miscellany category archive

Leap Post

I remember in 2000 there was some residual Y2K dread that things might have gone leftwards on February 29th, because of the funny business around years divisible by 100 not being leap years except when divisible by 400. If we would have been a bit faster on the learning curve, that would have created a slightly different flavor to the Y1.9K bug.

Hard to believe this is already the second leap year since 2000.

And here I am like so many other people, posting today for no other reason than to post on a leap day.

I’ll give you three semi-random items:

Lost is so freaking cool. Great science fiction storytelling on the tube. I loved last night’s episode, “The Constant.”
I’m this close to booking a flight out to Boston for the FSF annual associate …

This ain’t no holiday

Oh no this ain’t no vacation
(This is your chance to pay
The great casino foundation…)

Ain’t no vacation anymore, anyway.

Twelve glorious days off work and now it’s time to return to the grind.

So what have I been up to, besides miscellaneous family gatherings and activities?

Shoveling. We’re getting a decent Minnesota winter this year, with more snow earlier than we have in recent years. I usually make it a mission to keep the driveway clear to the blacktop, so that means obsessively pushing a shovel around.

And it has been a great year to get new boots. I’ve had a pair of Sorels for over 20 years that are still in great shape, but they were big and unwieldy for walking the dog around the neighborhood. I splurged on a pair …

Playing the Leeann Chin Gift Card Investment Game

(Part of being on break means I can write totally inane, off-topic posts…)

We get takeout from Leeann Chin once per week, usually on Fridays. This is about the third Christmas season now (that I can remember) where they offer a gift card deal: buy a $40 gift card and receive an additional $10 “free” in gift cards.

So let’s do the math:

Our usual bill: $13.81. (Includes Bourbon and Mongolian Chicken, umm…)

$13.81 x 52 = $718.12 per year

If I was willing to pay for a year’s worth of meals in advance:

$718 / $50 = 14.3624 gift card deals. (Let’s round down to 14.)

14 cards x $40 = $560 actual outlay

$560 gets us $700 worth of meals. That’s a $140 return on a $560 investment, for a very crude and approximate 25% annual …

At the St. Paul Curling Club

Lunch today at The Happy Gnome and then a walk across the parking lot to the St. Paul Curling Club for a couple of hours of curling. The Happy Gnome is a nice little restaurant and bar (although I apologize for their web site which seems to be all Flash). Went back afterwards and ordered a “Surly Bender,” which is brewed right here in Brooklyn Park, but they were out of that so I settled for a Flat Earth Cygnus X-1 Porter.

The Curling Club was really cool. I had no idea.

I’ve never played before. This was a team event for my work and none of us knew what we were doing, but we had a great time. We do these events about once a month, and …

The Sad Plight of Some People

photo by crowt59

From the Minneapolis StarTribune:

Mark Evenstad and his family, for example, were perfectly content with their 6,500-square-foot house in Woodland on Lake Minnetonka. But when a much-admired house down the street came on the market, they couldn’t say no even before selling their current house.

Evenstad thought it would take six months to sell the two-story brick house, originally priced at $2.3 million. After nearly two years and a new price of $1.895 million, showings have been modest. And somewhat frustrating, too.

A prospective buyer looked at the house eight times to see it at all times of the day — and then wanted to see what it would be like to wake up there. So Evenstad quickly refurnished parts of the house, which had been vacant, with bedroom furniture,

…

A Silly Post Brought to You by the Letters E and F

My daughter has a set of Sea & Learn Bath Shapes that are very entertaining for her and me and the wife alike. (The wife might not want to admit that. But for me I can say that they engage my brain more than a typical work-related meeting.)

I happened to notice that the “e” looks very Microsoft Internet Explorerish. It’s a small letter. It’s blue. So I looked around for the “f” and found that by an amazing coincidence, it is Firefox red!

(Ok, so the Firefox logo is predominantly orange and this is mostly red. Just play along, ok? The stars are orange. Take it or leave it.)

How about that? The forces of good and evil arrayed against each …