August 2005 Archives
The Amoco at Mattis & John is still at $2.80, but the Marathon at Kirby & Prospect is up to $2.96.
Talking heads are predicting $4/gallon before the gulf coast oil industry gets back in operation.
(A month or two ago, gas prices in Champaign shot up 42¢/gallon overnight, for no apparent reason. But when a category 5 hurricane shuts down the entire gulf coast, with no end in sight, prices go up only half as much. Go figure.)
P.S. New policy: I am reporting gas prices as they actually are, instead of what's posted on the pumps.
Young Master Samuel requested a bottle at 11:00pm last night; another at 2:00am; and a third just after 5:00am. Jennifer took care of the 2:00am feeding, while I did the other two.
So I figure I got shorted about two hours of sleep last night. I am just a little sleepy today.
Fortunately, there is caffeine.
Yesterday, mail was circulating here at dear old WRI claiming that gas prices in Bloomington-Normal had reached $3.50/gallon, and that stations in Champaign-Urbana were quickly raising their prices to match.
I didn't see the mail until today (I don't subscribe to that mailing list, I just snoop in the archives now & then), so this came as a bit of a surprise.
Gas prices did jump 20¢ yesterday, from $2.59 to $2.79. I suppose there could have been a $3.50 spike sometime during the day, when I wasn't paying attention, but it couldn't have lasted very long.
Update: When I say $2.79, I really mean $2.80. This is because for decades now the oil companies have tacked an extra nine-tenths of a cent per gallon onto the posted price: a bit of cheap psychological trickery to make their prices seem lower than they really are.
I see an opportunity here: drop the .9¢ surcharge, fire up an all-media Honest Prices For Intelligent People campaign, and cash in on all the pent-up resentment among motorists.
Last year, Microsoft pulled the plug on WinFS, the new file system that was going to be part of (what is now known as) Windows Vista. Won't be ready in time, quoth the 'softies. And so it goes.
Today they surprised everyone by releasing beta 1 of WinFS. (They surprised themselves, too: seems they accidentally released the beta a few hours early. Oops.)
I have three questions about WinFS:
- How do I back up WinFS metadata?
- How do I move WinFS metadata to a new machine?
- How do I synchronize WinFS metadata between two machines?
The 'softies don't seem too interested in answering these, aside from a vague, "Yes, that's very important. We're still thinking about it."
If you're still thinking about it, perhaps that's a sign you're not ready for a beta release?
Over at the IGA, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle is hanging over the edge of the parking lot retaining wall. (The wall is only about a foot high, so we won't be seeing this on any Amazing Police Videos cable shows.) Somebody had a little trouble parking, it seems.
A tow truck - curiously, also yellow - is attempting to lift the Beetle back onto the pavement.
Update: As of 10:30, the Beetle is back on its feet...er, wheels.
Fog this morning, rolling in from the south around 8:30. Still here, an hour later, thicker than ever.
Strange weather for August.
Looks like Hurricane Katrina is going to be a category 5 storm when it makes landfall somewhere near New Orleans (sometime tonight, or Monday morning).
The storm surge is expected to hit 28 feet - ten feet higher than the levees surrounding the city, which for the most part is below sea level.
It's at times like this that I'm glad to live in the middle of the continent. All we get here are tornadoes. They're nasty, but they're small.
First off: Quicken Deluxe can track savings bond purchases. There's no need to pay twice as much for Quicken Premier if that's all the investing you do. The Quicken web site is carefully ambiguous on this point, doubtless to nudge the uncertain toward the more expensive product.
Second: Quicken cannot import data directly from any version of Microsoft Money. Instead, you must have Money generate various reports about your financial data, save these reports as text files, and let Quicken (or, more precisely, a free add-in) parse the reports and populate its own database therefrom. Note that not all accounts can be transferred this way. Loans, for one, cannot.
Third: Quicken makes it difficult to enter initial terms & balances for accounts (say, as of the last statement) and begin entering new transactions. I told Quicken that my 401(k) account was accessible online, and it promptly downloaded two years of transactions I didn't want in my data file. (Why not? If I don't have two years of paychecks recorded in my checking account, with two years of 401(k) deductions, then the accounts won't balance.)
