Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/07/20/talgo/
When I rode Talgo, there was a delay.
On Friday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced that 2 or 4 Talgo trainsets would be purchased for Amtrak’s Hiawatha service between Chicago and Milwaukee. Apparently, these will be Talgo XXI trainsets which have run at a top speed of 159 MPH, yielding a speed record claim for diesel train travel.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the trip to Milwaukee will come in at under one hour. Even better, the Hiawatha serves Milwaukee’s airport, Mitchell Field. If Chicago residents can get to Milwaukee’s airport in less than an hour, there would no need to build the fabled “third airport.”
High Speed Rail? Yes, we can!
I rode an older Talgo in Spain, which was delayed due to a fire on the tracks ahead of us. They passed out soft drinks as we sat, and the Spaniards began playing music.
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/07/16/airhowa-png/
Virgin America has wireless access on its flights. For $13 you get enough bandwidth to video conference. It was fun.
I tried not to talk too much or too loudly from my seat. To be sure, everyone on Virgin America is pretty much immersed in their personal entertainment anyway so its not so much of a thing.
(Thanks, Todd, for the screen capture.)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/07/10/wfa-work-from-air/
I’m flying to New York. Fortunately, I needn’t lose a work day because for $15, Virgin America has got me on the Internet!
It is zippy enough, and the latency is perfectly fine, so I am guessing it is a terrestrial network. VPN works fine, too.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Last Result:
Download Speed: 964 kbps (120.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 337 kbps (42.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
It is a bit cramped, for sure. Fortunately, my Dell Mini 10 arrived yesterday, with Ubuntu pre-installed. (Vendor Linux!) I hope to write more about that later, but this is a zippy little thing that is probably about as usable as you’re ever going to get in a coach class airplane seat. Yay!
Virgin claim to have power plugs at each seat. I haven’t seen mine, but given the battery life this thing claims, I shouldn’t need to plug in for the duration of this continental crossing.
That looks like . . . Nevada. No . . . we’re above US Route 6 in Utah. 2112 miles to go. That’s another thing I dig about Virgin America: an interactive map at the seat terminal, and an adjustable headrest, which Southwest lacks . . .
Well, this is a work day, better get back to working.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/07/05/how-i-save-money/
When I was younger and earned less money, I was encouraged to save. Put a little away each month into savings! That is a wonderful sentiment, but after meeting expenses, what is ever left over?
Some years back after hard times I took a new job, set up new bank accounts, and had my paychecks direct-deposited into Savings. Using the online banking interface I set up a monthly recurring transfer from savings to checking. I began saving money without effort.
It is hard, though, to start from nothing. A windfall helps. If you are me you don’t want to squander good fortune, which is what one naturally does without some sort of system. It is harder, though, to start from nothing.
When you have some savings, you see interest accumulating on the monthly statement. You’re getting money for free! Neat! Sure, it isn’t much but dang it is nice to get ahead of the curve. Times have been good these past years, my savings account has enough money in it to maintain my normal monthly allowance for 3-6 months. (And somewhat more than that if I am layed off and collect Unemployment Insurance.)
Once I have about six months worth of expenses saved up, I usually purchase a CD, which means the bank holds on to my money for a certain period of time, with a certain guaranteed return. Anything beyond six months of income I invest in stock market index funds (ETFs) because I have read that over a long enough time horizon, the stock market provides a better average rate of return than banks do. I can afford that risk, but it is nice to have that one pool of money in a CD coming back to me with a certain return at a certain date, in case things have gotten squirrelly.
While we are in the middle of a nasty recession, my own job is fairly secure. Last time I had savings enough to roll over, I decided to forego the currently-low interest rates and instead buy straight into an ETF. This was in March, when the market had pretty well bottomed out, so although my other stocks and 401(k)s and the like have lost value, that lot of stock purchase has grown in value by 40% and I can smile and claim to be a financial mastermind.
