The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Personal

  • Marathon, Concerts, Presentation

    It’s been a busy few days. Lots of stuff going on.

    But let’s start with something funny that I have in common with this girl who ran the ING Georgia Half Marathon today.

    Runner with Her Tongue Out

    Let’s Compare!

    Sticking my Tongue Out!

    That was last Friday while I was giving a presentation on Diverging Diamond Interchanges (Soon to be a podcast at Talkingtraffic.org!) Sticking my tongue out when I concentrate is a habit I’ve been trying to break for years. This is incentive.

    What else did I do? Oh yes: I gave a presentation to the Georgia section of the American Society of Highway Engineers on something that is near and dear to me, professionally, right now.

    Diverging Diamond Interchanges

    A diverging diamond interchange is, well, Talking Traffic is going to cover that in just a few and ’til then you can hit Wikipedia.

    The presentation went very well and I got a lot of good questions from the other engineers and planners in the audience.

    Dimitri and Aelus

    On Saturday I ran the sound board and recording setup for The Extraordinary Contraptions. Pictures of that concert, and one this morning are at my flickr stream. This was at Momocon, which is a free convention put on at Georgia Tech. It’s an anime and cosplay and steampunk convention. Much fun was had.

    North Atlanta Multisport Club

    On Sunday I grabbed my bike and my MARTA pass and headed to downtown to cheer on the other people in the North Atlanta Multisport Club who were running in the ING Georgia Marathon and Half Marathon. I also got some good pictures while following the race route.

    It’s been a good weekend!

  • Wedding Dress Cleaning Racket

    So we’ve had this thing in a bag. It’s been in a bag since it was stuffed in there on the morning of July 20, 2003. This thing is Jenn’s wedding dress. It has been in the bag every since, transported from Maine back to Oklahoma by the good graces of my sister where we picked it up and took it home to Texas. It has since moved, twice, in the same bag to Atlanta and then to Marietta. It hasn’t been looked at since.

    We’ve discussed the thing in the bag several times in the last seven years, saying that we really should do something about it. Well, I’m doing something about it. We’re getting the blasted thing cleaned and boxed for preservation.1

    I called around to a few places today to see what the nominal charge would be for a wedding dress cleaning and boxing. Everyone on the phone was very nice to me but ladled lots of caveats over the conversation by saying that wedding dress cleaning cost has a floor but no ceiling depending on the complexity of the dress. This makes sense, however I was just trying to get some idea so if they would give me a ballpark estimate, I would be most grateful.

    Here is an almost verbatim conversation from the first place I called:

    Me: “So if you could just ballpark the cost for me, I’d really appreciate it.”
    Them: “Cleaning and preservation starts at $450”
    Me: BOOM!
    Them: “Are you ok?”
    Me: BOOM!
    Them: “Sir?”
    Me: “I’m sorry, but my head just exploded.”

    Wow. I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap, but $450 is a significant fraction (I think something like 2/3) of the original cost of the dress. Holy SHIT! leaps to mind. Thankfully, the place I called first was apparently the top end. That’s what I get for calling the place in Dunwoody first. Others were more what I sort of had in mind, ranging from $175 up to $300.

    The lesson here, for me at least, is that wedding dress cleaning and preservation should be built into the cost of the wedding, if not the dress itself. Bridal shops should make that a value-added service. If nothing else, it would keep their dress from being stuff in a bag for seven years.

    1: I said to Jenn, “We’re either getting in cleaned or getting rid of it.” She said, “Cleaned.” Very good.

  • Consumer Dissatisfaction/Frustration

    My Mother-in-Law gave us a plate for Christmas. This plate belongs with our china pattern, Vintage Jewel. When we received it, I commented to Jenn that we should take the plate and upgrade it by getting the rest of the setting, plus one more full setting as that would get us to six total. For our dining room size and how we tend to entertain, six is a good number.

    Therefore, off I went to Macy’s! Macy’s was the store of choice because it’s local and I can walk in and actually look at the china patterns to be sure I’m getting the right thing.
    (more…)

  • Ridding House of Crap, Part XXIV

    I’ve had some computers and associated peripherals lying around for a long time. One of these computers has moved from NY to TX to TX to GA to GA and will never again be moved unless that move is to an electronics disposal center or a person who wants spare parts.

    During this time, as computers have come and gone, I pull their hard drives in order to assure I keep control of the data.

    9 year of hard drives: '92 - '01
    click through for some notes and labels

    Sunday night I disemboweled the three computers that have been living in boxes down in the basement for way too long. Those drives are the second and third from left, plus the rightmost one. The other two drives have been sitting on a shelf in my office for years. Sometime this week they all have a date with tools that will free them of their magnets and then destroy their platters. Nobody is getting my data, dammit.

    This is all part of my plan to have less crap when we move out of this house, eventually. Not necessarily less stuff, but I insist on less crap.

    So far so good.

  • Preparing for the Race Season

    Pro Tools Home Maintenance Stand

    A purchase I’ve been avoiding to date has been a maintenance stand for my bicycle. I haven’t been avoiding it because I wanted to. I’ve been avoiding it because of cost; there continually were other things to spend money on when it came to bikes and racing. Unfortunately it is, ummmm, “inconvenient” to do maintenance on your bike without a secure way to get it off the floor and keep it from falling over, rolling around or just generally causing you to cuss and swear.