Fourth: Quicken is always nagging me to buy more things from Intuit. The credit-card account setup page nags me to apply for a Quicken credit card. The bill manager nags me to sign up for Quicken Bill Pay. Etc., etc. (Money 2005 is even worse: it's full of links that look like they go somewhere useful, but in fact take you to a page of advertisements.)
I'll keep messing about with Quicken, in my copious free time, but at present it looks like I've wasted $40. Oops.
It was a nice day, so we decided to have a picnic. We hit the Burger King drive-through for some chow, then went to Meadowbrook Park. (The wooden park, Jake calls it, because of the large wooden play area there.) We sat at a picnic table in the pavilion and ate our sandwiches (Sam had a bottle). After lunch, Jake played on the big wooden thing for a while.
A splendid time was had by all.
(Except for the part where Sam howled the entire time we waited in the drive-through, getting himself so worked up that he hurled a good portion of his picnic bottle all over poor Jennifer.)
Just now everybody's sleeping, except me. It's just about time for Sam's next bottle. Should I wake him? I suppose so....
The WikiPedia list of Latin legal phrases.
CNN says:
The U.S. Mint seized 10 Double Eagle gold coins from 1933, among the rarest and most valuable coins in the world, that were turned in by a jeweler seeking to determine their authenticity.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Mint says:
The United States Mint has recovered ten more of the fabled 1933 Double Eagle gold pieces. These numismatic artifacts were illegally removed from the United States Mint at Philadelphia more than 70 years ago.
The people from whom the coins were seized are - of course - taking the Mint to court in an attempt to get them back. "There's no proof that these were stolen," sniffs their lawyer.
The 1933 Double Eagles were ordered to be melted down, except for two that were donated to the Smithsonian. Any that exist now must have been stolen from the Mint - otherwise they'd have been melted down with the rest.
Never did rain much today. (Jennifer says it sprinkled a bit this afternoon, but not enough for sputnik to record any rainfall.)
It's supposed to rain tonight, but I don't see anything on the radar that's heading our way. (There are some nasty storms southeast of St. Louis, but I think they're heading east.)
Might have to water the lawn tomorrow.
Problem: I have several QuickTime movies that I recorded with the Nikon. They're very nice, but some of them are rotated 90° (because I was holding the camera sideways). It's hard to watch a sideways movie.
Solution: QuickTime Pro, which (among other things) can rotate movies.
New Problem: QuickTime 7 is in beta (aka "public preview"). If I buy QuickTime 6, it will be obsolete fairly soon. (No, there's no discount on upgrading 6 to 7, so far as I know.) If I buy QuickTime 7, it might not work (being beta software).
Guess I won't be buying QuickTime Pro until 7 is out of beta. Sorry, Apple. (And sorry also to the grandmas: some of those videos are really cute.)
The web server hosting these pages is currently reporting a load average of 29.9.
No, wait, it's dropped to 9.02. Not that that's much improvement....
Wired says:
Using a technique called X-ray fluorescence, a team of researchers at Cornell University has revealed ancient inscriptions carved into stone that had faded away over the centuries.
I wonder if this works on gravestones. Sure would be handy for genealogists if it did....
Radar shows rain over the western half of Illinois (west of I39 and I55), heading this way.
If I'm going to mow (a little bit more of) the lawn, I'd best get started.
Mr. Samuel, having slept most of yesterday, decided that last night would be a fine time for wakefulness.
He's resisting our attempts to stretch his nighttime feedings from every three hours to every four hours. "He sure did eat a lot this time," we say. "Maybe he'll be ok with waiting four hours."
Alas, no. Three hours later, regular as clockwork: WAHHHH.
(Sam and I slept for an hour or so this morning while a Discovery Channel show on serial killers burbled away on the television. Who knows what damage that's done to our subconscious minds....)
I decided recently that I can no longer tolerate Microsoft Money. It's time to find an alternative.
That means Quicken, so I picked up a copy of Quicken Deluxe 2006 this afternoon ($39 at Sam's Club). First impression: nothing too annoying. It might be usable.
The big problem is migrating six years of financial data from the Microsoft Money database (which is in a proprietary, undocumented format precisely to prevent what I'm trying to do with it). Quicken can import regular and investment accounts, but can't import loans.
