Hotel California

New look for 2011

2010-12-28T14:00:00.000-06:00

I finally upgraded to the new Blogger templates, several years late. This did kill off the work I did to make expandable links sections for my blog using the old template, but I can recreate what I needed from those fairly easily. I've also become an Amazon affiliate (which is integrated with the new Blogger template, another benefit to the upgrade) . I'm working out how to incorporate Amazon links now, so there will be a fair number of changes over the next few days.

You cannot serve both God and money.

2010-12-19T21:41:00.002-06:00

I think a lot of American Christians make the mistake of assuming that if they aren't in debt, they are pretty much following God's will for their finances. However, money may still control you just as strongly (or maybe even more strongly), if your every action and thought and first priority is about saving or increasing your wealth. Crown Financial Ministries sends out a weekly e-mail which last week contained this quick article that I really liked. I've excerpted and underlined a few of my favorite points.

God will never use money to worry us. If a Christian is worried, frustrated, and upset about money, God is not in control. God said that worry is not in His plan for our lives (Matthew 6:25). If we are relying on His guidance, He will supply all our needs, just as He has promised. So, believing that, we can concentrate on other things.

God will not cause Christians to hoard. There is a distinct difference between saving and hoarding. Saving is biblically recommended in order to be prepared for inevitable emergencies or adversity. Hoarding is putting money aside to guard against any and all calamities, yet seldom using it for family emergencies or financial setbacks. A Christian cannot be within God’s will and hoard money. Hoarding prevents Christians from seeing the needs of others and prohibits them from abandoning even a small portion of their hoarded funds to help the needy. Unfortunately, those who are guilty of hoarding usually can rationalize their behavior with so-called righteous arguments, but their arguments are contrary to the Word of God.

God will not use money to satisfy every whim and desire. It is important that we begin to adjust our lifestyles to be consistent and compatible with a Christian commitment. That commitment does not include lavishness. God does not want us to live in poverty; there is nothing inherently spiritual in poverty. Neither is there any sin in wealth. However, God does not desire for his people to live in worldly lavishness while His work needs to be funded and brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world do not even have the basics of food and clothing. So, although it is not wrong to live well, we should not live lavishly or extravagantly as nonbelievers. Our lifestyles must be guided by the Holy Spirit—not determined by the lifestyles of others, not even others within the Christian community. Although God does not supply the money to satisfy our every whim and desire, He has promised that He would meet our needs and provide an abundance so that we can help others. It is when we accept this principle that God will multiply our abundance as well.

Classic books

2010-12-07T16:25:00.013-06:00

While I was finishing my MBA, I made a list of some things I wanted to do once I had more free time. In particular, for college and post-grad degrees, I've found that my leisure reading always drops way off while I'm in school. Since I'm doing so much reading for classes themselves, that doesn't seem like the greatest way to relax. Due to having two kids now and a quite demanding job, I can't say that the free time has really materialized. Nonetheless I've found time to do a little bit more reading. I've been targeting some classics that I haven't read thus far, for two main reasons. One, if something is a classic (I guess the term is subjective, but whatever), it should be pretty good, and two, this is an area I know I need to shore up for when I eventually get on Jeopardy, my nerd dream. So here's what I've read thus far since I graduated, and a few I plan to read soon.

Here's what I've finished reading:
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby

Planned to read:
Their Eyes Were Watching God - have out from library, hope to read over Christmas
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck Centennial Edition) -have out from library, hope to read over Christmas
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Of course there's other books that I have read and plan to read, but I don't think they fit into the definition of a classic, so I'll cut off the list there.

How do people get here?

2010-12-05T14:18:00.002-06:00

Since it has been more than a full year between updates, I thought I would see what searches are still bringing people here in spite of the lack of new material. It turns out there are three searches where I am in the top 5 results on google.

Far and away the top way people stumble on the blog is via searches for statistical abuse for which the linked post is the second result on google as of today!

The next two bring in a lot fewer, roughly equal number of people, but still a fair number.

How much is a finger worth, for which I have the fourth result on google and

Definition of executive home, for which I have the third result.

I'm guessing from the traffic that more people actually search for statistical abuse than the other two. Can I turn those results into some money? I stopped doing google ads on here a long time ago, but it seems I should be able to monetize specific top search results. Probably aren't many ads that relevant to the worth of a finger (lawyer?), but the other two seem like they might correlate to something...

Whoa - I have this

2009-11-03T23:41:00.002-06:00

I've had this weird thing with my tongue that started roughly 20 years ago, where whenever I chew cinnamon gum, my tongue gets all irritated and red, basically burned. I've always just assumed that I had an allergy to something in cinnamon gum. Over the last couple of years, I've noticed lesser effects from (a very few) other foods, but always just chalked it up to some allergy and ignored it, as it really is just a minor inconvenience. Anyway, I'm at the dentist getting my teeth cleaned today, and the hygienist says, "You have geographic tongue." I had no idea what she was talking about, so she went on to elaborate that it's this irritation on the tongue that shows up at random, and probably never bothers me except when I eat certain foods. I immediately thought of the cinnamon gum thing, so when I got home tonight, I looked it up. Sure enough, I match the symptoms, and on forums several people talk about how cinnamon gum or candy (I have the same thing with Red Hots and such) is the chief trigger for this for them. Weird. This really changes my life not at all, as there aren't really any treatments, though some people have success with mints or vitamins. However, I guess it is nice to just know what's going on - not an allergy, but geographic tongue.

This apparently has a genetic component and tends to run in families. Also, I noticed that the Mayo Clinic mentions that toothpaste is an irritant, so somebody else may have this too. Not to mention that said unmentioned person also gets "canker sores" when stressed out, which is another possible symptom.

Peanut butter substitutes

2009-03-12T14:39:00.000-05:00

Sunflower seed butter > almond butter.

Arby's roastburger

2009-03-04T14:14:00.003-06:00

The roastburger is both good and free, with the purchase of a drink and a coupon.
I can't even remember the last time I was in an Arby's, but this is actually pretty good.

'As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God'

2009-01-09T11:01:00.002-06:00

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

From this fascinating article, found via a friend's link on facebook.

hot drink

2009-01-06T22:26:00.003-06:00

My wife's parents have been in town for the last few days and we all went out to lunch on Friday, before I went on to class. We went to a new favorite of ours, Cristina's, a Mexican restaurant. Emily was really enjoying the chips and salsa, meaning she was fairly quiet. With the conversation going on I wasn't watching her too closely, even though she was right by me. After a little bit, I look over at her and she is holding up the salsa directly to her mouth, guzzling it down straight from the bowl! We quickly take that away from her, and she goes back to chowing down on chips and salsa. Soon she is making weird faces and you can tell that her mouth is getting really hot. But this is a slow building salsa, so it is hard for her to tell that the pain is coming directly from the salsa. Now of course we have to take it away from her and try to get her to drink water, which only makes her think "My mouth is killing me AND they are trying to take away my delicious salsa", so she was none too happy. The trials of being two.

Crossfit

2008-12-26T14:39:00.002-06:00

Here's my latest adventure in the fitness domain: crossfit. I love the intensity as well as the varied nature of the workouts. Its emphasis on functional movement really makes a lot of sense to me now as I get older (and hopefully wiser). Really, what's the point of trying to have a 400 pound bench? It's more useful to have strength that you can apply, which crossfit really gives you with its mix of gymnastic movements and powerlifting. I've found a pretty good article on it, and I can assure you that the title, Sweat Storm, is very applicable.

I've been somewhat hit or miss with this due to the busy schedule, but the nice thing is that many workouts are in the 20 minutes or less range (but still very high intensity). I haven't had the discipline to simultaneously change my food intake, so I'm not losing weight with this, but that can come after the MBA. For now I need something just to maintain a basic level of fitness.

Bailout

2008-10-13T09:44:00.001-05:00

Comment one of my UT investment professors mailed out about the bailout:

I’ve got a plan to solve this whole financial crisis. We should put together a $700 billion hedge fund and let it overpay for securities. We should have Congress oversee this hedge fund because they have a record of financial expertise

Not to pat myself on the back...

2008-10-06T18:44:00.002-05:00

...but you heard it here first!

PETROLEUM ($/bbl)

	PRICE*	CHANGE	% CHANGE	TIME
Nymex Crude Future	88.59	.78	.89	19:08
Dated Brent Spot	83.40	-4.97	-5.63	10/06
WTI Cushing Spot	87.81	-6.07	-6.47	10/06

What is love?

2008-08-05T23:42:00.000-05:00

I can't get this story out of my head. The incredible neglect of a daughter by her mom is just so unimaginable. I think now having a daughter myself, I have even a stronger reaction to that. But even though it makes for a very depressing story, there is something incredibly positive too in the love and sacrifice that her new foster family has made in taking her in. The whole thing makes your heart break.

First he saw the girl's eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn't looking at him so much as through him.
She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a swollen diaper.
"The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high," the detective said. "The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs.
...
She wouldn't make eye contact. She didn't react to heat or cold — or pain. The insertion of an IV needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn't talk, didn't know how to nod yes or no. Once in a while she grunted.
...
Armstrong called the girl's condition "environmental autism." Danielle had been deprived of interaction for so long, the doctor believed, that she had withdrawn into herself.
...
Bernie, 48, remodels houses. Diane, 45, cleans homes. They have four grown sons from previous marriages and one together. Diane couldn't have any more children, and Bernie had always wanted a daughter. So last year, when William was 9, they decided to adopt.
Their new daughter would have to be younger than William, they told foster workers. But she would have to be potty-trained and able to feed herself. They didn't want a child who might hurt their son, or who was profoundly disabled and unable to take care of herself.
...
Diane called Bernie over. He saw the same thing she did. "She just looked like she needed us."
Bernie and Diane are humble, unpretentious people who would rather picnic on their deck than eat out. They go to work, go to church, visit with their neighbors, walk their dogs. They don't travel or pursue exotic interests; a vacation for them is hanging out at home with the family. Shy and soft-spoken, they're both slow to anger and, they say, seldom argue.
They had everything they ever wanted, they said. Except for a daughter.

Well, that's just to give you a taste. It's long, so I was trying to capture it in excerpts, but it just isn't doing it justice. It's worth your time. It almost made ME cry.

More of the same...

2008-07-12T22:47:00.001-05:00

Plano (closest major suburb/city to us. It's about the same size as Sacramento) is the best place in America to build wealth.

Forbes rates Collin County (our county) the 14th best county in America in which to raise a family, edging out Marin County at #15.

Business Week rates the best and worst cities for pay, cost of living adjusted, in various disciplines. Dallas is near the top of virtually every job type. Slides 12 and 17-19 are of particular interest to our family.

Forbes rates Dallas the tenth best recession-proof city.

Some cost of living comparisons with other cities of interest, all done using $100K base (so you can easily see % difference) in Plano. Following the link will let you see what areas comprise the difference, often housing is the prime suspect.
Sacramento: $123k (to equal a $100k salary in Plano)
Denver: $102k
Salt Lake City: $100k
Seattle: $116k
Northern VA: $141k
SF: $171k!
Dayton: $94k

CNN just named Texas the top state for business for 2008.

From the San Antonio BizJournal:

CNBC Inc. ranked Texas as the best all-around state economy and the No. 1 state to do business in America in 2008.

Texas boasts over half of the nation's new jobs created in the past 12 months, and has added over 1.2 million net new jobs in the past five years, more than any other state.

More on oil

2008-06-10T11:19:00.003-05:00

I believe we are in the midst of a general commodities bubble and that oil prices specifically will come back down, despite all the doom and gloom you currently hear. Much of that talk sounds very similar to the "it's different this time" talk of the tech boom and the housing boom. Here's an article that pretty much says what I'm thinking. Note that I don't believe we will go back to gas being less than $1 a gallon, only that I doubt we will be staying above $4. However, unlike the stock market, it will take a while for this situation to correct, more similar to the housing market, so it could be a while before things level out. And, as Jeff correctly pointed out in an earlier comment, it is impossible to predict exactly when a bubble will burst, but I believe it is possible to identify that you are in a bubble.

Here's some things that will likely be changing and impacting oil prices (some of this is in the aforementioned article also).
1) Weak dollar. I expect US monetary policy will move towards a more sound dollar, making oil worth less dollars/gallon.
2) In normal free market situations, as profits rise in an industry, new entrants are attracted to those profits and find ways to do things differently and more efficiently or at least source more of the desired item so that they can gain some of the profit. This should be happening in the oil industry. A variety of regulations make this difficult, but eventually these hurdles will be crossed. You probably hear a lot surrounding drilling in ANWR in regards to this topic, but oil shale in the west seems like a bigger story. Some of these options, like shale, require a higher price of oil/barrel than the $40 we used to be at, but settling down around $80/barrel would still make the new investments lucrative and be a significant decrease from where we are now. Also, refinery capacity is going to have to increase. All of these things take time.
3) We are seeing shifts in demand. While small, these trends are actually likely to widen over time. Technological innovation will shift not only to alternate fuels, but also to greater efficiencies with what we have now. As the original article explains, slight adjustments in demand can actually have a large effect on price.

