you should be outraged.

why i can't win at the stock market

2011-10-20T10:37:00.003-04:00

a few weeks ago, planet money decided to run an experiment. they asked readers to pick a number between 0 and 100, with the goal being to pick the number closest to half the average of all the guesses. so here's how to you play the game. if you assume everyone is guessing randomly, the average would be 50, so you'd pick 25. however, knowing that everyone else knows what you know, and are all guessing 25, you should pick 12.5, however knowing that everyone else knows what you know, and are all guessing 12.5, you should pick 6.25, and on and on and on until you wind up with some number which for all intents and purposes is zero. makes sense right? how could a reasonable, rational person pick anything else? well planet money released the results along with a graph of the distribution of guesses, to which i have added my own interpretation. for the record, the actual winning number turned out to be 11.53. i picked zero.

this whole experiment and ensuing debates with coworkers reminds me of this...

earthwuakle

2011-08-24T09:11:00.000-04:00

more fun with scammers

2011-08-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 02:37:12 +0100
Subject: washburn lyon electric guitar w/ practice amp - $75 (alexandria, va)
From: glevipaniz@gmail.com
To: sale-hjxug-2535751575@craigslist.org

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

You still have it up for sale?

This message was remailed to you via: sale-hjxug-2535751575@craigslist.org
If this email is a scam or spam please flag it now:
http://www.craigslist.org/flag/?flagCode=31&smtpid=20110809013713PoVZGyjC4BG3L-vKngSXLA

Dan Robinson

To glevipaniz@gmail.com

Yes.

kevin grierson

Add to contacts

To Dan Robinson

Hi,
Thanks for your response. I'm going on a vacation to London but I will instruct my assistant to prepare and mail your payment which I'm sure you will get in about 4 - 6 business days. I'll add $20 extra for the delay. I'll pay by M O or cashier check so send me your info (i.e full name, mailing address and your phone number)
I will also make arrangement for pick-up which will be after you must have received and cashed the payment.
Awaiting your info.
Thanks

Dan Robinson

To facebookpromotions001@gmail.com

You know what would really be more convenient for me is if you gave me your name, address, phone number and your bank routing number and checking account number and I will just direct-debit your account. I'd be happy to ship the items to you. That way we could complete this transaction much quicker.

why i love ledo's pizza: a photo essay

2011-08-06T22:39:00.000-04:00

making connections

2011-08-05T11:14:00.000-04:00

warning: most of the people reading this blog absolutely will not care about this post.

i've been searching for a good way to distribute power/signal/ground in various electronics projects and pretty much all of the options i've found just weren't quite right.

Wire Tap

first there is your standard wire-taps, wire nuts (i hate wire nuts), or just solder and electrical tape (i hate electrical tape). these are okay if you only need to one split your wire once.

Terminal Strip

there is your standard terminal strip, but these only allow you to connect wires 1-to-1 at a time unless you jumper two positions next to each other. or unless i connect the signal wire to each position individually. they also have no insulation.

Bus Bar

then you've got your busbars. not a bad choice, but again, no insulation.

Ganged Fuse Block

then there are these fuse holders which look like they would be pretty convenient, only i don't need fused circuits. and the other problems is, in this application, i need to distribute one 12v-constant power, one 12v-switched power and a common return so i'd need two of these and i'd need to tie the grounds together.

Blue Sea System Dual Bus Bar p/n 2722

this dual bus bar from blue sea systems looked promising but they were a bit on the pricey side and i'd need two of them, and it's really just more of a plastic cover than the metal parts could still short. you'd think a company making marine electronics parts would seal their stuff up better.

VTE Tabbed Bus Bar

but after many hours of searching the internet, i finally found almost exactly what i was looking for. it's these tab-style bus bars from vte world. they use quick disconnects for the various circuits, are insulated, come in different colors and are relatively cheap. i ordered two 10-position ones in black plastic (one for 12v-constant and one for 12v-switched), and one 20-position for ground, with red, yellow and black insulation respectively. you can order them in small quantities from vtewarehouse.com

Posi-Lock Tap Connector

and my coworker just showed me these, which also look pretty promising and will allow you to make up to four new connections with one existing wire. http://www.posi-lock.com/posiplug.html

brown thumb

2011-07-28T08:59:00.001-04:00

well it seems to be another year of unsuccessful gardening. i think if add up all the costs for this year and last year and all the delicious fresh fruits and vegetables i've managed to grow, i've spent roughly $315 on about three tomatoes, one green pepper, that apparently the fucking squirrel that stole it didn't think was very good, and a lemon the size of a golf ball.

here's the squash plants i tried to grow

and here's the one just randomly growing in my compost bin. that son of a bitch is like 15 feet long and some of those leaves are about two feet across.

on the plus side, the persimmon tree that i got last fall that was basically some roots with a twig attached to the top is doing alright, and the fruit salad tree and 4-in-1 apple tree are also doing pretty well. and the citrus plants seem to be enjoying the heat. the kiwi vines didn't make it.

chicken or beef?

2011-05-24T22:36:00.000-04:00

got ready to make some tasty kabobs for dinner tonight. marinated my steak since yesterday. skewered some vegetables... red onion, green peppers, mushrooms and squash.

stepped outside to light the grill and get it nice and hot before i put my steak on there.

noticed an awful lot of smoke and opened the grill to find this.

fortunately, i shut the grill off before i set the little guys nest on fire. they were lucky they weren't baby geese cause i woulda flame broiled those bastards. i think everyone is okay, but i think i'm gonna have to postpone that bbq i was planning on having.

i ended up cooking my kabobs under the broiler in the oven. came out pretty good.

my car on google street view

2011-05-08T21:02:00.000-04:00

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

my first eviction

2011-05-02T13:50:00.000-04:00

saturday was a beautiful day. i spent a couple hours outside doing yardwork. i left my garage open. here's a picture of my garage.

in the top right of the above photo you can see where i hang my helmet. below is a closeup.

after i finished the stuff in the yard i was working on, i was screwing around in the garage and a saw a bird fly into my helmet.

apparently he decided it was a good place to build a nest. i sat around for about 15 minutes with the camera hoping to catch him in the act, but i got bored.

crazy conspiracy theory of the day

2011-05-02T09:10:00.000-04:00

bin laden has been dead for years. we've been using him as an excuse to maintain public support for our activities in afghanistan and pakistan. now we've "killed" him. the photo circulating is a confirmed fake and the body has already been "buried at sea". the only thing i don't get is the timing. obama should have kept this one in his back pocket until election season.

tell me i'm crazy.

community supported agriculture

2011-04-26T10:07:00.001-04:00

a.k.a. farm shares. i like the idea a lot. basically you pony up in advance for a share of the harvest of a farm and get a pile of food once a week. the idea being the farmers have more reliable income, not subject to changes in market prices and not at the mercy of weather, and you get local, fresh food for roughly the same price you would pay at the grocery store since there's no middle man. seems like a winning proposition for everyone involved (you, the farmer, the animals, and the environment), right?

i've toyed with the idea of joining one on and off for the last year and a half or so. there was one CSA that actually had a pick-up location on my way home from work which would have been fantastic. unfortunately, they don't seem to be operating this year. most of the other's are way out of the way for my wife and i, or have pickups at weird hours that we'd never be able to get to like tuesday mornings from 10am to 10:30am, in belize. there is *one* however that delivers directly to your home which had me pretty excited until i looked at the prices.

basic two person share for 10 weeks of produce - $410. that's $41 of produce per week. even if i went to the most expensive grocery store and bought all organic stuff i'd still have a hard time buying $40 worth of produce. the weekly boxes from this CSA typically include one or two vegetables you could actually make a meal out of and the rest are things like onions, radishes, leafy greens, etc. not the most cost effective.

half dozen eggs each week for 10 weeks, $75, or in terns more easily compared to grocery store prices, $15 per dozen. now laura and i have spent countless hours in the egg section of harris teeter staring at the egg section trying to decide which eggs to buy. there's cage free eggs, organic eggs, free range eggs, brown eggs, white eggs, natural nest eggs and every permutation of the aforementioned attributes. being unable to decide eggs were the most politically / environmentally correct eggs, we just assumed that it was the most expensive ones they had at about $4 per dozen and bought those.

two 1/2 gallon bottles of organic milk every week for 10 weeks... $250. yes, that is $25/gallon of milk. that one pretty much speaks for itself. if you sign up for only 5 weeks of milk, the price goes to $30/gallon.

i hate to dissuade anyone from joining one of these though because i think it's such a great idea. most other CSAs cost about half as much as this one, not all have eggs or milk. so if you don't live in the boonies like me and laura, look into it. most of them cost about half of what this particular farm charges. here's where you can get started. http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

rubber-bandjo

2011-04-15T14:40:00.002-04:00

i will leave to your imagination, the circumstances that lead to this. i wouldn't quite call it musical, but it sounds better than i expected. also i'm told technically, the hole makes it more of a guitar, but rubber-bandtar doesn't have the same ring to it.

infrared dogs

2011-04-06T09:23:00.002-04:00

it's a trap!

2011-03-23T15:15:00.008-04:00

there's a story going around about a cop who got fired for attempting to remove a sign warning drivers of a speed trap ahead. and there's this story (also, believe it or not, in texas ) about a guy who was jailed for warning motorists of a speed trap by wearing a t-shirt standing on the side of the road. in some states, flashing you lights to warn drivers in the headed in the other direction is considered interfering with the ability of a police officer to do their job. cops seem to have a problem with warning people about speed traps, and i'm not sure why. let's examine the situation.

the primary assumption is that speeding is dangerous, therefore we have speed limits. we enforce those speed limits because we believe driving slower is safer.

now let's think about how a speed trap works. a cop hides on the side of the road, over the crest of a hill, or a around a bend or behind a sign. traffic, generally all moving along at the same pace, well above the speed limit, comes across this speed trap and the guy in front slams on his brakes even if he's only going 5mph over. if we're lucky, everyone behind him just slams on their brakes too and avoids a pile-up, resulting (at least around DC) in a 4 mile traffic jam where it's not possible for even the most dedicated of speeders to break the speed limit. and then as soon as everyone is past the speed trap, they all speed back up to their 15mph-over-the-limit speed.

on the other hand, consider what happens when a driver comes across a sign warning of speed traps ahead. they read the sign, they take their foot off the accelerator and gradually slow to the posted speed limit. drivers will then either continue at that speed until they pass an actual speed trap, and assume that no further danger exist and speed back up, or until they have traveled a sufficient distance that they feel the warning is no longer relevant and there is no risk of getting ticketed, and speed back up.

now if we go back to our original premise that speed limits enforcement is for safety, not adding to the coffers, out of these three options, which one sounds the safest to you?

speed trap
warning sign followed by an actual speed trap
warning sign with no speed trap

i'll tell you the answer since i'm a know-it-all.

it's the last one. drivers will slow down with the least likelihood of an accident and continue at that slower speed for the longest amount of time. other benefits? the cop can go do something useful. now can someone please explain why cops get all huffy-puffy about speed trap warnings?