Further investigation is required.
(The Quicken installer spewed no fewer than five icons onto my desktop: one for Quicken itself, and four advertisements. They were annoying, but easily deleted. Memo to the Quicken development staff: next time, ask whether you can use my desktop as a billboard. Thanks.)
Last night, Mr. Sam was a little fussier than usual. He's taking more formula than he used to - over two ounces, every time - so maybe he was just hungry.
Most of the time, he sleeps in the bassinet we borrowed from his Aunt Amy & Uncle Scott. We call it the Bass-O-Matic: "Sam's sleeping, guess I'll pop him into the bass-o-matic."
Heh.
The Carmi Times says:
S_______ H______, 33, Centralia, was arrested late Monday morning after he allegedly pulled his car off Interstate 64 in western Wayne County, beat his girlfriend, then took off all his clothes and ran naked down the interstate.
Um. I guess White County isn't as quiet a place as I thought. Or maybe aprés-assault highway streaking is a Centralia fad.
Mr. Doctor's office was supposed to call today, with the results of Jacob's throat culture. They didn't, so we called them.
Negative for strep, they said.
Well, then, what is it?
They don't know. They don't seem terribly concerned, either. (Nor am I; Jacob just didn't seem terribly sick yesterday, and grandma's reports make it sound like he's even less sick today.)
The temperature is around 70° (the slackers at NOAA haven't updated their conditions at Champaign page since 6:00am), there's a nice breeze, the sun is shining, etc., etc.
Time to mow the lawn. Even the part that doesn't grow very fast - where one of the previous owners had a pool - is looking knee-high and shaggy.
Knocking this jungle back is going to be a multi-day project. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge: by the time you finish, it's time to start over.
Jacob's gone to stay with Grandma & Grandpa in Normal for a few days. We told him it's a vacation, but really it's to keep his mystery germs away from Sam.
When we asked Jacob if he wanted to go on vacation to Grandma's house, he was very excited.
(Grandma called this morning. Jake had a good night, his temperature appears normal - though the thermometer we sent with him is notoriously inaccurate - and he hasn't complained about his throat hurting. It seems that whatever he's got isn't very serious.)
Last night was our first night alone with Sam. (Grandma and Jacob having left for Normal yesterday evening.) I did the 2:30am bottle, Jennifer took care of the 6:00am bottle, and Sam spent most of the night sleeping.
So did Mama & Papa, which was nice.
Sam has acquired a nickname: we call him the Bug.
Samuel had his one-week checkup this afternoon (about two hours before Jacob's doctor visit, as it turned out).
The nurse practitioner checked him over and pronounced him perfect.
We knew that already, ma'am.
Poor Jacob - his first day back at daycare since Sam was born, and they sent him home.
While I was driving over to pick up Jacob, Jennifer was on the phone to the doctor's office. At 3:47pm, when I was halfway to the daycare, my phone rang: "Jacob has a 4:00pm appointment."
Mr. Doctor had a look at Jacob (who certainly wasn't acting sick) and pronounced: slight fever (99.1°), some kind of throat infection, possibly strep. He took a throat swab for an overnight strep test, and gave me some antibiotics (free samples).
Poor little guy. But Mr. Doctor said he'd be fine in a day or two.
One of the volunteer tomato plants - from one of last year's discards - offered up three ripe tomatoes this evening.
So this year's garden hasn't been a complete failure.
Jennifer's mother is staying with us for a few days, to help out with Sam-the-Man. She used the computer this afternoon, to send some email.
Just now, this arrived in my inbox:
I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.
To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.
If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.
Seven months after we pulled the plug on EarthLink, the chimps have found a new way to annoy me.
I clicked on the link, typed in the swirly letters from the human-detector graphic, and added a brief - and polite! - message explaining who I was and why mail from me should be allowed through.
But it was damned annoying.
(I didn't end my message with P.S. I can get you a great deal on Viagra! But I surely was tempted.)
He's mastered nearly all of the skills a newborn needs: eating, sleeping, crying.
He's eating two ounces of formula every three hours, but we might have to increase that: last time (4:00pm?) he finished his two ounces and cried until he got more.
