Archive for February, 2008

My reading list for the flights

February 26, 2008

Again, information likely only interesting to me; the random selection of stuff I am bringing on the planes to read (Joelle will read much of it, but she also has her own book or so). If you remember from previous posts, I tend to like to bring magazines, so I can leave them behind at the airport, etc… without feeling bad. So I’ve been saving these up for a bit (and most are from free subscriptions from airline miles):

As usual, you make the case of what this means about me!

Last Flight Movies Post (I Promise!)

February 26, 2008

Back to the States from Paris, United offers a bit more variety as well:

http://www.united.com/movie/listingpage/0,6752,8_3,00.html

Chicago to Seattle portion, which is our final routing, is back to one of the movies we may have already seen on El-Al. Oh well:

http://www.united.com/movie/listingpage/0,6752,1_3,00.html

Flight #2

February 26, 2008

More notes that is probably not interesting to anybody but me!

Our second part of trip is from Tel Aviv to Paris. I can’t tell for sure which movie we’ll see, but it’s some combination of the following, judging by our airline type:

http://www.elal.co.il/ELAL/English/AllAboutYourFlight/InFlight/InflightEntertainment/Movies/, and then select March (from Tel Aviv)

Flying again

February 26, 2008

Not sure why this interests anyone else, but I looked it up, so figured I’d post it for history sake… Movies for our flights:

Our first flight: a red-eye, is Dan In Real Life

untitled2

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/entertainment/films/co_grid_200802.pdf

The longer flight has more options, including Follow That Bird (one of my favorites from growing up) and Bee Movie.

untitled

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/entertainment/films/mca_grid_200802.pdf

The Home Show

February 24, 2008

We’re heading to the Seattle Home Show later this afternoon with our friends Mike and Elisabeth, our usual partners in crime for this particular event. We haven’t always had a great need to visit the show, as it is mostly focused on remodeling, landscaping, building, etc… but it is always a great place to get ideas and advice (though often, the companies who can afford to participate charge more than I am willing to spend; it is the gotcha of these types of events). There are a few things I am looking for this time though:

  • Electricians to bid on replacing the remaining 25% of our house which is still Knob and Tube wiring (all safe, but insurance companies seem to want to get you to get rid of the stuff, plus, our light bulbs burn out quicker than they should, which is just plain annoying). We’ve received one bid from an electrician who I have worked with in the past, but for something of this magnitude, we’d want a couple more bids.
  • Insulation experts/weatherproofing. Our gas bill is higher than I would like, especially given that our basement is freezing. A bunch of this I can likely do myself, and it is on my list to learn, but some stuff (blowing in wall-insulation, for example), is clearly in need of professional assistance.
  • Roof cleaning (gutters/moss/etc…) We’re in pretty good shape up there, but before next fall, I’d like to get a good cleanup done. Seems like I could do this myself, but Joelle has no interest in me getting on the roof; frankly, she’s right – I don’t trust myself that much either!

I am sure there are other services out there as well; one nice thing is that even though these companies are expensive, they tend to have pretty good promotional deals offered if you book at the show. I assume this is even more so during the last few hours of the event (which is when we’ll be there). If they haven’t hit their numbers, I assume they might be a little more willing to play "let’s make a deal!" Let’s hope so!

Subprime Mortgage

February 24, 2008

John Schochet, a friend of mine, linked to a great presentation that actually makes the subprime mortgage mess begin to make sense. If you don’t understand the whole fiasco (and I mostly do, but man is it complicated!), check out this slideshow: http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

(via Morning Train and My Money Blog and Big Picture).

Blog reading trends

February 22, 2008

Ever since I switched to Google Reader for my blog reading, it has been keeping track of my blog reading habits. Taking a break from working on review-writing for a few minutes, I took a quick gander at it at to see what I’ve been reading most and where I stand. (and yes, I read a lot of blogs)

To be clear how it tracks, there are a few concepts:

  • Subscriptions – how many RSS feeds it’s tracking
  • Posts – # of posts the blogger/feed serves up, regardless of whether or not I’ve drilled into to actually read the article (often I just scan the title and discard)
  • Items read – how many posts/articles I actually look at the article for
  • Shared items – items I share as interesting to me; you can always find the list at: https://www.google.com/reader/shared/02645973665706385664 (rss feed available as well)
  • Starred items – items I star for myself so I can go back and look at later; not shared publicly. I tend to only do this if I do any reading on my cell-phone (i.e. on the bus)

My overall view stats for the past 30 days are:

From your 494 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 4,244 items, starred 2 items, shared 20 items, and emailed 0 items.

