Home of the Boogie Woogie Feng Shui

I am ready to declare that last night I had The Geekiest Thought of My Life. Summary: Are the Jedi from Star Wars sensing then biasing the collapse of the Multiverse?

Yes, I may have found a plausible physical justification for Jedi Force powers using the Many Worlds theory of the universe. I will write about this in detail later, but I would like to record last night while dozing on the flight from Dublin to Munich as the time I had this thought. It is likely the geekiest thought that has ever crossed my mind.

Lots of funny observations on Twitter for #nobel. Not agreeing or disagreeing with these, but I laughed:

@damngoodmon: I'm just saying Woodrow Wilson had to settle WWI and push the League of Nations to win his Nobel Peace Prize.

@volatile_tifa:Kanye: I'm real happy for you Obama, and Imma let you finish, but what have you done to earn this award besides call me an ass? XD

@rickmcmillan: Nothing against Obama and his Nobel Peace Prize, but nominations were due 2 weeks after he took office. He hadn't even unpacked yet!

@paulaharington: Once I found out that the Nobel Peace Prize was between Jon Gosselin and Obama. I felt much better that Obama won.

@krupali: "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do" - Henry Ford

@rkerestes: Thinks the #Nobel Cmte should've just said they are recognizing the American people for demonstrating we're not the stereotype people think

@sadin: I just played Solitaire on my computer. And goddammit Obama won that too.

@KimDay71: Just not being the jackass your predecessor was is not enough criteria for the #Nobel.

@joelfaucett: I think we can all agree that Obama deserves the #nobel for preventing Sarah Palin from ascending to the White House.

@srpetrew: Jimmy Carter 22 yrs of service. Woodrow Wilson 6 yrs. Teddy Roosevelt 5 yrs. Obama 11 days and he wins the #Nobel Peace Prize. Too soon?

I am annoyed they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. Accomplishments: attempting to talk to Iran; attempting to talk to North Korea; talking up 'hope'. I should get the biology prize for dreaming about unicorns.

Within 20 minutes I was personally belittled for saying so then lumped in with organized right-wing nutters.

My response to one legitimate comment:
This most prestigious award in the world should be given for accomplishments, not a sporting try. Initiatives? Visions? Hope? Come on, that's like [as Mike said separately] giving out participation ribbons for softball.

There are people out there with demonstrable successes and they should get it. The prize is a chance to recognize someone would otherwise would be ignored on the global stage. Giving it to the most globally well-liked man (after maybe the Dali Lama) and leader of the USA seems like a missed opportunity to recognize a successful leader laboring in relative obscurity.

General home improvement is a major hobby of mine. It lets me express my love of troubleshooting, design, and optimization. On my short trip to the States I had only 1 day for home improvement tasks. I got a lot done, but nothing major in itself. It was the first home change involving Rachel.

We pulled up all the plywood and carpet rugs in the master bedroom. These were left over from the brief 3 months I actually lived in my house where I used it as a gym. There were 6 large sheets of plywood covered by green rugs from Home Depot. We had to play a version of that game of shifting empty blocks around using a single hole space to get things out of the way. One by one we pulled up and moved outside the plywood and rugs. We left a single piece under the treadmill. That piece is larger than it needs to be but I didn't have time to trim it yet.

We sold my mattress to a friend and pulled Rachel's out of storage for our use. Then we rearranged some dressers.

The big coup was putting some shelves up in front of the treadmill. One is 2.5 feet off the ground, the other about 5.5 feet up, just higher than the treadmill which buts up nearly against them. The lower shelf now holds the cable modem and wireless router. The upper shelf is meant to hold a laptop to watch movies or Hulu from it.

I had a great idea though and remembered my old ViewSonic cable-to-VGA adapter. It is a box that takes in VGA and audio inputs from a computer and a coax cable. It is a video KVM that outputs to VGA. So effectively it is a cable box with usual features of menu guides that outputs to a normal computer monitor). This thing sat unused in my closet since my second year of college so I was happy to pull it out and use it. Now the coax cable from the wall goes through a splitter then to the cable modem and also this converter box. The convertor goes up to one of the LCD monitors I had lying around and some powered computer speakers.