In the end, who knows. Regardless of the price of oil, it doesn't hurt any of us to figure out ways to use less energy, for no other reason than it's nice to save money, even if it ends up being less savings than it is right now. My family was into buying higher mpg cars back when gas was less than a buck a gallon. A good dose of cheapness so often exceeds today's environmental fads.

** Update 7/1/2008 **
A couple more interesting links on the same topic:

Some interesting graphs from the WSJ. I especially like the one at the bottom overlaying the recent oil runup to the stock boom.

Article from Barron's saying oil may be back to $100/barrel by the end of the year!

Equal Opportunity to be Wrong

2008-06-10T11:15:00.004-05:00

Obama has come out in favor of a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Number 1, it is idiotic for the government, the least efficient entity in the history of man, to decide how much profit someone should make for doing something. On what basis is such a decision even made? Many tech companies would suffer to have as LOW of a profit margin as Exxon-Mobil's 10.85%. Check out Microsoft's latest number, 28.33%. In fact, of the 529 companies with a market cap greater than or equal to $10B listed on US stock exchanges, there are 247 with profit margins of 11% or more. Apparently 47% of our largest companies should be subjected to a windfall profits tax. I hesitate to even make that remark sarcastically; that will probably be the next plank of the Democratic party platform. Also, for anyone who complains about the fact that Exxon-Mobil has the largest sheer profit of any company in history, that just reveals economic ignorance. They are one of the largest companies in history, so if they make any kind of a decent return, of course they have a very large overall profit number. As you can see from the previous links, plenty of companies get away with taking more from customers on a percentage basis. Number 2, a tax on oil company profits serves only as a disincentive to produce more oil. If the reason oil prices are so high is that current demand outstrips current supply...how are things improved by further inhibiting supply?

Now let's move on to McCain. He proposed, with Hillary no less, a moratorium on the federal gas tax for the summer. We all know I virtually never oppose reducing taxes any way possible, but I have a hard time making sense of this one either. Removing taxes on an item has the obvious effect of lowering prices. Businesses lower prices to stimulate demand. If the reason oil prices are so high is that current demand outstrips current supply...how are things improved by a temporary stimulation of more demand?

*It looks like the numbers I'm feeding into the google stock screener above have reset, so you'll have to re-enter the appropriate date if you want to see the number of companies for yourself. Obviously the number vares slightly over time as companies' valuations change. With the recent losses, we now have 20-some fewer companies with a market cap above $10B.

Stimulus?

2008-05-14T14:12:00.000-05:00

This is an old article, but I thought it appropriate to call out as we are just now receiving our "stimulus" checks.

In this world of ours, those resources going to the rebate recipients don't come from the Tooth Fairy. They have to come from workers and producers. If the resources come from workers and producers who thereby receive less for their work than they otherwise would have received, won't they in turn spend less? Of course they'll spend less, and the people who now supply them with less will also spend less, and so on down the line.

As my former colleague and friend Milton Friedman liked to say, "There's no such thing as a free lunch," and this rebate is exactly what he meant. The net effect is that the reduction in demand from those who pay the real resources will be exactly the same size as the increase in demand from the rebate recipients. It's sad but true. Income effects always net to zero in a closed system.

To see this point from a more generic standpoint, if the price of apples rises, it is true that apple growers are better off. Their income effects go way up, and they can spend more. But apple consumers are worse off because their incomes go down by the exact same amount, and they have to spend less.

Emily Translator

2008-03-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

Ba: Ball
Ba Ba: Baby (now also occasionally actually pronounced BAY-BE)
Ba Ba Ba: Banana (sometimes just abbreviated ba-ba. You really have to pay attention to context.)
Da Da (occasionally even Da-DEE): as far as I can tell, this is either Melinda or me.
Do (pronounced dough): said whenever she sees, hears, or thinks about a dog. Will often be said excitedly over and over for several minutes.
Dis (followed by pointing): This. Means she wants something, or wants you to notice something, or who knows?
Mo mo (with sign language for more): usually equals GIVE ME THAT FOOD!

And a quick update, Emily still isn't exactly walking, but she is taking two or three steps between things to hold on to, so I think it is just a matter of time now.

MBA update

2008-03-29T00:05:00.000-05:00

I have been tremendously busy between the MBA and my new management role at work, so I never got the detailed info on my Vietnam trip published on here. However, we did just have to do a presentation on Vietnam for class, so I leave you with a few of the links that I used. We focused on starting a business in Vietnam, and I was responsible for the section on Raising Capital/Capital Markets and the conclusion. From peer reviews (i.e., we still don't have the professors' scores which actually determine the real grade), we had the highest score in the class.

Getting up to date info was a real challenge, since the laws in Vietnam are constantly changing.

Check out the Vietnam stock index, and how it has cratered over the last few months.

This article from early 2007 shows how they were in bubble behavior.

Very helpful report from the World Bank, though it was somewhat outdated, being from 2006.

One last article on raising capital.

More on the stock market madness.

Final note is that I was amazingly comfortable presenting in front of the class. I think the preaching I did a few times in California really took care of that. The only little bit of nervousness I did have was because we had to hit 15 minutes in presentation time, and given that I went last, I had to manage whichever way time went awry. Ended up being no problem. We banged out a lot of practice and were fairly polished.

Texas news

2008-03-28T23:51:00.001-05:00

DFW is number one in population growth.

Texas has record low unemployment.

Follow me to job paradise! Don't stick around after I leave somewhere though. Our old house in Sac got foreclosed on at the end of last year and is now re-listed for $110k less than we sold for. Yikes!

2008-03-03T12:37:00.000-06:00

I can't really concentrate enough to say anything coherent, so I thought I would use my time to throw out a few interesting links I've come across.

A map that shows what country each US state's GDP corresponds to. Gives you a feel for how mammoth our economy really is.

The moral sense test.

Leading in times of transition.

Hmmm...apparently I haven't really been saving a lot of interesting links.

ugh

2008-03-03T12:34:00.000-06:00

We are completely wiped out by either a bug or food poisoning here, with only Emily unaffected. Melinda and I got sick at almost the exact same time yesterday, which led me to believe it was something we ate. I have managed to keep down a few crackers so far today, but I still feel terrible and am now running a fever over 100. This is incredibly unhelpful to me, as I have a ton of work I need to do for my MBA over the next few days.

2008-01-09T17:30:00.000-06:00

Well, a lot has changed since my last post.

- I finished my first semester of my MBA (grades were decent, but did not achieve my personal goal of straight A's). But overall not bad for someone who has been out of school for 8 years and also has a family and a full-time job.
- Speaking of which, I got a new job. I am now the manager of a 10-person team of engineers, still in the same division at HP. I had 5 individual interviews and one panel interview in the same week as I was studying for my MBA finals. A bit exhausting.
- I went on my Vietnam international trip. I want to do a post for each day so that I can have something to reference and so you can have close to my full experience. However, I need to do that quickly before I forget everything but I am still recovering from my 36-hour journey back and the resulting massive jetlag, while also returning to my new job where I have to quickly bang out performance reviews this week and also do all my prep work for the first week of second semester MBA. So probably won't get to this before the weekend.

2007-11-25T19:43:00.000-06:00

Those of you used to monthly photo albums of Emily on Snapfish have probably noticed that not much has been happening there of late. That is because we have been without a digital camera since a certain party in the family made a trip to Salt Lake City from which the camera did not return. Have no fear, we have now purchased a much-improved replacement - a Canon Powershot SD850. Soon the deluge of photos will resume. In the meantime, Melinda has been recording Emily a lot on video, but I really don't have the time or inclination to pull that over to the computer, edit, and upload it, so you'll have to wait a while for that.

Like father...

2007-11-25T14:00:00.000-06:00

We have one of those alarm clock things that you can plug an ipod into that we use to play soothing music for Emily when she's getting ready to go to sleep. The other night, the alarm somehow got turned on and went off at the default time (since we never set it) of midnight. I was downstairs and had the TV on, and it took me a while to figure out what the noise was. Is it coming from the TV? No, it sounds like it's upstairs...etc. By the time I ran up and got it turned off, it had to have been going off for a couple of minutes. Despite that, and me running in and fumbling around with the clock, Emily never woke up. In fact, I could hear her regular breathing the whole time I was in there, even when the alarm was going off, completely uninterrupted. Just like Dad! Maybe she will grow up to be able to sleep through a burglar alarm going off in her house that wakes up the neighbors across the street like I did when I was in high school.

Money, Money, Money

2007-11-25T13:04:00.000-06:00

Sadly hilarious commentary from Trump on what it takes to be rich like him.

First, take the quiz.

Then read the insightful commentary.

Some of the questions are actually ok. However, some of the questions/Trump's recommended answers are so wrong that life wouldn't be worth living if I answered those questions the way he thinks is best. Here I refer especially to #3, #13, and #15

The funniest thing is that it doesn't take long to think of numerous cases of extremely wealthy individuals who don't follow these guidelines at all.

Emily visits Dad's office

2007-10-31T10:01:00.000-05:00

Emily visited me at work yesterday for our annual trick-or-treat among the offices that we do for all the kids. As you can she, she is modeling her pumpkin costume that Nana bought her.

2007-10-23T13:56:00.000-05:00

I recently read an interesting article from the ChristianityToday website.

Premise - if evolution is true (evolution that does not involve a designer, this argument doesn't really apply to intelligent design/theistic evolution), the state of things today is whatever is most advantageous in terms of natural selection. Fact - most of the world believes in some kind of god. Conclusion - religion is evolutionarily advantageous.

So here's where I'm headed with this thought experiment: if the evolutionary account of religious belief that many atheists are now promoting is correct, then atheists don't have much of a future. Their own arguments, plus some elementary demographic data, show that their position cannot become dominant. The only real chance that atheism has to flourish is if it's wrong. If the Christian anthropology, for instance, happens to be true, then we will expect people to rebel against God, to act in violation of his will. But we will also expect them not to want to admit that that's what they're doing. So they will try to argue that their actions, however sinful, however violent, intolerant, and cruel, are somehow in keeping with God's will. But eventually the cognitive dissonance of that position is likely to become too much for them, at which point they might find—like that one-time Russian Orthodox seminarian Josef Stalin—that the easier path is simply to deny the existence of the God who otherwise would be their Judge.

cell phone pics

2007-10-07T14:47:00.000-05:00

I finally fixed the bluetooth glitch on my laptop, so I can download pics from cell phone again. Here are a few things I found worthy of snapping with my blurry cell phone cam.

This cereal was at Trader Joe's in California:

From an ad on the table at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant we go to where you can get a whole meal for less than 4 bucks (I'm sure it's healthy too!):
What would Jesus do? He would buy this pool!!! And receive 50% off on cleaning with this coupon and a 1 year service agreement!

Our first activity at the Austin intensive for my MBA was to try to build as high a structure as possible with newspaper and a few other materials in a very limited amount of time. My team built a structure that reached the ceiling (it wasn't allowed to touch it) which would have left us tied with several teams, but one team surpassed us all by building theirs up into a light socket so they could go even higher. Here is the base of our ugly but effective contraption:

You can't really make anything out in the pic I tried to take of the whole thing, so I didn't post that one.

I try to take most of my pictures of Emily with our decent real camera, but here is one I took a while ago and it is now the background picture on my cell phone:

I cannot get enough of this clip

2007-09-25T23:12:00.000-05:00

It just speaks for itself.

More on obscene executive payouts

2007-09-17T14:28:00.000-05:00

This article points out where the company boards of directors are failing when they have to bring in high-dollar white-knight CEOs from outside the company.

Look, we agree that severance packages can be obscene. But unfortunately, this problem is probably going to get worse. The reason: Sarbanes-Oxley has driven scores of boards into a state of frenzied micromanagement. Too many of them are now more concerned with accounting minutiae than with people development, including succession planning. What a shame. Boards have only one job more important than developing internal candidates: coaching and supporting the current CEO. Boards can't do the work of management. They can only make sure the right management is in place, now and in the future.

Don't eat that!

2007-09-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

Well, here is an example of an article that sounds like total fear-mongering and scare tactics.

"We cannot be sure that this patient's exposure to butter flavored microwave popcorn from daily heavy preparation has caused his lung disease," cautioned Dr. Cecile Rose. "However, we have no other plausible explanation."

