Getting Married?
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/05/09/enter-here/
Door to the Marriage License Office, in Honoulu, HI
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/05/09/enter-here/
Door to the Marriage License Office, in Honoulu, HI
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/05/02/and-good-riddance/
Some folks are irritated with American reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden. Julie indicated that she had mixed feelings upon seeing our “own countrymen basically holding a frat party outside of the White House, hanging off of trees and singing ‘Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!'” I have heard others moan that this doesn’t change anything, why are we celebrating?
So, I expressed my own feelings in a comment on Julie’s blog:
I was happy about the news yesterday, and I still am. We killed a bad guy who has devoted his life to killing us. That is a victory, and I am proud and glad.
When the crowd outside the White House gathered and sang the Star Spangled Banner, it brought a tear to my eye. Then, America the Beautiful. People gathered at Ground Zero for a candle light vigil. In both places, the crowd chanted “USA! USA! USA!” They spoke for me.
I think it is debatable who kills the most Muslims. Our military adheres to Rules of Engagement that put them at greater risk in order to protect Muslim civilians. On the other hand, extremists recruit the young and naive to walk into crowds of Muslims wearing explosive vests.
We are not perfect and we shouldn’t pretend to be. We make mistakes, we kill innocents, and we have failed to hold ourselves to our own standards of humane treatment of prisoners and jurisprudence.
We are drawing down forces in Iraq, which has changed from a brutal dictatorship built on terror to a messy, unstable, imperfect democracy vulnerable to sectarian violence. We now have one less reason to linger in Afghanistan, which may help motivate the government there to get its act together.
Last night was progress. America done good and a bit of pride is perfectly reasonable.
-danny
I mean, its no Moon Landing. No sincere attempt to curb global warming or end world poverty, hunger, disease . . . but it is progress and I’ll celebrate it just the same.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/05/01/osama-bin-laden-is-dead/
Osama bin Laden is Dead
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/27/h4xx0r3d/
Within ten minutes, Maggie has defeated the automatic feeder.
Maggie likes to try and wake me up early for breakfast. Spraying her with the water bottle hasn’t dissuaded her, so now I put her out on the porch. I have read that an automatic feeder could distract her attention: instead of bugging me she’ll watch vigilantly over the feeder. And since we’ll be out of town for two weeks in May it would be a worthwhile investment.
Alas, this PetSafe Electronic Pet Feeder didn’t last ten minutes before she was able to break in and get the kibble. I’m proud of her. But I’m looking forward to finding a feeder that will keep her entertained without bothering me in the morning.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/21/fantastico/
Fantastico
Ask Yourself Three Questions
1. Do I want to make a difference in the lives of others?
2. Do I want a job with flexible hours so I can take care of my family?
3. Do I want to be my own boss?
If you answer “yes”–fantastic! Call now! (650) 630-2519
Mine eyes detected Spanish spam! The word jefe caught my eye . . .
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/20/evening-caltrain-sf/
Passenger's wait to board the 9:40pm train at Caltrain's San Francisco 4th and King terminus.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/19/avalon-creekside-tree/
When a Tree falls in the Apartment Complex, does it damage your porch? (Ours was spared.)
The scene last August at the Avalon at Creekside Apartment Complex. Nobody was hurt, as far as I know.
When we returned from Thanksgiving Holiday in November, we learned that Avalonbay Communities was evicting us over a billing error on their part. I have been thinking to make a YouTube video to explain that ridiculous affair.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/18/holdem/
Playing Hold'em at a friend's house.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/16/view-from-twin-peaks/
A view from Twin Peaks
We found ourselves in the city with time on our hands, but no money. Mei had not been to Twin Peaks. I fixed that.
I was mucking with Gimp. The fog looks like smog.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/13/rounding-the-bend/
VTA Light Rail Right of Way @ Tasman Drive, San Jose.
My commute, most days.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/11/image-10000/
The 10,000th image captured on my Canon SD630.
I applied techniques covered in the Gimp Selective Colorization Tutorial. The green in the foreground is as captured by the camera, but the rest was run through Colors > Auto > Equalize and then I tweaked the curves a bit to get more dramatic colors on the sky.
