iPad Porn

New Apple Gadgets

When you combine this with this I realize that maybe I shouldn't have bought the new iPad.

Work Intelligence Test

iPad

I just ordered one from the Apple site. It seems to do all the things I want to do, like email and Internet browsing from my couch or when I'm on the road. It has a Kindle app so there's no built-in obsolescence if Apple loses the ebook format war, and it can do everything my iPod can do with a much bigger screen. I don't need the 3G, since I'll have wireless most places I would want to use it. I got the 64Gig version, I have about 30Gig of music, and I like to have everything with me so I don't always have to pick and choose.

From the "I could play as well as those guys" department

Quadragesima IV (no, it's not a surround-sound format)

Quadragesima is the Latin term for Lent, meaning "forty days". The Lentan period starts today on Ash Wednesday, it is marked in many places by Mardi Gras celebrations on the previous day. For early Christians the rules of fasting during Lent were strict: just one meal a day, in the evening, and no meat, fish, eggs, or butter is permitted. Most religions have relaxed these rules, for example, since 1966 Roman Catholics only require strict fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

I posted about Quadragesima in 2007 and in 2008. Traditionally Lutherans aren't required to fast or sacrifice something for Lent as some other denominations require (see here for a brief theological discussion), but I will be doing it again this year. Last year I didn't make a Lentan sacrifice, but in previous years I have given up desserts and sweets, alcohol, sodas, and other dietary things.

This year I chose to give up television. I quit watching television completely for a week in college, during my senior finals, but it was still very difficult to do. Lent is actually 46 days (the Sundays in the Lentan period don't count towards the 40 days), and it has been difficult to maintain my will power for this long a period, so I decided not to leave it to chance. I had been considering television but I actually decided to do it when I heard a commercial from DirecTV about temporarily suspending service for free. I called them to set it up, suspending service from today until Saturday April 3rd. The good: they set up the suspension at no cost, automatically. The indifferent: any time remaining to fulfill a contract doesn't count during the time of suspension (that makes sense, since I'm not paying during that time, and my account has to be fully paid up before they will schedule the suspension (since the biggest leverage they have to make me pay their bill is to threaten to cut off service). The bad: the suspension time will count towards any promotions I have, like free HBO for six months. That doesn't really seem fair, it just seems spiteful.

My rules:

• No television at home, including no DVDs, DVR, VCR, etc.


• No television on Sundays or on Solemnities


• No Hulu to watch television shows on my computer


• Youtube is okay, within reason


• If I'm at someone else's house or at a restaurant I won't leave or ask them to turn off the television, after all, this is my sacrifice, not theirs


• Movies at a movie theater are okay

I will be disappointed to miss some of the series that I am following, but in order to make it a true sacrifice, as a way of remembering and personalizing the great sacrifices made for me, it has to be something that's significant.

SCAM: Domain Name Dispute

I received the following email, a quick Google told me it was just a scam that this Chinese registration company is using to scare me into registering domains with them. The contact information used to register domains is not supposed to be used for commercial purposes. I use a dedicated email address for domain registration, so I can tell when it is being spammed. Don't fall for this stuff.


----------------------------------------------------------
From: Tracy [mailto:Tracy@jsntwifi.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2010 1:02 AM
To: [my secret email address that I only use for registering domains]
Subject: Dispute From Domain

Dear Sir or Madam 2010-1-30
We are a domain name registration service organization in Asia,
Recently we received a formal application submited by Paul Martin who wanted to use the keyword "[my full name]" to register the Internet Brand and domain names with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia
After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. If you think that these domain names to be regisrated would produce possible dispute with you or effect your current business, you would contact us as soon as possible by Fax ,Telephone or Email in the next 5 working days.otherwise we have to approve his regisration application without your any reply.