Mr. Sam is a mellow little guy. Sometimes he cries for no obvious reason, but not very often.
Sputnik recorded almost two-thirds of an inch of rain between 11:00pm and midnight.
Might not get to mow the lawn today. I feel such disappointment.
Mr. Sam was rather fussy last night, but he's sleeping now.
Um.
No, he isn't.
WAHHHHHH
Jennifer & Samuel came home from the hospital today. All is well.
Spent $45 this morning, to fill up Mr. Explorer. Egad.
Hit the Lotto for $3 in yesterday's drawing.
I think the Lotto people are going to wait until the end of our subscription to send us a check: seems they were mailing out too many $3 checks, and the postage was getting out of control.
Mr. Sam was sleepy & quiet yesterday. He didn't wake up very often, nor eat very much, both of which worried Papa a little.
But he's much perkier today, and ate a big breakfast. (Kept it all down, too.)
Looks like Sam & Jennifer will be coming home tomorrow.
The nurses tell me that some of the recovery rooms do have internet access. Alas, ours does not.
Samuel Keith Rice
Born August 16, 2005 at 5:52pm
8lbs, 3oz
20½ inches long
Mother & child are doing well. Big brother Jacob is excited. The grandparents are thrilled.
Mr. Sam shares a birthday with his cousin Natalie, who turned six yesterday. (Happy birthday, Natalie!)
P.S. We have no internet access at the hospital. (That's only in the labor & delivery rooms - i.e., where you're too busy to make use of it.)
Rather cool today (in the 60s, I believe), and cloudy. The cloud cover is dark enough that rain seems likely.
My umbrella is - of course - at home.
Sputnik recorded a high of 69°, and about a third of an inch of rain, spread out over pretty much the entire day.
As soon as the grass dries out, I'll be mowing again. I've been neglecting the lawn, which is once again quite shaggy & jungle-ish.
I am currently downloading my latest iTunes music store purchase: Herman's Hermits Retrospective. Twenty-six tracks, $12.
Sometimes you just need a little happy bouncy pop music, don't y'know.
Oh, I'm Henry VIII, I am
Henry VIII I am, I am
...and so on, and so forth.
(My first attempt at making this purchase ended in failure: seems I hadn't bought anything from iTunes since February, and my credit card had expired. The credit card people sent me a new one, but I never got around to telling iTunes about it. Oops.)
It's been a cool, drizzly day: a most welcome change from the blast furnace we've had lately.
Norm & Barb came over from Normal, bringing Clementine and donuts. (We ate the donuts, not the dog.)
Norm retrieved Jacob's airplane from the tree in which it's been lodged for the last two weeks, by the alarming technique of climbing the tree and prying it loose by hand. I was expecting the branches to give way and send him crashing to the ground, but apparently they're stronger than they look.
I pulled up the tomato plants. They're still not bagged up, though: too rainy for that. They're just in a pile on the cement next to the barrel. Alas, poor tomatoes.
And we have three pumpkins growing in the back yard, not just one: our only gardening success of the year.
Took another look at the drive-to-work vs. take-the-bus question this morning.
Streets & Trips tells me that my route to work is about 5½ miles. Personal Vehicle Manager tells me that Mr. Explorer gets about 12mpg in city driving. (Ouch.) Assuming gas is $2.50 per gallon (which is a bit low; on Friday regular was $2.59), that works out to $1.15 per trip.
Bus tokens are only 72¢ each, so taking the bus to work three days a week would save a little over $130 per year: a not-insignificant sum.
(Except that the transit district is likely to raise fares to cover increased fuel costs, thereby wiping out any cost advantage they currently enjoy.)
Update: I made a slight mistake in my route calculations: if Jake is staying home, I don't need to stop by the daycare on the way to work. That reduces the distance traveled to 4¾ miles, more or less, which in turn reduces the cost of the trip to about 99¢. The bus is still cheaper, but the annual savings is only $84.
The storm system that was in St. Louis earlier today reached Champaign a little while ago: another half inch or so of rain has fallen since 8:00pm.
Not much in the way of thunder or lightning, though. Just rain.
(And today's high was only 83°.)
No sign yet of Mr. Samuel. Sorry, grandmas.