Voila! Now the pesky cables and boxes sit nicely on one shelf hiding in the otherwise-useless wall space in front of the treadmill. And the treadmill now has cable TV at eye level. There is room on the shelf to slide the LCD monitor out of the way to put a laptop there instead to use Hulu. Of course, a laptop or permanent box could sit on the floor and send output through the cable KVM box also. We paid $40 for shelves and reused some unused electronics from my closet. In return we have an efficient media center for the master bedroom and the treadmill. Brilliant? Yes.

Downstairs I did some minor work: replace the air filter; hung a painting we bought from a street artist in Rome; and replaced some dead incandescent bulbs with flourescents. Until recently I couldn't find candelabra-base flourescents in the stores, but they carry them now at Home Depot and Walmart. For some reason the incandescents in the drop-down fixtures in the kitchen burned out very quickly and never gave much light. The new bulbs are much brighter for much less energy and should last much longer. Almost every bulb in the house is flourescent now except up in the ceiling fans. Those will be swapped when they burn out.

Also did some basic maintenance on the bicycles. Mine sat outside most of last summer and fall so it was quite nasty and rusted. I cleaned and oiled the chain and other parts. The shifting is very badly maladjusted and I have no idea how to fix it. I will investigate when I come home again, or simply take it to CycleWorks for a full tune-up. I think the chain needs replaced or adjusted to remove a link or two (chain stretching is a bigger problem on recumbents because they are enormously long). Rachel's just needed some oiling and chain cleaning and it is good as new. She has a real European city bike with light generator, upright seat and bars, 3-speed internal hub, and a lot of charm. It is practically good-as-new now.

My chore list when I move home includes:

1. finish patching and painting the large holes I put in the drywall searching out a water leak last fall


2. add an electric outlet to the hallway and maybe one in the stairwell wall


3. fix the two wonky electric outlets in the living room and laundry room


4. get new windows installed in place of the cheap old ones: at least 2-pane with all the good energy-efficiency features (nitrogen filling and low-e coating)


5. get or build a small outdoor chest to store barbecue supplies


6. build the reading lamp/automatic nightlight shelves Rachel and I designed

Can't wait to get home! That might be sooner than expected. My definite last date is November 21 but my residency permit and visa expire October 31. We are having problems renewing it, so I might get kicked out of the country in a few weeks. Hot damn, that would be good to come home early.

I had another good experience interacting with T-Mobile customer service today. Those folks have been friendly and helpful every time I called, but today was extra nice.

In January since I was in Germany I dialled back my mobile plan to a minimum. I could (should) have requested they deactivate it completely, but the running cost was only $10/month. Since I am visiting I have used my mobile phone without a minutes plan. I tried to use it sparingly, but apparently it was up to $52 in overage charges.

I called to see about switching to a normal minutes plan since my new billing cycle starts tomorrow. The rep on the phone checked it all out and retroactively changed it for the whole last month! And he saw my text usage was over $5 so he flipped on the basic 300 texts service to cut that down to a straight 5. So they reduced my already-due bill of $52 to $35 and I have a legitimate plan again for next month, of which I only need about 4 days before I go back to Germany. Still, a big win since I will save money and be able to use my phone as I normally would.

The rep was interested in my overseas trip so we chatted about Germany a bit and why I was there. When he found out I worked for Motorola we discussed the new Cliq coming out. He said from the training he did last week it looks very good - at least as good as the HTC MyTouch 3G he's been carrying.

So to recap: T-Mobile listened to my situation, looked over my options, found a plan that would save me money if they applied it retroactively and that wouldn't lock me into a new contract, and then chatted amiably about work and intelligently about upcoming cell phones.

Upshot of this: you guys probably won my business when I look for a new phone and plan in November. As much as I want an iPhone, T-Mobile service and support destroys AT&T's every time.

