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Blog General Personal

Still Alive

Posting suddenly got very sporadic since I’ve been so busy. Going to work on getting it back to normal real soon.

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Personal

2012 By The Numbers

Carrying over the commute from last year (minus a few more WFH days) and taking an extremely educated guess at foot travel.

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 =  111.08 mi daily
                                                                x  245 days
                                                               --------------
                                                                27,214 mi
Flying:
  2,676 mi + 2,437 = 5,112 mi
  2,948 mi + 2,518 = 5,466 mi
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
                                                             =  17,890 mi

Cruise:
  850 mi (estimate)
                                                             =  850 mi

Walk (via pedometer minus treadmill estimated)
  ~1,200 mi - 294 mi =                                        =  906 mi


Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                        = ~3,500 mi

                                                               --------------
Total:                                                          50,360 mi

Velocity for 2012: 50,360 / 8,760 = 5.75 mph

Laps around Earth: 50,360 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 2.022 laps

That might be the first time I’ve ever broken 2 laps around the earth. It’s alarming to think that with relatively little travel I still did 2 laps around the earth. I’m always on the go.

Categories
In The News Personal

Post Hurricane Sandy

Bandwidth

Things have been quiet for a few days thanks the Hurricane Sandy. Power went out Monday afternoon and wasn’t restored until Thursday afternoon. About 4 hours after that it was cut again and was restored this afternoon. Despite that I still managed to work until 3:30 AM Tuesday fighting fires at work thanks to extremely slow cellular connectivity. Lots to catch up on, lots of deadlines to still hit over the next several days.

Believe it or not, the above image was delightfully fast internet access during the storm. For the majority of the time it was way worse.

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Personal

Catching Up

I was away for the past week, as a result I’ll be in catch up mode for the next day or two as I process through things. Unlike in the past. I did relatively well keeping up with things like email, so I expect it to be much easier.

Categories
Personal

2011 By The Numbers

Since I do this every year, I’ll just get this out of the way now. Carrying over the commute from last year and taking an extremely educated guess at foot travel. I’m up slightly from 2010.

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 =  111.08 mi daily
                                                                x  255 days
                                                               --------------
                                                                28,325 mi
Flying:
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
  1,617 mi x 2 = 3,234 mi
                                                             =  10,546 mi

Cruise:
  1,318 mi
                                                             =  1,318 mi

Walk (via pedometer minus treadmill estimated)
  1,160 mi - 250 mi =                                        =    910 mi


Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                        = ~1,300 mi

                                                               --------------
Total:                                                          42,399 mi

Velocity for 2011: 42,399 / 8,760 = 4.84 mph

Laps around Earth: 42,399 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.7 laps

My average speed is now almost 5X what the NASA’s crawler-transporter’s did moving the Shuttles.

Categories
Hardware Personal

A Mortician Repair Man

I never throw anything out just because it’s “broken” without attempting to fix it. Generally speaking I’m handy enough that I can get things back up and running. Given my family history I had a 50/50 chance of inheriting this trait. I’ve done this from a very young age. It’s clearly something deep inside my psyche.

One odd thing I’ve noticed is that even when I come to the realization something can’t be repaired because of either cost, ability, parts, whatever, I’m still obsessively inclined to reassemble as if I completed a successful repair. Every screw exactly as it was fully assembled from the factory. It’s similar to a mortician dressing up the diseased before burial. I’m not sure if it’s an intellectual challenge (do I recall where everything goes) or just some sort of OCD. I suspect the former slight more than the latter. I can’t recall ever just sweeping something off the table into the trash.

I’m not sure if I’m alone in this, or if it’s common amongst those who repair their own gadgets.

Categories
Personal

2010 By The Numbers

And 2010’s numbers…

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 =  111.08 mi daily
                                                                x  255 days
                                                               -----------------
                                                                28,325.4 mi
Flying:
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
  1,540 mi x 2 = 3,080 mi
                                                              = 10,392.0 mi

Walk (via pedometer minus treadmill (246 mi))
  1,145 mi - 246 mi =                                         = 899 mi                    
  
Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                          ~1,300.0 mi

                                                               ----------------
Total:                                                          40,916.4 mi

Velocity for 2010: 40,916.4 / 8,760 = 4.67 mph

Laps around Earth: 40,916.4 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.64 laps

That includes the 2,000,572 steps recorded via a pedometer. I realized tonight I was about 1,000 short of the 2 million mark so I hopped on the treadmill for a quick 1,000 step walk to make it at around 10:00 PM.

My velocity last year was 4.43 mph, so a slight jump based on a few more steps and slightly more flying.

Categories
Personal

Advice From Lord Polonius To Laertes

Learning Shakespeare in High School is done more out of tradition than practicality. Lets face it, there’s little to learn in Romeo & Juliet that you can’t learn watching MTV or Jerry Springer except perhaps Iambic pentameter.

One of the notable exceptions is Act I Scene III of Hamet when Lord Polonius gives some advice to Laertes. This seems like pretty sound advice for anyone:

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice” always reminds me of Plato’s “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something”.

Categories
Personal

2009 By The Numbers

Now to crunch the numbers for 2009…

Commute:
  (6.85 mi [drive] + 47.4 mi [train] + 1.29 mi [subway]) x 2 = 111.08 mi daily
                                                               x  255 days
                                                               -----------------
                                                               28,325.4 mi
Flying:                                                       
  3,656 mi x 2 = 7,312 mi
    779 mi x 2 = 1,558 mi
                                                              = 8,870.0 mi

Walk:                                                           1,065.0 mi

Etc (misc, pretty random guess here):                          ~1,000.0 mi

                                                              ----------------
Total:                                                        39,260.4 mi

Velocity for 2009: 39,260.4 / 8,760 = 4.43 mph

Laps around Earth: 39,260 mi / 24,901.55 mi (earth circumference at equator) = 1.58 laps

Not bad, more than a lap around the earth! At an average distance of 238,857 miles it would still take 6.08 years to make it to the moon.

Categories
General Mozilla Personal

Happy Festivus

Festivus PoleAs everyone knows, today is Fetivus. So happy Festivus.

For those who need some background, they can read my previous post from 2006.

Hopefully we can get bug 394616 fixed so Firefox doesn’t mark Festivus as a misspelled word. It’s getting annoying (I know I can add the word, but I periodically clean things up and that goes away). That said, a spell checker’s ability to correct my amazingly wrong spelling of Hanukkah is amazing. No matter how badly I misspell it, and I can assure you I do a great job of it, Firefox always knows what I want. If you haven’t tried that before, give it a go. Someone told me a long time ago Hanukkah is one of the best words to test the abilities of a spell checker with. This is true either because spell spell checkers require skill to fix it, or because it’s so easy to misspell. Next time you need to review spell checkers, this is a test you can use. you’re welcome.

While I’m on the topic of holidays, here’s a Christmas message from a monkey as the queen typically does. It’s pretty well done for a YouTube video.