Oh yeah, those 401(k)s . . . and my employer’s stock-purchase program. Times are good: my salary is considerably more than my expenses, so lots of money is drained away from my paychecks into retirement savings, and another pool of capital, before it hits the reservoir of my savings account, which I then tap into my checking to meet expenses. A wiser person than me would manage investments such that one pool is for retirement, another for a house, or a college fund, or whatever . . . I’m not that clever, which is why contributing to 401(k)s is nice: that money is set aside by government mandate! My main financial ambition these days is to buy a house, probably after I get married. (That is a different topic.)
Another financial ambition I have been putting off is college money. For the one part, I don’t have kids of my own yet, and there’s no guarantee I ever will. But I am also an Uncle and a God-father: there are children I know whom I want to succeed . . . on the other hand my own experience is that after I was discharged from the Army, I was a non-dependent and eligible for a lot of financial aid, and I attended an inexpensive state school. It is nice if you can rely on your parents’ generation to help you through school, but I also know that “God bless the child that’s got his own.” That’s not to say I don’t want to help, only that I know that even if I can not help, a way can be found.
All the same, it is a challenge and a strain sometimes to live on a “fixed” income, when there is plenty of money that could be spent so easily. To be sure, I kind of enjoying saying “no” to fancy stuff, and driving around in my old car, making do with less, as generations before have done. But I also like to eat out for lunch, take my girl out, fly home for holidays, buy nice clothes, and support my hobbies. I’ll squeeze a little extra out of the piggy bank for the holidays, maybe a vacation, and other one-time expenses like maybe a new computer, and the occasional needs of broke relatives, but I am mostly tight-fisted. The past few months I have had a growing credit-card balance. I raised my “allowance” for the first time in years to pay it off quicker, but I’d rather endure the sting of interest rates that encourage me to say “no” more often than to raid the piggy bank . . . even when times are good, money is a hassle.
If things continue to go well, I like to think there will be a day in the future where I stand proudly in the newly-purchased house that is the fruit of my labors and discipline. Then I’ll have decades of mortgage payments to look forward to. I’ll feel even more nostalgia for the earlier lean times, when life was full of possibilities. But I will also have the thrill of knowing that my settled, successful, middle-class life offers possibilities of its own.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/07/04/snapshot-my-e-mail-archive/
0-14:22 djh@ratchet ~> ls -lh mail/archive-*
-rw------- 1 djh djh 18M Jun 14 17:17 mail/archive-1997
-rw------- 1 djh djh 29M Jun 14 17:16 mail/archive-1998
-rw------- 1 djh djh 18M Jun 14 17:13 mail/archive-1999
-rw------- 1 djh djh 26M Jun 14 17:13 mail/archive-2000
-rw------- 1 djh djh 25M Jun 14 17:11 mail/archive-2001
-rw------- 1 djh djh 18M Jun 17 2004 mail/archive-2002
-rw------- 1 djh djh 25M Jun 14 17:09 mail/archive-2003
-rw------- 1 djh djh 15M Jun 14 17:08 mail/archive-2004
-rw------- 1 djh djh 63M Jun 14 17:05 mail/archive-2005
-rw------- 1 djh djh 202M Jun 14 16:54 mail/archive-2006
-rw------- 1 djh djh 362M Jun 14 18:06 mail/archive-2007
-rw------- 1 djh djh 202M Jun 14 19:17 mail/archive-2008
I recently went through, and using mutt’s date-range filters, revised my e-mail archives, most notably saving messages stored in Gmail into these annual mbox archives.
I think it was around late 2005 that I started using Flickr, so the ramp up in sizes is pictures being e-mailed from mobile devices.
I delete most e-mail that I receive, but I pretty much archive all personal correspondence, and anything I send.
Also, I was disappointed that when I tried to copy archival messages into Gmail, via IMAP, Gmail would interpret the message date as the date it was copied in to the archive, and not the date the messages was created. That was disappointing. I like Gmail’s search capability, so it would have been nice to give it access to my corpus.
Mainly though, I dig Gmail’s interface, especially while traveling. But I recently got mutt running again because it is a much faster way to step through an Inbox and delete / reply / Archive than clicky click web interface. If only I could give it access to my Gmail contacts . . .