Oh, and previous calls to them have been of same helpfulness: to unlock my phone, multiple times to discuss rate plans, and to find out about phone features back before my current phone came out. Good job, guys.

I'm having a great week home. A major task for this visit was wedding planning and that is going off better than I imagined. My jobs this week were to rent a dance floor, get a photographer, and get a stamp made. 1 and 2 are done already! The dance floor was easy. And while at dinner with Rachel's Mother (Janice) and Stepfather (Jim), it turned out Jim's brother used to do wedding photography! He doesn't like doing it anymore, but Jim called him and he agreed to do it for us! For free, of course, but we will give quite a large thank-you gift. BAM! The hardest remaining planning bit is sorted!

The final thing is a stamp. Rachel came up with a symbol for us combining our initials and interests. I need to change her image in a vector drawing to get it made online. So I need to find someone who knows about that sort of thing or learn it myself. I'm sure someone experienced could whip it up in 15 minutes. It will probably take me many hours. I might even try to do it programmatically with the pySVG library. Either way is going to be laborious.

Tonight I am going to a sparring exhibition at Andrew's boxing gym with Kellen and we are meeting Nick and Cara. Cara has a graphic design background - I wonder if she knows how to use a vector art program and could help. It should be fun watching Andrew do his boxing thing, but he is sparring with Zack the owner and operator of the place, so he will probably get pummelled pretty bad. That won't be cool. But at least he'll have supporters.

This is the best flight I've been on this year. I am wide awake and in a good mood and have none of the headaches that have plagued my last few flights. Had a good gluten-free dinner, some ginger ale and diet coke. Plenty of leg room (United's Economy Plus makes such a difference).

The great thing is I am being very productive. I'm working on my contacts management application. Work on the flight so far:

• Added page to show deleted contacts with an option to restore or purge a person


• Built a right-click context menu on the main contacts list so you can delete, view, or edit directly


• Broke some of the CSS formatting (oops)


• Refactored some javascript


• Removed the worst of the performance shortcomings


• Experimented with animating some of the dynamic UI elements (not working yet)


• Removed gaudy/ugly function buttons and put clean toolbar at top


• Worked around a weird bug where email addresses are turned into mailto: links


• Resized and centered search bar (large text now)


• Added some smarter rules to the contact merge algorithm


• Got right-click 'Delete' option working, though without in-place refresh (page redraws)

Next I want to make the contact info popups appear at the top of the list so they push down older items.


And finally, I am rocking out to a Del Amitri album I hadn't listened to before. It is really good.

I've become interested in some manly arts lately. I have taken up wet shaving, wearing a quality cologne, and shining my shoes. They feel old-fashioned and pleasing - manual tasks that add a bit of flair and extra interest to rather routine self-maintenance.

The wet shaving started after reading a few articles on the internet. On our trip to Dublin Rachel and I came across a Knights of the Green specialty shaving shop. I bought some Taylor of Bond Street shaving cream. I enjoyed shaving with it so much Rachel bought me a badger-hair brush and quality Proraso aftershave the next day. Since then I've been learning the basics of the art of real shaving and enjoying it immensely. Each morning I spend a few extra minutes compared to an electric shave, but I have a far-superior shave and smell like a god. The smell of that Taylors cream is refined manliness.

I want to try a safety razor next to go even more old-school. With some practice it is supposed to give an even closer shave and be more fun. My grandfather just passed away and I wonder if he had an old one around. I remember him shaving with disposables, but perhaps there is an old one squirelled away. I will ask my Dad to keep that in mind while sorting Grandpa's things. That would be a good keepsake.

On a trip to Paris in July I wandered into a Sephora shop and bought some cologne. I had been thinking about it for a long time but didn't expect to buy any there because of language difficulties. But I smell-tested a dozen and found one that really struck me. I went with Azarro Twin which has a light smell of citrus, almond, and sandalwood, among other things. It has an upbeat but solid scent. Rachel likes it a lot, and I have to say I feel a bit more attractive just wearing it and catching a whiff now and then. It is good stuff.