    Thus, I finally bit the bullet and got a stand. The first order of business is to reset the derailleur on the Trek which currently isn’t a big fan of two of my gears ratios. It got discombobulated during the 24 Hour Race lo those many moons ago and I’ve been putting up with it, probably to the detriment of my drive train. No more! I will take care of my equipment!

    I will also clean up my garage! Which needs it, as evidenced by the image

  • Snow!

    Enjoying the Brief Snow

    You may be aware that the East Coast of these here United States has been enjoying some interesting times this winter. From record cold temps to record snowfalls, everybody has been invited to the party.

    Even Atlanta has had it’s share of fun, shown above. Jenn and I poked around outside and threw some snowballs, just to say that we did. After all, that image was taken on Saturday evening, and by Sunday afternoon it was all gone.

    Some other pictures of the snow here at my flickr site

  • Pimping my Ebay Listings

    Want to buy one of the best engineering reference books that exists in the English language? One stop shopping over at Ebay for the Engineer in Training Reference manual by Michael R. Lindeburg, PE. I put this book to good use when I took the FE/EIT.

  • New Bag

    My all-around carry sack has needed serious repair and/or replacement for a while. I decided to replace it with a Chrome Metropolis messenger bag.

    Chrome Metropolis Messenger Bag

    It’s big, it’s waterproof, it’s a heck of a lot easier to deal with when you’re on your bike yet it will still suffice for my general use which is hauling stuff back and forth from the office and elsewhere. There will be things that live in this bag that are specifically bike related (see map in the below photo) but this will still be my general purpose sack for the next 10 years I expect.

    Chrome Metropolis Messenger Bag

    You can see my first Nerd Merit badge on the velcro in the photo. “Ship Ship Ship!” I should also get the Inbox Zero badge, but the others I’m less qualified for except possibly the Family Tech support. However certain friends of mine might dispute my qualifications there (thanks, Jim, John, Rachel!).

  • Workouts – Back to Basics

    Today I began something that I should probably have been doing all along. It might have averted the little tiny problem I had last fall. That thing is: core workouts every day.

    Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t plan to put in a 45 minute abs-back-hips intensive crushing exercise session every single day. What I plan to do is devote at least 15 minutes to doing basic strengthening exercises to stabilize my core. I know I can come up with 15 minutes every day for a basic set of poses. If I don’t manage to get up in time, I can do them at lunch. If I don’t do them at lunch, there’s at home. 15 minutes is easy. I can do it!

    If the marathon training underway knocks my fat percentage down any more, I might even have a six pack! I won’t hold my breath, though.

    15 minutes a day (or more, depending). Jenn might even get me back into Yoga. We’ll see.

  • Why I will Never be a Politician

    I will never be a politician. One of the reasons is because if I were, I’d have to say stuff like this:

    The process used to get this bill to 60 votes was unlike anything I had never [sic] seen before. Deals were cut behind closed doors for individual senators and their states at the expense of taxpayers across the nation – and that’s just not right. The majority leader also made a compromise on abortion – where, morally, there can be no compromise – to get his 60th vote.

    Saxby Chambliss’ (R-GA) full statement about the health care bill senate passage can be found at GeorgiaFrontPage.com. As an amusing aside, I would have preferred to link directly to something on Chambliss’ website, but there’s nothing there. How do you let people scoop you with your own statements?

    Why won’t I ever be a politician? Because statements like that would really stick in my craw. It’s unbelievable (yet existent, so it must be believable) pandering to his Republican base which is entirely understandable, yet the wording is insane.

    It’s understandable because the base is what elected him. He needs to make sure the people who don’t look deeply into things know that he’s not into this back-room deal-making fiasco that is Washington Politics nor does he support abortion. I can just hear Joe Six-Pack sitting in his barcalounger shouting “Fuck Yeah!” at Fox News, but as I just said, that statement is insane.

    First, “The process used to get this bill to 60 votes was unlike anything I had never [sic] seen before.” Really? I doubt it. This might be factual in the sense that he’s never seen precisely this sort of sausage being stuffed, yet when he was elected to the Senate in 1994 the Democrats held a 56/44 majority in the Senate. There must have been similar struggles. This statement is just so much bumph I don’t want to think about it. When has politics not been about back room deal making? Like or hate it, that’s the truth.

    Second, “The majority leader also made a compromise on abortion – where, morally, there can be no compromise – to get his 60th vote.” This statement is also factually true yet fundamentally false. The Majority Leader made a compromise that moved the abortion issue closer to where a Republican like Chambliss would like to see it: No Federal funding. So, yes, Harry Reid compromised abortion by moving toward the Republican end of things therefore quote-mine the word “compromise” out of that and beat the Democrats over the head with it in order to pander to the voters. I’m not going to even discuss the rectitude of “no compromise” with respect to abortion or any other thing.

    Third, I personally understand exactly why Senator Chambliss said what he said. I also understand that if I were in his shoes, I would be doing exactly the same things because that’s how the game is played. And that’s why I could never be a politician. While I see how the partisan process functions, I have no desire to twist my ethics into the knots required to make statements such as that above. It would be nice if we lived in a country where every citizen took the time to know the issues and become involved rather than repeating talking points on major items that have been ingrained into us by ideologues, however that is not the country we possess. Unfortunately.