March 1997 was when my server hard drive crashed, and after that I began to take disaster recovery more seriously.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/06/26/inland-north-represent/
This quiz gets it right:
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Inland North
You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”
|
| The Midland |
|
| The Northeast |
|
| Philadelphia |
|
| North Central |
|
| The South |
|
| The West |
|
| Boston |
|
What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
Donchya know, eh?
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/06/23/ensure-my-safety/
There’s a new billboard at the bus stop at 19th Ave and Taraval. I could read the first three characters with my own little brain:
ä¿ Insurance
我 I
安 Safety / shelter
Looking up the fourth character: 全 (all) I see that the last two characters together mean "safety". 安 is easy to remember, because "woman under a roof" means safety / shelter / security.
ä¿æˆ‘安全
bao3wo3an1quan2
Ensure My Safety
There are many insurance agencies in the neighborhood.
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/06/17/adsense-suspended/
Back in 2005, Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience at Google, stated:
“There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”
Apparently Google lacks the same sort of respect for the web sites of its AdSense customers, because they started putting animated advertising on my site.
“Say it aint so.”
According to Google’s “self-service tech support” there is no way to turn them off, short of reverting to text-only ads.
This is wrong on a few levels. And I’m not sure if Google is just being its regular sloppy self or if they are getting desperate for revenue such that they’re finding more wiggle room in the “don’t be evil” philosophy.
Whatever is going on down in Mountain View, I will just get along without the $10/mo or so I’ve gotten from AdSense revenue.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/06/17/spam-honorable-mention/
I hate spam at least as much as the next guy. Heck, fighting spam is my day job. But I just gotta say, this little guy who made it through the Gmail spam filter this morning just made me smile:
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/05/27/transit-etiquette/
I will never forget a day in high school when I was sitting on a crowded bus, headed home, and the lady in front of me, who was not old or pregnant, had what looked to me to be a pained expression on her face. I wondered if maybe her legs hurt as the vehicle lurched around, but I was a shy kid scared to offer her my seat in case really I had just totally misread the situation. After a while the crowd eased and the woman took a seat near me with obvious relief. I had failed on that day to give my seat to someone in need, and ever since I have made an effort not to repeat that mistake by paying greater attention to my fellow passengers.
I still ride transit most weekdays, and I have noticed especially that younger people tend to fail at the whole courtesy thing. Part of it may be self-involved rudeness, but part of it I think is a combination of shyness, and a fear of making contact with strangers in a public place. My generation was raised on the lessons that the world outside our homes is extremely violent and treacherous and that the most dangerous thing a child could ever ever do is to talk to a stranger. I like to think that with time most people grow out of their shells and feel more comfortable taking the initiative for social responsibility.
My own strategy is that if I see a person who might better deserve my seat, I try to make eye contact, at which point I start to get out of my chair. Then they either move forward or gesture for me to sit down. (It is better to err on the side of getting someone a seat. Also, I think people looking for a seat know to look others in the eye.) In other cases if the vehicle is crowded and eye contact can not be achieved, I’ll often just stand the heck up anyway, positioning myself in such a way that the person who could best use my seat finds it most accessible. (I would hate for a young punk to ignorantly snipe my seat.) (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/05/11/twitter/
I think Twitter is over rated. Some BBC commentator was yammering on the radio this weekend about how Twitter was insufficient to replace established media. WTF? Twitter is a way to waste a few minutes of time and occasionally score a chuckle or a wry observation off a friend. Much like a grilled cheese sandwich, Twitter should not be taken too seriously. And yet, there’s a whole ecosystem of people re-tweeting each other and #tagging their posts and live-tweeting as if like hey, its the blog-o-sphere 5.0 with a 140-character limit. Seriously, if you’re imitating the blagojoshere, you’re doing it wrong.
Today, I tweeted:
Twitter would be more pleasing if not for all the RT RT RT RT and #tagged #whoring #bullshit. I mostly un-follow those twats.
Which gets mirrored over to Facebook, where three people have “liked” it.
Consider this entry as my coming out of the Twitter closet. You can follow me if you like, but I really really really don’t care.