Yet because I have longed maintained that the fake butter in microwave popcorn smells terrible and makes me sick just thinking about it, I completely believe this propaganda.

What luxury do I care most about?

2007-09-05T13:31:00.000-05:00

In Austin for a week to kick off my MBA, I stayed at the Four Seasons. Now in Dallas for our every-other-weekend classes, we stay Friday night at the Hilton Anatole. Both very classy hotels where money has been lavished on a number of things, including granite-topped nightstands and marble in the bathroom. However, expense has been spared in one key area. Neither hotel had very good toilet paper. Seriously, do I really care whether my nightstand has granite on it or not? No! But I do care about the quality of toilet paper I'm using. I really believe that I shouldn't have a vastly better product at home than what I get at a nice hotel.

UT Austin MBA

2007-08-27T13:39:00.000-05:00

Busy day at work coming back from vacation, but wanted to get out a quick wrap-up of my MBA experience thus far.

I spent the week in Austin going to school full-time. Loved it. I have three classes:
Financial accounting - I can see how incredibly useful this is, but it would be boring as a full career. I compared it to algebra. I definitely don't want a job that is all about algebra, but it sure is handy in a ton of other things I do like.

Statistics and Decision Analysis - seems like a good class. I like making charts and graphs.

Managing People and Organizations - favorite class so far, because so obviously applicable to my work life. We do a ton of interesting exercises that demonstrate what we're learning.

We also had one-shot seminars in some other things, including an intro to economics class that was supposed to give us the foundation we needed for the rest of this year, since we won't have our actual economics class until next year. I have to say the prof, Dr. Brandl, probably gave the most interesting lecture I've ever sat through. Which is really saying something when you think about how dry economics could be. Milk price controls, China, monetary policy - all fascinating. He went on for a while about some scary stuff regarding China's economic health, which prompted a student to ask how we would be affected if China had a big economic downturn. He answers something like this - "Not that much, our economy should stay fairly healthy for the next few years...if Hillary doesn't get elected. Then all bets are off." I already liked him even before that, but that pretty much cinched it.

We stayed at the Four Seasons in Austin the whole week. Very nice, but I can't see how I would ever justify paying that much (~$400/night) on my own for a room that all you really do is sleep in. The marginal benefit doesn't justify an extra marginal cost of $250+/night over Embassy Suites.

Videoconferencing

2007-08-27T13:35:00.000-05:00

We have this at work, and it is actually really close to meeting in the same room with people. Really changes the dynamics from a traditional computer and phone virtual meeting.

Statistical Abuse II

2007-07-31T10:40:00.000-05:00

I listened to the news on the radio while driving in this morning. The newscasters discussed a recent report on housing foreclosures.

"How does Texas fare on the list?"
"Not good, Bob. Texas is third on the list of number of foreclosures, trailing only California and Florida."

AAUUUUGGGHHHHH! THOSE ARE THREE OF THE FOUR MOST POPULOUS STATES, SO THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE SHOULD EXPECT. Give me some kind of rate change or per-capita statistic. If anything Texas might be ahead of what we'd expect, since it is second most-populous but third in number of foreclosures. Ok, I just went online to find a link with the numbers that the radio folks were discussing. IT MAKES THE EXACT SAME IRRITATING KIND OF STATEMENTS. Look at the headline: Texas still struggling with foreclosure woes, study shows. But let's read what is revealed in the text.

For the first six months of 2007, the Lone Star State reported 69,471 foreclosure filings, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac. That amounts to an average of one filing for every 130 homes. The company will not release individual market data for another week.
There were two other states that had a higher number of foreclosure filings than Texas.

For the first six months of 2007, RealtyTrac reports that California led the nation in the number of foreclosures, with a total of 189,560 filings -- an average of one foreclosure filing for every 69 households. Florida took second place, with a total of 102,213 filings. That amounts to an average of one foreclosure for every 81 households.

The national picture isn't looking too rosy either. The latest RealtyTrac report shows that over the first six months of the year, the United States recorded a total of 925,986 foreclosure filings. That amounts to an average of one filing for every 134 households.

Hmmm, the national average is one filing for every 134 households and Texas has one for every 130 households. So as anyone with an IQ over 32 could tell, that pretty much equals AVERAGE, not OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING. I'd be a lot more worried about being in CA with 1 filing for every 69 households.

*Follow-up: For contrast: here's an article that discusses the same data in the correct manner. It calls out Florida as fifth in foreclosure rates. Nevada is actually in the worst shape based on that info, and wasn't even mentioned on the radio or in the previous article.

Catch up on your Mckinney news

2007-07-31T10:36:00.000-05:00

I actually could have been on the highway with this car-chase yesterday when I was driving to a dental appointment, but elected to take surface streets instead.

A routine traffic stop turned into a dangerous chase after the driver took off down residential streets and onto Central Expressway.

Authorities said after the man was arrested, he told police he was rushing his cat to a pet hospital.
...
The chase began in Garland and reached up to speeds as high as 90 mph. Once the man reached McKinney, he turned his vehicle back around and headed south until the chase ended in Richardson.

Idiotic Statement of the day

2007-07-31T10:29:00.000-05:00

From Yahoo News:

If 11 young men can instill national pride and a sense of unity by playing soccer, Iraqis are wondering why 275 politicians elected to steer Iraq to a brighter future cannot achieve the same result.

Next this Einstein can spend time pondering why more Americans watch the Super Bowl than watch the presidential debates. Granted, I'm not saying it's a good thing long-term for our country or theirs, but perhaps sports are more fun than politics? Newsflash: most people prefer eating brownies to broccoli.

another random test

2007-07-11T16:35:00.000-05:00

Your Score: English Genius

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 93% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I think the 93% on the Expert words means I missed just one, which from looking at the answers was probably a mistake on further/farther. I know I have trouble with that.

2007-07-07T18:56:00.000-05:00

Emily liked the room we had at Harrah's in South Lake Tahoe for $40/night. I'm pretty sure this could be used in a Harrah's ad campaign.

Back in California

2007-06-26T11:43:00.000-05:00

As of Sunday, we are back in California for two weeks. I'm working this week from my old office in Roseville, and then next week will be complete vacation. We even have plans to jump up to Tahoe for one overnight stay, assuming the forest fires in South Lake Tahoe are contained by then! The biggest news so far is that I swung by our old house on the way into work yesterday and saw it was for sale. Once I got to work and said hello to everyone, I hurried to check the listing and they are asking 60k less than we sold for two years ago! They might not even get that, so we definitely got out at a good time.

Blogger Blues

2007-06-19T18:26:00.000-05:00

After my recent post declaring "I'm back", you're probably wondering where I disappeared to for two weeks. Well, I had some issues with blogger. I could type up a long boring post explaining why, but instead I'll just copy from the e-mail rant I sent my sister. Well, I was trying to send it to my sister to explain why I had not posted something on my blog, but was so irritated by the whole experience, I accidentally sent it to my wife instead. Anyway, here it is:

First it wouldn't recognize my e-mail username/logon. So I figured if I reset my password it would start recognizing my username. That turned out to be true, but it sends the new password to your "secondary e-mail account", which I evidently didn't enter in when I signed up. How about sending the new password to MY FIRST E-MAIL ACCOUNT? HOW ABOUT NOT STOPPING RECOGNIZING MY USERNAME OUT OF NOWHERE? So I now I have to wait five days to be able to answer security questions to access my blog. Words fail me. There will be an angry rant on my blog in four days.

Today I log on assuming I'll have to remember the answer to some questions I set up two years ago to be able to access my account. Instead, blogger logs me in without even asking for a password. I'm happy about that, but I honestly have no idea what my password should be now, since theoretically it has been reset. And what the heck happened to their server, where it stopped recognizing my user name for no reason? Who knows if I'll be able to access it tomorrow or not?

Your source for In-N-Out burger news

2007-06-19T18:20:00.000-05:00

Story: Blah blah blah... some chain in Utah is too similar to In-N-Out, so getting sued...blah, blah. Then this for the last line:

In-N-Out Burger has plans to open their first Utah location near St. George by early 2008.

WHAT....UTAH?????

(looks at map, since I've never even heard of St. George)

Oh that's actually not that far from Vegas, where they already have a location. I guess they can use the same food sources/distribution network, so it makes some kind of sense.

I'm back

2007-06-01T11:46:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the two or three of you who still check my blog. It's been almost two months! I originally stopped while I was finishing my UT MBA application, but then just didn't get back in the groove after that, and then my wife had to go to the hospital with pancreatitis and gallstones, so I just never really got back in the saddle. Plus, once I went for so long, I think I wanted to have something really important to say in my big first post back, which meant I never posted anything. So, since I am in a list-making mood, I'll give you some things that have changed for me since my post in early April.

1) I have a new cell phone
2) I turned 31.
3) My in-laws have been out to visit - twice, actually, thanks to my wife's surgery.
4) I bought an old-school manual mower, kind of like this one. I couldn't find the exact one I bought. Mine is also from Scotts, but has a different handle and a smaller cutting width, which makes for quite a workout doing the lawn.
5) I have vastly increased my network on LinkedIn. Shoot me an invite if you're on there and I'm not already linked to you.
6) I am considering building an ark, since it hasn't stopped raining here in Texas for the last two months, after raining maybe twice in the entire previous two years we were here.
7) I learned Mandarin. Ok, not really, but nothing else sounded very impressive in my list, so I thought I would make something up.
8) I went to a Rangers' game. My home team winning streak stayed alive and well in the MLB, quite a feat as the Rangers are not so good this year.
9) We bought plantation shutters for our family room. Yes, that's how boring things are. I had to mention that just to get to 9. I was hoping to come up with ten things.....

Daddy's girl

2007-06-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

Some facts about Emily
1) She hardly ever cries. She is generally a very content little baby.
2) However, when she does cry, it's because we are trying to get her to take a nap. She HATES naps. Going to sleep at night is fine, however.
3) She can say "Dada". However, the charm of this is somewhat weakened by the fact that she says "da" and "da da da da da da" all the time and there is seemingly no connection to me whatsoever. Oh well. Soon.
4) Everyone says she looks just like me. I always say, "My genes are winning."
5) She's started eating rice cereal, so we are going down the path toward solid food. Quite a few pics of this in the May Snapfish album, so just ask me if you would like access to the mammoth number of pictures I take of her.
6) She held up very well through Mommy's recent traumatic surgery (see a later post where I give more details) and is quite content to be cared for by different people, especially if they are willing to hold her.
7) She loves her bumbo seat (which she is in in the picture above)

quick update

2007-04-05T16:27:00.000-05:00

Thanks to those who stopped by to wish my wife a happy birthday!

For everyone else, you may have notice a dearth of blog postings of late. I'm taking a break from this while I try to finish up some other items. I'll be back soon!

stuff

2007-02-28T10:20:00.000-06:00

This picture probably won't be funny to most of you, unless, like me, you work with a bunch of Linux snobs. They are probably the only thing worse than the Mac snobs. If you are unaware of the internet legend of the man on the right, see here and here for more info on Tron Guy. Also, am I the only one who finds the PC guy actually very likable in a sad way?

The sky here was BROWN on Saturday.

A couple of amusing flash games if you have a little time to kill. The irritating game - aptly named; this is very difficult to do for long. I can't remember my best time, as I haven't played it in a while, but I think it was somewhere over 30 seconds. The game whose name I don't know. Top score here is 185. I don't really play these a lot, but they are nice quick games if you just want to de-stress for about a minute.

For those of you wanting to know about my MBA situation, I am still waiting to hear back from schools. In the meantime, you can amuse yourself with this fascinating site. While this uses self-reported stats and is thus in no way a scientific sampling, it is still interesting to look at which people got accepted or rejected vs where they fell on the GMAT and GPA graph. I wish you could get this kind of data more officially. Of course that would be way too revealing, so the schools would never do it. Another interesting MBA-related link. An interesting article on b-school's potential effects on relationships.

Life

2007-02-18T17:58:00.000-06:00

Well, life is starting to return to normal somewhat. I think we sort of turned the corner at about five weeks and seem to be headed in the right direction. At five weeks, with the help of our friend Wendy who was visiting, we were actually able to go out to a sit-down restaurant for the first time with Emily. We also made our big return to church, where Emily has been quite a hit. Yesterday we even went shopping at the outlet mall not far from us, and then headed over to Costco. It doesn't sound like much, but it felt like a big victory.
When we get to Costco, we decide that my wife will pick up a few items and I will keep Emily in the stroller with me while I eat a slice of pizza at the little Costco food stand, as I am getting ravenously hungry from working out earlier in the day. After I finish my pizza, Emily starts to get fussy, so I start pushing the stroller around the store. She loves being in motion of any kind, so this immediately quieted her down. However, I am now no longer in the place where my wife expects to meet up, so I figure I will just call her cell phone and we'll join up with her wherever she is. So I dial her phone, and I can hear it ringing. I think it must be coming from over by the couches, so I quickly push the stroller over there, but I don't spot her before the call goes to voice-mail. A little frustrated that I couldn't see her and that she didn't answer her phone, I dial her again. It seems I am practically right on top of where the ringing is coming from. It goes to voice-mail again! Why can't I see her? Suddenly the light dawns. Her phone is in the diaper bag, which is in the stroller, which I am pushing around...