The other new art I am learning is polishing my shoes. I have some pretty nice black leather shoes - nothing fancy or pretentious. But I didn't like how dull they were starting to look. They were scratched, scuffed, and dusty. They were starting to feel like everyday black shoes rather than dress shoes for work or going out.

I read some how-to articles and tips and watched a few videos on the internet to get an idea of what I was doing. Then just went at it. It takes me a long time and it is pretty messy, but that is inexperience I am sure. I've done a full-on polishing several times now, though less often than I would like. I have read you should do it every 5 times you wear them, but I doubt I will go that extreme. Every few weeks is enough for me..

The actual process is easy enough - spread some polish on with a sponge, let it harden for a few minutes, then polish it with a brush then some cloth. But the sponge I have doesn't dig polish out of the can very well, so I have to use other tools to do that. Maybe I am supposed to stir up the polish more to break up the hardened slab completely, but again I have nothing disposable I want to use for the job. Also the cloth I have used tends to disintegrate and leave fibers stuck to the polish coat.

Anyway, it is easy enough and makes a big difference. My scuffed and dusty-looking shoes transform into a glossy sheen. They don't look new but they look cared-for and loved. They catch the light and thus the light more and make me feel dressier wearing them. Shoe polishing is an art one doesn't hear of much and it is a shame. It really does wonders to restore quality shoes to respectability.

These are the simple routines I have developed lately. I feel more mature with the shaving, cologne, and polishing, like I am joining the ranks of stolid hard-working gentlemen who made American great. It's a bit of ritual to polish myself each day before taking on the world. It makes life noticeably better.

I am onsite monitoring an install at a customer. I like it when things go smoothly. Failover tests at the end always make me nervous. We have had so many inexplicable hardware failures on server restarts that every restart gets my heart going and I start praying we won't have some bizarre critical failure.

Usually we do these at midnight, but today was 6am. Didn't get much sleep or food this morning so feeling quite hungry. I will hang out until upgrade is solidly done then head for home. It will be nice to get some sleep and then be able to work from home today.

What a boring update. Better then no update at all. I should write more about my career stuff when I have the energy.

I think I figured out what's been making me sick for months now. My toothpaste. My licorice-flavored toothpaste. Licorice is gluten-toxic for some goddamn reason. I have been at the point of eating nothing but raw fruit and vegetables for 2 weeks now. I was beginning to suspect that Munich water has traces of gluten in it, that's how baffled and frustrated I was.

I hate to think how much damage it has caused me internally. All the times I was too sick to go outside, or made me lazy at work, and it's been affecting my concentration and mental focus for ages. I've used that toothpaste for almost 2 years now.

Toothpaste. Fucking licorice toothpaste was killing me.

So tired....drove from Leeds to Bath today then spent 6 hours at the Thermae Bath Spa. Rachel and I sat in the kraxen stove, had a massage, a very good dinner, then 4 hours wallowing in the warm pools. Now wrote a quick note to the families and falling asleep as I type. Off to bed!

Rachel and I just finished day 4 of our England trip. Today we rented a car and drove from London to Leeds which took about 3 1/2 hours. The hotel here is great with a big pretty room, king bed, and nice view. Also right next to the main metro station here.

We napped a bit this afternoon before getting some Indian food. It was quite good, but I definitely got some wheat from this bread they had. We asked if it was made with wheat flour, but when the guy told us, I heard it as chickpea flour and Rachel heard beet flour. So I will be a bit sick tomorrow. If I had known for sure I would have had a beer also.

The main event was going to the Shakespeare festival at Kirkstall Abbey a few miles outside Leeds. We bought excellent tickets a month ago for it and were in the the center about 7 rows back. Tonight was Much Ado About Nothing and it was very good. Benedick and Beatrice were good and Claudio too. It rained all day but stopped in time for the show with the weather turning very nice. It was a great evening.

Tomorrow night we will go back from A Midsummer Night's Dream with even better seats. The earlier part of the day will be a visit to the Royal Armoury, some time at Kirkstall Abbey to explore it, and the James Herriot museum. The Herriot museum will be fun! I have wanted to see that part of England for many years.

