Dave's Place / Metamusing

I always set my parking brake, something I am occasionally teased about. This weekend I got an almost painful reminder of why I do. It was snowing hard when I left work on Friday. I stopped at Atkins Farms for a few things on the way home, and forgot to set the parking brake. By the time I got back to the car it was completely shrouded in a light coating of snow. I could not see once I got in. I had Soolin with me and had picked up a small treat for her while in the store, and I started unwrapping it as I started the car. I turned to give it to her and while she was enjoying it I got a funny sensation and suddenly realized I was moving. I slammed on the brake, sending Soolin tumbling, and flicked on the rear windshield wiper. I was maybe half a car length from a small embankment that sits above Atkins, and the car had scooted most of the way through the parking lot, only 5-6 car lengths in total but my path crossed over 3 lanes of parking spaces and an area where there’s normally a lot of foot traffic. I was super lucky no one was walking through the lot when this happened, and that instincts kicked in and I slammed on the brakes before I went over the embankment. It’s only a couple of feet high but nothing good could have come of it. Three cheers for a little Friday luck!

I have the day off, and I’m taking advantage of it by wasting time on the internets. If you haven’t seen this before, it’s definitely worth a look – a ~3 minute animated history lesson:

I’m a bit behind, granted. I have a good excuse – came down with pneumonia and it really knocked the stuffing out of me. I’m just starting to feel myself again after fighting this off for three weeks, and I’m still fighting a cough and dealing with fatigue issues. Anyway, I made two resolutions this year: To get back on track with my diet and exercise regimen, and to follow an example I set myself several years ago with my buying habits.

The diet and exercise resolution has turned out to be easy thanks to the bout of pneumonia. My weight had been creeping up and by this fall I was over 180 for the first time in a number of years, something I had begun to worry about. Stomach issues and a generally slacker attitude to exercise had me off my regimen for almost all of the summer and fall, so I figured, time for a new years resolution to address it. Pressures off now though – I’m down under 170 for the first time in at least 4-5 years. I just need to keep it off. As soon as my stamina is back it’s back on the exercise regimen, possibly adding in running, which I haven’t done regularly since I left Maine.

The second resolution is inspired by a successful resolution from years ago. At that time I had gotten addicted to buying books off of Abe books, ebay, and Amazon, and my to-read pile was growing faster than my read pile was decreasing. I resolved to only buy a book after I had finished at least one, and to generally focus on bringing down the number of books in the to-read pile. It worked. I still have a huge to-read pile (>20 books) but it no longer grows and it’s no longer close to 100 books. This year I’m applying these principles to videogames, because my to-play pile is like 15 games at this point and maybe higher. I’ve resolved to not buy a new game unless I finish one, and to focus on finishing off games I’ve left partially completed. I have this terrible habit of starting whatever new game I acquire, playing it obsessively for a week or two until the next game comes, then moving on, rarely finishing anything. No more! I’m working my way through games at a rapid clip, and not opening anything still in the shrinkwrap until I knock games off the list. So far it’s working – I’ve finished 4-5 games since the year began, and this was with me unable to play games for two weeks thanks to the pneumonia.

I’m such a hopeless nerd.

I’ve also put myself on a budget. Mint.com rocks for helping you see where you spend your money. I spend too much of mine on games, and that’s stopping as well.

Anyway, to sum up a rambling post, figure on a lot of  ‘Game finished’ posts from me, especially over the next couple of months, as I focus on a game at a time instead of flitting from game to game.

A minor bummer for me, a major bummer for the local residents. Some months ago engineers discovered that the Champlain bridge was so compromised structurally that they immediately closed it down, and over the christmas holiday, they blew it up. There’s a video of that demolition below. The minor bummer for me is that I’ve travelled extensively in that region of upstate NY, and several times drove past that bridge without ever crossing over it. I’d even planned to several times as part of the annual kids camping weekend trip at Roger’s Rock Campground, but just never got around to it. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, it was the only drivable crossing of Lake Champlain, and local residents are now faced with using the seasonal ferry or daily commutes approaching 100 miles. They’re trying to work with the federal government to  get a replacement bridge constructed, but even if they succeed it’s going to take many years.   Here’s the location of the bridge on google maps, and below a local tv station’s footage of the demolition.

Herbie the Elm, courtesy of Flickr

Well, here’s a minor bummer. I lived in Yarmouth, Maine for like 7-8 years, and right around the corner from my house was the largest living Elm tree in the US. I used to jog by it almost daily when I exercised. It went by the name Herbie and it had a plaque at its base explaining how it was still around despite Dutch Elms disease. turns out that it finally lost the battle with the disease after a ~50 year fight, and the town is taking down the tree. There’s a piece about this on the Portland Press Herald site, plus more details and info on chotkes they’re going to make from the tree on the Yarmouth website

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I forgot to post this on Saturday after Susan and I went out hiking. The guidebook warned us the trails were poorly marked and it was right – we ended up off the trail, bushwacked, thought we had found the right trail, and ended up only hiking half as far as we had been planning. The location is great. It’s a trail system behind Holyoke Community College, very close to our house and with miles of trails snaking back through the area, so we’ll definitely be back.