Yours sincerely

Tracy
Checking Department
Tel: 86 513 8532 1087
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email:Tracy@jsntwifi..com
Website: www.jsntwifi.com or www.jsntwifi.com.cn
Our File No.:2884349

Changes to the site

Blogger has announced that it will no longer support ftp publishing after March 26, 2010. Since this site is published using ftp, that means that there will be some changes, especially since some of the features of my website are not supported by blogger's hosted sites. And in addition to that, it means that I will have to put in a bunch of work to convert over, at a time when I am not putting in a bunch of work to the site.

At this point, it's not clear how much of this you will see. Some features will go away for sure, like the server-side includes that add the Thought of the Day and What I'm Reading and What I'm Reading for Book Club boxes. There may be a way to keep these, but since I really haven't been updating these regularly, if I can't find a really easy way to update these (like tweeting from my phone) they might go away. Another thought is the whole website idea goes away. I already do Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and having a personal web presence might be a distraction from my professional activities (like if I ever have to look for a new job). There are some advantages in having some web space that I control, but I'm paying $11 or $12 per month to maintain a hosted domain, and I may give that up and go completely into the cloud.

Other options are to migrate to another blog software, but that either takes more money or more work or both. Facebook is cheesey but it has a couple advantages, limited access and free and easy. Just like me!

This is a geeky topic but since I am a total geek I will keep you updated.

How Long?

How long before you can buy the entire Library of Congress collection or every Amazon book on a disk? What about the all the music on iTunes? Every movie or television program ever made in any language all the time. In a relatively short period of time¹, these will all fit on a single memory stick. And that memory stick will eventually cost just a few dollars. And once someone buys it is only a short time before these media are available on the internet (pirated). It's like that Qwest commercial. What will it be like to have instant access everywhere to everything for free?

How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive

You're six miles up, alone and falling without a parachute. Though the odds are long, a small number of people have found themselves in similar situations—and lived to tell the tale. Here's Popular Mechanic's 120-mph, 35,000-ft, 3-minutes-to-impact survival guide.

Joke of the Day

Q: What do a tornado and a redneck divorce have in common?

A: In the end, someone is going to lose a trailer.

The Moses Tablet

From my previous post about the Apple tablet (now the iPad):

I would buy a tablet from Apple if it would:

✔Widescreen hi-res

✔Connect via wireless

✔Browse the internet

✔Read books

✔Have 4+ hours of battery life

✔Run iTunes and play music, podcasts, TV & movies

I would wait in line like the fanboys if it would:

✔Do STMP email

✔Keep my calendar, contacts and to-do list (e.g. run Outlook)

✘Sync with my Outlook on my laptop

✔Read magazines and newspapers

✔Run aps from the iPhone Aps store

Ikea Demo on New Apple Tablet?

Are You Tying Your Shoes Wrong?

Brrr

The cold hard facts of freezing to death here.

The Best Christmas Song of All Time

2010 Ferrari 458 Italia

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. Means=$210k.

Video of the Day: Fishing Show Bloopers

Best blooper show evar!

10 Worst Phrases to Use in Business

From MSN Careers, Today's 10 Worst Phrases to Use in Business.

My personal pet peeves:

All sports metaphors - I had a boss who wasn't a big sports fan, and would say things like "we're already on the 99 yard line". He was surprised when I told him that it only went up to 50.

Granularity - widely misused by people (intentionally!) trying to sound corporate, it refers to the level of detail to "drill down to".

Work smarter not harder - this is used when management does not plan to give you the resources you need.

I'll take that under advisement - it really means that I won't take that under advisement.

Thinking outside the box - this is so tired and cliche that it is inside the box.

Thought leader - new but stupid

At the end of the day - loses all effectiveness when used in every third sentence.

Jobless Rate for People Like You

Click on the picture to do your own. I was interested to see that less women were jobless than men, overall 7.6% vs. 9.5%. Having a high school dimploma makes you twice as likely to be jobless as a college degree, and not having a high school dimploma makes you almost twice as likely to be jobless as having one. The highest jobless rate is for black men ages 15 to 24 without a high school degree, the rate is near 49%. The lowest rate is for white women ages 25 to 44 with a college degree, at 3.6%. Also note that the trend in joblessness is upward, the recession does not appear to be over.

