April 2005 Archives
seigniorage - revenue or a profit taken from the minting of coins, usually the difference between the value of the bullion used and the face value of the coin.
Apparently, the US Mint has earned $5 billion with the state quarters. It costs 5 cents to make one, so all the collectors effectively pay 20 cents to save each state quarter.
Justin was getting in the shower when I woke up. I slunk back to bed, and spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes working on last Sunday's LA Times crossword puzzle. (For the first time in ages, the very middle across answer went all the way from side to side.) I started with about one-third of the puzzle complete, and ended with only a small block in the upper-right to finish.
Next, I spent some quality time with the new Aerostitch catalog. On top of the cool stuff in there, the copywriters have too good a time writing the descriptions for each item. Another great way to pass twenty minutes or so.
I'm still trying different options for on-bike audio. For whatever reason, both of the MixIt's that Keith sent me throw out random, high-volume noise that is distracting at best and often unbearable. In the last package Keith included a Tessaract xma3, similar to the MixIt but without a volume control. It worked well on the ride into work this morning. Another option is to connect the e2c's directly to the Shuffle, and use a loud external speaker for the V1.
Keith also sent some power connectors to wire up the tank bag, but I'm leaning towards mounting a Powerlet outlet on panel D, above the battery. This weekend is shot, but maybe the next one?
The calendar on the Headache page started out with three months, grew to six months, and is now (and forever) a full twelve months. From the beginning the monthly calendars have been wrapped in a <div id="calendar"> tag. With the recent change over to a Print-specific style sheet, I decided to move the daily narrative section of the Headache page to a new page when printed. The calendar entry for the print.css style sheet now includes "page-break-after: always;", which FireFox happily supports.
Each of the doctors that I hand the diary to are interested in the calendars, but they don't seem to really care about the narrative. With the calendars on a separate page, their bookkeeping will be simplified.
I'll take the new printout to Dr. Liao on Thursday morning, along with my fully-notarized Advanced Health Care Directive.
Justin and I had a discussion (read: argument) about the need to move the Cadillac closer to the curb on the left side of the driveway. He thought it was fine where it was, about a foot away from the curb. His mother complains about getting her car past the Cadillac into the garage, and since I have to park the FJR behind her car, anything I can do to help her get it into the garage is good news for me.
On Sunday evening I was puttering around the yard, watering the grass, cleaning up the garage and such, and decided to make the move. When I told Justin about it, he gave me all kinds of grief, so I took a couple of pictures to prove to him that I did actually get the car about half an inch from the curb.
Continue reading Half an inch.
Jason's friend Dave, who always calls me "sir", got married on Saturday, April 16th. I took some pictures of groomsman Jason and his escort Jennie after they returned from the festivites.
Individual-I is a new campaign that Bruce Schneier has launched, to promote the idea of individual liberty. The sign shown here -- a vaguely humanoid capital letter I -- is intended to be a readily recognized symbol of personal liberty, freedom from surveillance and control, guarantee of due process rights and other fundamentals that are eroding in today's world. It is meant to be as recognizable and simple as a peace symbol or a cross, and as iconic.
via Boing Boing.
I print out my headache diary each time I visit a doctor, with varying results. What looks pretty (enough, at least) on the screen doesn't translate well to a printed page. IE has big trouble printing it in portrait, as well, with the text getting cropped on the right margin.
In honor of this morning's visit to Dr. Wogenson, I created a print-specific style sheet, and changed a couple of templates to make it work. The Meta template now includes media="screen" on the original style sheet LINKs, along with a new link to print.css with media="print". The Banner template includes a new #printhead div, with goption in stylized text. The screen style sheets set display:none; for #printhead, and the print stylesheet sets display:none; for the standard header and menu div's.
The print style sheet also removes the page background, the border around the master div, and a few other minor changes.
The site looks the same when viewed on the screen, but now looks much better when printed.
The kids moan when I watch golf on TV, but they hung around to see Tiger Woods make an incredible shot from off the back of the 16th green at Augusta in the 2005 Masters. He chipped from the edge of the second cut, with enough backspin to stop it at the top of the downhill, where it took a 90° turn to the right and eased towards the cup. It slowed as it neared the hole, and paused for a full two seconds before dropping in to the huge cheers from the gallery.
The Nike swoosh on his ball was clearly visible just as the ball dropped in. We all said that the ad agency for Nike would have a commercial ready by the end of the tournament, but Joseph Jaffe beat them to it:
I took a three-day trip up the coast at the end of March, 2005.
