Dear business world,
Please stop with the legal and confidentiality disclaimers on emails that stretch out 10+ lines. Same goes for top-posting on a thread of five e-mails in one. You’re annoying me to no end, especially when your added contribution is only one line.
E-mail disclaimer hate
Feb 10th, 2009 by bwann
Catching up
Feb 8th, 2009 by bwann
I suppose I should call this the unfinished blog entry since it’s been sitting in my editor for nearly exactly a week now.
I have acquired every episode of House and have successfully watched each episode. I’ve been watching it as it was on the telly every now and then, but now I’m complete. Season three has a nice share of cute blondes. At first I had a crush on the daughter of the cheese bacteria guy, Keri Lynn Pratt. Now I’ve passed her up and have an eye on the stalker 17 yr old, Leighton Meester.
I spent this last weekend being completely lazy, trying to catch up on sleep. After sleeping in until 1 PM, napping from 6 PM – 7 PM, tea from 9:30-10 PM, I’m fairly sure it’ll be up until 3 AM.
I spent this weekend being completely lazy as well. After a very busy week at work I wanted to either get out of town for randomness or do nothing. I had thought of driving 1000 miles to the east on Saturday to see where I’d wind up. Maps tell me I’d almost make it to Jacksonville, FL; the coast would be just a bit longer. I actually had a change of clothes in my pack ready to go, but sleeping in wound up winning instead. I’m still sleeping like crap.
I turn 30 in 38 days. It doesn’t seems like a earth shattering milestone, but means I’m no longer twenty-something. I hadn’t thought ahead to what I’m doing. Dean Karnazes ran his first 30 miler on the night of his 30th birthday. It’s unlikely I’ll do the same thing, but nice to know I’m not too far behind in the game. Folklore says I should be on my 2nd marriage by now and a successful manager. I got my eight year stint of running a company out of the way early, so I’m just short the [ex-]wife now.
I went out last Tuesday night to catch Mike and the Moonpies play at Hole in the Wall. It felt really weird going out, like I hadn’t seen that part of Austin in months. Wasn’t the same crowd I was used to seeing from the old Wednesday night shows, so I felt disconnected and out of place.
Carrying a several-hundred calorie/day deficit has hit a plateau. I had a steady weight loss for a couple of months and now can’t seem to get below 168. I’ve definately lost muscle mass, which I expect to gain back pretty soon when I start cycling again. I was wandering around the area today, lots of quiet neighborhood riding to be done up here. Many steep climbs to get there though.
Tiesto in Concert 2004 gave me a great idea for Burning Man. During Eastern Magik there’s this big huge (20′-30′?) cloth/canvas head on which a face is projected. The face just does nothing but look over the crowd, the gaze shifting from here to there. I can easily see that peering over the playa and getting a reaction. No idea if anything like that has been done. I’m short a powerful projector, crane, and canvas head anyways.
My project this year is generating enough electricity to run an RV air conditioner. So far the specs on what a unit requires are escaping me. I still intend to purchase a small wind turbine and better polycrystaline photovoltaic panels this year. I think between the two I should be able to generate several hundred watts during the day, but this isn’t enough to drive an AC continuously. Still looking into 12 V systems and swamp coolers. Either way, I should have enough juice to throw at the problem.
The Boston in-port races of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 are in May. My friend did not think much of my idea of moving his boat from Lake Travis to Galveston and sailing up to catch the action on the water. We’d have to depart like, last week, to make it in time. He has this silly notion that it’d be faster and cheaper to fly up and rent a boat up there. What happened to seeking adventure!
Cedar allergy hell
Jan 20th, 2009 by bwann
I am officially alergic to cedar pollen. It’s everywhere. Constant sneezing, runny nose, very itchy eyes. I started taking Zyrtec which helped some, then changed to Claritin-D. I bought a HEPA filter the other night and have been running it full blast in the bedroom. Still having problems with sleeping, hopefully I’m wore out enough after today to sleep soundly. The good thing about Claritin-D is the pseudoephedrine which leaves me mildly floaty feeling.
Re-living CHiPs
Jan 4th, 2009 by bwann
Things about CHiPs that highly amuse me:
- The episodes wrap up very tidily with no drama. Disputes just dissolve.
- I’ve seen two actors that are in Dallas: Mary Crosby (Kristen Shepard), Ken Kercheval (Cliff Barnes)
- The vehicles on the freeway scene move so slow. I don’t know if this is because of the big “Drive 55 to stay alive” campaign or if it was slowed down for filming.
- Michael Dorn (the klingon on Star Trek: TNG) was in the series as a CHP officer.
woo, new year
Jan 3rd, 2009 by bwann
Wee 2009! It’s been a slow couple of weeks and I’ve been glad. I spent Christmas in Oklahoma. I spent the most of that crashed on the couch like a king! I wound up working Friday, fortunately it was a pretty quiet day.
I got two seasons of CHiPs, been watching that here and there. The women in that series are much more attractive than in Dallas. I remember some of these, so I think I’ve seen part of the first season recently somewhere. I’m highly amused by how quickly and tidily the stories are wrapped up. No dramatics, the criminal just gives up. Also, regular (not even unleaded) gasoline for 60 cents per gallon!