don't get me started on speed cameras / photo radar.

stop giving me stupid tips on how to save gas

2011-03-14T09:56:00.005-04:00

yes media, i remember two years ago all the helpful tips you gave to me on how i can save gas. i don't blame you for bringing it all up again, because we americans have terribly short memories. honda civics were the best selling vehicle for about two months in the USA before it reverted back to the ford f150 full size pickup truck. but if you are going to give us tips, at least don't give us stupid ones. here's some text i just received in an email

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening....your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

first of all, a gallon is ALWAYS a gallon. the amount of mass a gallon of some material contains can change with temperature, but a gallon is still a gallon. density goes up as temperature goes down, and with gasoline this means more energy.

the thermal expansion coefficient of gasoline is .000950 per degree celsius. that means for every one degree celsius the temperate drops, you get .0950% more energy from a gallon of gas. let's assume that daytime temperatures go from 70F to 100F, the difference being roughly ~17C. That means you'd save about 1.6% if you bought your gas at 70F instead of 100F.

so yeah, you might save a few cents. but if you re-read the original text, you will see that it says the gas is stored in large underground tanks. once you get below about 4-6ft, the ground temperature is extremely stable, so none of that math matters anyway because the gas is always the same temperature.

and on top of all that, you've assumed that the pumps are accurately measuring volume in the first place, when in fact they are most likely measuring something else (like flow) and using that to approximate volume.

here's another bit of text from the same email

One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine.Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

the evaporation claim is debatable. you have a fuel cap that is pressure tested when you get your emissions checked. the reason they are testing it is to make sure you are not leaking evaporated gasoline fumes into the atmosphere. so yes, gasoline does evaporate, but it stuck in your tank. and yes, if your tank is completely full, there is no air for the gas to evaporate into, but as soon as you start driving there is.

and here's another think to think about. if you have a 15 gallon tank and you never get below half full, in the course going through 15 gallons, you are, on average carrying around 11.25 gallons of fuel. gasoline weighs a little over 6lbs per gallon. that's about 70lbs of fuel.

if you let your tank go all the way to empty before you fill up, you're averaging 7.5 gallons, or 46lbs of fuel. that's about a 25lb difference. are you sure that you are losing enough gas through evaporation to make of for 25lbs of weight?

on the other hand, some similar "how to save gas" articles suggest ONLY filling your tank half way, in which case you would average about 3.75 gallons of gas or about 23lbs, a 42lb savings. is it worth it? how can both of these claims can be true? well actually they *could*, but are they? i have no idea, but my guess is probably not.

if you REALLY want to save gas here are a few simple steps that ACTUALLY make a difference and they should all be really obvious to you already.

drive less.
drive slower. when your speed double, wind resistance quadruples.
reduce the weight of your car, preferably by driving a smaller car
coast as much as possible (coasting in neutral is illegal in Virginia and possibly other states for some reason, see VA§46.2-811)
avoid using your brakes. do this by taking your foot off the gas sooner and coasting to a stop when possible, or not accelerating when you know you're just going to have to slow down again soon. this is really just restating #4.

that's it. that's how to save gas. if you want to be obsessive about it, check out ecomodder.com and people there will be more than happy to explain to you how to take this shit way to far and squeeze 100mpg out of your 3 cylinder geo metro by building a fiberglass boat tail and wheel covers.

note: i wrote that sentence first and found the picture second.

adventures in nostalgia

2011-03-03T08:24:00.007-05:00

last night i finally went through a box of crap that has been following me around since 1996. in fact, it was labelled with a magnum 44 sharpie "dan's big box o' crap". essentially, it was the box of school work, notes and random crap (matchbook sewing kit, duncan imperial yo-yo, monopoly, a photo of my 1989 dodge daytona) that i hauled back and forth between home and pittsburgh for my four years of college. in it i found a lot of things, but mostly what i found was some startling revelations about myself.

the first being that i used to be way smarter. i realized this after looking through a lot of class notes and homeworks assignment and determining that 95% of it is now gibberish. what once made perfect sense (or at least enough sense to get a passing grade) might as well be the equations for quantum entanglement. it's really quite tragic, given the hours (and dollars) spent learning that stuff only to find that it's completely gone.

the second thing i was able to deduce from the contents of that box, is that i am quite possibly gay.

exhibit a

if you are having trouble reading that, it's a bar tab, listing the following items:

2 alabama slammers
1 blow job
2 cement mixers
2 lemon drops
2 purple hooters
2 buttery nipples

and below the total, as if to punctuate the whole tab with a "you're gay" exclamation point, a swoopy "Thanx! Shaun". at least he didn't leave his phone number on it.

hahahahahahahaha

2011-01-26T19:30:00.004-05:00

sucks for you guys! glad i'm not out there.

english is a living language

2011-01-25T08:41:00.004-05:00

there's a reason a new version of the oxford dictionary comes out every so often. it's because english is alive. new words are created, old words are adapted for new purposes and meanings often change.

take for example

guilt·y
[gil-tee]
–adjective, guilt·i·er, guilt·i·est.
1.
having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp.against moral or penal law; justly subject to a certainaccusation or penalty; culpable: The jury found her guilty of murder.

it used to be that if you added "not" in front of "guilty" it meant the opposite of guilty, or to put it another way,

in·no·cent
[in-uh-suhnt]
–adjective
1.
free from moral wrong; without sin; pure: innocent children.
2.
free from legal or specific wrong; guiltless: innocent of the crime.

it seems however, that these old anachronistic rules of grammar no longer apply (or i am just getting old and having trouble keeping up). especially to high profile criminals. for example, jared loughner, the man accused (and i *have* to use the word accused here because i could get sued for libel if i don't!) of the shooting spree in arizona has plead not guilty. now for some so-called "facts". there are statements from some 250 witnesses. he was tackled on the scene of the crime and handed over to the police. the shooting was caught on video tape.

now i'm 100% behind the tenat of innocent until proven guilty (which sadly does not apply to the IRS) and reasonable doubt and all that, but i think we are well beyond a reasonable doubt here. all we're doing is wasting time, money and creating a media circus. and what's more? the judge entered the not guilty plea on his behalf.

dream interpretation

2011-01-10T11:59:00.002-05:00

i am driving my car. my mother is in the front passenger seat and my wife is in the back. i spot a tornado on the horizon and ask my mom to find the weather station on the radio. she can't figure out how to work it. i try to talk her through it, but give up and try to change the radio station by myself, at which point i drive off the road, slide sideways down a hill and the car comes to a stop. i wake up.

a dream like *has* to mean something, doesn't it?

just sign it already.

2010-12-20T08:24:00.002-05:00

just sign the damn thing already. you don't like the verification process? who cares? even if you did verify that russia reduced their nuclear arms to the amount agreed to, they'd still have enough to annihilate us so what's the difference? it doesn't matter if they totally flatten the US just once or 10 times over, it's still flattened. sign the treaty and dismantle our surplus. stop spending on the maintenance and security and quit whining about having to work on holidays. running the free world does not have union-guaranteed 15 minute breaks every hour.

to your credit congress and senate, you did manage to repeal don't ask don't tell and sign a tax bill, even though it is a total clusterfuck, which is a topic for another day. now if you could approve a budget so the government doesn't get shut down, that would be sweet.

if kevin was a dog

2010-11-04T09:14:00.001-04:00

i bet he'd be jacked like this dog.

miracles of modern science

2010-10-19T19:47:00.004-04:00

...or crimes against nature, depending on your perspective. allow me to explain.

i've ordered a number of fruit trees to plant in our new yard from raintreenursery.com and ediblelandscaping.com, which is a virginia nursery specializing as you might guess, edible landscaping. i'm actually pretty excited. i've order blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, a variety of kiwi propagated from a specimen growing on a fence at the national arboretum in DC, a persimmon tree, an apple tree and a fruit cocktail tree.

a what?

a fruit cocktail tree. yeah, i never heard of it before either. (thanks tobin!)

commercial fruit trees are not grown from seeds. if they were, you'd never know exactly what kind of quality fruit you'd get because the seed would have genetic material from two different trees. so let's say you want red delicious apples. you grow a root system, cut it off above the ground and graft on sprig cut from a red delicious tree. the two parts fuse together and you get an tree with roots from one type of apple tree and branches and fruit from another.

well if one graft is good, obviously more is better. turns out that you can graft multiple types of fruit from the same family onto the same rootstock. so for instance, the apple tree i order has grafts from akane, jonagold, gala and spartan apples. the fruit cocktail tree is either a plum or a peach root system and grows four different kinds of stone fruit: peaches, plums, apricots & nectarines.

if anyone knows where i can get a lemon, lime and blood orange or clementine tree, let me know!

unexpected surprise

2010-10-18T21:30:00.004-04:00

this is almost as mind blowing as the bar owner in canada, driving us to a different bar in his minivan so we could watch the redskins. on live-chat tech support with sony trying to find the replacement charger for my wireless headphones...

You have been connected to Agent Ray.
Agent Ray: Hi, thanks for choosing Sony Ericsson Chat Support. My name is Ray. How may I help you?
Dan: I lost my charger for my HBH-IS800 headphones.
Dan: what is the correct replacement part number?
Agent Ray: You can use the CST-60, CST-70 or CST-75 standard chargers to charge your headset.
Dan: what is the difference between those parts?
Agent Ray: CST-60 and CST-70 are basically the same model, the CST-75 has a piggy connector that you can attach an accessory to it while charging your phone.
Dan: okay
Dan: thank you
Agent Ray: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Dan: actually
Dan: i am looking at a picture of the cst-60 and the connector does not appear to be correct
Agent Ray: What happens is the correct charger for the HBH-IS800 is not available to buy. However, as one time courtesy concession, I can send you a new charger as no cost to you.
Dan: that would be fantastic
Agent Ray: Please provide me with your full name, physical address and a telephone number to place the order.
...
Agent Ray: Thank you for the information. Here is the confirmation number for this order: 101810267531. You can expect this delivery within 3-5 business days.
Dan: thanks ray!
Dan: really appreciate it.
Agent Ray: Is there anything else I can help you with?

and here's the thing... it's gonna cost them about $2 in postage (the charger itself i'm sure is next to zero cost) and they bought themselves a ton of good will. THIS IS A GOOD STRATEGY IF ANYONE IS LISTENING.

baby shower

2010-10-12T15:38:00.003-04:00

so we had a little baby shower for a coworker at the office today. it was a bit awkward. not much chit-chat going on. i proclaimed that i would ask some questions, but i'd never been to a baby shower before and don't know the etiquette and would probably ask something inappropriate, at which point the following inappropriate questions:

so, where was the baby conceived?

do you know who the father is?

i'd also like to note that asking the baby's name is dumb since once the parent-to-be tells you, there is only one possible response, which is "oh, that's a lovely name".

post your own inappropriate baby shower comments below.

proof that wall street analysts have no idea what they are talking about

2010-08-18T12:58:00.001-04:00

captcha this.