After Curtis Orchard, we stopped at the Savoy BoRics so Jake & Papa could get trimmed & groomed.
Jake likes getting his hair cut. The clippers tickle.
We took Jacob to Curtis Orchard today. He likes it there: there's hay to jump in, a tractor to drive, goats to feed, kittens to play with, etc., etc.
Sometimes we even go in the store & buy some apples. Not today, though. We did buy lunch at the new dining area: sandwiches, chips, beverages, $15.
About the only nice thing that can be said about the new dining area is that it's conveniently located for people who are already at Curtis Orchard. The prices aren't so bad, but the food is merely adequate and the staff take just about forever to prepare it.
But Jake had a grand time. (No pictures: I left the camera at home. Sorry, grandmas.)
Thunderstorms last night: sputnik recorded nine-tenths of an inch of rain between 8:00pm and 10:00pm. I'm sure the grass is happy, or at least happier than it's been.
Come September, Jacob will be going to daycare only two days per week, instead of five. So the question is: what's the cheapest way for me to get to & from work the other three days? With gas prices nearing $3 per gallon, driving is no longer the obvious winner.
I could take the bus:
- Full fare, $1 per ride;
- Tokens, $5 for seven, or 72¢ per ride;
- Season pass, $100 for four months, or $1.04 per ride.
(If I rode the bus every day, the season pass would be 62¢ per ride. But at most I'll be riding only three days per week.)
So how much does it cost to drive to work? As a rough estimate, Mr. Explorer burns about 1/3 of a gallon of gas for a one-way trip between home & work. So 1/3 gallon per trip × $2.50 per gallon = 83¢ per trip.
So the bus is about 10¢ per trip cheaper than Mr. Explorer. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Still, it's almost $50 per year.
Must contemplate this further....
Sputnik recorded a high of 93° today.
It's been in the nineties just about every day this week. I don't go outside, except to get in the (air-conditioned) car & drive back & forth to work. The grass is turning brown. I haven't checked the tomato plants lately, but I'm sure they're completely dead by now.
I really should bag them up & put them out with the garbage. Maybe next week.
On Sunday I ordered a copy of Dantz Retrospect 7.0 from Amazon.com; it arrived today. (And I didn't even pay for second-day shipping. UPS has grown too efficient for their pricing model.)
I installed it, hit the Dantz web site for updates (there are always updates), then tried to back up a few directories on nessus.
Apparently the backup CDs were written in some proprietary format that Windows doesn't recognize, which is a little troubling. But it seemed to work. (If I ever need to restore anything, I'll find out how well it worked.)
I really should back up the entire system, but that's about 50GB of data. (Half of that is my iTunes music library.) A full backup would consume just about an entire spindle of CD-Rs, and I'd be swapping disks for hours.
I suppose I could get one of those 300GB external FireWire disks, and back up to that.
Last night, Jennifer & I were talking about all those magazines I used to have in the closet: dozens of banker's boxes, hundreds of magazines.
They're all gone now: recycled and/or thrown away.
"If we'd never met," I said, "my apartment would look like the one in that movie...the one with the two crazy uncles. I can't remember the title. One of the uncles was that fella from WarGames...."
We thought about it for a while, but couldn't come up with a title.
Fortunately, there's the Internet Movie Database: the actor was Maury Chaykin, and the movie was Unstrung Heroes.
Still no sign of Mr. Sam.
We're all a little stressed from the waiting.
CNN says:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told thousands of visiting students that if U.S. forces were to invade the South American country, they would be soundly defeated.
Now why would we want to invade Venezuela? Yes, they have oil, but it's easier to buy the stuff than to send in the Marines.
Woke up this morning just in time to watch the shuttle landing at Edwards AFB, California.
Looks to have been a most uneventful landing.
Maybe tomorrow.
Sorry, grandmas.
The tomato plants - which have gone eight days now without water, except for rain (of which we've had very little) - are not dead.
Well, they're mostly dead: shriveled, withered, brown. But there are five or six ripe tomatoes amidst the ruin. (No, I didn't pick them.)
(At this point, clever people will realize I failed to keep my promise to pull up the tomato plants & stuff them into a yard waste bag. It's just laziness on my part, not some foolish hope that they will recover & begin producing bushels of tasty veggies.)