Susan the dogs and I had a scare this morning when we encountered 2 rattlesnakes on a local trail system. Here’s a a photo and a brief video of one of the snakes:

Rattlesnake from David Hamilton on Vimeo.

Dave Arneson passed away yesterday. He played a critical role in the development of Dungeons and Dragons and role playing games in general, though he never received as much of the credit as Gary Gygax did. Both he and Gygax died relatively young. I spent my formative years playing games inspired by the work Arneson did, and to this day the fantasy computer and strategy games I play owe a debt to his imagination. My thoughts to his friends and family, and thanks for a life well lived. There’s a nice obit/writeup over on the escapist, and here’s Dave’s entry on wikipedia for those curious about his work and life.

The check engine light came on in my car for like maybe the 30th time last week. Mid-week, I dropped it off. I didn’t know it at the time, but my car was out of warranty based on date – I haven’t passed the mileage limit but the time had expired. They called the next day with bad news – I had a vacuum leak, they thought it was a sensor attached to the exhaust manifold and it was going to cost me at least $350, but could cost at least another $800 if there was something wrong with the exhaust manifold itself. Ouch! (the prices are high in part because it’s a modern car – they had to disassemble half the engine to get at these parts). Anyway they call back a day later with more bad news: it’s not the sensor, BUT – am I willing to risk another $250-300 to have them disassemble the exhaust manifold to check it, but not replace it?

At this point I was starting to wonder if they might be scamming me, but I took the gamble. Their thinking was, they had almost never seen an exhaust manifold in a car with mileage this low that had a leak, and that maybe something was fixable on the manifold itself by grinding it down/resealing etc.

At this point I’m looking at ~$500 with the possibility of another $800 hanging over my head, so I’m not happy and praying for a happy ending. Of course when they next call it’s nothing of the sort – they can’t fix the manifold, they have to replace it. Now I was half convinced they were scamming me, and I’m looking at ~$1300. Double ouch! They mention that they’re going to try and get Mazda corporate to reimburse some of the expense since while I’m technically out of warranty I have not exceeded the warranty miles and I have an unusual part failure issue. I don’t count much on this and at this point am pretty pissed. Poor Susan gets a couple of earfuls about this. Meanwhile I’ve also been in a rental all this time and since I’m not in warranty this is also on me and they won’t be able to get the car back to me until the following week. To sum up: all bad news.

When we return the rental (because Susan is back from Boston and can bring me to work) they tell me Mazda USA has agreed to pick up all parts costs plus most of the labor – all they ask me to pay is the local dealership’s time spent diagnosing, which amounts to ~$300. They even cover the cost of my rental.

!!!

Talk about a dealer doing you a solid. There’s no better way to earn customer loyalty than this kind of stuff, and they just earned mine bigtime. This car has been a pain in my ass with the constant check engine light stuff, but they definitely did the right thing by me this time around. Kudos to Mazda USA and Balise Mazda in Springfield MA, I owe a debt of gratitude to both of them.

Meanwhile I still can’t decide what to do with this car. It’s proven a constant source of reliability issues which are very out of the norm for the model and model year. I don’t figure I can continue to count on the dealership doing me solids when it has issues, so I feel like I ought to get out of the car now, but the situation kind of sucks – buying into something new means car payments again, just as I made my last payment! On the other hand, when this latest issue cropped up I was cussing myself since I swore after the last time that I had had it and it was time to trade the thing in. I dodged the bullet once, how many more times will I be able to? Susan and I will be debating this over the weekend, no idea how this will play out.

Susan and I spent most of last week in Washington, DC. For me this was mostly work – this year’s North American Drupalcon was in DC so I spent Wednesday-Friday in conference sessions from 9AM to 6:30 every night, then entertaining in the evenings. The conference was pretty good overall – I learned a lot and added a bunch of stuff to my todo list. Friday night I got together with a couple of old friends from college and had a blast catching up, hanging in a funky bar/restaurant that was Marvin Gaye themed and had a southern/belgian fusion menu (no typos there!). Saturday was my 42nd birthday and despite nursing a miserable cold Susan and I tromped all over the mall, visiting an exhibition of 15th century Dutch painting in the national gallery (cityscapes, really great stuff), an outdoor sculpture garden and skating rink, the National Botanical Garden, the Jefferson Memorial (which I had never been to), Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial Park, the Lincoln Memorial, and finally the Korean War Memorial. Sadly we ran out of gas at this point and never made it to the WWII Memorial which I had also hoped to see. We finished off with a poor choice for dinner by me. Susan doesn’t like chinese food so we never get to eat it, so for my birthday dinner I chose chinese. Sadly Washington DC has no good chinese food and the place we went to pretty much stunk. Despite this I had a great day. It was the first time I had been to DC since roughly ‘93 and outside of the mall area it was all new to me. We walked pretty much everywhere and by and large I really liked the city.