Statistical Abuse

2007-02-07T16:45:00.002-06:00

I just can't handle the misuse of statistics that I see constantly in the media. I know it has always been thus, as one can see by the age of some of the plethora of quotes available on the subject. However, it seems like it is getting even worse of late. I'm not even talking about bending statistics in political debate or somesuch, but in even the most innocuous of things. This article states that women apparently have better relationships with their clothes than with their men.

The study also suggested that clothes often wear better than relationships.
The average woman between 18 and 54 years of age has hung on to her favorite article of clothing for 12 and a half years, a year longer than she's held on to her longest relationship.

Let's talk about a few of the flaws underlying any conclusions that can be drawn from this statement.
1) A girl of 26 could conceivably still have clothes she bought when she was 16, since most women are done growing by then, but there is virtually no possibility she could have been in a relationship since then. They might as well have concluded that 17 year olds like their bed better than their car, since they have quite likely had the bed longer. Idiotic.
2) You can own clothes simultaneously, so you can accrue years with a favorite article of clothing while it is not actually your favorite. Example: A woman buys her favorite skirt at 20 and keeps it until age 32 when she throws it out. When she throws it away, her new favorite item is a shirt she bought when she was 23, meaning her new favorite item has been with her 9 years. Outside of Colorado City, a woman who divorces her husband will be restarting at zero, which really weighs down the averages.
There are other problems here, but I grow weary of this example. Let's move on to the cover article a couple of weeks ago in Parade magazine, entitled, "Is America still No. 1?"

We spend more money per person on health care a year ($5,700) than any country, and a greater percentage of our gross domestic product (more than 15%) goes to health care. But are we getting our money’s worth? Forty-three countries have more doctors per capita, including France, Switzerland, Mongolia and Lebanon.

I hope that a reasonable person is immediately suspicious of any conclusions to be drawn from that statistic, since common sense should instantly ring alarm bells about any claim that implies Mongolia is ahead of us medically. Is having more doctors per person better? Perhaps we don't need as many doctors per person because our doctors are better trained and more efficient. Likewise, most Americans own a car, or live near public transportation, so it's not like we need to have one doctor within walking distance of every group of 100 people. At least that statistic used a per-capita comparison.

Similarly, the U. S. has a greater rate of incarceration (737 per 100,000 people—or 2.2. million) than any other nation, and we perform the fourth-highest number of executions

So.....we're the third-largest nation in the world and we perform the fourth-highest number of executions? Hmmm. What I really hate is that that statistic is thrown out in the same sentence as the per-capita info on incarceration rates, so it's difficult to see how the "4th highest" number wasn't intentionally used to make things look bad. Hard to plead ignorant there.

Those probably aren't even the worst examples of what we regularly read or see on TV, they are just a couple I happened to have handy.

Project follow-up

2007-02-01T17:12:00.000-06:00

Here is a picture of our newly-installed ceiling fan in the room I'm using as my office.

As you know from the last post, our toilet turned out to need some more work to make it stop intermittently running, so Dad and I eventually ended up replacing every part of the interior workings of the toilet. The good news is that that only cost about $20 total, and that it was easy enough that even DIY-challenged me could do it again in the future. The bad news was that the whole process included one trip to Wal-Mart and two to Home Depot, the last due to the fact that Home Depot had previously restocked the thing I bought and it had a missing part, so I had to go back and exchange. That earned an angry comment in the survey you can fill out after each visit. Dad also tackled the overhead fluorescent light in our walk-in closet, which has had one tube out and the other one working 80% of the time. He seems to have gotten us up to 100% on the working tube, but the other tube is still out. Still, we're better off than we were.

My wife also pointed out that her Dad had fixed a little problem with the crib we bought used off of Craigslist (of course that's where we got it!), and replaced a couple of doorstops for us. We had one that was not stopping the door in from our garage, so I was repeatedly slamming the knob into the wall when I would come home. Not good for the drywall. Those are fixed. We also had a fridge repairman out to work on the annoyingly loud noise that our fridge makes at random times. This is the second repairman we had out. This one did a ton of research and figured out that the problem could be with a fan connected to the ice maker. He ordered the part, and then installed it a couple of days later. That seemed to take care of the noise......at first. It reappeared in about three weeks. Very annoying!

I'm feeling pretty tired, so I'm sure this post is barely readable, but would make perfect sense to me even if I read through it 14 times. That's been my experience with tired-typing of late. I hate to think what I've been sending out in e-mails at work.

Projects

2007-01-25T21:27:00.000-06:00

Here's some projects that have been done around our house while first my wife's parents and now my parents have been out to visit.

First, our upstairs shower started not putting out hot water again, so we had to hire a plumber to come fix that for $220. After that, no more outside help.

My father-in-law re-grouted the bottom of our shower and fixed the piece of rubber under the door that had split and was hanging down. He also fixed our broken wall clock and hanged it for us. He then hanged multiple pictures that we had never gotten around to putting up. My mother-in-law helped my wife (finally) organize her side of our walk-in closet. They both did a ton of cleaning around the house, including even light fixtures. Our house has never looked better!

With the arrival of my Mom and Dad this week, it was time to tackle putting up a ceiling fan. We purchased two fans at Home Depot more than a year ago when they had a good sale and we had a 10% off coupon. A friend helped me put up one fan shortly thereafter, but the other one languished in its box until now. Dad and I put it up today, in what I must say was a herculean struggle. We got it wired and put together in what seemed like fairly quick fashion, only to find that it didn't work when we hit the switches. We tried several more iterations of switching which house wires connected to which fan wires, all to no avail. Holding a very heavy object over your head for an extended period of time while balancing on a ladder is a pretty good workout. Eventually we even took down the previously done ceiling fan to check out its wiring. It matched what we had done the first time, so why didn't that work? I had ruled out a blown fuse because my computer was in the same room and had stayed on the whole time. Nonetheless, after all the futility, I eventually ran down and checked the fusebox. Sure enough, it was blown. I guess the overhead light and an outlet in the same room are on different fuses. So, I reset the fuse, we re-wired back to the original way, and everything worked. Whew. Dad then took a look at our lawnmower that hasn't been working, but which I had not had the right tool to open. Dad had already gotten that, and quickly diagnosed what needed to be replaced. However that part requires going to Sears, which we don't have immediately nearby, so that project had to be postponed to another day. Next, we tackled a toilet that has been intermittently refilling. After a quick trip to Wal-Mart, Dad had the flapper (is that the technical term?) replaced in no time. Unfortunately, the problem hasn't been solved so we return to that project tomorrow as well. I also came home from the Wal-Mart trip with a can of WD-40 (I'm not sure what happened to the can I had), so I went around the downstairs spraying all the squeaky door hinges, which were many. It is so nice to have those quieted. Tomorrow, the upstairs' hinges!

Both sets of parents also did all of the meal preparations while they were here. We will sorely miss all their help!

No need to panic

2007-01-20T01:09:00.000-06:00

In case you might be paying attention to car seat stories, it turns out Consumer Reports big news about most car seats failing their safety tests was due to their own bad methodology. This article gives you the whole story and a list of seats the NHTSA declared safe from their testing.

Software Engineer on American Idol?

2007-01-20T01:00:00.000-06:00

That's right. It's even worse than you think.

Emily

2007-01-20T00:36:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed less blogging on my part of late. That is due to the arrival of our daughter Emily on the 4th of January. Without any bias, she is obviously the cutest baby ever. My sister has an excellent post that pretty much covered the details of her birth. Since then there has definitely been less sleep, and a lot more time spent focused on poop, and bottles, and crying, but she is a lot of fun. And, other then a few minor glitches, she is very healthy, for which we are very thankful.

Her arrival coincided with a very busy period at work. Whereas I had been planning to take about a week off and then work some half days, I ended up only taking three days off and have been working extra hours since. I really hope things calm down soon. It has been nice having my wife's parents here to help out. They leave this Saturday and then my parents come in on Monday, so we won't have to be on our own for long!

Is my hair pointy?

2007-01-20T00:29:00.000-06:00

Instant message conversation the other day, which started with me expounding on Bob Nardelli leaving Home Depot.
Friend: You sound like a manager
Me: I am a manager.
Friend: Yes, but now you SOUND like one.

I don't think that's a compliment, but I think it means I should be making more money soon.

one of those dumb quizzes

2007-01-20T00:21:00.000-06:00

Your personality type is SCUAI

You are social, calm, moderately unstructured, accommodating, and intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Providence, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, San Antonio, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Portland/Salem, Nashville, Louisville and these international countries/regions Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Norway, Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, Russia, Japan, India

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org

Apparently I didn't land in the right city in Texas. If you follow the link to the description of SCUAI, you'll find that, like most quizzes, this one is about 50% accurate. Yeah, I'm pretty worry-free, but let's face it, I hate to lose. And while willing to explain things twice, I pretty much hate having to do so. I do like having philosophical discussions. That hit or miss pattern goes on for the rest of the traits. Probably 50% of these traits apply to everyone on earth.

Baby update

2006-12-26T17:43:00.000-06:00

Just a quick post to catch people up on things. Our daughter was originally due on January 6th. But when my wife went in for her last ultrasound, they were saying the baby was on the larger side (who would think?) and she had a huge head, in the 95th percentile (I told my wife "Big head = big brain!"). Based on that information, the doctor had scheduled an induction for the 28th. However, we went in to see the doctor today, and things weren't really making any progress, and the baby didn't seem to be much larger (so no need to rush things along). So, we're going to hold off for now and come back in on January second to see where things are then. No baby until 2007 unless she suddenly changes her mind and makes a quick appearance on her own!

My family's future?

2006-12-10T20:56:00.000-06:00

A lot of times after I explain how my wife took something back to one store and drove to get it at another store for the sole purpose of saving 75 cents, people look at me like they just don't understand. So I reference this to help explain:

Mavs game

2006-11-26T16:28:00.000-06:00

We went to our first Mav's game last night with some friends. We took the DART (light rail) in from Plano. Quite convenient, since you don't have to drive downtown and pay to park. Also, to credit Dallas, a couple of times when we got on the train, all the seats were full, and men were practically falling all over themselves to give up their seats to our pregnant wives (the other couple is expecting in February, a month after us). Stay classy Dallas.

The game itself was uneventful, with the Mavs obliterating the Hornets in the first quarter. At the start they were up 21-3. They pretty much coasted after that. Although I have no real love for the Hornets, I was kind of rooting for them a little bit since Bobby Jackson plays for them now, and I always liked him when he played on the Kings (Peja is on the Hornets now too, but he was injured and didn't play at all). How did Bobby repay the love? He got thrown out in the third quarter and looked like he was about to physically tear the ref apart. Anyway, at a random timeout after that, the Mav's mascot, whose stupid name I can't remember, came out for some quick entertainment. He sits on a little skateboard thing and they use a giant slingshot to shoot him at these huge inflatable bowling pins. If he gets a strike both times, Dave and Buster's gives $10 of game cards to every fan in one lucky section. They announce that tonight's section is section 324. Wait a minute...324...THAT'S US! I am way more into the mascot bowling now than the ho-hum game. The mascot guy comes through for us with two strikes, and shortly thereafter the Dave and Buster's people come up to hand out gift cards. We are near the top of the section, so after the girl near us finishes, she still has a bunch left, so I ask her if we can have some more. She is happy to oblige as she just wants to get rid of them, so we now have $60 of Dave and Buster's credits. After any Mav's win, Taco Bueno gives out coupons for free tacos, so we scored those too as we left. Not bad for our $9 cheap-seat tickets. We made money going to the game!