2010-06-15T12:06:00.003-04:00

captcha, and more specifically, re-captcha, is a pretty neat idea. if you're not familiar with it, it was originally designed as a system for verifying that person on the other end of a web browser is in fact a person, and and not a 'bot. re-captcha steps it up by not only verifying that people are human, but uses them at the same time to perform a task that computers are not good at. in the case of re-captcha, it shows you images two words, one of which it knows and one which it does not and asks the reader to type them in. the assumption is that if you type in the one it knows correctly, you probably also typed in the one it does NOT know correctly. this way, the re-captcha system can identify the text in images. they use it for digitizing books where the optical character recognition software has trouble.

try it out!

long story short, i get a kick out of it every time i'm presented with one because i know what's going on behind the scenes. and today was no different, except i was presented with this image, which i wasn't quite sure how to type:

shark attack!

2010-05-16T19:10:00.000-04:00

back in the saddle again

2010-04-03T20:06:00.002-04:00

universe: 3
dan: 1

it's finally gotten a bit warmer and now that we've switched to daylight savings time, there's some sun in the evening. i've been talking about getting back into riding my bicycle to work for a few weeks now, but hadn't yet. i'd been hoping to get some shorter rides in first but when i realized that was not likely to happen i decided to just suck it up and ride in on friday. let's just say that it could have gone worse, but it could have gone a lot better too.

laura decided to ride in friday as well, so we left the house and rode together for about 3.5 miles until it was time to part ways. so far so good. after laura split off i picked up the pace. i made it across the wilson bridge and up the giant hill in record slow time, sucking wind the whole way, then crossed the beltway into oxon hill farm park road, and that's where things started going downhill. i managed to run over a shard of glass which cut a nice gash in my tire and shredded my tube (point universe). luckily, i had my last spare tube in my backpack. no problem right, except i broke the tab on the bracket for my frame pump and had to fight with that before i could inflate my new tube (point universe). 10 minutes later and i was back on the trail. made it to work, showered and enjoyed a tasty bagel. the one bright note on the way in, no naked coworkers in the locker room (point dan).

the real reason i wanted to get some rides in before riding to work was the ride home. i had no real worries about getting in. it was the sore butt that i was hoping to avoid on the way home. and those fears were well warranted when i got back on the bike at the end of the day. it hurt, but not as much as picking up the phone to call my wife to come rescue me when i got the 2nd flat tire of the day (point universe) about half way home. steel bands in the cut tire finally made their way into the new tube and ruined it as well.

two michelin city 700x32 with "protek plus", whatever that is and enough tubes to last me about three years (assuming less than two flats per day) are on order from treefortbikes.com.

new orleans zoo animal pose off!

2010-03-22T21:15:00.003-04:00

Gorilla

Eel

Bear

Giraffe Tongue

Laura

... and the winner is ...

Gorilla!

parking ninjas

2010-03-08T12:11:00.005-05:00

arlington county has the best parking enforcement in the world. they never go home early. they are relentless and they are everywhere. they don't quit.

5:52 dan & laura park at a meter in shirtlington because the free lot is full. laura reads the sign on the meter, it requires feeding until 6pm. the meter has 1 minute left on it. laura is feeling a bit rebellious, it's friday night and it's been a rough week at work. we decide to take a chance.

5:53 meter expires

5:54 meter maid jumps out of the bushes and issues dan & laura a $25 parking ticket.

things i would have liked to blog about but didn't

2010-01-29T10:35:00.003-05:00

how awesome the steve seagal: lawman tv show is

my neighbors who refuse to recycle, even on recycling day

how i don't understand the whole leno/conan thing

how i don't understand the whole iPad thing

the irony that the recalled toyota pedal assemblies were manufactured by a US company

impressions on the future

2010-01-06T20:11:00.003-05:00

as most of you have heard by now, it is 2010, otherwise known as the future. and so far, it kinda sucks. why? well, first my hard drive crashed, then my grandmother died, and while my car was parked at my parents house the night before the funeral, some low life fuckers stole my car stereo and subwoofers and the remote to my in-dash touchscreen (but not the remote for the stereo or the touchscreen itself?). at least they didn't do any other damage to my car. add to this the fact that i will probably owe taxes this year, i am entirely unimpressed with 2010. on the bright side, it can pretty much only get better from here.

i feel better already

2010-01-05T10:10:00.004-05:00

i sleep well at night knowing that our elected officials are busy at work tackling important issues like climate change, global security, health care reform and the volume of tv commercials.

Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act - Directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prescribe a regulation prohibiting advertisements accompanying video programming from:
(1) being excessively noisy or strident;
(2) having modulation levels substantially higher than the accompanying program; and
(3) having an average maximum loudness substantially higher than that of the accompanying program.

the bill has been passed by the house. let's hope the senate can get their act together and set aside all the partisanship and get this import piece of legislation enacted!

i have no idea what this thing is

2010-01-04T09:36:00.001-05:00

but i'm pretty sure i want one

busted.

2009-12-20T14:03:00.005-05:00

this is why you don't post secrets to the intarwebs.

From you should be outraged.

cheapskates

2009-11-23T12:45:00.006-05:00

why is stuff that is free so much more desirable than stuff that is really really cheap?

laura and i remodeled the downstairs bathroom and removed the existing vanity and mirror. (they were secured to the walls with screws that required a square bit just in case you were wondering) i posted them together on craigslist for $50. i left the ad up for a week and got zero responses. after having stared at a bathroom vanity sitting in the living room for two weeks i decided i just wanted it out of the house so i moved the ad to the free section last night, and this morning opened my inbox to find:

im interestad plz let know they stiil available email me your address

Hi
I am interested on yours items please give me your address for pick up it. Thank you

Hi R they still available? thanks

Hi

I am interested in the bathroom vanity. Is it still available? I can pick up tomorrow evening after 7pm, just send the address.

Hello,
I can come pick it up tomorrow in the evening.
Where are you located?

is it still available i can pick it up tomorrow, whats the address
and your tel#.
tnx.

Is the mirror still available? If so I can pick it up tonight! Thanks

Still avaiable

say you had a widget that was normally $1000 and you put up two ads for it, one for $5 and one for free. you'd probably get a disproportionate number of people wanting it for free rather than for $5, even though $5 is still an amazing bargain. why? my guess is that there is actually value in getting something for free in addition to the value of the item itself. i'm sure economists have a good explanation for this but i don't know what it is.

furthermore, there seems to be a strong correlation between the desire for free stuff and bad grammar. i will grant forgiveness to those who most likely are not native english speakers, because they speak more languages than i do, but the rest of you... goodness.

we also removed a toilet that i will be posting on craiglist shortly. i'm interested in seeing what kind of responses i get for that one.

cold blooded killer

2009-11-04T20:55:00.007-05:00

my dog is a cold blooded killer. 100% wild beast. she is a snarling, slobbering, bone crushing monster and she is tougher than nails. literally. what you are looking at is what i came home to this evening. nana chewed to pieces a board full of nails, and i guess it made her thirsty because when she was done with that she washed it down with a gallon of gasoline and had a light bulb for desert, and then just for shits, she mauled some nearby orphans.

actually, it was just a 6" carpet tack strip that i had left on the floor of the bathroom i am tiling. but damn, anyone who has messed with tack strips knows, there's a good chance blood will be spilled and the little dog chewed the thing to shreds, nails and all. i hope she didn't eat any of them.

and what are you going to do with that when you get it home?

2009-10-28T09:46:00.005-04:00

in a society where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is ever widening, and your worth is measured by the things you own, the car you drive and the jewelry you wear, theft will always be a problem. which is why security screws on bathroom stalls make perfect sense. because you know, everyone is always trying to steal bathroom doors, and no one likes to take a dump with no door. it's totally undignified.

now i could understand, that yeah, maybe some high school kids decided it would be a funny prank to dismantle some bathroom stalls. maybe it even happened more than once, and to prevent it from happening again the school installed security screws. that might explain why ONE bathroom somewhere in the midwest might have security screws installed, but certainly not the fact that the vast majority of public restrooms use them.

i've been thinking about this off and on for quite a while, mostly whilst crapping in a public restroom. i have two theories, neither of which seem very reasonable:

1) bathroom stall theft is a widespread problem

2) all bathroom stalls are manufactured by a single company, which also happens to manufacture security screws

but wait, there's more! recently, i was in a bathroom that used TWO DIFFERENT KINDS of security screws. basically, each bracket or hinge had four screws on each side, two of one type and two of another type, meaning you would need to have two security screw bits in order to steal the stall. again, i can come up with only two explanations, and again, neither of them seem very reasonable:

1) it is a marketing ploy by bathroom stall manufacturers, in order to be able to make the claim that their stalls are more secure than their competitors.

2) bathroom stall thieves have wised up and starting carrying the more common type of security screw bits around with them, forcing bathroom stall makers to take more drastic measures in order to protect their "customers".

brb, potty.

beer money

2009-10-23T13:50:00.005-04:00

things i have sold on ebay or craigslist in the last two weeks:

ti-85 calculator...$15
vacuum cleaner...$25
santana moss jersey...$50
desk chair...$10
tv stand...$10
pedi-paws...$10
bike cover...$10
car parts...$304
dupont paint samples...$35

things pending sale:
toyota corolla factory stereo...no bids
802.11 pcmcia card...no bids
house of kolor paint samples...current bid $26
ppg paint samples...current bid $26
basf paint samples...current bid $26
large ticket item which shall remain nameless...to be delivered sunday $1575

i'm off to my storage unit to see what else i can 1) get rid of 2) have someone come pick up and 3) get money for.

i crashed my bike

2009-08-11T08:25:00.005-04:00

it finally happened. i used to crash pretty much on the regular when i was mountain biking up in laurel. mostly from doing something stupid, not having enough momentum, failing to unclip, tryintg to wipe some sweat away from my eyes and crashing into a tree, etc. never anything really serious though. until recently i've managed to not crash this year (though i did have on interesting get-off). either i'm getting better at biking or i'm getting older and more conservative. honestly, it could be either one. anyway, here's a video of one my previous wrecks attempting to break the land speed record. it wasn't as bad as it looks.

saturday i went mountain biking at fountainhead regional park, down near the occoquan river. i'd have to say that of all the mountain bike trails i've ridden in the area, this one is the most difficult. it's about 25 minutes from my house and about five minutes after i left the house, i realized i had forgotten my gloves, all but guaranteeing i would wreck, and land palms down in some really sharp gravel, but it didn't feel like turning around. the trail pretty much kicked my ass. i had to get off and walk a bunch and it took me about an hour and half to do 7 miles, but i amazingly managed not to eat it.

until this morning, riding my bike to work on the nice paved bike paths down through alexandria. it rained last night but the paved sections of path were mostly dry. i came to a curve on one of the wooden bridges and thought to myself, i better slow down, and no sooner did i think that than the front wheel slid out and i was on my way to the ground. i came down on my right elbow, tumbled, hit my head (wearing a helmet thankfully), rolled over my back and came to a nice comfortable stop sitting down on the trail. i scraped up my elbow a bit, but other than that no damage to me and the bike was fine except the chain fell off. my camelbak however, did not fare quite so well. it basically popped like a big water balloon when i rolled over it. i stood up and two liters of water came gushing out.

anyway, it's good to have a little crash every now and then, if for no other reason than to get a little hurt, just to know you're still alive. i find a little crash can actually build confidence too, because, hey, that wasn't so bad, i can take a little more risk next time and if i crash, so what?

on the virtues of buying CDs

2009-08-04T15:32:00.004-04:00

reasons to buy CDs:
- you can get them used, really really cheap online
- you get a whole album instead of one song
- you get liner notes
- you can rip them at any bitrate you want
- you can play them on any device/brand you want
- if you bought songs with DRM from itunes and your ipod breaks, you have to buy another ipod
- you can sell them when you're done with them
- you don't have to worry about your hard drive/ipod crashing and taking all your music with it

reasons to buy digital downloads:
- you can't be bothered to drive to the used cd store or wait a few days for it to come in the mail
- most of your music collection consists of one-hit-wonders
- you are too lazy to rip your own CDs

celebrity death watch...