1 day until vacation! In 24 hours I will be meeting my fiancée in London to kick off what promises to be the best month of my entire life so far. It will lead up to my 27th birthday and the closing months of my Germany experience. August will bring 9 days in England, a week in Ireland, a week in Italy, and a week here in Munich with Rachel and Cort and having dinner parties with my friends.

Today I am wrapping up some work items and cleaning the house. Rachel will be returning with me from London so the place has to be up to girlfriend standards. So no bits of clothes lying around and no unpleasant smells or scary bits in the fridge. Perhaps even some light dusting will take place.

Packing is particularly difficult because I haven't travelled for fun for a long time. When I travel for work I just need some dress slacks and shirts and plenty of black socks. Also I am flying RyanAir so the weight limit is pretty low, even for checked bags. The only things I had to buy for this trip are two travel umbrellas for Rachel and I.

Selecting umbrellas was as time-consuming as I feared. The Kaufhof had a vast selection of colors, shapes, sizes, and build materials. I spent something like 80 minutes sorting through them, calling Rachel for opinions, giving them practice opens, and weighing the aesthetic qualities. Finally I chose two of the same model because it had a pretty good feel and the nicest handle. Most of the travel umbrellas had small knobby handles that were unpleasant to hold. Rachel will get the prettier of the two because I'm a nice guy. They were both expensive so I will be on guard that we don't leave them behind at a stop during our travels. The forecast for London is rain the next few days so we will get immediate use of them (sadly). An unnecessary umbrella is a great thing.

The only errands left to do here is pick up the GPS that Emily is lending me and take out the trash and recycling. Then get some sleep and set off at 5:30 in the morning for grand adventures.

1. Diaspora by Greg Egan
2. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
4. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
5. JG Ballard's short stories

...to be continued...

I've gotten back into Team Fortress 2 the last 2 weeks. Still using medic class most of the time because usually the team needs one. I don't mind because it's one class where you can see the visible effect of your efforts. A good medic can keep 3 people alive on the front lines who would be dead. Then every few minutes you can push in with an ubercharge and break a stalemate. You can't win without a good medic working with a good attacker.

In the last 3 days I have encountered some great teams and awful teams. Oh, and one inexplicable team. Bad teams are characterized by frontal assaults leading to death and not knowing when to retreat. Good teams have good communication and advance or retreat as a group, warn about approaching dangers, and correct each other's behavior.

Last night was the first inexplicable team I have played on though. Our team of 12 people had 7 engineers, 3 snipers, a demoman, and a pyro (me). 7 ENGINEERS. They only built defensively and only side our own base.We had an incredible defense built up and all 7 engineers running around building and repairing their sentry guns. They did build a teleport though...from the upstairs to the downstairs. It was actually faster to run down the stairs or jump the railing. Outside we had myself and 2 snipers, which made us the most useless forward assault team ever. I do not know how we held off the other team for half an hour inside our base. It was an incredible display of stubborn refusal to adapt. Maybe it was the 'practice makes perfect' theory: that if they positioned the sentry guns just right it would be impenetrable.

Well that theory was bogus because of one thing: spies. Yes, the spies who can sap a sentry gun and take out a whole room in 10 seconds untouched by any of those guns. This happened over and over. I cajoled, begged, and demanded the engineers switch to an attack class, but nothing happened until right at the end. Finally one switched to a Heavy and we seemed to make some progress, but it wasn't enough. Eventually the scouts and spies overwhelmed our sentry gun porcupine creation.

So we had an all-defense strategy with a major flaw: TF2 favors attack. Attackers can hide and build up ubercharges or just repeatedly storm the place and eventually win. Defenders have to be absolutely perfect forever. Well, until the other team trips up and you switch to offense and push them back. If the team never pushes out and attacks, though, you just can't win. As they say, you can't steal second with your foot on first.