Number 1

2006-11-22T10:34:00.000-06:00

I had to post a screenshot of one of my two solo victories at weboggle. Here I am playing under a team name, since I do like to play as a team with some of my coworkers, but as you can see, I am the only one playing (since my score = the team score) and I have the highest overall score. It's been a lot of playing to eke out two victories, and none of the really awesome weboggle players were on there, but someday maybe I can beat them. We do actually have a great team of people that play from work, so we often win when we play as a team. Three in a row is our record, which we've done several times, but we haven't yet been able to get four. Check in shortly after 5 PM central to see us win (though we don't play every day). Sometimes we get a couple people playing around 10:30 as well. It's actually not as easy to rack up high scores in team play as you might think, since it is easy for multiple players to mostly just list the same words. You might have one person score a 100 and another 65, but your total could easily only be 120 due to the number of duplicates. We seem to have a fairly good team strategy going now, with certain people specializing more in looking for very long and odd words, and the fastest typists working on churning out the most common and shorter words.

random updates

2006-11-09T15:23:00.000-06:00

I had a great visit with my grandma, my mother, and my aunt and uncle in Salt Lake City last weekend. My grandma has been having a lot of health problems, so I thought it would be good to get in a visit before I really can't travel as we get closer to having the baby. Although she had been having a lot of problems with mental confusion before I got there (the result of a nasty fall and broken pelvic bone a few weeks ago), and had another fall and mental setback after I left, while I was there her mind was actually fairly clear. I had a great time visiting her. We even watched Lawrence Welk together on Saturday night in her room at the care facility. That normally wouldn't be a highlight for me, but it was a nice reminder of old times. I remember how she and Grandpa used to love watching the Lawrence Welk.

Yesterday, I went to my second class at the hospital in preparation for being a dad. This one was for dads only, and was actually fairly useful in terms of information presented. The first session, that we went to last week as a couple, wasn't bad, but I felt 95% of it I could have gotten from just reading one of the pamphlets they gave us. Anyway, I do feel a little better prepared for the actual birth experience. I do find that since I've been so busy, I get far more irritable if people don't present information to me as quickly as possible. I don't want people wasting my time. The last speaker last night was focused on child development stuff, and I was thinking how I liked how fast she was talking and presenting stuff. The head lady then immediately interrupted to tell her she was talking way too fast and needed to slow down. Great. This same lady brought the hammer down on TV watching with your kids. Basically said it was terrible for them. Shocking.

I saw a funny shirt at work yesterday. In the spirit of the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign, this shirt said "Keep Dallas Pretentious". I think you can only really appreciate that after living here. I found a link to the website where these are sold, but it was down. So, if they ever get it working again, maybe I'll throw it back in here. But probably not. Let's face it, I'm not spending time to update new material on here, much less going back to clean up old stuff.

I was able to see the Kings on ESPN last night. I stayed up a little late and they rewarded me by beating Detroit.

**Update
Miracle of miracles, I have returned and put in the link to the t-shirt referenced above.

GMAT tips

2006-11-01T11:19:00.000-06:00

Well as of last Saturday, I am officially done with the GMAT, and I did quite well, scoring in the 99th percentile.

Here is my advice on GMAT preparation.
1) There's really no value to buying an expensive new book to practice out of. I got more out of the two books I bought at a used book store (I'll add the titles into the post once I have the books with me) for a total of $15 than the one terrible new book that I bought for more than $30. Of course, consulting Amazon.com to see which books other people like also makes a lot of sense.

2) You should immediately download the free GMAT test prep software from mba.com. Make sure you understand all the math in the math review section, but do not yet take the two practice tests. You don't want to waste your freebies!

3) Time yourself as you work through your practice problems from the very beginning. Pacing ended up being most of my difficulty on the quantitative section, but I was completely unaware of it until I took timed practice tests. Then I had to scramble to catch up. This was very different from my experience taking the GRE in 1998 right after I finished college, where I don't remember having to think twice to bust through math problems in no time. Not only has the intervening 8 years meant that I had dropped off in some math skills that used to be second nature, but I realized that the corporate engineering world basically teaches you a different way to think as well. In conversations with another co-worker here who had the same experience on the GMAT, we realized that engineering is much more focused on you methodically determining the correct answer, with no real bonus to you to get it done super-fast, so you get rusty at going so quickly. Anyway, my advice from all that is that as you work through practice problems, if you do a set of 15, make sure you can finish those in less than 30 minutes, (same pacing as you would have on the GMAT with 75 minutes for 37 questions) rather than just working through at whatever pace until you finish. Also, the GMAT often has questions that can be solved simply if you identify the trick or can be brute-forced if you don't. If you don't watch the pacing, you might fall into the trap of simply brute-forcing questions all the time, when you really need to be learning the underlying trick. You will NOT have time on the GMAT to brute-force a bunch of questions.

4) There are several free resources to help you as well. Princeton Review has a free computer GMAT that you can take to assess where you are. Keep in mind with any free product, you get what you pay for. I found an error in the Princeton Review test, which they confirmed in e-mail to me and I assume has now been corrected, but you might be exposed to questions I did not see. Peterson's also has a free test (also had some wrong answers, I don't really recommend this test too highly) and 800score.com also has one free quantitative section available online as well. Because I ended up needing help on the pacing so much, I actually purchased the 5 full GMAT tests from 800score.com as well. If you also pursue this route, do be aware that the free quantitative section is the same as one in the 5 full tests that you buy, which is kind of annoying.

5) For an overall plan, I recommend that you study from a book or two at the start (while timing yourself for practice questions), eventually working in some of the free practice tests along the way to check your progress and identify areas where you need more work than others. For me, this quickly showed that I needed to focus on a few key math concepts I wasn't remembering and pacing as I've stated above, and that I could largely ignore further study on the Verbal portion of the GMAT, since I was rocking that section with no problems. I recommend saving the official GMAT test prep practice tests until close to the end when you are almost ready to take the GMAT. These tests are actually old official GMAT tests, so they are most like what you will really take. I don't believe the tests from Princeton and Peterson are actually adaptive, and even the 800score.com tests, which do adapt somewhat, don't do so to the same extent as the actual test itself does. I actually went back through one 800score.com test I had already taken to see how much getting all the answers right changed what questions I saw. I did see a couple of different questions, and some questions were reused but restated so that you had a find a slightly more difficult answer, but they were not that different. Anyway, the official GMAT tests should be pretty good indicators of how you will do on the test, and will definitely identify if there are things you still need to understand. With any practice test, be sure to go back through after you finish and understand all the problems you missed, and also just check through the ones you got right, in case you guessed a right answer without really understanding what you were doing. Obviously this is the only way to identify what areas need further study.

Busy?

2006-10-16T21:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I decided that new responsibilities at work, getting ready for the baby (I haven't really done anything...yet. Painting is coming), and studying for the GMAT (pretty much ready) weren't enough for me, so I've decided to try to run an 8 mile Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. My wife is working that day, so I thought it might make sense to try this now. I've never actually run that far before. I cracked off 10K (6.2 mi.) this Saturday, which is the farthest I've gone to date. With that, I'm pretty sure I can make it 8 miles, though I will probably have to walk a couple of times and won't be that fast. My training plan right now is to run several 2-4 mile runs during the week, do a long run each Saturday in the 10k vicinity, and take Sunday off.

Conversations

2006-10-10T23:58:00.000-05:00

Rental Car Counter
Already late to a lunch meeting, I'm in a rush to get my rental car after deplaning at SJC. The guy at the Avis counter asks me "Would you prefer a 4-door or 2-door car?" I figure I might be hauling around some folks, so I say, "4-door".
Avis guy:"We don't have any 4-doors. Would you prefer a mini-van or an SUV?"
Me: "SUV. Definitely."
Avis guy: "We don't have any SUV's. Would you like the mini-van?"
Me (silently pondering why he keeps offering me choices that I can't actually have): "I think I'll go back to the 2-door car, thanks."
So, I ended up with one of the new Ford Mustangs, which is actually pretty nice. I got a Mustang as a rental a few years ago, before the redesign, and it was a terrible car. This one is actually fun to drive, though only legless people could sit in the back seat.

Dinner
One of my co-workers notices that the menu states that the Caesar salad has "eggless dressing". Not sure if that is different than normal or what, he asks the server, "What does it mean to have an eggless dressing?" The server replies, "Without eggs". Totally straight-faced, doesn't crack a smile, doesn't say anything else. Even after I start laughing.

Hug it out

2006-10-06T22:14:00.000-05:00

Just before I left Roseville on Tuesday, two of my coworkers there had a little spat. I kept telling them that they needed to "hug it out" because I just think that is a hilarious phrase. Two days later I was watching The Office, the funniest show on television, when Michael, the boss, says that exact phrase to his employee Dwight after Dwight tries to take Michael's job, gets discovered, and then breaks down. I'm leading pop culture once again.

2006-10-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

We just got back from a whirlwind week in California. We arrived in Sacramento late Wednesday night. I kicked things off on Thursday by getting up early to meet several friends for breakfast before heading off to work. The drive in was a bit of a hike from El Dorado Hills to HP in Roseville, but didn't seem too bad now that I'm so used to driving so far to get anywhere in Texas. I worked Friday and Monday and Tuesday from Roseville as well, and it was great to see my old team, though some days were so busy that I was hard-pressed to fit in an appropriate amount of goofing off. I did manage to hit a brewery on Friday after work with some of the guys. It is right near HP and just serves beer from the back of the brewery only on Thursday and Friday evenings. It has a very small-town feel, as people bring homemade food and whatnot to share. Saturday and Sunday my wife had a baby shower each day. I got out of the first one, and was able to take off for a quick trip up to Tahoe with a couple of buddies. I won't mention the other friend that was supposed to go with us but deserted us to .... play Worlds of Warcraft. The trip was really cool, we really miss in Texas the ability to take off and drive for an hour and be in such a beautiful area with cooler weather. On Sunday I did attend the second baby shower, and had an enjoyable time at that one. Two of my cousins were able to make it from Lodi, and it was great to catch up with them. We visited our old church on Sunday night, and a collection of old-timers turned out to greet us. Holly completely coincidentally happened to be in town at the same time from Colorado. We had a great time hanging out with folks afterward at the legendary In-N-Out. Speaking of restaurants, yes, we did manage to hit all of our favorite places. We had dinner with friends on Friday night at Original Pete's. Monday night saw us at the greatest place on earth, Chicago Fire. Tuesday we even tried a new place (with this friend and his wife, who hosted the first baby shower) in Folsom called My Brother Vinny, which serves generous portions of delicious Italian food. We ate on the balcony and it actually had kind of a European feel. Needless to say we had a coupon. We also enjoyed several home-cooked meals at my in-laws' new house, including Saturday night's steak dinner which we enjoyed with my wife's cousin and his new wife. Between all the eating out, the showers, and connecting with friends and family, we did more in that one week than we normally do in several months in Texas!

Guess where I'm going Monday through Thursday of next week? That's right, back to California. This time to Cupertino for work. No, I couldn't combine the trips, so don't ask!

I remember

2006-09-11T17:25:00.000-05:00

I remember being awakened by my roommate pounding on my door shouting something about a plane crashing into a building. I remember thinking, "What can I do about that? I should just go back to sleep," but something in his voice made me think this might be something more than a random accident and I should check it out. I got up in time to see the second plane hit and the towers fall, and it was obvious that it could no longer be an accident.

I remember a trip down to NYC from RPI two years earlier, where my buddy Seth and I walked into the lobby of the WTC and found out that it cost $12 to get to the top as a tourist. That's a lot of money to a grad student, so I said, "This will always be here, let's just see that some other time..." Nope.

I remember how earlier that month, I had worn a t-shirt with a small American flag on it, and a friend commented that nobody wore flags anymore. After thinking about that, we realized we hadn't really seen much patriotic wear or patriotism in general (singing along with the national anthem, etc.) since Desert Storm. That was about to change dramatically.

I remember how a culture whose only heroes came from sporting events suddenly saw real heroes in action on Flight 93 and many parts of Ground Zero. The whole event really demonstrated how trivial most of our everyday lives are. I remember churches being full in the weeks that followed, as people struggled to understand what happened. Was it a momentary blip on our consciousness before we consumed ourselves again with celebrity worship and banality?

I remember thinking that it wouldn't be long before we would be struck again. How hard could it be to strike a school, a mall, or a stadium? Our sense of invincibility shattered. Yet five years later, no major blow.

blah blah blah

2006-09-06T14:54:00.000-05:00

Almost a year ago, we had to replace our washer when it failed. We limped along using our old dryer out of sheer cheapness/stubbornness. Then last week we wandered into Lowe's to look at faucets and decided to see how much the dryer was. It was still $850. We decided we could live with the old dryer for a while longer at that price. One of the workers there saw us looking at the dryer, and told us they had a returned one available at a discount. Sure enough, they had one for $500, the only catch being they had had to swap out a part. For $350 off, we were happy to take it. However, with returned items, they don't deliver the new dryer nor do they haul away your old one. Picking the new one up was easy, but how would we get rid of the old one? Craigslist to the rescue again! I put the add out for a free dryer, and in less than 10 hours I had 17 responses. The dryer was gone the next day.