2009-07-24T09:56:00.002-04:00

chalk up one more the grim reaper. gidget, the taco bell chihuaha is dead. yo quiero taco bell.

holla at me

2009-07-20T11:22:00.005-04:00

i got a google voice invite. you can't port your existing number yet, but you can *pick* your new one. i've got a few i like below, but please send in any suggestions.

edit: btw, (330)-8-URANUS is available if anyone wants that one.

where's my yellow jersey?

2009-07-13T11:04:00.004-04:00

View Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail in a larger map

sunday morning i left the house on my bike and told laura i'd be back in a few hours. 7 hours later, i came back. i rode the washington & old dominion railroad trail end-to-end. the map above is the gps track from my ride. it starts right across the street from our house in shirlington and ends in purceville, west of leesburg. the trail is just shy of 90 miles round trip. it took me about 6:45 of actual riding time and about a 30 minute break when i got to the far end out in purceville, va, where i pounded about 3 gatorades and two cliff bars before heading back to town. i averaged about 13.6mph round trip (again, not including stops). garmin says i burned about 5800 calories. suprisingly, my legs are not nearly as sore as i had expected, but i'm going to have to see how they are tomorrow. anyone wanna go with me next time?

electric boogaloo

2009-07-13T09:22:00.002-04:00

my friend kevin, who loves having his name mentioned in other people's blogs, has been trying to get out more, drink less and chat up some ladies. coincidentally, i happen to think that most of my friends are borderline alcoholic, so i'm happy when there's something going on that doesn't involves a bottle of fermented gasoline. last week, i talked kevin into driving down to alexandria for a dog happy hour, which i think could have good woman-meeting potential, just not the venue we went to. friday afternoon he sent me a link from the washington post for a breakdancing battle in DC. he was kinda wishy-washy about it at first, but i talked him into going, much to chris's chagrin. here's the highlight reel... the guys were all really good and the two crews that made it to the finals were incredible. oh, and on top of the 2 on 2 battles, they showed beat street before the contest and the AFI in silver spring was showing breakin' and breakin' 2: electric boogaloo that night.

r.i.p. smooth criminal

2009-06-26T09:18:00.005-04:00

i may or may not have shed a tear this morning on the way to work listening to thriller.

youtube has blocked thriller from being embedded so go there and watch it because it is possibly the greatest music video of all time.

nerd cred levels return to normal

2009-06-03T09:29:00.005-04:00

i got my laser cut parts in the other day. for those of you who are interested, ABS plastic cut with a laser smells pretty bad. the parts came out pretty good. unfortunately, i failed to make one crucial measurement and didn't account for some wiring. the good news is, the parts that really needed to be correct were. most of the stuff that didn't quite work out was for mounting the controller board behind the screen. lucky for me, i had a roll of padded double-sided tape handy. anyway, here's the end result.

overall, i'm pretty pleased with the way it came out. if i were to do it again (besides the obvious getting the measurements correct) i'd probably mount the screen lower in the hole since the top overhang obstructs the very top of the screen. also the ABS plastic has one smooth side and one textured side. i'd probably put the textured side out, and fill in the seam with liquified ABS and paint the whole thing so it looks like one solid piece. finally, i'd skip the superglue i tried to use on the IR sensor because now it's all clouded up.

upping the nerd cred

2009-05-27T15:06:00.007-04:00

as if having a computer installed in my car was not nerdy enough, i decided to take it once step further. i had previously molded the screen into the stereo/air duct bezel using a few generous gobs of fiberglass cathair and some bondo. it worked, until i actually tried to put in the car, when it immediately cracked about 3 years ago. it's been cracked ever since.

i was content to leave it that way until i recently stumbled across a double-din kit for my model of LCD screen, which immediately ordered. upon receipt, i removed the screen from the car, broke it apart from the fiberglass and bondo and discovered that the kit was for a new version of the LCD screen i have and it would not work and no kit existed for my version of that screen.

at this point, i had few options. i could mold the screen back in the same way i did it before. i could try and mold it in using ABS plastic, which would probably have come out much worse and been horribly sloppy, or i could have a bezel and mounting kit custom fabricated.

i spent about three hours the other night using my new digital calipers to take some measurements of the screen and the space i have to fit it in and some 2D drafting software to lay out my kit.

i sent the CAD files off today to be laser cut from 1/8" thick ABS plastic. if i did everything correctly, i have created a faceplate for the LCD, some risers, and a backplate for mounting the electronics for controlling the LCD and it should all snap together like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.

monthly budget report

2009-05-01T09:52:00.002-04:00

well, we just about it made it. we went over by about $7 which is not bad considering laura and i probably used to spend at least double what we spent last month. it wasn't exactly a lot of fun, but we are going to keep doing it. we're discussing possibly upping it to $700 instead of $600. i am officially declaring it a success. we're going out for chinese tonight to celebrate.

stop freaking out

2009-04-30T09:25:00.007-04:00

fact: according to the CDC on average, 5%-20% of the population of the united states is infected with the flu each year. the regular flu, not swine flu. 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complication and 36,000 people die. again, the regular type of flu, not swine flu.

fact: the swine flu outbreak of 1976 killed 1 person. 1 person died in 1988 after she "visited a county fair swine exhibition where there was widespread influenza-like illness among the swine."

fact: you cannot get swine flu from eating pork.

fact: swine flu is treatable with the same drugs used to treat the regular flu.

fact: the transmission of the flu virus from humans to pigs is a bigger problem than vice versa.

do yourself a favor. listen carefully to the media and what they are actually saying. have they told you that swine flu is more deadly than the regular flu? have they told you that it is more contagious than the regular flu? have they told you that it is not treatable? no. so now that you armed with some actual facts, stop freaking the fuck out.

you can find it on the internet

2009-04-28T09:07:00.008-04:00

we have a dog. she sheds a lot. we run roomba pretty regularly and it's always full. when we vacuum, we can get farther than one room at a time without having to empty the canister. when the dog gets brushed, there are literally multiple handfuls of hair that go into the trashcan. basically, there are immense amount of dog hair that the dog is no longer using. so much in fact, that i have often wondered what possible uses their might be for such large amounts of fur.

attic insulation (brown dog?)

maybe we could find some dogs on chemo we could donate it to?

a hair helmet?

or maybe, after i finish the scarf i starting knitting 5 months ago that is nearly halfway done, i can make a dog hair sweater! (for sale at amazon.com for only $13.67!)

edit: i think i should make a sweater for nana out of nana's shedded fur or is that somehow wrong?

please don't put your babies in the dumpster.

2009-04-24T08:49:00.002-04:00

an open letter

2009-04-22T09:00:00.005-04:00

dear planet volunteers,

earth day is a wonderful event (which happens to coincide with trash day in my neighborhood oddly enough). earth day is something that's good for everyone and your enthusiasm is fantastic, though i fear your efforts may be a bit misguided. picking up sticks that have fallen off of trees in the woods, chipping them, and then putting them back in the woods, is perhaps not the best use of your time.

thanks,
dan

(skip to ~2:45)

i'd do it anyway

2009-04-20T10:14:00.004-04:00

if there is one thing i have learned from watching sci-fi channel original movies, is that one should not to tamper with the delicate balance of nature. for instance, you do not want to go back in time on a dinosaur hunting safari and accidentally step on a butterfly or you will transform the future into a place with man eating apes and plants that ensnare passersby and shoot them with venomous thorns. also, you would not want to summon a long extinct tyrannosaurus-rex to protect your aztec tribe from raiders because he is likely to eat you when he is done. another common mistake you might want to avoid is transplanting dangerous creatures such as a chupacabra, from their natural habitat, onto, say a cruise ship full of plump white people or creating a sabretooth cat theme park.

in addition you should not implant microchips in your brain, expiriment with radation of any sort, perform any sort of genetic engineering, time travel, capture previously uncataloged species of animal or insect, attempt to interact with ancient tribes who have somehow survived the millenia without being discovered, or otherwise tamper with the natural order of things. i could go on, but obviously the producers at the sci-fi channel feel it is important for us to know that everything we do has the potential for deadly, absurdly bloody, unintended consequences.

having said that, given the opportunity, i would, without hesitation, wipe mosquitoes out of existence and not give it a second thought. the first warm sunny weekend this spring i put on shorts and got no less than five mosquito bites below the knees.

something else i'm glad is over.