All that aside, I was in total berserker mode as pyro this morning. I gave up playing medic for two reasons: my teammates were too stupid (okay, maybe inexperienced) to take advantage of ubercharges*, and spies were stabbing me in the back every 2 minutes. I played a perfect pyro the last 3 hours. I ambushed; did hit-and-runs; disrupted offensives; nailed entire teams from behind as they massed to attack, spychecked like I had obsessive compulsive disorder; was generally a cuisinart of death. I caused confusion, chaos, fear, and uncertainty in the other team and racked up a massive death toll - everything a pyro should do. It was awesome.

The frustrating part of it was that it was only me attacking. The rest of my team was holed up in our base building sentry guns and shooting arrows out. In one rush I took down a level-2 sentry gun, 2 teleports, and 7 enemies on the bridge (Badlands map). I thought my team was behind me to finish claiming it, but I was alone on the empty bridge, surrounded by burning carcasses and sparking electronic remnants. I started to pull back to find my team and was shot by the other team respawning. My teammates hadn't even left the base.

Still, my awesomeness has left me in a great mood.


* Note to Demomen: when you are ubered please attack the sentry gun ripping us apart. Don't wander off and start putting stickybombs in the area we already control.

It feels truly great to be back in Munich after being on the road for 2 weeks. I had a 2-night stop in Frankfurt then 9 nights in Paris. The work was medium-intense. Most of it was testing work which is pretty easy but there was a background of so much other work that I felt very pressured to keep up. I really had no days that I could finish work for the day and feel good about it. When I went to bed each night it felt like I was giving up rather than rewarding myself after a job well done.

Anyway, more on Paris later. Today I feel very good! I slept in, but not too late. I ate a quick meal of the only food I have in the house - 2 eggs and a block of cheese. After showering and starting laundry I felt clean. Also I shaved today with a real razor, not my electric shaver, so I feel like a new man. Even put on some of the cologne I bought in Paris just for the hell of it.

Now going to get some groceries. Then will just have to see. Maybe Emily will want to meet in a beer garden to chat for a bit, or else I might go on a walk. At some point I want to go run a few miles and work out at the gym. But I also have a mountain of tasks inside to handle. I don't care too much. For some reason even though the weather outside is gorgeous I don't feel like I have to go outside to enjoy it. I am happy just to be home and be getting things done.

If you are like me and use folders to organize your email, you probably found these don't synchronize automatically - just the inbox does. Well I finally figured out how to make them synchronize. It isn't hard, just clumsy. You might find this useful.

It is probably same procedure on all Windows Mobile 6.0 phones, but don't know about 6.1.

1. Go into Outlook mail on your phone so you see your inbox messages.
2. Choose Menu->Folders. You probably see Deleted, Inbox, Outbox, Sent, and Draft folders.
3. Choose Menu->Show All Folders. Now you will see all the sub-folders of your inbox and other items. This menu item toggles between "Show All" and "Show Managed".
4. Choose Menu->Manage Folders.
5. Scroll to each folder you want to sync and choose Sync on the menu. Or you can turn off Sync.
6. Choose Done
7. Choose Menu->Send/Receive. It can take a while to process all sync changes in the sub-folders
8. Now in your phone's mail you can choose Menu->Folders to switch between them.

I am in Paris since yesterday morning. Was told Wednesday night to be on the 6:35 AM plane from Munich to Paris for some emergency help onsite. Some frenzied packing and 2 hours of sleep later I was on my way.

Had a full day at the customer fighting various strange and interesting problems and learned a few things. It was 2 hours of frustrationg and 10 minutes of victory repeated over and other during the day, each problem more baffling than the last. In the end it all made some sense, but during investigation I was mumbling "this is impossible" a lot.

After finishing at 7pm Antoine gave Mathijs and me a ride to Meudon train station, about halfway to Paris city center. Then we took a train to Le Gare Montparnasse. My hotel was a few stops from there, but I left my bags in Mathijs' room adn went to dinner with him and Kevin, who was also in town. Dinner was excellent, both food and conversation. It is always good to sit with the higher-up folks and get all the latest news and gossip about work and the real story behind recent events.

