Home of the Boogie Woogie Feng Shui

hello to my readers, if I have any. I have stopped using my Livejournal account and won't be posting any more updates here. I transferred the whole thing to a Wordpress blog on my personal site. It is now at http://blog.uncommonguy.com .

I will leave this account active for a while as a backup. If I ever screw up my new blog I can retrieve everything from here again. Also as a note, Wordpress can automatically import all posts, comments, and other data from Livejournal, so if anyone wants to transfer in the future keep that in mind. It is really easy, just a few clicks.

So please remove this feed from your reader and visit Carl Scharenberg's new blog.

The democrats are just so spineless. The dems vs repubs seem like "confused cretins" vs the "reactionary blowhards".

What’s The Non-Sexist Way To Say, “Grow Some Goddamn Balls And Fuckin’ Pass The Fuckin’ Goddamn Health-Care Bill, You Goddamn Pussies”?

That really needs "and remove those special interest exceptions" but is otherwise dead on.

I took Friday off at the end of a 3-day business trip to Dallas. It was a great day. I was at the Museum of American Railroad by 10:30 and spent 2 1/2 hours there. They have 30 locomotives and interesting historical railcars like Pullman sleepers and various types of cabooses. I called my dad while standing by the Big Boy, the largest steam locomotive built (there were a series, so there are still 8 around). We discussed it in detail including how amazingly huge and heavy it is, then moved on to discussing interesting attractions in Kansas.

I was mixed up about the aquarium in Dallas - it turns out there are two! I tried the one at the Fair Park but it was closed for renovations. That was my biggest interest for today, so I was somewhat disappointed. Later I found out the actual big aquarium is downtown. While still at Fair Park I went through the Discovery Gardens and butterfly house. The butterfly house was just okay. There were fewer butterflies than I expected so it wasn't that interesting.

Wandering the gardens turned into the high point of my day. There was a large water fountain with wide lip to sit on. It was a beautiful 75 degrees out at that time with blue skies and fast-moving clouds like spiderwebs passing overhead. I lay back on the fountain edge, right hand idly playing in the water, and watched the clouds. It was bliss. I dozed for a good 20 minutes and felt fantastic.

Next I drove downtown to the Sixth Floor Museum a the Texas Book Depository. It covers JFK and his assasination, obviously. It was a good museum. Very informative audio tour, good photo and text layouts. It was more educational than most of the museums I've visited recently.

This is when I discovered the 'real' aquarium, but it was only open for another hour so I didn't go there. I walked to the Bodies exhibition. The exhibit itself was good. As usual, I was left wanting for really detailed or really interesting information. The information is presented in a straightforward bland way and didn't communicate enough 'practical effects' of the data. When I see such detailed displays of human skeletal and nerve systems I want to get facts but have access to a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of aspects of human body design. What works well, what doesn't but is impossible for evolution to fix, or most of all why is it built a certain way. A museum should start leading you toward deeper questions, giving enough information to get you thinking more deeply about a subject rather than just providing facts.

Actually the exceedingly detailed models made me quite queasy. Thinking about the internal bits, particularly blood and nerve systems, bothers me. I became light-headed at one point and sat down for a bit. I have fainted while giving blood before (from low blood pressure, not queasiness) so I knew what was coming over me and handled it fine, walking calmly over to a bench to sit for a bit.

So after that I spent a long time with my phone looking for an evening activity. If I were here tomorrow night there is a good burlesque show I could attend, but nope - I'll be at the KC Symphony tomorrow night. I found a comedy club and planned to go there but I developed a pretty bad eye ache. After dinner I didn't feel like going out, so just went to the hotel.

A long and fun day! My next trips are to Denver, somewhere in Ohio, and possibly Quebec. Looking forward to those, but my day of great weather, big locomotives, and good museums will be hard to top.

I feel great today. Got back from Germany last night after the usual delays in Chicago. Had some downtime hanging out with Rachel on the couch, then Jake and Angela stopped by for a few minutes. Had a full night of sleep so I am caught up and rested. This morning I went all out with the shower, a long careful shave, cologne, snazzy dress shirt and black jeans, and am stepping out to do errands. Feeling pretty flash at the moment. Life is so good.

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.