2009-04-17T11:06:00.006-04:00

john madden's career as a football announcer.

john "the rambler" madden has finally retired. finally, i can stop listening to his incessant ramblings and statements of the completely obvious. no more running straight up the a-hole or b-hole. no more turduckens. no more insightful comments about how the key to game is to score more points than the other team. no more utterly useless diagrams on the telestrator.

who will sell me athlete's foot spray now? i've got an idea!

john madden, even though i'm glad you're gone, i'll still miss you.

well i'm glad that's over

2009-04-15T11:33:00.002-04:00

after spending 20 minutes in line at the post office this morning, it's over (knock on wood). getting the taxes done this year was possibly one of the worst experiences of my life.

since the last post on the topic, i called the md comptroller myself to find out what the correct forms were to file. turns out these guys filled out the wrong form for me. good thing i checked, because they obviously didn't bother and i would have sent in the wrong paperwork. after i told them that, i actually had to tell them what day the maryland taxes were due. they thought it was may 1st. eventually, they sent me a version of the correct form, of course it was filled out incorrectly.

i ended up taking the day off of work yesterday to do them myself. i sat down with a pencil and printed the forms and the instructions and did them by hand. i called the accounting office several times throughout the day and not once did they call me back. finally, when i finished doing them by hand, i drove over to the accountants office and laid into them. the owner was such a dickhole he wouldn't even turn around to acknowledge me when i walked in. he told me that they "have done 75 personal tax returns" and that i was "the only one who ever complained" and that he found it hard to believe that they were doing it wrong, implying that i must not know what i'm talking about. it was ugly, but i'm getting my money back (the owner claimed he was too busy to stop and write me a check at that time, but whatever). with any luck, my refund checks will be the last i will ever see of our 2008 taxes.

for the record, the accounting firm is Accounting Solutions Network, PLC and their url is http://arlingtoncpas.com. stay away. far far away.

final score:
md refund ~$500
va refund ~$1300
federal refund ~$1000
accountant fee refund $540

lousy accountant update

2009-04-12T10:58:00.003-04:00

i still have no answer from the accountant regarding the proper forms to file in MD, however i did have a chance to look over the numbers on the return she filled out for us and we should be getting back at least $700 instead of owing $290. at this point, the service i am getting is bordering on criminal.

to recap:

taxes as done by account, we owe $522
taxes after corrected by dan, we get ~$3100

criminal. i will be calling the owners next week to get my money back.

please be assured that your call will be answered as soon as possible

2009-04-10T09:59:00.004-04:00

i hung up the phone this morning and decided to try the leave-a-message-and-have-someone-call-you-back option instead of waiting on hold, thinking that no one is actually answering the phones. when i pressed 1 to leave a message, the recording told me "sorry cannot leave a message now because the mailbox is full [click]".

random posts

2009-04-10T09:11:00.011-04:00

* i have been trying to refinance our houses. rates are extraordinarily low, with 30 year fixed mortgages at about 4.875%. i've found that closing costs are generally more than i'd like to pay, and for some reason i have to pay local taxes when i refinance. i'm not entirely sure what i'm paying taxes on though. i'm having a hell of a time getting anyone to call me back. it appears that no one is interested in my business. one of the existing mortgages is with suntrust, so i thought i would just call them and see if i could renegotiate the interest rate without refinancing. i called them yesterday at 9:30am. i waited on hold for FOUR hours, at which point they stop playing soothing music and assuring you that your call is important to them. i left the office with the phone off the hook on speakerphone around 4:30pm, still on hold. when i came in this morning, i was still on hold. holding for 24 hours must be some kind of guiness record.

* yesterday i went mountain biking at wakefield park in annandale. for some reason, i didn't go all summer last season. i had forgotten how much fun it was and i'm glad i went. i almost ate it at one point crossing a narrow wooden bridge about 3ft above a gulley. i didn't have enough speed and rode off the side. luckily i was not clipped in and just tossed the bike away and landed on my feet. anyway, i also realized how fat and out of shape i am. at least mountain biking is fun enough that it doesn't feel like exercise.

* this morning i was listening to NPR and they ran a sound byte from an upcoming story. they were talking to a banker about how when the FDIC takes over a bank, it ends up costing other banks money. the guy they were interviewing made the comment that his bank was "paying for the sins of others". that made me laugh. welcome to the club blowhole.

"We were very angry that we were paying for the sins of others," Marranca says. "Obviously, the cost of this was because other people were doing silly, imprudent, criminal things. We never got involved in subprime loans. We would never do a loan with no documentation. We didn't cause this problem. Imagine if you had to pay for your neighbor, or your competitor screwed up somehow, and you had to pay for it."

Yes, taxpayers, close your eyes and try to picture a scenario where you pay for the mistakes of others.

* on a related note, NPR ran another story on FDIC takeovers a week or two ago that was actually quite interesting. it sounds like the FDIC might be one of very few government agencies that is capable of acting swiftly and effectively.

* my accountant cannot tell me for sure which forms i need to file for MD. i was reading over the instructions because i wanted to double check everything again and it appears as though i might have to file both a resident and non-resident forms. i sent her a copy of the pdf instructions from the maryland website and she doesn't know the answer either. we're kinda running out of time here. also, according to our accountant, it appears that we have to pay taxes on laura's income in MD, despite the fact that she did not live in, nor make any money in MD in 2008. i find this hard to believe.

* last.fm is insisting that i will like the goo goo dolls, the bodeans and hootie and the blowfish. augh.

note to consumer product engineers

2009-04-07T19:28:00.002-04:00

dear engineers,

please do not let your accounting department talk you into using plastic gears when you know you should be using metal ones. especially relatively expensive, in high-torque applications like:

- my broken shredder
- my broken stick blender
- my broken garage door opener

thanks,
dan

how do you make $600/hr?

2009-04-02T12:03:00.008-04:00

get a bad tax accountant.

so this year laura and i decided to have our taxes done by a "professional" due to the retardedly complicated nature of tax code and our situation this year. we dropped off all our paper work near the end of february. i called after three weeks to check on them and they hadn't even looked at them yet but got right on it after i called. we went in a day or two later to pick up the returns.

i was quite disappointed to find out we owed money because in my previous attempt to do them on taxcut i had thought i was getting ~$2k refunded. they told us we owed $974 in federal taxes, we were getting back $873 from maryland and owed $421 to the state of virgina - all in all we owed $522. a quick look over the return and a few questions later i realized they had not included quite a few things, for example one stock transaction which was a loss of about $450 had no purchase price and was therefore listed on my taxes as a short term capital gain. i told her about a few other issues and emailed her some more records later in the week.

i went back last night at 6pm, straight from work, hoping to find a completed tax return but alas, it was not to be. i stayed there until nearly 11pm pointing out mistake after mistake after mistake. and it was really weird stuff, like negative numbers listed as amounts for charitable donations. by the time all was said and done, we had gone from owing $522 to getting a net refund of $2403.

to top things off, after all that, we had to pay the accountant $540 to do our taxes. and the worst part, i'm still not convinced it's correct. since now somehow we now owe maryland money instead of getting a refund, and are getting refunds from virginia and the feds instead of owing.

fiscal responsibility

2009-04-01T14:03:00.004-04:00

let me start by saying that this is not a rant about the economic stimulus plan or the fact that the US government is now providing car warranties.

laura and i have decided to try actually budgeting some of our expenses. primarily because we ended up owing taxes this year and i decided that we are poor. at this point, i expect anyone who is reading this is probably really offended that laura and i would call ourselves poor (well, really just me). while we do both make a good bit of money, it manages to disappear as fast as we can earn it just like everyone else, mostly because of our habit of eating out way too often.

we've settled on a figure of $600 dollars per month which comes out to between $3 and $4 per meal per person depending on what assumptions you make. originally i had suggested $500 per month or roughly $125 per week, which is less than $3 per meal per person. we tried that for a week an went over by about $5 and cleared out most of our freezer and pantry in the process.

anyway, i've added a new gadget to my blog (over there on the right ->) so you google reader users (a.k.a phil) will have to go to my actual blog page to see it. it's our running tally for the month.

does anyone else budget their expenses? how much do you spend on food?

* for the record, i got a foot-long sub from subway today but i only ate half of it.

why the hell did i click that link?

2009-03-31T09:32:00.001-04:00

this is sure to cause nightmares for anyone, not just me.

various forms of outrage collide

2009-03-29T23:27:00.003-04:00

some of you may remember my post about random fees, in particular the "convenience" fee for paying my arlintgon property tax bill with a credit card. well, i went to pay my parking on the street with no front tag fee online and just in case any of you were curious, there is still a fee for paying with a credit card.

i'm outraged.

2009-03-25T09:34:00.004-04:00

three warnings and one ticket in four days. outrageous. i'm outraged. the worst part? my car wasn't even moving. the first one was for no front tags on the supra, parked on a county street. i was not parked at a yellow curb, or in a handicapped space or in front a fire hydrant. no. my car sat there, next to the curb, not moving, properly registered, but lacking the front license plate. the three warnings i received when i stopped at the gate to show my badge and one of the gate guards was bored and decided to write me up for the clear plastic front license plate cover on the corolla. i was given a warning for that, a warning for failure to provide proof of insurance (i couldn't find my insurance card) and a warning for operating an uninsured vehicle, even though my vehicle is in fact insured, indeed probably over-insured.

did i break the law? yes, i did. and according to the law, i deserved those tickets/warnings. but who did i hurt? did i endanger someone? did i endanger myself? were the other people on the block where my car was parked somehow put as risk because my car did not have a front license plate or other people on the road at risk because my other car had a clear piece of plastic over it's front license plate? were my actions to the detriment of society at large? of course not.

the real risk here is the local governments running out of money and so they write stupid little laws like this with stupid little fines to pad their budgets. but here's the best part... have you ever wondered why you are required to have front tags? (hint: cops don't chase you from the front) it's for things like photo radars* and red light cameras** and laser speed traps***, other laws that generate revenue. so now we have laws specifically designed to ensure that other laws revenue generating laws continue to put money in the county coffers.

you're probably thinking, dan is an idiot and he gets what he deserves. he should just do like he's supposed to and no one will bother him. if you're thinking that, you've missed the entire point and i have failed as a writer. the point is 1) i shouldn't be forbidden from doing anything that doesn't hurt anyone and 2) the government should not be writing laws for the purposes of collecting money unless they are tax laws and even that is questionable if you ask me.

* i think we can pretty much all agree that photo radars do not improve traffic safety. after about a month, everyone knows exactly where they are and will slow down for just long enough to not get a ticket. furthermore, anyone who *does* get a ticket gets it 2-4 weeks after the fact which means 1) they did not slow the time they got the ticket and 2) now they know exactly where it is so they can slow down just long enough next time to not get a ticket

** red light cameras are still debatable. while they have been shown to decrease the number of cars running the light as it turns from green to red, they have also been show to increase the number of rear-end collisions at the same intersections. so you decide if you'd rather get hit by the car behind you or have to wait while some jerk squeeze through the light at the last second.