From kottke:
I've always liked the old designer's adage of "good, fast, or cheap, pick two". That is, a project can be completed quickly, it can be done cheap, and it can be done well, but you need to choose which two of those you want. If you want a good project done quickly, it's gonna be expensive. Fast and cheap? It's gonna suck. In his talk at SXSW, Jason Fried outlined another pick two scenario clients need to be aware of: "fixed scope, fixed timeframe, or fixed budget". Here are some more variations:
Elegant, documented, on time.
Privacy, accuracy, security.
Have fun, do good, stay out of trouble.
Study, socialize, sleep.
Diverse, free, equal.
Fast, efficient, useful.
Cheap, healthy, tasty.
Secure, usable, affordable.
Short, memorable, unique.
Cheap, light, strong.
In considering these sets of trade-offs -- accepting that they are cliches and therefore both overly general but also fairly accurate across a range of diverse situations -- two questions come to mind.
- Why is "pick two out of three" the rule? Why not "one out of two" or "four out of six"? Or is "pick two out of three" just a cultural assumption?
- Is there some underlying scientific or economic relationship here? What do the situations in which "pick two" logic applies have in common? In clumsily casting about for an appropriate explanation/metaphor, I considered the triangle (all interior angles add up to 180 degrees), thermodynamics and entropy, Boyle's Law, Hooke's Law, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (although that's a "one out of two" thing), Ohm's Law, and Newton's Second Law of Motion, but none seem to fit well.
I originally had an appointment for Friday, March 25th, but Rebecca called to say I couldn't come in. The Red Cross limits people to 24 donations in any 365-day period, and I had hit the limit.
I ate too much at Margie's before starting out on some all-new roads.
Creston Rd. starts from 13th St. and the 101 in Paso, winding south and a little east. In the quaint (no, really) town of Creston, it turns into SR-229. Wow.
SR-229 winds south under a canopy of oaks, past horse ranches in the rolling hills. It only runs for ten miles, but it's some of the best ten miles I've ever ridden. They were running an annual Wildflower Bike Ride on the same road, but I was early enough to avoid most of the riders.
SR-58 gets compared on Pashnit to the best of California's motorcycling roads - Angeles Crest, SR-36 - impressive company. It's broken down into thirds: twisty and hilly on the west, followed by a straight and fast section with fun whoopdees, followed by more twists and hills on the eastern end.
It was all it was made out to be, and maybe even more with the green hills and massive wildflowers on display. My back was yowling after three long days in the saddle, but the ride was still very cool. The bugs were out in force, though.
SR-33 is pretty dreary through the Kern County oil fields. Cerro Noroeste was fast and fun, as always. I-5 was harsh without the V-1. My back was screaming all down the I-210.
When I found out the McDonald's next to the motel had no sugar (as in none - at all), I wasn't sure how the day would go, but things turned out fun, if not messy.
After gassing up, I started out for Carmel around 9:00am. I always enjoy the last 15 miles of SR-46 on the way to SR-1, and the green rolling hills looked especially inviting today. The first forty miles of SR-1 were fun and fast.
About halfway, I was passed by a guy on a Harley. I've never paid much attention to the various models of Harley's, so I couldn't tell you, but he passed me over a double-yellow while I was waiting to legally pass a slower car.
For a variety of reasons, I choose not to pass over a double yellow. First, the obvious: it's dangerous. I'd hate for my kids to have to tell people that their dad was killed while passing over a double yellow. It also reinforces the widely held view that motorcyclists are a bunch of crazies that make everyone less safe on the road. I make only a few exceptions: if a motorist on a lonely stretch of road slows down and moves to the right (but not into a turnout) and invites me to pass, I'll do it - as the safer option. Refusing this offer causes confusion at best, and hard feelings at worst, and it just makes sense to go for it.
Between the dead bugs and the smears from me trying to clean off the dead bugs, by the time I reached Carmel I could hardly see through my shield. I had a mocha and a muffin at my coffee place, decided to wait on more gas, and made my way to Carmel Valley Rd.
After a few miles of residential traffic, Carmel Valley Rd. (G-16) turns into a superb motorcycling road. Medium-length straights mixed with tight turns and wide sweepers, all under a canopy of oaks following a small stream. Late in this section I peeked up the stream heading into a turn and saw a small deer taking a drink. Very cool.
All the rivers and streams I came across were flowing strongly.
I stopped for gas and a sundae in King City. I called my friend Connie to wish her a happy birthday.
G-14 is less twisty than G-16, running from King City back to Paso by way of Lake Nacimiento and Lake San Antonio. Lake Nacimiento looked a lot higher than I remember. (I talked to my boss about it, and he says the lake fills up almost every spring, and gets nearly drained for agricultural use every fall.)
I had a carne asada taco combo from the Mexican place next to the motel. They've changed owners, but I still enjoyed it. I was somewhat dehydrated by the end of the day.