I’ll also mention that we took Amtrak both ways. It was pricier than flying, we got stuck for 2 hours in a broken down train, and the bathrooms were disgusting, but I’d still choose to travel that way again in a heartbeat, it is so much more comfortable than flying.

No friday fun this week – given what’s happening with the economy, I thought I’d try something a little different. Take 12 minutes of your life and watch the movie below. Better than anything I’ve seen it nicely summarizes what’s happened to our financial markets over the last couple of years.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

…but I think I know why they’re so anxious to pass it. Check out this graph of job losses over on speaker.gov:

job losses in the last 3 recessions in the US

Focus your eye on that green line. If things continue on that pace there’ll be mass protests in the streets before 2009 ends – no wonder the politicians are in a frenzy. Cross your fingers folks, we’re in for an uncomfortable year.

Check out this excellent sattelite photo of the inauguration day ceremonies:

popsci.com sattelite photo of the inauguration

There’s another image plus links to larger, higher resolution photos over at the original article. Cool stuff!

Last year my resolution was to give up my daily diet coke habit, and I actually succeeded, so this year I’m going to go for two resolutions. We’ll see how it goes. My first resolution is similar to last year’s, but this time I’ll focus on coffee. I drink way too much. My daily intake looks like: 2 cups before I get to work, a cup at work in the morning, and another cup in the afternoon after lunch. Things are even worse on the weekends, when I often drink three pots of coffee with Susan. For this year I’ll keep it simple, and resolve to lose the cup of coffee when I get to work.

My second resolution is to revisit one I madeand failed to keep a couple of years ago. You may notice the new lifestream in the right column of this site, and I’m going to do my bit to populate it by resolving to record every book and movie I read this year, much like I started to do in this booklog and movielog back in 2006. Part of the reason I abandoned the logs back in 2006 was it started to feel like a chore. To make this easier, this time around I make no guarantees as to how much I’ll say about a given book/movie/whatever – the resolution is to simply at a minimum record the fact that I did it, and maybe a sentence or two about what I thought. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m obsessed with the economy these days, to the point where I occasionally drive Susan a bit nuts at dinner chattering about it, but it’s pretty clear we’re entering into a significant recession and possibly worse. Evidence supporting the worse angle would be this article on engadget, , where they report that Black Friday sales declined… for the first time ever. There’s perhaps no greater indicator of the collapse of US consumer culture than this, folks. For the record, sales were down by 8%, which hardly seems terrible until you consider companies were already forecasting lower sales to begin with, to the point where companies like Circuit City already were facing bankruptcy. Another way to express it would be: if the black friday sales can’t get gluttunous US consumers to pull out their walletts, what can?

So next up from the economic crisis: no more credit for you, Joe Consumer. Check out this article over on Reuters‘ site. It’s a bit longer on speculation than fact, but this is not the only piece I’ve seen suggesting the banks are going to radically reduce the amount of available consumer credit, and I’ve already been contacted by one of my banks letting me know they’re jacking up my interest rate and fees. If you’re living your life off your credit card and you don’t have a stellar credit score, watch out.

Here’s an idle bit of speculation to ponder, too. How long do you suppose it will be before the insurance companies start dropping clients? All of this stuff is deeply intertwined, and offering insurance requires capital and access to it. Insurance is heavily regulated and there are more stringent requirements on capitlization than the banking industry was coping with, but where do you suppose those funds the insurance companies are required to hold are actually sitting? And how much do you suppose they’re actually worth versus how much they think they’re worth? I have no facts to back this up, just idly wondering how far this unravelling will go.

You have to be a gamer and have spent some time on xbox live or played some other online competitive game to appreciate this animated gif that tells the tale of WWII as if it had been fought as an online game, but if you have this is funny as hell. Warning though – harsh language, not politically correct by any stretch of the imagination, and it runs for a couple of minutes. Kudos to whoever came up with this though, it cracked me up.

So I’m driving to work. I normally take this backroads way to the office during the school year because the major road passes through South Hadley and the campus of Mt Holyoke College, ie it’s slow when the students are here. The road’s speed limit varies from 25 – 40 depending what section you’re on, and normally my speed is between 40 and 50 on it – everyones’ is, it’s a little back country road. There are kids catching their school buses though and I guess the cops decided to crack down, or maybe I’m just unlucky, because today as I came down a hill doing maybe 45 a cop pulled out behind me and flipped on his lights. I thought I was busted. I slowed down and started to pull over but there was a crossroad, so I decided to pull over after the junction. There was a car there waiting to make a left, and I guess the driver decided to try and bolt out in front of me so as not to be slowed down by the cop pulling me over etc, or maybe they were impatient, or…who knows, whatever they were thinking they suddenly pulled out in front of me, causing both me and the cop to have to jam on our brakes, nearly causing an accident. Apparently this pissed off the cop because he blared his siren, did a u-turn in the middle of the road, and took after the other guy. I was like ‘whoo hoo!’ and proceeded on my merry way to work. Three cheers for good luck!