Trader Joe's to go

2006-09-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

My wife has developed quite a system to keep herself stocked with her favorite goods from Trader Joe's grocery store while living in a state that has no TJ locations. Fortunately, virtually all of our family and friends live in close proximity to a TJs, so any time we go to visit them, my wife brings along extra luggage for the specific purpose of bringing back food. Also, when they come out to visit us, my wife requests certain foods from them as well. I would never have suspected it, but according to the Dallas Morning News, my wife is leading a trend.

It looked like a lot of luggage for a weekend trip: Three suitcases and two big boxes. But it was easy carrying them to the airline counter. Most were empty.

I was taking them to New Mexico to fill them up.

Two days later, when I checked in at the Albuquerque airport for the flight home, they were stuffed. I had boxes packed with wine, Thai-spiced peanuts, cans of corn chowder, organic dog biscuits, hand lotion, dried gooseberries and much more. Yes, I know we have grocery stores in Dallas. But we don't have a Trader Joe's.

What is faith?

2006-08-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

The spring issue of the RPI alumni magazine featured a balanced story on how students of different faiths integrate that faith into their daily lives at RPI. The story included this statement:

"The world is telling you that science and faith don't go together, that God couldn't have done all of that," says Kristen Clark '09, a physics major from Michigan who heads outreach for the Rensselaer Newman Catholic Fellowship. "Part of what is great about RPI is that you can learn that these things go together. It's a struggle. Science can't explain everything."

That statement was apparently too much for one RPI graduate, who responded with a letter to the editor in the latest edition of the magazine.

Science Can Explain Everything
I read recently with some dismay your cover story on spiritual faith in the Spring '06 Alumni/ae Magazine. I think it unfortunate that you chose to feature twice in that article a particular quote by Kristen Clark '09 (both in the third paragraph of the article as well as in a legend to one of the figures).

I am referring to the following sentence: "Science can't explain everything."

I firmly disagree. Science can and will eventually explain everything. The simple fact that science has not yet explained everything does not automatically prove the existence of a creator or the weakness of the scientific method. In choosing to feature that particular point of view in your piece on students and their religious observances, you provide tacit approval to those who would elevate faith over science.

I expected a publication produced by one of the nation's leading technological universities to have a more forward thinking point of view. What can I expect in the next issue, a cover story promoting intelligent design?

Number one, lighten up! I'm quite certain that the dominant philosophy at RPI is in agreement with the letter writer, so he hardly needs to get so worked up that an article mentioned, but did not endorse, an alternative idea. Secondly, consider this sentence: "We don't have all the answers now, but eventually ______ will make everything clear." Fill in that blank with God, and apparently you're a crazy Christian (and certainly not "forward thinking"). But put science in the blank, and you are a completely rational person making observations based solely on evidence? I think not. This guy has just as much faith as Kristen Clark does, just in something different.

Craigslist success

2006-08-28T10:29:00.000-05:00

Over the past couple of years I have browsed Craigslist classifieds (link is for Dallas, but you can find your city on the right) as a buyer, but this weekend was the first time I used it to sell anything. Ever since we bought our plasma TV, our old 32" TV has just been sitting unplugged taking up space in our bedroom. I had taken pictures of the TV a month or so ago, but never got around to actually posting them. I finally put it on CL Saturday afternoon and by Sunday I had 6 people express interest in it. We sold it Sunday night, and the buyers were willing to pay the full price I had listed it for, $150. I think that was a decent deal, since I saw several comparable TVs listed at $200, though I also saw one at $125. I ended up giving it to them for $140, since they were college students who had driven up from Arlington. My wife, in her pregnancy cleaning frenzy, also threw in an extra bookshelf CD player that she wanted to get rid of. Our bedroom definitely looks nicer without that big hulking TV in it. The thing is so large we really struggled to get it into the buyers' car, but finally succeeded in getting it through the front passenger door with the seat fully reclined. Anyway, the Craigslist experience was definitely a good one: easy to post, free to post, immediate response, very friendly buyers.

Kaplan College Guide loves RPI

2006-08-26T12:05:00.000-05:00

RPI gets a mention as a new Ivy.

Applications to RPI were up 23 percent in 2005—a reflection of the school's reputation as an educator of scientists and engineers. The class of 2010 is 29 percent female. Students like the school's state-of-the-art facilities, including the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. RPI also operates a co-op program that lets students work at companies like IBM. Hockey is big on campus; RPI has a Division I team that's won two national championships. Skiing is also popular; the campus is just 45 minutes from the Adirondacks and the Catskills.

Working for the man

2006-08-14T13:34:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of stuff to blog about, but have had almost no time. I've picked up some commitments at work while a co-worker is on vacation, and that work has been extremely time-intensive, both at the office and at home, and quite stressful. Expect to hear more from me as I have opportunity.

Gas temperature map

2006-07-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

Gasbuddy.com has this new gas temperature map visually depicting how high gas prices are across the country. Not that anything on it will shock you. Yet another way we save money by not being in California.

Brain Builder

2006-07-31T09:27:00.000-05:00

Out: Sudoku
In: WEBoggle

How do you want to be remembered when you die?

2006-07-28T10:39:00.000-05:00

An unsolved, brutal, multiple-stabbing murder of a real estate agent recently took place in Mckinney, a few miles from our house. When I saw an article on the deceased in Sunday's paper, I thus read it with some interest.

Sarah used to tell her friends that life was worth enjoying. She never needed to be reminded in return.

An expensive Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz sat in her driveway. Fancy clothes came from Saks and Neiman Marcus. Friends joined her on luxurious vacations to California, Colorado and Hawaii.

"Everything she did was to the extreme," said longtime friend Holly. "Everything she did was above and beyond."

After reading that, I started to feel even sadder for the lady. This is how people remember her? For what she had? I joked to my wife that if something happened to me, I didn't want her to list off all my material achievements in the paper. "A Toyota Camry sat in his driveway. Affordable clothes came from Nordstrom Rack and Banana Republic, on clearance. His wife joined him on exotic vacations to Ohio, California and Arkansas. They enjoyed an occasional fancy meal at the Olive Garden." Anyway, I pondered on this some more, as I read the whole article and thought, perhaps if those were the things you spent your life pursuing, that's exactly how you would want to be remembered? I'm hoping I'm wrong on that, because that would be even more tragic.

After Sarah graduated from Berkner High School in Richardson in 1983, she landed a job leasing apartments in North Dallas. Apartments quickly turned into houses as Sarah realized that real estate was a good way to make money.

At 23, Sarah married her first husband, Mort, a longtime love interest. They had a son named Alex. But the marriage broke up after five years. Young Alex and his father, who could not be reached for comment, moved out of state. Sarah would rarely see her son.

"I think there was a lot of pain there," Holly said. "It wasn't a subject that came up often."

Alex, now 15, did not attend his mother's funeral on Thursday, said Sarah's brother, Joe.

I think this part may make this the saddest article ever.

Executive Home

2006-07-28T10:34:00.001-05:00

What exactly constitutes an "executive home"? This seems to be the real-estate buzzword du jour here in Dallas, but no one is really sure exactly what it means. I think general agreement is that "over-priced" is at least part of the definition. I'm pretty sure there aren't enough executives here to buy the 50,000 executive homes being advertised.

NOT a Unicorn

2006-07-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

I have been informed by some of my ever so sensitive co-workers in Roseville that our most recent ultrasound pic looks like it might be of a unicorn. Let me disabuse any of my readers of that notion, and point out that that is merely its hand up by its face. You can actually make out the individual bones if you click on the picture to see the larger image. Now I wonder if my child will ever eventually read this blog and be curious about who said they looked like a unicorn. Someone might need to get ready for an awkward conversation in five or ten years.

Baby Pic

2006-07-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

My wife went into the doctor shortly before our trip to Ohio, and ended up having an ultrasound. Which was a surprise to me, because somehow I had thought she was only having a blood test. I had kind of wanted to be there for the ultrasounds, and indeed my wife informed that she was the only one at the place there without a husband. The doctor viewing the ultrasound proceeded to inform her that he knew the baby's gender and asked if she wanted to know as well. Definitely the kind of thing that I wanted to be there for! Anyway, he proceeded to claim that we are having a girl. However, we were only 13 weeks along at that point, so I was kind of suspicious of the accuracy. Is he the sort of guy who just likes to predict things? Especially when the odds of being randomly correct are 50/50? My wife bumped into her regular doctor while working last week (one of the advantages of being a post-partum nurse is getting to see your doctor a lot), and her doctor confirmed that 13 weeks is awfully early to be trying to ascertain the gender. She told us to definitely not buy anything for the baby based on that. I guess we'll know more at the next ultrasound in a few weeks. We may be setting a new record for most ultrasounds. I joked on the phone the other day that I was going to buy TomKat's ultrasound machine, now that they are done with it, so we can just have a daily record of progress. Anyway, we'll be happy with either gender.

Graceland

2006-07-15T22:53:00.000-05:00

On the way back from our trip to Ohio, we visited Graceland. This is never a place I had a big desire to visit, but it actually was fairly interesting. First, we had to get over the price, because $22 seemed pretty steep to me, to see the house of someone I'm not all that into. Fortunately, we got 10% off as AAA members, giving us a whopping total of $4.40 saved! Anyway, the house was delightfully ugly and tacky, which is what made the trip enjoyable. I offer you a few pictures from the vast selection available in our snapfish album. E-mail me if you're dying to see more.

I laugh every time I look at this picture. It just can't get any more redneck thank having a silver punchbowl set on top of a TV in your fancy dining room.

I cry every time I see this one. The interior decorator involved in this should have been charged with a crime.

These last two are from the same room. Note how the hideous green shag carpeting is the same. Unfortunately, in the second one, the carpet is actually on the ceiling.

Regardless, I definitely learned a lot more about Elvis. I was quite surprised to find out that he had his own racquetball court built on the premises. And he had a shooting range there as well. Who knew we had those interests in common? Anyway, to sum up, Graceland is kind of a fun trip back to kitschy 1970's America, and would be a must see if you are an Elvis aficionado.

Discover your strengths

2006-06-20T14:11:00.000-05:00

I read the book Now, Discover Your Strengths a couple of years ago with my mentor at work. As part of that, you actually take a test to help reveal your strengths. The results have come up in discussions at work and with friends (I guess a lot of people are reading the book now), so I thought I would post my top five characteristics.

Input People strong in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.

Learner People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Command People strong in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.

Context People strong in the Context theme enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.

Strategic People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

The in-depth descriptions line up even more with me. This is one of the few tests I've taken where it wasn't more of a feeling of "That kind of describes me, I guess. Couldn't anybody say they felt that way at least some of the time." Nope, this is right on. As proof, the top two results have to do with learning. No surprise, as I have long said that if I won the lottery, I would just go to school full-time and get a bunch of degrees in a variety of subjects that I enjoy. That would be a lot of fun to me.

Update

2006-06-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

My right wrist recently really (secretly I enjoy alliteration) started to hurt with the dreaded signs of Carpal Tunnel syndrome, the nemesis of computer workers everywhere. Since I already use a natural keyboard, my next step was to switch to using my mouse left handed for the past two or three weeks. While this does seem to be helping, I think it makes me more tired at the end of the day, because I am just left hand stupid. It's not a problem for reading e-mail or that kind of thing, but any highlighting or dragging and dropping just becomes a chore.

Public service announcement: I am not a Cystic Fibrosis carrier.

We have had about four days of rain since arriving in Texas in March 2005. This drought has forced McKinney to Level Three Water Restrictions. Essentially this means you can only water your lawn on trash day, and any water bill going over 10,000 gallons a month will be hit with a 25% surcharge. In our house, we've taken it a step or two beyond that, however. For example, we (and here "we" is more correctly used to indicate something my wife is really excited about and I go along with) now use a bucket to collect the water that runs through the shower while you are waiting for it to warm up and use that to water flowers and plants in the front yard. With something satisfying twin goals of cheapness AND environmental friendliness, my wife is an unstoppable force.

Bumper sticker I saw on the way to work a few days ago: God Bless John Wayne

Number of days I helped people move in the last week: 3
Items broken or banged up:0
Injuries to my person: 3 (scraped up hand, bruised shoulder, re-re-sprained my ankle - I actually did the first re-sprain by running into the wall playing racquetball. Similar to how I separated my shoulder in college. Walls are dangerous.)

Nights I got together with friends to watch the Mavs play only to realize there was no game that night:1 - Although I had seen about 400 statements that the game was on Sunday, apparently every time my brain translated that into Saturday. Oh well.

We've made the decision to put granite in our kitchen, to replace the lovely Formica that you've seen featured in several pictures (see here and here) on this blog, as I like to use part of our counter as my display area.

Days between my initially starting this post and actually publishing it online: 14

Who feels like bursting into song?