*** i've got no good argument against speed traps. and in fact, they probably would improve traffic safety in the long run if the fines were so substantial that it actually changed peoples driving habits.

my own personal nightmares

2009-03-19T09:19:00.004-04:00

this is a post i've been meaning to make for a while. it is about all the odd recurring dreams that i have, though this xkcd comic that was posted the other day makes me think, maybe they aren't so odd and it's what reminded me that i wanted to blog about this...

missing homework
this is basically what you see in the comic above. usually it involves me getting to the end of the semester and realizing there was a class project that i completely forgot about or realizing that i signed up for a class and had totally forgotten about it and not gone since the first week. in my version of the dream, it's usually one or the other though, not both. and i don't think i ever worry about not graduating because i usually wake up after the second panel.

what does it mean? hell, i don't know. college was traumatic? i'm a control freak? at any rate, i feel better knowing i'm not the only one who has this nightmare repeatedly, almost a decade after i graduated from college.

loose teeth
this one is not impressive, or even interesting really. i only note it because i've had it more than a few times, and that's what this post is about. sometimes i will dream that one of my teeth is loose and about to fall out. one of my grown-up teeth, not one of my baby teeth.

what does it mean? it is a well known fact that i hate the dentist and do not floss. perhaps this is a manifestation of the guilt they put me through everytime i go to the dentist. perhaps it is residual hate for my sadistic orthodontist from my teenage years.

worms
if there is one thing that creeps me out it's parasites. little bugs living inside you. nasty. this one is especially bothersome because it will occasionally manifest itself in real life, like in an episode of ER or survivorman, perhaps a friend coming back from a stint in the peace corp in africa, or perhaps a cute and cuddly cockerspaniel that i watched take a crap that procedeed to crawl away. my version of the dream usually involves me finding a little scab or bump or something on the bottom of my foot that i start picking at. eventually i will break through the skin and find something that i'll start pulling on. depending on how bad a nightmare it is, it turns out to be either a small worm or a very very long one. gross, i know.

what does it mean? i'm pretty sure it means parasites are freakin' nasty and i'm terrified of them and also i should never go to africa.

falling
i'm pretty this is my version of the falling dream, only when i have it, it's not free falling like out of an airplane or into a giant black hole in the ground. when i have it, it usually involves me being on a latter or up in a tower or on a scaffolding that starts to tip over and there's nothing i can do but hang on and go with it.

what does it mean? probably nothing. my theory on the falling dream is that it is related to the twitch just as you fall asleep and the state where your muscles become unresponsive, known as sleep atonia, which is presumably so that you don't hurt yourself (or your spouse) playing soccer or dreaming about your career in mixed martial arts while you are asleep.

running in water
i kinda suspect this one is relatively common also, but don't have any evidence to support it. basically, something is chasing me and i am trying to run away. either i can't run at all or it feels like i am trying to run in water and my best effort will only get me moving very slowly.

what does it mean? maybe that all my efforts are futile. or maybe that time is catching up to me and i can't get away. or maybe it's my fear of the inevitable. or maybe it's just more of the r.e.m. atonia (<- album name?) crap.

subtleties in advertising

2009-03-18T21:34:00.007-04:00

ladies, schick wants you to keep your bushes trimmed with this.

am i really that out of touch?

2009-03-11T11:05:00.003-04:00

backgroud: i use meebo as my chat program because it's the only thing that works at the office. they've added a new feature that puts little polls up in your window where you can answer stupid questions, the results of which might show up in something like your high school yearbook.

where is the "buy the cd" option?

fda impotent, needs viagra

2009-03-05T09:25:00.009-05:00

i was going to ramble on about the state lawmaker from west virginia who has proposed a bill to ban barbie dolls on the premise that "the Barbie doll, I think, gives emphasis on if you're beautiful, you don't have to be smart", but decided that the topic was already absurd enough and didn't need any ridicule from me. instead, i will ramble about the recent supreme court ruling regarding regulatory pre-emption.

the facts of the case (from what i understand) are this:

wyeth, a pharmaceutical company, created a drug (called phenergan) for treating migranes. the drug and drug warning label were approved by the FDA.
a certain method for administering the drug carries a risk of gangreen, and there was no warning about this on the FDA approved warning label.
a woman had to have her arm amputed as a result of being treated via the method described above and sued wyeth.
wyeth claimed that since the fda approved the warning label, they could not be held responsbile and the the fda's approval essentially immunized wyeth from lawsuits.
the supreme court ruled that "that Phenergan's label did not contain an adequate warning about the IV-push method of administration" and that wyeth's defense did not hold. the woman was awarded $6.7M.

now, while i don't disagree that if wyeth knew about this risk, they undoubtedly, should have included this on the warning label, it does make me wonder what the hell is the point of the FDA approval process?

the whole purpose of regulatory bodies like the FDA is to assure some degree of quality & safety to the general public. these agencies exist because it is generally believed that it's not possible for an average consumer understand all the risks they are faced with (and is a topic worthy of it's own rant), be it with respect to automotive safety, the grade of your beef, prescription drugs, or toy dolls that send the wrong message. there are probably hundreds of the agencies; FDA, USDA, NHTSA, SEC, FTC, CPSC and on and on...

the supreme court effectively ruled that FDA approved warning labels do not sufficiently divulge the risks inherent with the use of some drugs. this inevitably leads to the question, if the FDA approves insufficient warnings, how can i trust them? if i can't trust them, then why do they exist? the supreme court essentially rendered the FDA impotent, and have possibly set the same precedent for all regulatory agencies.

without getting into an argument about whether the fda should or should not exist, they should be held responsible in cases like this. if the FDA knew about this risk and approved the label without a proper warning and had the legal authority to force wyeth to include it, the FDA is equally responsible.

rant.

2009-03-02T12:41:00.000-05:00

web pages that resize your browser window should be illegal.

saving money on auto insurance

2009-02-14T09:48:00.003-05:00

drivers who switch to all-state save an average of $353
drivers who switch to geico save an average of $230
drivers who switch to liberty mutual save an average of 20%
drivers who switch to state farm save an average of $426

at least that's what all the commercials say. you'd think i could get free insurance if i just switch insurance companies back and forth a few times. now how can this be? surely, someone must be lying. nope. they just aren't telling the whole truth. the reason they can all make this claim is because who the hell changes insurance companies to a more expensive company? no one. obviously, anyone who switches to a new insurer only switched because that new insurer was cheaper than their current insurer. all drivers who switch, save. drivers who don't save, don't switch. duh.

howto: become completely emasculated

2009-02-10T13:01:00.005-05:00

1) get a flat tire during rush hour

2) fail to change the tire on your own

3) flag down three police cruisers for help and have them park with their lights flashing

4) attract lots of attention and create lots of traffic

5) have your tire changed by the one female police officer

edit: no, this did not happen to me. i know how to change a tire. i saw this one the way home the other day.

there ought to be a law...

2009-02-09T22:46:00.004-05:00

...against making laws so complicated that no one could possibly understand them. i was downloading a few of the forms i need from the irs website. i just googled the specific form i needed and up came a direct link to the pdf. i decided to take the file name off the link to browse the directory and this is what i found. is this some sort of make-work program for accountants? part of the economic recovery plan from the previous depression?

random posts

2009-02-06T09:15:00.004-05:00

a large flock of crows has decided to take up residence in the trees just outside our house for the last couple days. there are hundreds of them and they're pretty damn creepy, especially at night. they also appear to have singled out my car for some reason and it has paid for it dearly.

tax code is retardedly complicated. i started doing our taxes this week. this year, i have converted a personal residence to an investment property which had expenses but made no money in 2008, gotten married and moved to virginia, laura sold some stock, exercised some stock options and made some contributions to a retirement account that she was not eligible for. i had some stock that was transferred from one brokerage account to another brokerage and then sold. that means one married-filing-jointly federal return, one married-filing-separately partial year state return for maryland, one married-filing-separately partial year state return for virginia and one married-filing-separately virginia state return. flat tax anyone?

we watched sweeny todd last night. laura and i agree that it would have been awesome if the italian barber had been played by dave arabian.

i've been listing to all my cds on my computer at work in alphabetical order by album name. this morning i hit the "greatest hits" block of albums. there look to be about 13 of them.

nerd problems

2009-02-03T19:07:00.002-05:00

today i spent the day debugging some timer code that was supposed to be using the memory mapped micro-second counter at 0xE8000044 on my ts-7800 board. instead i was reading the random number generator at 0xE8000040! lol! can you imagine? i'm so silly!

slaughterfest

2009-01-29T22:54:00.003-05:00

i just watched rambo. the new(ish) one. i saw blackhawk down once upon a time and it was so violent and bloody it got to the point where i was just bored*. rambo takes violence to a whole new level. it is a complete and utter bloodbath. at one point in the movie, he rips a man's throat out with his bare hands. for the last 10 minutes of the movie, rambo has taken over a jeep-mounted .50 caliber turret and basically mows down the bad guys continuously. their heads explode. limbs are blown off. holes are blown through chests. i can't fully describe how absurdly violent this movie is. it's one of those things you just have to see for yourself. two dismembered thumbs up.

oh yeah, there's a plot too, but whatever.

* my brother claims that he saw striptease and it made him bored of boobs. i find this hard to believe.

nana goes to the beach

2009-01-26T11:05:00.000-05:00

new discoveries in human physiology

2009-01-26T09:30:00.003-05:00

saturday i went to the gym with the hulk and phil and paid $16 to lift some weights. make no mistake, i could feel it when i got home saturday night but sunday morning when woke up i could not move my arms. i believe i have discovered a completely new, previously undocumented type of soreness. every muscle i have is sore, with the exception of maybe my toes. i can't straighten my arms out. i had to roll out of bed because my abs hurt to much to sit up, and my arms are too jell-o-y to prop myself up. my hamstrings hurt. my traps hurt. my pecs hurt. basically the muscles in red in this diagram.

laura thinks i am being a bit dramatic. i assure you, i am not. typically, i would not be surprised by this, as i've gone through it before. i don't lift weights for an extended period of time. then i decide to start lifting again and i always over-do it. this usually results in some sore muscles the day or two after, but this is different. the closest i have ever come to this amount of soreness is once after a three day ski trip where when i sat down in a chair, i could not lift my feet off the ground and once when i rode 52 miles on my bicycle in 4 hours. this is as best i can figure, what it feels like to be worked over with a baseball bat, being in car accident or perhaps being on the bottom of the dallas cowboys offensive line. i thought about taking a sick day today but decided that i didn't want the hulk to have the satisfaction.

last time i will be paying these fees

2009-01-22T19:33:00.002-05:00

i got the last water bill from wssc for the house in laurel today.

water use.......$1.97
sewer use.......$2.77
bay restoration fee.......$7.50
account maintenance fee.......$11.00
total......$23.24

that is $4.74 in actual usage charges and $18.50 in fees, or put another way my bill was just under 80% add-on fees and 20% for the amount of water i actually used.

biggest crowd ever?

2009-01-22T10:07:00.004-05:00

so i just got back from SC, where i was avoiding the predicted madness that was the inauguration of barack obama. i've been trying to find an official crowd estimate and i can't and here's the reason why: louis farrakhan, leader of the nation of islam, threatend to sue the national park service (the agency charged with running the national mall) over their estimate of 400,000 people at his 1995
"million man march". obviously for an event being billed as a million man march to have only 400,000 people, looks a bit silly. ever since then, depending on what story you believe, the national park service has either been barred from or had their budget cut for doing crowd estimates.

at any rate, the estimates i have seen for the inauguration range from about 800,000 to about 2,000,000 which is a pretty big range if you ask me. here's the satellite imagery. if you're having a slow day at work, maybe you can count for yourself after you've zoomed way in.

Credit: GeoEye Satellite Image

an open letter

2009-01-16T09:17:00.005-05:00

dear really, really old guy at 7-11,

let me start by commending you on your independence. most citizens your age would probably not be out and about like you are, and even though it took your 20 minutes to get money out of your wallet, you have my respect sir. i noticed that you were buying some lottery tickets. i occasionally purchase lottery tickets myself, and like you i am hoping to beat the unbelievably bad odds and win an unspeakable amount of money. but if i may make a suggestion, perhaps you might consider a different game instead of the "cash for life" tickets you were purchasing?

sincerely,
dan

band or person?