The restaurant was a tiny place on a quiet side street. It was run by a vivacious lady in her 50s or 60s who obviously loved it. Food was good and wine was fine but more mild than I expected. The high point was creme brulee which I normally do not care for that much. But it was perfect and amazing. Rachel loves those, so I was thinking about her when I got it. Creme brulee is very hit-or-miss, so I am not moving it into my list of favored desserts until I have a few more good ones.

Finally got to hotel at 11pm, utterly ready to collapse. I talked to Rachel for a while on Skype (Vodafone Mobile Connect 3g card works under Linux now!). Then napped for a little while and worked again from 1-3am. We discovered terrible database problems at that time so I left it with the experts and went to bed.

Overall and long and exhausting day especially after so little sleep the last 2 nights. Today is not starting off well either. Looking forward to collapsing in bed for 10 hours of sleep tonight keeps me cheerful. I am in a state of unflappable good mood despite all the work problems at the moment.

Taking a break from work and decided to blast some random thoughts out.

1) The space station is a gigantic waste of money. Until we have a rotating station with some gravity keeping humans in space will continue to be a waste of effort and money.

2) I do not care about philosophy and am amazed there are people who do. I don't see the point to discussing what lies under reality and the possible basis for morality. It just doesn't matter.

3) Travelling gets boring to me pretty quickly. Now that I have been around Europe a bit I am progressively less interested in visiting any given place. I have seen all the churches and monuments I care to, and I have little interest in talking to strangers just for the experience of talking to strangers. There are many places I wish to see but now I value time spent with a travelling companion more than I do the actual travelling. I find travelling alone mostly tedious.

4) Copyright violations by an individual should never be punished by more than a small fine. A traffic ticket is a good comparison, and never more than perhaps $2000. Violations for financial gain should be punished by larger fines designed to strip all profits and extract some punishment.

5) I generally un-follow people on twitter after a week or three. The only people I care to see twitters from on an ongoing basis are my friends who don't use twitter anyway.

6) I have developed a strong dislike for most mobile phones, particularly Windows Mobile based ones. The Iphone looks like the only phone I could enjoy using. I will acquire one the very day I have a chance, ie when I move back to the US.

7) I am willing to pay a lot of money for great experiences. These days I have the money but not the time or person to do them with. And most of my friends are not able to pay for things like I am at the moment. Thankfully there are plenty of cheap things to do but they are all back in the US and have to wait until my time in Germany is over.

8) I have become more and more conservative with money the more I accumulate. Or maybe just maturity over the last 3 years since starting a career. When I had 2k in the bank I would buy anything I wanted. When I had 15k I was less interested in spending any. These days I only buy larger things after considering it for many months.

9) My interests become less intellectual and more active the older I get. My friends are no longer the nerdy intellectual crowd, but are the down-to-earth guys who will do things with me. Like kayaking and backpacking with Andrew, helping Nick monkey around on his vintage scooter modifications, motorcycling and random projects with Kellen. I enjoy experiences and activities more than discussion and my group of friends has changed to reflect that. These days my friends are doers and not thinkers. And so am I.

10) The more time I spend with other women the more I love my girlfriend Rachel. She is great. I am more comfortable with her than anyone else on Earth. She is superb.

11) The government bailout of banks and car companies disgusts me. Most of the activity in the financial world is money games with no real-world value creation. I think most of it should be illegal.

12) Elected representatives should be held to an ethical standard that "if it looks unethical, assume it is". Ethics committees never punish a congressmen even when it is obvious they are crooked. Hearing descriptions of complex financial dealings between companies and congressmen it is obvious there is dirty dealing. Endless investigations might prove it is legal, but I say if it look fishy, assume it is and throw them out or censure them.

13) Laws should be written in 2 forms: normal legalese and plain English. The plain English version should be considered definitive on intent and basic effects of the law. The legalese can describe some technicalities or extra bits.

14) Reading and discussing Jane Austen and Henry James in high school English were the most-wasted hours of my education.