2006-06-08T15:06:00.000-05:00

Those of us who feel like a lonely voice in the wilderness crying out against grammatical sins can find friendly solace in this list of the 10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid. I could not agree more, and they listed one of my top pet peeves at number 1! Here is the complete list from the article.

#1: Loose for lose
No: I always loose the product key.

Yes: I always lose the product key.

#2: It's for its (or god forbid, its')
No: Download the HTA, along with it's readme file.

Yes: Download the HTA, along with its readme file.

No: The laptop is overheating and its making that funny noise again.

Yes: The laptop is overheating and it's making that funny noise again.

#3: They're for their for there
No: The managers are in they're weekly planning meeting.

Yes: The managers are in their weekly planning meeting.

No: The techs have to check there cell phones at the door, and their not happy about it.

Yes: The techs have to check their cell phones at the door, and they're not happy about it.

#4: i.e. for e.g.
No: Use an anti-spyware program (i.e., Ad-Aware).

Yes: Use an anti-spyware program (e.g., Ad-Aware).

Note: The term i.e. means "that is"; e.g. means "for example". And a comma follows both of them.

#5: Effect for affect
No: The outage shouldn't effect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn't affect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn't have any effect on users.

Yes: We will effect several changes during the downtime.

Note: Impact is not a verb. Purists, at least, beg you to use affect instead:

No: The outage shouldn't impact any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn't affect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage should have no impact on users during work hours.

#6: You're for your
No: Remember to defrag you're machine on a regular basis.

Yes: Remember to defrag your machine on a regular basis.

No: Your right about the changes.

Yes: You're right about the changes.

#7: Different than for different from
No: This setup is different than the one at the main office.

Yes: This setup is different from the one at the main office.

Yes: This setup is better than the one at the main office.

#8 Lay for lie
No: I got dizzy and had to lay down.

Yes: I got dizzy and had to lie down.

Yes: Just lay those books over there.

#9: Then for than
No: The accounting department had more problems then we did.

Yes: The accounting department had more problems than we did.

Note: Here's a sub-peeve. When a sentence construction begins with If, you don't need a then. Then is implicit, so it's superfluous and wordy:

No: If you can't get Windows to boot, then you'll need to call Ted.

Yes: If you can't get Windows to boot, you'll need to call Ted.

#10: Could of, would of for could have, would have
No: I could of installed that app by mistake.

Yes: I could have installed that app by mistake.

No: I would of sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.

Yes: I would have sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.

NO NO NO NO NO!

2006-06-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

This is exactly the kind of cheesy thing we don't need! I left off the name of the church, because I'm sure they are well intentioned so I don't want to smear their good name, but FRANtastik "God Power"??? Come on! This is along the same lines as the t-shirts from a few years ago that twisted brand names into fun Christian slogans. Oh great, a little Internet search has revealed that the t-shirts live on.

The top one, where they've taken the "Budweiser, King of Beers" slogan and turned it into "GodWiser, King of Kings", is the one that really stood out in my memory as an egregious example, but Saviorade is running neck and neck it with now. Augh! I just want to note that this is not a diatribe against Christian t-shirts or fliers in general, but rather ones that are cheesy, uncool knockoffs of pop culture. Maybe I'm overly sensitive on this, but if we really believe in an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent God, doesn't it seem almost demeaning to be reducing Him to fitting into a copied advertising slogan? Not to mention saying very little for our creativity as Christians.

While looking for these t-shirts, I actually found an article making a similar point to mine. This not to say I agree with everything in the article, but I think the selection below is stated well.

The problem with these carbon-copied Christian acts is the problem that plagues all Christian versions of "secular" products: they're copying something that isn't any good to begin with. A Christian boy band aping the showy banality of 'N Sync is only doing Christianity and Christ a disservice by placing his message in a soulless, superficial context. A shirt that uses Mountain Dew's logo to advertise Jesus is, in essence, selling out one of the few people in the history of existence who would never sell out. Perhaps Christian marketers will eventually give it up and start trying to do things differently than the rest of the industry does. Changing the word "Pepsi" to the word "Jesus" doesn't count as "in the world, not of the world." Maybe someday instead of parodies or trite slogans, we'll see more straightforward Christian T-shirts with nothing but plainly inscribed Bible verses and no colorful fanfare.

I think I'm going to be working the phrase "showy banality" into my everyday usage.

Whoa

2006-06-03T00:59:00.000-05:00

Probably not a surprise to most readers of this blog, but I'm going to be a Dad. We had the first ultrasound today. It's hard to make too much out at this point; we're still pretty early here at 9 weeks. I was impressed by the ultrasound lady's ability to identify head and bottom in the pic above. On the other hand, how would we know if she were wrong? Anyway, until now it felt sort of dreamlike that we were having a baby, because there wasn't anything tangible to latch onto, other than a slight bulge in my wife's belly and her needing to sleep 12+ hours a day. Now it feels more real to actually see the pic and especially to hear the heartbeat. There's definitely somebody in there. Wonderful and terrifying at the same time. Being a Dad is a big responsibility, and I'm just a couple of years removed from making random trips to Reno at 3 AM on a Tuesday and keeping myself awake at work the next day via intravenous Mountain Dew. I guess maybe the times won't change so much, only the reason I'm up at such a weird hour. I can only really compare my feelings to when I first left school and started working at HP - excited about the new opportunity and because you know you will learn and grow, but wondering on the inside if you're really up to the task. Only multiply that times one thousand.

What?

2006-06-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

I just saw someone walk out of a stall in the restroom after pooping and NOT WASH HIS HANDS. Straight out the door! Isn't this the one thing left in the world that everyone can agree is wrong? Slowly...losing....all...hope....

The Office

2006-05-31T11:57:00.000-05:00

Things I find exist in most offices:

1) The guy who constantly refills his gigantic cup (or more accurately, bucket). The cup never seems to get cleaned either, so it has gradually developed its own brown ecosystem. The owner will often refer to this as "seasoning".

2) What list would be complete without reference to the inappropriate speakerphone user? Not only is using a speakerphone at all a faux pas in the cubicle world, but it is never just for business purposes either, so people end up overhearing all kinds of personal information. Even at my new work, where we have offices that could actually allow you to use a speakerphone privately at low volume, I still have one habitual offender who a) never closes her door, thus obliterating the benefit of having an office, b) has fairly loud conversations, and c) always seems to be discussing a surgery or her kid's grades when I walk by. What is the deal? CLOSE THE DOOR!

3) On a similar subject, the person who has no idea how loud their computer volume is, and naturally loves having it ding to announce every time they receive an e-mail. The whole building can know how important you are!

4) Guys only: The weird urinal user. The guy who is taking a leak at the urinal, but is simultaneously stretching with his hands over his head, or leaning against the wall above the urinal with both hands. That's gross in the first place, because you should touch as few things as possible in a public restroom, particularly right around the toilet, and by no means should you use the metal flusher part above the urinal as something to lean on. Ugh. Furthermore, do your business and get out. What is wrong with people?

5) Things inappropriately used to indicate status at work:
- Number of meetings attended. "Important people like me are required to spend all day on the phone."
- Number of unread e-mails in the inbox. "Normal e-mails don't even rate me reading them."
- Newer/fancier monitor/laptop/equipment in general. Work envy: "I see you're sitting on the latest from Herman Miller and viewing your work on a 22 inch flat panel."
- Old and busted: hours spent at work.
- New hotness: Can you get away with not taking mandatory training courses? This may be an ACTUAL indicator of status. Tread carefully.

Repetition is the key to understanding

2006-05-30T10:38:00.000-05:00

This post is dedicated to Mr. Greg Kurtz, my honors English and Literature teacher at Dayton Christian High School. Mr. Kurtz drilled two concepts into our mind in our classes (well, Mr. Kurtz was a great teacher, so I'm sure I remember more than two things from his classes, but these were concepts that he especially emphasized). One was that an author will usually repeatedly state in different ways the main point he wishes to communicate, hence "repetition is the key to understanding". Second was the concept of logical suspension of disbelief. For example, you have to accept that Superman comes from a far-away planet where people are born with superhuman strength and the ability to fly. Once that is established however, things still have to progress logically given that framework. For example, it would not make sense for the citizens of Metropolis to consider Superman a hero if he used his superhuman strength only to fling poop at them at supersonic speed. All of that is just background so I can review a book and a movie that I recently read and watched.

While in California, I finally read the Da Vinci Code. An easy and somewhat interesting read. Brown does a good job of keeping you involved in the different puzzles and wanting to see their solutions. However, I would quibble with the MTV-style chapters. Some were only two pages long! Irritating. Now, let's address how the logical suspension of disbelief applies to this book. By this point, many people have probably been overwhelmed by the amount of chatter discussing how the book is an attack on the church, what the Christian response to it should be, etc., so I'm not covering that at all. Rather, once you realize that the book is complete fiction and only an idiot could think there was anything factual in it that undermines Christianity, you can still have an ok time reading it. That part is the logical suspension of disbelief. However, one character's actions so did NOT ring true for me that it really killed the whole experience. At the start of the book, a French policewoman and a Grail historian are investigating the death of the policewoman's grandfather, who it turns out has quite a few connections to the Grail. She had actually cut off contact with her grandfather ten years earlier, when she walked in on a bizarre sex ritual at her family's vacation cabin wherein her grandfather was having sex with a woman in front of a bunch of masked people. Later in the book, the Grail historian guys explains that this was a PAGAN sex ritual where the masculine was connecting with the feminine and bringing them both closer to God or some other crap like that. Now a normal response to that would be "Yeah, that's exactly what I THOUGHT it was. Creepy!" However, in the book, the policewoman responds by crying, totally accepting the explanation as valid, and expressing remorse that she cut off contact with her grandfather over such a triviality. WHAT? How did the explanation change things at all? What else would she have thought was going on in the first place? Regardless, how does the explanation matter? If she had walked in on her grandfather sacrificing a child to something, and the historian dude later explained that it was ok because it was a PAGAN child sacrifice ritual that allowed them to connect to God better, would that have made it ok?

My wife and I watched Rumor Has It, starring Jennifer Aniston, on Saturday. For a chick flick, this actually had a pseudo-promising premise. Aniston, the lead character, returns to her hometown of Pasadena to discover that her family might have been the basis for the The Graduate. It seems like an interesting story could pop out of that, right? Wrong! The movie becomes a serious trainwreck at the point where the Aniston character meets the man who slept with her grandmother and her mother (so he would be the Dustin Hoffman character in the Graduate) and who she suspects might be her real father since her mother had a brief fling with him a week or two before her wedding to the man Aniston grew up with as father and a baby (Aniston) popped out shortly before nine months after their wedding. It turns out he is sterile so he cannot be her father (Side point, she couldn't just ask her mother because she died when Aniston's character was only nine years old). Ok, now she knows and can move on right? Or, option b) She could have sex with him! Guess which one happens in the movie? Yikes, this is a disturbing trifecta. 1) Creepy older dude 2) Who slept with your mother and your grandmother 3) WHO YOU JUST THOUGHT COULD BE YOUR FATHER. There is no way that would ever make sense. I still feel dirty just having watched it. The next day after watching this, the movie would come to mind and I would involuntarily shudder. Even aside from that, the plot was terrible. My recommendation: run fleeing from the room if anyone even mentions this movie in the future.

The end of 'more' - Los Angeles Times

2006-05-26T11:49:00.000-05:00

The current frenzy over Wal-Mart is instructive. Its size is unprecedented. Yet for all its billions in profit, it still amounts to less than four cents on the dollar. Raise the cost of employing people, and the company will eliminate jobs. Its business model only works on low prices, which require low labor costs. Whether that is fair or not is a debate for another time. It is instructive, however, that consumers continue to enjoy these low prices and that thousands of applicants continue to apply for those jobs.

Try to guess who wrote such a reasonable-sounding sentence before you follow this link. Respond in the comments if you would have correctly guessed that in your first 1 million tries.

Ugh

2006-05-23T12:25:00.000-05:00

This stuff tastes as good as it looks, which would be like the vomit in The Exorcist.

Did you miss me?

2006-05-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I can't really say why, it isn't that I've been any busier than normal, or that I've had a computer shutdown. I mostly just haven't felt like it, or an idea will pop into my head to blog about, and then shortly I will think "That isn't really worth blogging about." Too high standards? Or just sheer laziness? Probably the latter. Regardless, I'll catch you up on what's been going on here.