Still no sign of Mr. Samuel. Hurry up, silly boy. We're all eager to meet you.
Jennifer & I took Jacob to see March of the Penguins, at the Art theater.
We hoped he'd enjoy it, but Jake's penguin threshold seems to be about half an hour: after that, he started fidgeting. The last third of the movie he spent sitting on my lap, playing with my cell phone and pretty much ignoring the movie.
It was a good movie, though.
Looking at backup software this morning; Dantz Retrospect seems to be the best choice (at $95, it had better be).
The license agreement for their trial version says:
Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Dantz Development Corporation...hereby grants you a nonexclusive, worldwide, non-transferable..., perpetual, revocable license...to...make one (1) copy of the Software solely for backup or archival purposes.
Lawyers: they love the fancy language, but sometimes they just don't think. Consider the following:
- Install Dantz Retrospect;
- Set up a rotating backup scheme, in which you keep several full system backups (of various ages) on hand.
As soon as you make that second full-system backup, you've violated your license agreement, which allows only one archival copy.
I've been sniffling & sneezing all day. Either I'm having some kind of allergy attack, or I'm catching a cold.
Um...now is not a good time to catch a cold. (I suppose one could argue that it's never a good time to catch a cold.)
Jake just wandered out of his room (for the third time this evening).
"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?" I asked.
"I thought it was morning," Jake said.
Yesterday was my birthday: forty-two years old, or fifteen thousand one hundred ninety-two days. (I suppose I could calculate my age in seconds, but since 1963 predates the Unix Epoch by seven years that would be difficult.)
Norm & Barb came over from Normal, bringing dinner (Avanti's), birthday cake, and presents. (Thank you, thank you, thank you.)
Amy, Scott, Natalie & Ryan left a happy birthday song on the answering machine. (We were home when they called, but were outside waving goodbye to Norm & Barb. Oops.)
Now I must think about how best to make use of my (quite generous) birthday present. Hm....
The other day, Mr. Card posted a brief review of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory over at hatrack.com; he says:
By and large, each kid is just one thing: Competitive, bratty, greedy, obsessive. There's no attempt at making them believable.
Maybe if they had been funny, it wouldn't have mattered that they had no dimensions beyond the single "humor" each one represented. But they didn't represent anything I've seen in the real world.
Um...it's a morality play. Depth of characterization and moral ambiguity don't fit the genre.
Baby Samuel's official due date isn't until the 18th, but it seems that he's going to be a little early: at Wednesday's checkup, the doctor predicted he'd be born on Saturday.
That's only two days from now. (Though if he waits that long, I'll be surprised.)
It's rather difficult to concentrate on work, knowing that at any random moment it might be time to rush off to the hospital.
The Forgotten English calendar tells me that today is the Feast Day of St. Lydia. I must confess that my first thought on reading that was:
Lydia, oh Lydia
Say, have you met Lydia?
Lydia the tattooed lady...
(Full lyrics can be found over at Why a Duck?)
Work stuff:
- Numerous builds failed last night;
- InstallShield 11 is a steaming lump of yak dung;
- I didn't bring a lunch, but it's 86° outside: too hot to go out and get one.
Pity me, pity me.
Poor Jennifer. She took her car in for an oil change this morning, and ended up spending almost $300.
Usually that only happens to me....
This year's tomato harvest, by date:
- 7/26: One. Small, mottled.
- 7/27: One. Small, mottled, started to rot after a few days. Thrown away.
- 7/30: Five. A bit larger, better color, but spattered with a white, waxy substance that won't wash off. Probably this is Sevin, left over from the Japanese beetle and/or hornworm troubles, which means the tomatoes aren't safe to eat.
At that point, I gave up. I didn't water the tomato plants on Saturday, nor on Sunday; by Sunday night, they were looking quite shriveled. Tonight I'll pull them up & stuff them into a yard-waste bag.
And that will be the end of this year's tomato project.
Seems there was another power failure last night at the pumping station, another pressure drop in the mains, and another precautionary thirty-six-hour boil order for everyone in our corner of Champaign: between Mattis & Staley, I74 & I72.
Thank you so much, water company. Have you considered installing a few backup generators?