The original thing that caught my eye, of course, being the workmen updating the sign.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/08/c64/
You never forget your first computer. For Christmas of 1984, Grandpa gave us a Commodore 64. A couple years later we got a disk drive, and eventually we even had a printer. Before the disk drive we had to buy programs on cartridge, or type them in to the basic interpreter line by line. Mostly I just played cartridge games. Eventually we got a modem, and I could talk to BBSes at 300 baud in 40 glorious columns. (Most BBSes assumed 80-columns.) I was happier when I got a 1200 baud modem for my Amiga, which could display 80 columns of text. In my second year of college I discovered the joy of C programming on Unix workstations, which led to my present career as a Unix SysAdmin. I spend my days juggling multiple windows of text, generally at least 80x24. /djh
After reading about the brand new Commodore 64, I downloaded a font from style64.org and played around in my style sheet:
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
Here is the stylesheet markup:
/* C= 64 */
@font-face {
font-family: "C64_User_Mono";
src:
url("C64_User_Mono_v1.0-STYLE.ttf")
format("truetype");
}
DIV.c64_screen {
background-color: #75a1ec;
color: #4137cd;
min-height: 25ex;
width: 40em;
padding: 3ex 6em;
margin: 0;
}
.c64 {
font-family: "C64_User_Mono",
monospace;
background-color: #4137cd;
color: #75a1ec;
}
The text is wrapped in:
<div class=”c64_screen”><pre class=”c64″>
</pre></div>
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/05/extra-crazy/
Tea Party? No, these guys make those guys look reasonable . . .
I was on my way home and saw these guys outside the Mountain View Post Office. I looked at the Obama-with-a-Hitler-moustache and figured the Tea Party had set up shop. I snapped a picture, and then this guy asked if I was worried about the solar flares.
Solar flares? Tea Party people don’t worry about solar flares . . . I smiled and approached: these guys were doing performance art! I told them solar flares are good for cooking.
“Obama isn’t doing anything to stop the solar flares,” he began to explain.
I saw the name LaRouche and realized these guys weren’t parodying the Tea Party: they were actually way further down the rabbit hole of crazy. “Well, he likes solar power,” I punted.
As the guy began to explain that we should be performing nuclear fusion ourselves I edged away. I am an impressionable young man with a sufficiently unconventional belief system: I don’t want to catch their crazy!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/02/india-cricket-world-cup/
Fans in Mountain View Celebrate India's World Cup Victory
As I was walking home from the cafe I encountered a growing crowd of shouting, chanting, singing folks waving Indian flags. I googled “Indian Holidays” on my smart phone, then thought to google “India cricket” and it turns out India has just beaten Sri Lanka to win the World Cup.
In my Sophomore year of college I was paired with a roommate from India. Tarun was a very serious EE major who left the room for only three things: 1) classes, 2) meals and 3) the India-Pakistan cricket match. He was a nice guy but since he was always studying in the room he wasn’t an ideal roommate.
Indian ex-pats I meet tend to be really serious, smart, hard-working people, so it is nice to see a crowd of folks reveling in a collective emotional experience. This is a great moment for anyone who has moved so far from home to make their life.
See Also: Indian Spinning Wheel.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/01/track-daily-spending/
So . . . I’m not an accountant.
I’m trying to get a better handle on my “spending cash” which is managed through my personal account and credit cards. Most “needs” type expenses are covered through our joint finances, so the personal account is mostly discretionary. The problem is I want to reduce my personal credit card debt, and these days the personal account doesn’t get much money to play with, which means I need to be smart and aware with my discretionary income.
About a decade ago I tried managing my spending by writing the date on a series of $20 bills. If I was breaking a bill with today’s date on it, things were going alright. If I was breaking yesterday’s date, I was doing well, and if I was spending a bill with a future date on it . . . well, time to cut back, eh?
This time around I’m thinking to allow myself $10/day. ATMs don’t give out tens, and these days I make some small purchases with the credit card, so I’ll try a different solution: a Google Spreadsheet!
I thought it might be neat to share the progress here, in case other folks are curious to see how this experiment works. You should be able to see the results tally up over the course of the month on the right.
This is by no means a comprehensive thing: I’m not tracking automatic withdrawals (charity, web hosting) or interest on the cards: I’m merely trying to keep my personal spending (the “burn rate”) in check by maintaining an awareness of what’s up. This is pretty much lunch money, small gifts, and entertaining the sweetheart. My rule is going to be that any personal spending I have to initiate I will track. So, I’ll count the $50 mobile phone bill, for the sake of a healthy challenge.
Technical note: I don’t know for spreadsheets, but the formula for setting up the balance column was to start at cell D3 with this formula:
=IF(A3="",,SUM(D2+C3))
This basically means that if the date (A3) on this row is filled in, add the amount (C3) to the previous total (D2). I was then able to “copy” that cell, multi-select all the cells below, and “paste” and the formula got updated each row, as my Excel Guru colleague expected.
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