AT&T finally ported my number to my iPhone. This means I am finally back to carrying one phone. Last night it felt weird not hooking my Nokia to the charger on my night stand. I’ve been doing this action right at 10 years; it’s quite the habit.
This weekend I was browsing through textbooks at UT’s school of business. One that was required for a supply chain management degree was called The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. Apparently quite the classic business book. It’s basically about operations management, written in novel form. A lot of the story hit home (“everthing is either hot, very hot, do it now!”) and I couldn’t stop reading it. In retrospect, some of the things about constraint management they discuss seems like it should be common sense. Things such as gathering data, identifying a bottleneck, preventing the bottleneck from going idle. After they save the plant the thrill stops, but I think that’s because it’s where the meat of theory of constraint is brought in.
Freak weather
Dec 15th, 2008 by bwann
It was quite stuffy in my apartment last night, I turned on the AC and went to bed. This morning I wake up to a frosty 33 F day; it was quite chilly in the apartment.
This of course is only second in comparison to it being 81 F at noon last Tuesday then plunging into the 30s with snow. That’s more impressive than the usual 70s -> snow we had in Oklahoma. I blame the global recession for the weird weather, “global warming” or “global climate change” is so old and busted.
Nov 30th, 2008 by bwann
The past few days were spent in Oklahoma visiting the family. I left Austin at 3 AM on Thursday morning and made it up in record time. Very little traffic, and that was the point.
Despite repeated pleas to “eat more” by my grandma, I managed to put on four pounds between all the turkey and drinking of tea to stay awake.
Friday night I ventured up to Tulsa to visit friends, but it turned out to be a complete waste of time as I couldn’t sync up with anybody. I did wind up doing a good amount of driving around to see what had changed. Many of the businesses and restaurants I used to frequent were gone. Fortunately First Watch and Full Moon were still there.
The city has apparently put a considerable amount of effort into fixing up downtown. All new city feature signs, not to mention the new hugeass BOK Center. Last time I was up, that hadn’t even been started. I saw several bike paths had been placed, new bike/pedestrian bridges in place. Half of Riverside park was torn up, looks like they’re putting in dual bike and pedestrian paths. I guess bike traffic has really picked up, or they’re at least planning on it.
Nevertheless t’s still dead on the weekends, not a lot happening. I don’t think they’ll ever come up with a unified entertainment district that gains critical mass. There’s the whole warehouse district, Cherry Street, 2nd street, and some stuff elsewhere. I just don’t see it as a place people will want to spend a lot of time at yet.
Seeing the old office building at 8th and Cincinnati really kicked me in the gut though. So many good, bad, and stressful memories of winding down the old company. It was really a culmination of memories of living there and all the good friends I lost contact with as we all grew up, moved off, and went our seperate ways.
I discovered the “small wind” industry tonight. One piece of this is the Air Breeze Land wind turbine. For $600 I think it’s worth playing with at Burning Man. Southwest Windpower makes a pretty neat telescoping pole mount which has a base that’s designed to be parked on by a RV or vehicle to hold it stationary. It’s a neat idea, but I’d like to see how practical it is in the field. Then I saw the price, $799, which is more than the turbine itself. This is what leads me to think “I could build this thing myself.”
Southwest Windpower also produces the Skystream 3.7, a much larger unit. I question its advertisement showing the rancher+hippy promoting the 3.7 for “grid-connected homes”. It claims “Skystream can … reduce your dependence on foreign oil.” Last time I checked, we don’t use oil for electricity generation in the US. We certainly use a lot of natural gas, and the vast majority of that is domestic. The only way I can see this holding true is if you were using a gasoline or diesel powered generator, or using your new found source to power an electric car. I digress, this sort of thing is what causes people to accuse me of being too literal.
Nov 23rd, 2008 by bwann
It’s animal kingdom around here. When I first moved in, I had three squirrels munching on the oak tree just off my balcony. Then the deer roaming about. Last month there was a pair of bucks walking down by the mail center. This month while walking out to my truck there were four raccoon crossing the parking lot. Earlier this week as I drove up the hill there was a group of six raccoons on the road. Last night as I walked down the hill from doing laundry, I looked over in the brush and there was a deer walking down with me no less than 30 feet away. Tonight there was a deer walking around the Walgreens parking lot on Mesa.
This is absolutely brilliant: Denny’s Introduces ‘Just a Humongous Bucket Of Eggs And Meat’
Nov 18th, 2008 by bwann
After one of my tires gave up life, I went to NTB at 7:30 on Saturday morning to buy new tires without waiting forever. $762 later I have new rubber. Now my truck must last another 70,000 miles so I can get my money’s worth out of them.
The upshot of falling crude prices is that airfare has gotten cheap once again. I bought a ticket to Boston for the first week of December for a little under $300. I need to buy a ticket for Christmas in Oklahoma before it’s too late.
I picked up Boone Picken’s newest book this weekend and finished it Sunday. I didn’t know much about him until I saw an article in the WSJ about his wind plans. He sounds like quite a character and he’s still going at it. I’m interested in his Clean Energy Fuels company, how they provide natural gas service stations.
I was eyeing Guitar Hero: World Tour at Fry’s on Sunday. I was still feeling my wallet burn after buying tires, so I passed it up. I somehow found myself at Half-Price Books buying an old “Fundamentals of Corporate Finance” textbook instead. It seems way more interesting, but you can’t exactly share that experience with your friends.