2009-01-13T13:51:00.004-05:00

every once in a great while you learn something which challenges the way you think about the world. something you may have held as fact suddenly becomes fiction and your internal model of the universe is shattered. maybe you felt it when you realized santa claus was not real. maybe you've experienced it when you left behind the illusion of being in total control of your own life. maybe it happened to you when you realized one of your favorite musicians was in fact, not a real person. post your score in the comments.

take the quiz

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.mystudiyo.com/act80790/mini/go/band_or_person"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;band_or_person&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

collection of random rants

2009-01-08T09:10:00.008-05:00

* the illinois senator situation is actually quite infuriating. the system has been hijacked. it's clear that neither blagojevich nor the person whom he appointed, roland burris, are acting in the interest of the people of illinois. these are elected positions, intented to represent the will of the people. regardless of whether or not he has broken any laws, i don't believe anyone from illinois wants blagojevich in office anymore and he refuses to step down, even though it would be the right thing to do. similarly, it appears that his appointment is legal and the senate will have to allow it, burris should recognize that source of his appointment is not representative of the people and by extension neither is his appointment. i think blagojevich knows he's screwed at this point and is doing his best to stick it to everyone on his way to jail and burris is a egotistic powerhungry opportunist. at any rate, it's very sad to see such blatant disrespect for the spirit of democracy. here's a snippet from a new york times op ed on burris.

On the negative side, you might want to include the fact that Burris has already constructed a mausoleum for himself that is topped by Illinois’s state seal and the legend “Trail Blazer.” Those are followed by a list of his historic firsts, ranging from the impressive (first African-American elected to a statewide office in Illinois) to some stuff you would really try to refrain from bragging about except at parties in which there had been a great deal of drinking (first African-American exchange student from Southern Illinois University to Hamburg).

There also is a sidebar granite slab for “Other Major Accomplishments.” As the mausoleum illustrates, even in an occupation in which oversized egos are practically a career requirement, Burris can be a little alarming. The fact that he made Illinois history by being elected state comptroller in 1979 is something you would feel like admiring a lot more if Burris had not told The Associated Press in 2008: “I’d say if there hadn’t been a Roland Burris, that there would not have been a Carol Braun or a Barack Obama.

* the government tv converter box coupon program has run out of money. lots of people are whining. get over it. the government is not obligated to pay for you to watch tv. plus, who knows how many people got the coupons because, hey, free $40, even though they have cable and don't need them.

* all of the bridges from virginia into DC are going to be shut down on inauguration day. i don't quite understand how they expect to get 4 million people in and out of downtown dc when the only way in or out is going to be up through maryland. and while i am fortunate enough to not have to go downtown or even leave my house that day but 4 million people PLUS all the vendors, hotel staff, restaraunt staff, security staff, metro staff, organizers and various other people will. metro certainly can't handle it. i will either be blockading myself into the house or trying to get out of town the day before. by the way, there is anecdotal evidence that people, as i imagined, are not getting the ridiculous amounts of money for renting out their houses during inauguration.

* monday night i stepped in dog poop. it was not a little poop either. i might have to incinerate my shoes. i'm pretty sure it's one of our neighbors who just lets her dog out of her house because she is too lazy to walk them. it sorta wanders around until it finds a shoe to poop under and she opens the door and starts hollering for it to come back. this is also the same neighbor that while she rarely picks up after her dogs, when she does, she leaves a little pile of poop filled bags by her front door for days and days while flies congregate around them. she is also the neighbor who has a really obnoxious barky dog and leaves the windows open during the summer so they can see ever person and squirrel that walks by and bark at them as loudly as possible. i've also seen her sit in her car (which is filled with garbage) smoking a cigarette with the engine running listening to the radio for up to 20 minutes on some occasions.

this is not okay.

2008-12-31T09:17:00.005-05:00

from the time i was born until the time i was about 22 i had never seen my dad's upper lip because it was hidden behind his soup strainer mustache. one day i came home from college for the weekend and it was gone. i'm sure he was very attached to it, but he did the right thing. he shaved that bad boy off and to my knowledge, he has never looked back. today, msn posted an article about regrettable trends in pop culture, and while i feel the list may have overlooked several thousand items, i have to agree that this, perhaps, is one of the most regrettable and the one i'd most like to put a stop to immediately.

tech editors are idiots

2008-12-30T10:03:00.003-05:00

it's the end of the year and of course this means everyone is doing their stupid end of the year 2008 wrap ups best of this worst of that lists. and for some reason, a bunch of tech column writers have decided that the peek is awesome. in fact, it is so awesome that it is in the running for time magazine's gadget of the year. the peek, if you don't know, is a small handheld wireless device that lets you check your email. that's it. you can't surf the web. you can't talk to your friends. you can't text message. you can't even check your work email, just web-mail. it costs $100 to buy the device and about $20/m for service. i can see how you might think this is awesome, if it was oh, maybe 1998, about a year or so before blackberries came out. but these days my dog can get her email on her cell phone. so why would anyone buy this thing and why would people who are alleged technology pundits think this thing is so great?

eff fees

2008-12-16T09:35:00.014-05:00

nothing drives me nuts like extra fees (actually lots of things drive me nuts, but the topic of my blog today and this book is fees). baggage fees, local number portability fees, fuel surcharges, etc., etc. basically all these fees are normal costs of doing business which companies like to pretend are add-ons or some extraordinary cost that they should not have to pay for. why don't they just add this into the price of the service you are paying for? because this way they can advertise a lower price and then make it up by tacking on fees.

today, outraged by the fact that i had to pay a fee to pay my stupid living in arlington fee (personal property tax) by credit card, i sent an email to mastercard and called the arlington comissioner of revenue to let them know they were in violation of their merchant agreement. if you didn't know, it's against the mastercard (and i presume visa) merchant agreements for a merchant who accepts credit cards to charge a fee to the customer for using them. this is essentially why you don't see gas stations (or shouldn't) that have different credit and cash prices anymore. it says so right here in paragraph 5.9.2. it states:

5.9.2 Charges to Cardholders
A Merchant must not directly or indirectly require any Cardholder to pay a surcharge or any part of any Merchant discount or any contemporaneous finance charge in connection with a Transaction. A Merchant may provide a discount to its customers for cash payments. A Merchant is permitted to charge a fee (such as a bona fide commission, postage, expedited service or convenience fees, and the like) if the fee is imposed on all like transactions regardless of the form of payment used, or as the Corporation has expressly permitted in writing. For purposes of this Rule:

A surcharge is any fee charged in connection with a Transaction that is not charged if another payment method is used.
The Merchant discount fee is any fee a Merchant pays to an Acquirer so that the Acquirer will acquire the Transactions of the Merchant

there are a few possible outcomes to the ball i have set rolling:

nothing
the extra fees are removed
the extra fees are removed and everyone's property tax bill in arlington goes up by $3 next year to cover the costs of removing the fees (sorry guys)

also, for the record, the $10 minimum charge at your favorite chinese carryout place is also a violation of their merchant agreement. though i'm not so upset about these because they are typically mom and pop type places and i don't mind and i pretty much always get at least $10 worth of food anyway.

5.9.3 Minimum/Maximum Transaction Amount Prohibited
A Merchant must not require, or indicate that it requires, a minimum or
maximum Transaction amount to accept a valid and properly presented Card.

he's actually quite spry.

2008-12-15T08:53:00.005-05:00

over the weekend some irate iraqi decided to chuck his shoes at the president, who surprisingly dodged both of them with minimal fuss. mr. bush, if you're reading this, (which you undoubtedly are) while i am not a fan of your political views, i'd like to invite you to join our dodgeball team.

the incident however, begs the question: where the hell were all the secret service agents? i mean, shouldn't one of them have tackled the president while another dove inbetween the president and the shoe (in slow motion yelling "noooooooooo!"), taking a size 9 to the chest? and while the president was already being whisked away in a helicopter, shouldn't that guy have been gang tackled by at least 27 other guys in black suites with really obvious ear pieces almost instantly? instead he reached down, took off his other shoe and threw that one at the president too. what gives secret service?

have i been watching too much 24?

p.s. the iraqi police totally beat the snot out of this guy in the hallway after the incident which is sad ending to an otherwise hilarious story.

on politics...

2008-11-04T10:29:00.009-05:00

so i voted this morning. i hope most of you did too, after doing your research of course. here is a collection of random thoughts on voting and on this election...

on throwing away your vote...

i voted libertarian today. a lot of people think voting for a 3rd party is throwing away your vote. i would argue that the only votes that are thrown away are:

those which are not cast (due to either lack of interest, or disdain for both major party candidates)
those which are not cast for the candidate that you think would make the best president. but instead cast for someone just so the other guy doesn't win.

in either case, you've wasted your chance to speak up about who you would like for president. if you don't like either of the candidates, vote for someone else, there are plenty of other options (green, constitution and libertarian are the most well known). sure, they have no chance of winning, but with enough votes, they get federal funding for the next election cycle and that's a start.

at the very least, you can get a bunch of free food if you vote today, which is probably about as a good a reason as any to vote.

on voter turnout...

before voting, watching the morning news and after voting, on my way into work i heard an awful lot about voter turnout and how this is expected to be one of the biggest turnouts in recent history. i can't figure out why, when it seems to me that there is such a small difference between the democratic and the republican parties as they both move towards the center. regardless of who wins the election today, our government still spends too much money and that's not likely to change. our economy will still be in a slump and we will give away billions trying to fix it, the only difference is who those billions are going to. neither party is willing to place any blame at all on the people who took out mortgages they knew they couldn't afford. neither party is truly willing to stand up for gay rights (democrats might say they are, but they won't back gay marriages, just "domestic partnerships", which is a cop out to avoid alienating borderline voters). i could go on.

so in a seemingly irrelevant election, why the large turnout? am i totally wrong here? does anyone have any theories?

on voting systems...

lastly, i'd like to voice my support for alternative voting systems. the problem of people voting just so the other guy doesn't win really bothers me. i think everyone should be able to find a candidate that they support, not just one that they don't hate as much as the other one. one way to fix this problem is to change the voting system.

there are many alternatives and i haven't researched all of them, but my favorite so far is an approval system, where each person votes for as many people as they would approve of being in office, instead of just one. the person with the most votes wins. similarly, a ranked system would allow you to, as the name would suggest, rank in order of preference the candidates for office. today with presidential elections being as close as they are, only a tiny fraction more above 50% (or in the case of 2000, less than half) of the people got their chosen candidate in office. in an approval or ranked system, maybe not everyone gets their first choice, but maybe 75% could get someone in their top 3 choices. some people also predict that these systems would reduce attack ads, which would be a tremendous relief. unfortunately, it would take congress, which is comprised of nearly all republicans and democrats to actually pass a bill to give up their stranglehold on power and it will never happen.

you should be outraged.

Mmmmmmeat.