From New York Times.

Video of the Day: Marvin Gaye "What's Going On"

Marvin Gaye's vocals are fantastic, but what really makes this song and many other Motown hits is the bassline of James Jamerson.

Site of the Day: Passive-Aggressive Notes

I've posted about this site before, but if you work in an office, you may have seen how signs can proliferate.

Click on the picture to see a larger version. From passiveaggressivenotes.com.

Apostrophe's turning' up' Everywhere!

Proper apostrophizing can be fun.

Bass Player Jokes

A while back I posted some drummer jokes here and here, now I've heard a couple of bass player jokes, and turnabout is fair play.

What do you throw a drowning bass player??
... His amp!

Son: "Daddy, I want to grow up and be a bass player."
Father: "Son, you can't have it both ways. "

Q: What's the first thing a bass player says when he knocks on your door?
A: "Pizza!"

Q - What's the difference between a bass and a rhino that's just eaten a can of baked beans?
A - One's a huge useless thing that makes a deep farting noise and the other is a rhino.

Q What's the difference between a bass and a trampoline?
A You take off your shoes to jump on the trampoline.

It's Only Talk

Wars and Rumours of Wars

The biggest buzz on the Interwebs right now is about the (maybe) Apple tablet. See here for some discussion about how the tablet may redefine the publishing business like the iPod redefined the music business. There're even arguements about what this hypothetical product might be named.

I would buy a tablet from Apple if it would:
Widescreen hi-res
Connect via wireless
Browse the internet
Read books
Have 4+ hours of battery life
Run iTunes and play music, podcasts, TV & movies

I would wait in line like the fanboys if it would:
Do STMP email
Keep my calendar, contacts and to-do list (e.g. run Outlook)
Sync with my Outlook on my laptop
Read magazines and newspapers
Run aps from the iPhone Aps store

Full disclosure: I own an iPod Classic, but not an iPhone or an Apple computer.

Video of the Day

This is a view of the Kuroshio Sea aquarium set to music; maximize the screen, the video quality is great and something about the colors and how groups of amazingly different fish appear and disappear is naturally soothing.

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

From What I Learned Today.

Site of the Day

One Year After Hurricane Ike

The Big Picture reminded me with these amazingly cool before & after pictures (click on the pictures to see the after photo) that this time last year, I was riding the storm out in Salt Lake City, returning home to see Ike's wrath.

Luckily no hurricanes headed towards Houston this year. At least not yet.

Tim O'Reilly has Idea 2.0

Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 five years ago. Now he is trying to coin the term Gov 2.0, and has helped organize a summit next week to talk about what that might mean.

When asked to comment, Mrs. O'Reilly said that she had had enough of her husband's numbering schemes, referring to leftovers as dinner 2.0 and going to the bathroom number 2.0.

Remember

New Bass

1989 Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay

I Knew There Was a Word for It

Holidrawl

Joke of the Day

A lady was walking past a pet store when a parrot said, "Hey, lady! You're really ugly!" The lady was angry, but she continued on her way.

On the way home, she passed by the pet store again, and again, the parrot said, "Hey, lady! You're really ugly!" Furious, the lady stormed into the store and threatened to sue the store.

The store manager apologized profusely and promised he would make sure the parrot didn't say it again.

The next day, she deliberately passed by the store to test the parrot. "Hey, lady!" it said.

"Yes?"

"You know...."

From Comedy Central's Joke of the Day.

