, or your pal is a wine snob and wants you to agree with him/her. Even though you'd probably get sick doing so.

Example 2: You are Hindu. Your pal, who is not Hindu, is enjoying a fantastic hamburger and wants you to have a bite. Same choices as #1, except for the wine snob part--this pal eats a lot of hamburgers. Even though it would violate all your principles to do so.

Example 3: You are from a non-democratic country. Your pal, who is from a democratic country, thinks your country really needs to be more democratic. You think your country really needs better infrastructure more than democracy at the moment. Either your pal loves his/her country so much he/she would like you to exactly have the same experience, or he/she is arrogant and thinks democracy is the only way the world should be run. Disregarding the fact that you're really proud of your own country.

Which is it?

Question of the day.

Will the constant barrage of TV ads really affect the election outcome?

Question of the day.

Is this a great election season or what?

The Terminator is running for governor. Donna Tello is running for comissioner. And there's the usual slew of negative TV ads telling which way to vote on the propositions.

Next year, make me a promise. Somebody please nickname himself He-Man.

Dear Makers of Propel Fitness Water,

I don't understand your packaging strategy. There is a tamper-evident plastic wrap ringing the cap and an inside seal topping the bottle, but the part of the cap you actually put your mouth on remains uncovered during shipping. This means the beverage inside is clean, but the mouthpiece is potentially unsanitary.

Incidentally, I don't like the sucralose taste. I'm glad this bottle was free.

Question of the day.

What does it mean?

I've made two presentations in the last month, in completely different contexts, and about completely different things. One was at work, and the other was at school. I'll admit I busted my butt to pull together both. And both times, I've been tapped on the shoulder afterward by people I generally trust and told that I did a very good job. The gracious part of me accepted and is feeling pretty good about it. The cynical side of me suspects it's one of the following:

* I'm normally really quiet, and people don't expect me to present well, so a good presentation is a pleasant surprise.
* I normally ask dumb questions, so this was a pleasant surprise.
* I looked horribly nervous, so everybody was trying to console me. Or, I flubbed something important, and they were trying to console me.
* They were simply glad to hear a presentation in which good English was spoken. (Past tense notwithstanding.)
* Or, maybe I really did give good presentations, people really do look to me as a role model, and busting my butt was worthwhile.

I want to believe the last one. I think I will.

Question of the day.

If I had started on the marketing writeup a week earlier (and moved mountains to get the time to start in on that reading early), would it have been any better?

Nah.

I would have had to stay up until 1:30 anyways.

Question of the day.

Why do drivers of non-compact cars insist on parking in the compact spaces and then get mad when we drivers of compact cars have to park in the non-compact spaces as a result?

Question of the day.

Why does wine made from grapes appear to be the most popular kind when apple juice is so widely consumed?

Question of the day.

Who?

Questions of the day.

Why is the concept of "slower traffic keep right" so difficult to comprehend? Also, would it be a terrible idea to designate the rightmost lane as the one for people on their cell phones?

Question of the day.

Is it better to debug your own cruddy code or someone else's?

Question of the day.

How do we know the paper toilet seat covers are cleaner than the toilet seat?

A rant.

Dear VTA,

Your TV ad for the all-day light rail pass is much too wordy. You could explain the product in half the time. Also, the product is flawed. To be truly useful, an all-day pass should be good on the buses and the light rail, not the light rail only. Without the bus transfer, how do you expect people to get to the light rail in the first place?

Question of the day.

When?

Question of the day.

Is it better to speak one language perfectly, or two less than perfectly, assuming these are commonly used languages?

Question of the day.

So, Mr./Mrs. Imtooimportantforthis, what happens to you if the train crossing signals malfunction, they don't actually light up before the train approaches, and you're stopped on the tracks like the idiot you are?

Answer of the day.

The talk went quite well, thank you. The questions were all meaningful and nobody tried to beat up on me. I must have looked nervous, though. Why else would that guy have gone out of his way to tell me he thought the talk was very well explained and well done and that he enjoyed it?

Question of the day.

When an organization turns dysfunctional, why is it so difficult to recognize this and turn it around?

Question of the day.

Why does Monty Python work so well and other shows do not?

Question of the day.

I just got a new doormat--the old one was attracting spiders that look like leaves. (They would be very cool except for the part where they're spiders and like to come inside.) The doormat says it can hold up to one quart of water. Why would I want my doormat to hold water?

Answer of the day.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ask me again on Tuesday

Question of the day.

What would happen if we brought back the draft?

Question of the day.

Where's Z?

Question of the day.

If the song goes, "I fought the law and the law won", then how do you explain this link?

Question of the day.

Why do foods cooked in small batches seem to taste better than foods cooked in large ones?

Questions of the day.

How did humans first decide all those things (fugu, assorted things from the sea, bugs, various plants) were edible? How many people had to be very unlucky before we figured it out?

Question of the day.

Why are some TV stations really quiet, and others really loud? This is in terms of normal volume; I'm not comparing Fast Money to Masterpiece Theatre.

Question of the day.

I'm not fond of milk chocolate bars, and I find eating peanut butter straight of the jar absolutely disgusting. So why do I like peanut butter cups?

Question of the day.

Would it kill CNN to air CNN International during waking hours? I'm glad baby Abby is safe, but the coup in Thailand is the more significant event.

Question of the day.

Why is it so easy to condemn that which you do not truly understand?

Question of the day.

Don't you realize the more you criticize and protest, the more they're going to want to do it?

Question of the day.

I use a can opener. What do you use?

Question of the day.

Do sales really go up when stores put out their Christmas things before Labor Day?

Question of the day.

Will the odds of there being something to watch really improve with the addition of more TV channels?

Question of the day.

How do the TV meterologists come up with their numeric high temperature predictions for the day? This morning, channel 2 predicted 91, and the Weather Channel predicted 85. That's quite a spread. I think they come up with tighter predictions when betting on football scores.

Question of the day.

Why does Safeway sell at least two different brands of mango ice cream but no gelato?

Question of the day.

How do I get more than one register using intrinsics?

Question of the Day

Where's Z?

Question of the day

Are the non-steaky bits of Kobe beef cows as prized as the steaky bits? In other words, would fried Kobe beef liver and onions be much of a delicacy, or would it be just like ordinary beef liver and onions?

P.S.

Regarding 4.1, don't you dare write "everything" in the comments. Do that on David Pogue's blog, OK?

My wishes for today.

I wish

1. That people would learn how to use e-mail and e-mail lists properly.
1.1. That I could flog those who do not.
2. That the Croc Hunter is at peace.
3. That T has no more phone meetings for today.
4. That J would fix the script on her blog so I could see the text before it flashes off the screen.
4.1. Failing that, that I figure out what is wrong with IE.
5. That I figure out why this code fails when it's supposed to work, and vice versa.