Items read by day for the past 30 days:

readbyday

Top 10 feeds that get me to read articles – many of these are because they post so many articles, so they bubble to the top (this is sorted by  # read, not by % read)

Subscription # Read % Read
Slog Go to homepage 206 20%
Chowhound’s Latest – Pacific Northwest Go to homepage 189 17%
Valleywag Go to homepage 188 25%
CNN Political Ticker Go to homepage 166 21%
Freep.com – RSS – Sports 159 12%
Fatwallet.com Finance Go to homepage 134 22%
Slashdot Go to homepage 118 20%
ProFootballTalk.com » Rumor Mill Go to homepage 107 24%
Lifehacker Go to homepage 107 23%
TMobile Howard Forums Go to homepage 76 27%

I probably will try to post about this every few months – it provides a nice view of what I am interested in over time, so I’d like it posted for my own archival purposes, if nothing else. Plus, if anybody else finds an interesting blog because of it, good for them!

Vending Machines

February 21, 2008

prod_hot_drinksWorking from home today, in order to get some private time to work on my team’s annual reviews, I found myself in need of a change of location to keep my productivity up. Since I knew I had to be in Redmond at 6 pm for my friend’s bachelor dinner, I decided to head that way and beat traffic.

I stopped at the Redmond Library due to their free WiFi, and immediately noticed they had a pretty nice coffee vending machine (not quite the same look as the picture, but you get the idea). I rather enjoyed my cafe latte with medium strength and 1 sugar, thank you very much (and even more so that they had separate buttons to figure this all out).fountain_r2_c8

Which brought me to a question that perplexed me – how come you see these vending coffee machines that serve liquid in a cup, but never see vending machines for pop/soda that do the same thing? They are always in cans or bottles. It is even more perplexing since there is always the drink machines (such as the picture on the right) at fast food places and other food establishments, but they aren’t acting as vending machines in those contexts. Anyone have any ideas?

Blog no longer in use

February 21, 2008
This blog is no longer in use. All future posts are at:

(Posting one more time since some people were confused).

The wheels on the SLUT go ’round and ’round

February 21, 2008

I tend not to drive too much (been big into bussing and walking), or head in towards South Lake Union’s direction much these days, so I almost never see the new South Lake Union Streetcar (it used to be called the South Lake Union Trolley or SLUT in the Seattle jargon until the politicians figured out the abbreviation).

This evening, on the way back from a friend’s Bachelor Party dinner, I happen to drive by the SLUT, not once, but twice (traffic was pretty bad, so I was stuck not moving in time for it do a back and forth).

Each time, there was exactly one rider on it – trust me, I looked closely to see if I could find anyone else on there. There was also no one waiting at the SLUT-stop.

Which further proves my thoughts on the whole thing to begin with. I love the idea of more mass-transit, and would love to get to a place where cars aren’t needed anymore. But for this mass-transit to make sense, it actually has to go places where people need it – and not between the mishmash of blocks they threw the current lines down on. Expand it to the U-District or Capitol Hill (or Eastlake), and I can see the lines being used. But as is – I don’t even understand why those single riders were even on it.

I know I am not alone among my friends and co-workers (most of whom are frequent bus riders) — no one seems to like the current rendition of the streetcar or understand it’s point. Though to be fair, most of them are secretly wanting to go for a spin, if only so they can scream out "I rode the SLUT and the city encouraged it!"

Actually, I want to be able to say that too! I should go for a ride soon :)

Maybe the name is how they’ve crossed the 100000 rider milestone (according to http://www.seattlestreetcar.org/)… people are so full of laughing about the system they actually want to ride it. Funny how these things turn out.


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