But I will say this for Twitter: it keeps my rants short!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/04/14/systematic-developmental-retardation/
I am presently enjoying an old thick history book. A footnote in the first chapter says:
“Biologically considered, the distinguishing mark of humanity was systematic developmental retardation, making the human child infantile in comparison to the normal protohuman. Some adult human traits are also infantile when compared to those of an ape: e.g., the overdevelopment of brain size in relation to the rest of the body, underdevelopment of teeth and brow-ridges. But developmental retardation of course meant prolonged plasticity, so that learning could be lengthened. Thereby the range of cultural as against mere biological evolution widened enormously; and humanity launched itself upon a biologically as well as historically extraordinary career.”
W H McNeill
“The Rise of the West”
I was thinking that domesticated animals are similarly developmentally retarded relations of their wild kin. Dogs mature to a wolfishly adolescent level. By remaining in a younger, more affably co-dependent state, they more easily get along with humans. From what I have seen, a lot of adult humans could be described as childish, and while the usual concern is that they are less effective for their childishness, they also subordinate themselves more readily to more ambitious leaders, and this facilitates collaboration.
Or, I guess, domesticated humans and animals fall more naturally into packs, for better and for worse.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/04/10/dream-scramble-time-at-a-methadone-clinic/
I was at some sort of lecture for really smart people, and a precocious young woman asked a technical question of the speaker, who answered back with some Math, and the questioner apologetically asked for a moment to run the Math through her head before she could follow-up. The speaker replied that she should take her time, because after all, “this is an open forum, not scramble time at a methadone clinic.”
And I was like where the heck did that line come from?!
Later in the dream I was looking for my car in a parking garage and found it not where I thought I had parked it but a little ways away where I had actually parked it earlier in the dream. I was like “this dream has a great continuity” and then I had to pee so I was looking for a toilet in the parking garage. That is when I got up to pee, and realized that I had slept really soundly this night. I was glad the sun was managing to peek through the clouds.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/04/02/better-slacking-through-science/
Look what I found on the Internet, via a Facebook friend: Facebook, YouTube make better employees: study
The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.
[ . . . ]
“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the Internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days’ work, and as a result, increased productivity,” [Study author Brent Coker] said.
Nine percent, biatch! The article points out they’re talking Internet browsing < 20% of the time, and that Internet addicts lose productivity. I think this is consistent with “work-life balance” . . . take a break to clear your mind, then get back to work refreshed.
Taking a walk in the sunshine is also a nice alternative to the Intarnetz.
I also think drinking lots of water and coffee is a good habit: you keep getting out of your chair to adjust your fluid balance, if ya know what I mean. Also, eating-at-your-desk is an awful awful sin which should be committed only when you don’t have much choice. Like, on Tuesday I had an all-day deployment, otherwise I take my food down to a sunny spot in the cafeteria and enjoy with a book or magazine.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2009/03/28/the-sun-is-an-excellent-magazine/
A couple years back I came upon this magazine somewhere that was all poetry, prose, and black-and-white photographs. And the stuff inside was good. I love reading and I used to mostly keep up with The New Yorker. These days The Sun is one of two magazines I subscribe to. It is more enjoyable and less of a burden than The New Yorker.
Another thing about The Sun that I really appreciate is that there are no ads. Just me and the writer, mediated only by the editorial staff of The Sun and some pleasing typesetting. As the editor, Sy Safransky recently explained in his annual appeal for donations from Friends Of The Sun:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with some advertising, just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with a traveling salesman knocking on your door. But you probably wouldn’t invite the salesman in if you and a friend were having an intimate conversation. In a magazine that strives for emotional candor and a reader’s quiet respect, a sales pitch is an unwelcome distraction. I want to place one simple demand on a reader’s attention: the content. Nothing else.
I sent them some cash last year. This year I figured maybe I can send a couple subscribers? If you’re looking for good stuff to read on a monthly basis, I totally recommend a subscription to The Sun. And if you happen to be kinda poor, drop me a line with your home address because when I renew I have been known to throw in some gift subscriptions and you might could get lucky.
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/
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