Product of the Day - Suitcase Full of Sausage

Le Boss C'Est Contador

Le Tour de Lance

First of all, it's amazing that Lance Armstrong is even in the race to begin with. The last time he raced in the Tour it was 2005, and he retired at the end. After the Pyrenees, he looks like one of the top two legitimate contenders for the yellow jersey. If the other top contender wasn't on his own team, he would look even more likely to win. I think the only one who could really take Lance out of race is Johan Bruyneel. To me Lance looks just like he did in his previous Tour wins, biding his time and riding intelligently, avoiding any mistakes before he picks his opportunities to make time against his rivals. He certainly didn't lose any time in the Pyrenees, when Contador attacked (against his own team!) Armstrong and Leipheimer were forced to turn off the gas so as not to help the other GC contenders. And after the initial sprint, Contador didn't make any more time against the pack, and I think Lance had a good bit of energy he held back. He's still got a long ways to go, but he is certainly a legitimate contender. When the race started, I thought he would just be tarnishing his reputation, one more champion who couldn't go out on a high note. I couldn't understand him insisting that he could be the leader of the team, since I didn't think he would stand a chance against Contador in the mountains. But he certainly has held his own so far.

The public opinion seems to be in his favor. The journalists, especially the French journalists, continue to claim he is unpopular, but if you listen to the crowds the seem to be much more for him than against him. Journalists have to earn a living, though, and saying Lance is a good cyclist is not news. If you offered a journalist, not just a Frenchie journalist or a sensationalist, but any journalist, a fair-minded journalist who doesn't have anything personal against Lance Armstrong, the choice between documents that absolutely proved Lance Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing substances and documents that absolutely proved he hadn't, I think almost all of them would chose the proof that he was dirty. And it's actually a much bigger story if he hasn't, since that would make him even more superhuman. Athletes that cheat to get ahead are a dime a dozen; an athlete that utterly dominates his sport even when the others are cheating is epic. And there are many journalists who do have a personal against Lance, maybe because they root for the underdog or don't like his arrogance or his ruthless style or single-minded focus on winning the Tour, or hate Americans, or cyclists, or whatever.

I heard on the Versus converage that Lance has been tested forty times since he announced he was returning to the Tour last August. That's before the race even started. That's forty out-of-competition tests, not counting the daily testing during the Tour and other races. Lance without question is the most-tested athlete in history, and has never once tested positive. There are riders in the race who have been proven to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, and they are all more popular with the press. I can understand why a fan (especially a French fan) or a journalist might be against Lance, I cannot understand why the Tour and the are against Lance. There seems to be a personal grudge against him, backed up by the testing abuses and nasty comments and leaks of (later documented) false information to the press.

All of this, on top of his teammate's seeming betrayal, is just more motivation for Lance to win another Tour. And if he can overcome the world vs. Lance at 37 years old, he will be in my mind the most dominant athlete ever.

EPILOGUE
I heard a sports analyst on ESPN ask Bobby Julich why Lance finished in 41st place today. Bobby said "um, because it was a bunch sprint finish? And, Lance isn't a sprinter, you ass-face?" Well, that's not exactly what he said, I am paraphrasing, but the question was asked.

Le Tour 2009

It's been an exciting Tour so far, and diabolically difficult even before we hit the mountains. The time trial in Monaco was an amazing course, and the team time trial course produced the carnage that the riders were predicting.

Some initial thoughts:
- Finally the Tour is in high definition. Even if you don't like cycling, it's worth watching the three or four hours just for the countryside of France.

- If Lance Armstrong hadn't retired in 2005, he would have won the Tour in 2006 for sure, with most of the favorites out for doping. He may have beaten Alberto Contador in 2007, and he would have beaten Carlos Sastre in 2008 for sure. That would have been his 10th yellow jersey, and he would probably be retired for good.

- Lance looks like he's in at least as good a shape as he was in winning the Tour in previous occasions. He's a viable contender until we see who's got the goods in the mountains. My guess is that he won't be able to stay with Contador, but Contador has already made a dumb mistake or two. There's a reason the Tour is three weeks long.