2008-10-29T09:39:00.003-04:00

one of the nice things about living in modern society is the fact that we are able to be pretty well removed from some of the more unsavory, but some would argue necessary chores of life. like eating meat for instance. we can go to the grocery store and buy a pound of ground beef without ever having to watch a cow give birth, feed a cow, clean up cow shit, kill a cow, and grind up a cow, etc. no, we jut go to the store and plunk down a few dollars for a nice square package of uniformly ground meat product. it doesn't look like an animal and it's all too easy to forget where it comes from. but not everyone is as blissfully ignorant as i am, no, some people are vegetarians. some people do it for health reasons, some because they believe in animal rights, and some just because they think animals are just too damn cute to eat. this video might leave the rest of us thinking that maybe meat is too damn cute to eat too.

how dan missed out on the second biggest single-day gain in the stock market ever.

2008-10-28T21:44:00.007-04:00

last week i had decided that i'd had enough of sitting this one out and watching my retirement slip further and further into the future. i moved my international investments into us value oriented funds. then on monday i decided it was time to start buying some stocks. overseas markets were down 10-12-14 percent monday and the us market were about even. the week before i had transferred some money to my ING account, who now operates their brokerage program through sharebuilder. i put the order in to buy monday night after the markets closed. today the s&p had it second biggest single-day gain ever. up over 10%. awesome, right? i logged into my sharebuilder account to check out the massive amounts of money i had surely made today. the order i put in monday night? still "processing". seriously though, we're not talking about a lot of money, but if i were someone else, it could have been. mostly i'm mad because honestly, i have no idea what i'm doing with my investments and there's basically no chance of me timing the market that well ever again. ever. fuck.

breakfast of champions

2008-10-15T10:59:00.005-04:00

laura had beer and chocolate cake for breakfast this morning. vacation is awesome.

update: it turns out laura did this for the express purpose of blogging about it. i have informed her that she has officially "gone too far" and that going out of her way to do things so that she can blog about them is a bit strange.

honeymoon - day 9

2008-10-14T14:21:00.002-04:00

well not only have i fallen way behind on the honeymoon blogging, but i think it's a safe bet to say they are going to get less interesting as the details start to fade away. anyway, today we went to mt. washington. we decided to drive up instead of taking the cog train because laura is sorta afraid of heights and thought that heading up a mountain at 45 degrees would be upsetting. how this is better than driving up a road that is not quite wide enough for two cars, 6000ft in the air with no guard rail is better, i'm not sure, but that's what the wife wanted so that's what the wife got. mt. washington is known for it's erratic weather and it did not dissapoint. clouds rolled in and out all day and the winds at the top of the mountain were sustained at about 40mph. looking down on clouds is an odd sensation. the peak is also above the treeline which is interesting. as you go up, the trees get smaller and smaller to the point where they look like mini christmas trees but can still be hundreds of years old, and then they eventually disappear altogether and there's nothing but rocks and brown grass.

on our way back down from the peak, we stopped to do a little hiking on the appalachian trail with runs from maine to georgia. it turned out to be more like an aisle of randomly strewn large rocks than what i would normally consider a trail and so we didn't make it too far before it started getting dark and we had to turn around. a photo of the so-called "trail" is below.

we had heard that there are moose in the area and apparently tend to mess up peoples car's pretty bad. i have a friend who has hit (or narrowly missed) deer with his car on several different occasions. he should be glad he does not live in moose country, since a large moose can weigh about 1600lbs as opposed to the deer he has weigh maybe 1/10th of that. fortunately, or unfortunately, we didn't get to see any.

honeymoon - day 8

2008-10-13T20:50:00.001-04:00

today we woke up in our temporary house in pemaquid point, provided to us by one of my mother's wonderful friends. after hanging around for a bit and having some coffee we decided to head into the nearest town (damariscotta, me) for some eats, where once again we ran into some sort of fall festival. they had giant pumpkins, carved and uncarved up and down the street and i heard someone talking about a regatta in the harbor. we had a great meal at the salt bay cafe and then walked around to look at the giant pumpkins.

then we walked across the street and behind a row of buildings where we found the pumpkin growing contest winners. basically, they are some sort of unholy radioactive miracle-gro pumpkins that given the opportunity would probably try and overthrow the united states. they were so big they had to be brought in on a trailer. the winner was 1129lbs.

then we walked over to the water where we saw a few of the remaining regatta entrants straggling up the boat ramp.

yes, you are in fact looking at what i presume to be a father and son motoring around in 6hp pumpkin. this was not just any old regatta. this was a pumpkin regatta. here are some pics of a few of the other "boats" that had already been pulled out of the water. i have no idea where to begin describing how awesome an idea this is. i'm pretty sure i would enter if i was a local.

honeymoon - day 7

2008-10-12T12:09:00.003-04:00

	today we spent the day in boston. the plan was to hit the MIT museum and then stroll on over to the harvard square oktoberfest and get hammered. we woke up a little before the museum opened so we went for a walk.
	we walked across the charles river, which is the one where you see all the snooty harvard kids rowing down the river and really healthy young college people jogging along it's banks.
	on the other side of the river is newbury st. which is like if you took georgetown and made it trendier. someone had this really awesome house with this even more awesome dog chillin' on the front steps.
	the MIT museum was pretty small, but pretty cool. the first floor was not that exciting but the second floor had all their cool robot displays. they had cog and kismet, a bunch of the old hopping and walking robots from the media lab and they happened to be showing an episode of scientific american where they were interviewing my AI professor from CMU.
	they also had a whole bunch of what i will call kinetic sculptures by arthur ganson where were all totally mesmerizing. for some reason, laura thinks people will be able to save the world with them. i just think they are kinda neat to look at.
	after the museum, it was beer-o-clock, or so we thought. time to head to the harvard square oktoberfest and get smashed, right? wrong. these bastards don't have any god damn beer at their oktoberfest. i mean, not to sound bitter, but wtf? no beer? after walking around in a state of bewilderment we found the john harvard brew pub and proceeded to take matters into our own hands.

honeymoon - day 6

2008-10-11T11:41:00.003-04:00

saturday morning we left chatham and headed for salem, ma. we were going to head into boston and go on the sam adam's brewery tour but decided to rearrange our schedule a little bit, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea. apparently salem is the place to be for the entire month of october and as we rolled into town we were greeted with bumper to bumper traffic and $20 parking for their october harvest festival or whatever it was. we were hoping to go to the witch museum and pirate museum but they had lines around the block waiting to get in. we did manage to see the house on the left, which is the "house of seven gables" and apparently is famous and in some book. i had to google "gable" to figure out precisely what that meant. after fighting crowds for a long time, i called the 800 number for the sam adam's brewery to find out that they were already closed for the day and not open the next day.

we left salem and headed for boston, where the roads make even less sense than the mixing bowl and the new woodrow wilson bridge interchanges. we checked into our hotel in cambridge to find a gay jewish wedding going on in the courtyard. we sat for a while, watched the last few minutes of forrest gump on hbo and then hopped into a cab to visit my friend rahul and his wife emily and to check out their new house and get dinner. i had spoken with rahul earlier in the day about what to do for dinner and made some flippant remark about ethiopean food, which is how we ended up at an ethiopean restaurant for dinner. rahul and emily treated us as part of their wedding gift and it was quite delicious.

after dinner we hopped on the T, rode back to the hotel and passed out.

honeymoon - day 5

2008-10-10T21:06:00.000-04:00

friday we made it to martha's vineyard. it was about an hour and a half drive from our place in chatham to wood's hole where the ferry departs from. we hopped on the ferry around noon and we were dropped off at oak bluffs in martha's vineyard around 12:45.

laura was hungry so we stopped for lunch. not many places were open since it's the end of the season. i tried to order a bunch of things that they ran out of and hadn't bothered to reorder since they were closing for the winter. laura decided to get fish and chips because the ones i had earlier in the week were so awesome. as you can see from the picture (which i will pay dearly for having posted), hers were not as good as mine.

we walked around for a bit and encountered a village of miniature houses painted in random colors and over-sized, suspicious squirrels.

later we walked about two and a half miles from oak bluffs to vineyard haven. we spent some time there checking out the shops and then caught the bus back to oak bluffs to take the ferry back to woods hole. i got some really cool sunset pics from the bow of the boat.

it's different here

2008-10-10T11:29:00.002-04:00

rich people live different lives. but it's little differences. like in newport, where we would have rats, they have minks scurring about. and like us, they also must share the road with bicyclists. but instead of our ubiquitous minivan or suv, this guy is driving a damn ferrari.

honeymoon - day 4

2008-10-09T20:59:00.000-04:00

thursday was a slow day. we spent the morning bumming around. i made a quick trip to marion's pie shop and the chatham jam and jelly shop. and then about 2pm headed off back to newport to do the ghost tour at belcourt castle. the architecture was really amazing and they got this crazy woman who apparently has travelled the world looking for ghosts to give the tour. she was quite amusing. unfortunately no photography was allowed inside the building so i can't show you any pictures of the ghosts we saw.

honeymoon - day 3

2008-10-08T23:37:00.006-04:00

no big adventures today. we were going to try and go to martha's vineyard, but didn't due to poor planning. we realized we missed the morning ferry and if we took the afternoon one we'd only have about two hours there. instead we ended up driving to hyannis to go to "raw bar" which is supposed to have really good lobster rolls. sadly, i cannot confirm this because they were closed. instead we went to spankys clam shack.

on the way back to chatham we stopped for mini gold where i destroyed laura and made a new friend in the process. she's vowed to never play mini golf again after suffering total humiliation on the course.

beverage season

2008-10-08T21:35:00.008-04:00

maybe it has something to do with the fact that i was born on halloween, but i really do love the fall. it's got quite a few things going on for it... cooler weather, football, free candy, columbus day (my favorite holiday of them all), did i mention my birthday? but none of these things are the subject of this particular blog entry. no, today i am going to write about all my favorite fall beverages.
	we'll start with one of the more common ones. the starbucks pumpkin spice latte. some might argue that the winter seasonal gingerbread latte is superior. i would argue that those people are idiots. when starbucks is making the pumpkin spice lattes, i would estimate that my weekly starbucks expenditure goes from something pretty close to zero to something pretty unreasonable.
as delicious and comforting the pumpkin spice latte is, nothing beats that warm feeling that a few pints of beer can give you and there is no better and socially acceptable time (with the possible exception of st. patties day) to get totally shitfaced than oktoberfest. the sam seasonals are always good and the oktoberfest is no exception. oh, and did i mention their brewery is in boston and laura and i are going for the tour on saturday?
	you might remember when i blogged about the jack's pumpkin spice beer. it's pretty good, but the shipyard pumpkinhead is damn good. it's hard to find around DC. in fact, i've never seen any shipyard stuff around DC. lucky for me, i happen to be in massachusets right now, just one state away from the shipyard brewery and found a six-pack in the local grocery store. we'll be visiting their brewery in portland, maine next week. hopefully i can get them to ship me a keg. you know how some guys like to go on a road trip and see a baseball game in every stadium? i'm thinking beer brewery road trip.