We got back from a week in California late Tuesday night. We had a great time in Sacramento, but we were pretty spent by the time we left, as we tried to max out seeing as many people as we could during our visit. We arrived in Sacramento very late the previous Wednesday night. I guess by the time we made it out to where we were staying it was actually Thursday morning - 1 AM CA time, felt like 3 AM to us on Texas time. We got in late, so the pickings at the rental car place were pretty slim and we ended up with a PT Cruiser with a sunroof. Kind of different so it was fun for a while, but in the end I didn't really like it. The good thing is that I Pricelined it and got it for $16 a day. Not my finest hour in rental car history (that would be $13/day) but pretty close. I'm a huge fan of using Priceline for renting cars - all of the price savings that you get on airplane tickets without the drawback of not being able to specify a time. Moving on from my Priceline ad, I had an 8 AM meeting the next morning, which I just dialed into from our hosts' house, as there was no way I was getting up early enough to drive into HP Roseville from Folsom by 8 after our late night the night before. When I did make it in, I was actually able to just work in my old cube, as a contractor that had worked there in the meantime had quit to take a job with Tivo. It no longer felt the same though. For one, I had to clean up the huge amount of dust that had collected there. But it was a lot of fun to hang out with my old team. Naturally there were quite a few inflatable beach ball attacks. Par for the course in California. I don't really get that in Texas. I think offices tend to discourage that sort of activity, whereas cubicles are quite conducive to it. We went to the legendary Chicago Fire Pizza two nights in a row with different groups of friends. A great restaurant, but it does lose a little something to go to the same place two consecutive nights. We also basically stuffed our faces every day with all the different people we met up with for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so much so that I could not even fit in hitting In N Out even once. I believe I gained back about three pounds from my all my eating. I did manage to go jogging once, but I had hoped to do more. My performance has been no better in the week since we got back, due to the effects of jet lag, me getting mildly sick, and time devoted to the NBA playoffs. We did manage to see a ton of our old friends and got to go to our old church. We miss both of those things a lot, as I feel like one thing we lack in Texas is a lot of Christian friends our age. We also hung out with my wife's family for Mother's Day and couple of other meals. In fact, her grandmother ended up having emergency gallbladder surgery while we were there. Never a good thing to have to have surgery, but since she did have to have it, I was glad that my wife could be there for it. There's my quick vacation brain dump.

Science experiment?

2006-05-05T23:57:00.000-05:00

My wife recently took an onion we left in our pantry for too long and started growing it in a glass on our counter. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps she's really missing middle school science fairs? Regardless, I knew you'd want to see it. We have no plans at this time to become self-sufficient in terms of onions.

Is it me?

2006-05-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

I'm usually not much for online tests/memes, but I took one a couple of weeks ago that I thought was interesting. Fairly accurate too, though I have some minor quibbles with it. You can mouse over the picture to see the traits it has for me. I think it over-rated my extroversion a little bit and gave me lower style points because I said that what I wear doesn't define me at all. But I am an engineer, so maybe "slightly low attention to style" (the gray box at the bottom) is all we can hope for. One interesting thing is that I can actually invite other people to answer the same questions about me and see if their perception matches mine. Go here if you would like to do that. I'm actually fairly interested in that, so please do so if you have any inclination.
**Update: it looks like you have to do your own assessment of yourself before you can assess me, so this may not be such a huge win. Oh well.

Dynamic Leader

Final PBG results

2006-05-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

I have the money in hand from the contest! At left you can see what I look like now that it is over. Ok, maybe not. As you know, I hit the initial weigh-in at 245. We then had to stay under target (253 for me) for the next month, including potentially random checks. We actually only had one random weigh-in, and then the final one at the end of the month. I weighed 246 at both of those, so I managed to stay pretty much the same. I've started playing a ton of racquetball at work, and am playing basketball once a week as well. I'm as active as I've been since college, and it's definitely fun, although one guy at work owns me at racquetball, so I am now dedicating myself to beating him. I have started running more, too. I busted out a 10k (6.2 miles for those of you who aren't metric savvy) on the treadmill two weekends ago. It is amazing how much easier it is to run when you weigh less. I even did the 10k in 58 minutes, which is no incredibly speedy time or anything, but is going pretty quickly for me. I'm also occasionally trying to run faster 1 mile times. So far I've gotten down to 1 mile in 7:30, and I'd like to push that down under 7 minutes. My other big aim is to do a 5k in under 25 minutes (basically 8 minute miles for 3.1 miles). Right now I can do in the 27 minute range, at a little bit faster than a 9 minute mile pace. I figure with a little bit more training I should be able to keep up an 8 minute mile pace for an entire 5k.

On a related note, I saw a doctor for the first time since we moved here, just to get a physical. He pronounced me "very fit" and was impressed with my resting heart rate being under 60.

Taxes

2006-04-26T14:15:00.000-05:00

According to this article, America has one of the lowest overall tax burdens in the world. I'm not sure about how these numbers are figured out though, as I really don't see how they calculate that being married and having two kids drops you from 29% to 11% overall tax burden.

Now, check how your state ranks in per-capita taxation. We apparently made a killing here by moving from California, ranked #9 with $2,724.31 paid by the average person each year, to Texas, ranked 49th with $1,434.16 in average taxation.

Brownouts are stalking us!

2006-04-18T15:03:00.000-05:00

I thought moving out of California would mean no more brownouts. Wrong! Apparently hitting 101 degrees in the middle of April can wreak havoc with a state's power grid. April is normally a month where they schedule to have some generators offline for maintenance, since the weather should be quite temperate, so this hellish heat just overwhelmed capacity. The previous all-time high for April in Texas was in the mid-nineties and was set in 1925. I'm really glad I could be here to see that record obliterated.

The Good News: 1) It didn't really seem THAT hot to me - maybe I'm getting used to Texas? Maybe being thinner helps? 2) The high temp is supposed to be in the seventies starting tomorrow. Strange weather. The Bad News: If it's getting this hot in April, what will August be like?

The Rabbit is back!

2006-04-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

As someone who learned to drive on a 1981 diesel VW Rabbit, similar to the one at left with the exception that ours was white, I am proud to announce that VW is bringing back the Rabbit! For those who thought my old Corolla didn't have much power, that was nothing compared to the lack of prowess the Rabbit, named Wally by my sister, displayed at going up hills, etc. But for its time, it got incredible gas mileage, 40-something mpg, and it kept going forever. I think ours finally hit the graveyard at 240,000 miles. VWs today are a shadow of their former greatness.

Little Rock trip

2006-04-04T13:46:00.000-05:00

We spent Friday through Monday in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had planned on the trip being a surprise to my wife, which it was until just as we were starting out when a friend called to see if I wanted to go to lunch and I said, "I can't, we're on our way to Little Rock", not thinking about my wife being right next to me. Either way, it would only have been another hour or so before it would have been obvious where we were headed. Since she already knew we weren't going to go more than a few hours drive, going northeast from our house doesn't lead to that many places in that time. Anyway, Arkansas was actually pretty, certainly much moreso than Dallas. We even got to see some green, and a lot of trees. Overall I would say the Little Rock area has a lot of potential for growth, though currently it is a little bit redneck for me. We both liked the smaller town size. You could travel anywhere around the area in 20 minutes max, quite a contrast from the two hour journeys across the metroplex we are now more accustomed to. Which reminds me, there was NO traffic in Little Rock, ever. It was glorious. We actually rolled into Little Rock, after stopping for dinner at Cracker Barrel (my wife's favorite restaurant), around 5 PM on Friday, when you would expect the highway to be packed. Not only did we never slow down, the highway wasn't even crowded! Amazing. We then rolled into our hotel, which was actually a bed and breakfast place near downtown Little Rock. This did not thrill my wife, who apparently had been expecting a fancy hotel. It turned out well though, with the big drawback being just the lack of a real shower. I guess you are supposed to take relaxing baths in the jacuzzi tub while you're there, but that really isn't our thing so we ended up taking half showers from the flexible shower head. Naturally my favorite part was the homecooked breakfast served every morning. As you eat this meal with the other guests, it also afforded us the opportunity to meet several different interesting people, including a family from California and two women traveling from Lafayette, Indiana on their way to meet up with their husbands somewhere. This also demonstrated that my wife will as of yet not identify herself as being "from Texas". She now states it as, "I live in Dallas, but I'm from California." I find this humorous, as I did the same thing for a long time in California - "I live in Sacramento, but I'm NOT from California".
On to what we did while we were there. We just took it easy at the B&B Friday night, then did some serious hiking at Pinnacle Mountain on Saturday. That's the pic above; we have several of our own that we took, but I haven't downloaded them off the camera yet, so that I just grabbed off some website. It wasn't a very tall mountain at all, but the last part of it was a steep climb over a bunch of rocks, so we got a good workout in. After we climbed back down, we walked around part of the base and back, giving us about a five mile hike in total. Thankfully we managed to sneak the hike in between bouts of rain. We headed home and got cleaned up and met up with my cousin, who got stationed in Little Rock two weeks earlier. On our way to dinner, we saw signs for the Old Mill, which I had seen in my web searches for stuff to do, so we took a quick detour to check it out. It turned out to be a very nice area, with tons of plants and flowers. In fact, there was a wedding party there taking pictures when we arrived. I'll post some pics from there as well, upon downloading. We then proceeded on to Bosco's, where we celebrated my wife's birthday and then over to a sports bar across the street to hang out a little more and watch the Final Four. We came home reeking of smoke from that, but a good time was had by all.
Sunday we slept in a little and then went to check out some museums. We ruled out seeing the Clinton Presidential Library, because we didn't want pay $7 each to see stuff about Clinton. We started to check out the Arkansas Museum of Discovery, which had gotten fairly high reviews online. I could tell my wife wasn't that excited about it though, and then we walked through the door and it smelled funny, so we bailed on that too. Another $7 each saved! We then proceeded down the street to the Old State House Museum. This was a very impressive museum for the price of admission: free! Seriously, it was very high quality, but it only made me realize how Arkansas has been the site of virtually nothing important to our nation's history. Sure, they participated in big events, Civil War, Mexican War, etc., but not much actually happened there and they have very few citizens of national significance. Somewhere in there we grabbed some very good Chicago-style pizza. Not up to the awesome standard of Folsom's Chicago Fire, but better than anything we've yet found in Dallas. After the pizza, and knowing my weigh-in in the challenge at work was fast approaching, we then went back out to the Pinnacle Mountain area and walked around in two more parks, Maumelle and the Arkansas State Arboretum. We also managed to check out some real estate in the area, as we are always curious about the types of homes you can get for the money in different areas of the country. I think real estate is my wife's hobby. Then Monday we returned home. I'll give a couple of more in-depth stories in another post; this one is already too long.

PBG checkpoint

2006-04-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Date	Workout	Time	Calories Burned	Weight
2/23/2006				256
2/24/2006
2/25/2006	Elliptical	60	1450
2/26/2006	Elliptical	60	1507
2/27/2006
2/28/2006	Elliptical	42	1050
3/1/2006
3/2/2006
3/3/2006	Elliptical	42	1050
3/4/2006	Elliptical	50	1200
3/5/2006	Elliptical	60	1440
3/6/2006	Elliptical	51	1250	258
3/7/2006	Elliptical	50	1250
3/8/2006
3/9/2006	Racquetball - cutthroat	90	1200	255
3/9/2006	Precor Elliptical	30	620
3/10/2006
3/11/2006	Elliptical	36	900
3/12/2006
3/13/2006	Precor Elliptical	40	750
3/14/2006	basketball	90	1350
3/14/2006b	walleyball	90	1200
3/15/2006
3/16/2006	jog 2 mi	20	400
3/16/2006b	stairmaster	10	200
3/16/2006c	Precor Elliptical	20	400
3/17/2006
3/18/2006	Elliptical?
3/19/2006
3/20/2006	Elliptical	5	125
3/21/2006	basketball	90	1000
3/22/2006
3/23/2006	Precor Elliptical	43	850
3/24/2006
3/25/2006	Elliptical	60	1500
3/26/2006
3/27/2006	Elliptical	10	250
3/28/2006	Elliptical	52	1200
3/29/2006
3/30/2006
3/31/2006	Jog 2 mi?	20	425
4/1/2006	climb mountain, etc for 5 mi hike	150	2100
4/2/2006	walk 3 mi	80	600
4/3/2006	Elliptical	60	1540
4/4/2006	Elliptical	42	1050	245

It's been a while since my last update on the contest. We had to weigh in by today under our target weight. My target was 253, and as you can see, I was well under. Now I just have to keep it off for the next 30 days and I will split the pot with the other successful folks. No word yet on how many else made, but current speculation is still five or six, which would yield a profit of about $150 for me. I still need to keep exercising and watching what I eat, as I gamed it a little bit this morning to get eight pounds under. I didn't eat breakfast and had a very small meal last night for example. So if I had not done that, I would have still made it, as I have been consistently weighing in around 249 to 250, but without as much breathing room.

Go Engineers!

2006-03-28T12:49:00.000-06:00

A little nerd pride from RPI! Not only are engineers naturally extremely sexy, but they are also good at crosswords (and Sudoku).