- All of the questions about who the Astana team leader have got to be wearing on Lance and the other Astana team members. I can only imagine how it antagonizes Contador, but he doesn't speak English so we don't see him on the television coverage.

- Fabian Cancellara's descent in the stage 1 time trial was amazing, too bad we didn't get to see any of it on television. He was fourth going up the mountain and finished , he gained 26 seconds in about 10 kilometers on the best riders in the world.

- Previous winner Carlos Sastre was denied the right to wear yellow for the first stage. I bet this wouldn't have happened if the previous winner was a little more popular than Sastre.

- Mark Cavendish will win a huge number of stages, he looks absolutely unbeatable. If he can make it over the mountains with a team I think the record of eight stage wins is not unattainable. Leaving the Tour last year to lose in the Olympics was (in retrospect) a dumb decision.

I can't wait to see what happens in the mountains!

See my posts on previous Tours here.

The Star Spangled Banner

My favorite was always Huey Lewis and the News.

Banff 2009

I took a long weekend trip up to Banff to get out of the Houston heat, it's been over 100° F (38° C) for the last week or so. I couldn't afford to stay at the Banff Springs Hotel but I went up for a cocktail on the back terrace, and next time I'm going to plunk down the $400/night to stay there. That's in Canadian dollars, so it's really not that expensive in real money. Here's the view off the back terrace:

Banff National Park is the most beautiful place I have ever been. I've been to Banff and Lake Louise in both the summer and winter, and both are fantastic.

See posts from my other trips:
Ridin' the Storm Out
Hurricane Rita update
Skiing 2007

Joke of the Day

The Dalai Lama walks up to a hot dog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything."

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Tony J. and I went to see the movie Anvil! The Story of Anvil this afternoon. It's a documentary about the Canadian heavy metal band that influenced (some say started) the speed metal movement carried on by Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, and other huge names. Anvil did not get the commercial success that these other bands enjoyed, but are continuing to work to fulfill their dreams of becoming rock stars. It was directed by Sacha Gervasi, his directorial debut, but who co-wrote The Big Tease with Craig Ferguson and wrote The Terminal, directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Tom Hanks.

The film premièred at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008 to a standing ovation, and won awards at a number of film festivals. The band is experiencing a resurgence of interest, and is currently working on a new album (their 14th) titled Juggernaut of Justice and will open for AC/DC at their first two summer Black Ice World Tour shows at Gillette Stadium and Giants Stadium.

2009 Indy 500

Tony and I went to the Indy 500 again this year, it's our third time (here's last year's race). We stayed in a sketchy hotel, but it's reasonably priced and it's close enough to walk to the race, about three miles.

View Larger Map
The weather was great, it was sunny in the morning, about 85 degrees, and slightly overcast during the race. No rain this year, we sat for hours in the rain in 2007. We changed seats this year, we were on the infield near the start/finish line, and we moved outside closer to turn 1, you can see the difference from the pictures from last year and this picture:

Check out the crowds, there are about 400,000 in attendance:

Video of the day: Cannonball floating

View From my Room at the Driskill

Looks very Austin.

New Computer

About a month ago, my desktop computer at home died. I was able to get it working again by taking it completely apart and putting it back together again, but every time I turn it off again the problem reoccurs, and instead of disassembling it and reassembling it every day, I've just left it running 24/7 until I could fix it or buy a new omputer. Doing some research online, it looks like an issue with the fan that cools the processor, but fixing it means replacing the motherboard. Even though the computer is only about three years old, they don't make that model anymore, so it's probably worth it to plunk down for a new one.

I decided to wait until we got our bonuses to decide how much to spend on a new computer. I have a laptop for work, and I have a nice setup with three monitors, so I really need a desktop. I'm taking some of my own advice about how to buy a new computer. I made a list of what I needed: Windows machine, Intel Quad core processor, 500GB hard drive, at least 4 GB RAM, and a Blu-Ray player. I like buying a customized box online, so I checked out Dell, HP, and Gateway. Our company has an employee discount with Dell and HP,

Then I saw this:


And this:


Sure it costs about twice as much as a similarly configured Dell XPS, and I don't get an employee discount, but check out those components, and the quality of the manufacturing. This tank of a machine won't crash because of some little 5V fan. It looks like you could run over it and it would still be humming away. And it's cool looking, too.


Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to Drew, Happy birthday to me!

Vegas Elvis

I was downloading my ski pictures (coming soon) from my trip to Mont Tremblant in Quebec, and I ran across some pictures I had taken in Las Vegas. I was experimenting with light and exposures, I didn't quite capture the glow of the underlit bottles, but I did get the Elvis posters in the background.



Satisfied, Leah?

2008 Taxes

I did a quick and dirty estimate on my 2008 income tax return last weekend, just to see if I had to pay more or if I was getting a refund. It looks like I'm getting about $3,000 back. Yay! Time to adjust my withholding. Oh, and I looked at my year-end statement from one of my retirement accounts, I lost more than $100,000 over the last year. Well, you win some and you lose some.

Here's some more posts about income taxes:
Taxes
More fascinating blogging about taxes!
TurboTax vs. TaxCut: Tax Preparation Software DEATHMATCH: Even more fascinating blogging about taxes!

Juno

I first saw Juno at the theater when it started to get some Oscar buzz last year, and it's out on the HBO now. I've watched it a couple of times since, every time I see something new. What a great movie. I think it's a better movie than the others in the recent genre, Knocked Up, Superbad, etc. Ellen Page was born to play the part, the dialogue by Diablo Cody is instant classic, and the rest of the cast is all-star, with Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and J.K. Simmons. So I had to buy the t-shirt.

Are You a Bigger Film Addict Than I Am?

Are you a bigger film addict than I am? Find out! Check off the movies you've seen here and then compare!

My 2008 in Cities

Criteria: one or more nights spent in each place. Cities marked with an * were visited more than once. Numbers represent the number of nights I spent in each city. I traveled more this year than usual, mainly because of the job change, getting started back at El Paso. Cities are in the order that I remembered them. Here are my lists from 2005, 2006, and 2007. I also put 2007 in a Google map. See the 2008 Google map:


View Larger Map

Bellaire (the rest)
Atlanta (6)
Birmingham (16)
Corpus Christi (12)
Park City (5)
Salt Lake City (9)
Columbus, GA
New Orleans (12)
Houston (3)
Natchitoches, LA
Indianapolis (6)
Houma (9)
Chicago (4)
Dallas (7)
San Francisco (6)
Jackson, MS (2)
Laurel, MS
Conroe
Washington, D.C. (4)
San Diego (4)
Shreveport, LA
Monroe, LA

Clear Evidence of Global Warming

I found this here.

Can you spot the 1,000 things wrong with this picture?

From one of my favorite sites, The Big Picture, sponsored by the Boston Globe newspaper, it highlights high-quality, amazing imagery - with a focus on current events. This image was from the series "Icy Days and Nights".

Wow, That's Deep

Does your computer get jealous when you use it to shop for a new computer?

Nerd Humor

I read this awesome blog called Passive-Aggressive Notes, and this note is what nerds like me find humorous.

Drew 4.0 Beta Goes Live

A couple of days ago I switched the main page over to the new design and republished . Everything's not done, but it's functional at this point, and it's kind of an incentive to finish up on the little aesthetic things.

- New header. I want to stay with the IBM blue (see the old version here), and somthing not as tall as the new one.
- List of tags in the sidebar, this will replace the old navigation on the left hand side. I'll have to convert all the old web pages into blog posts, and oh yeah put tags on all the 300+ posts in the blog and go through and update all the links to these pages in blog posts. That may take a while.
- Change the heading fonts to make the style more like the old page.
- Clean up the footer on blog posts, and maybe put links to etc.
- Update the RSS links
- Update the design of individual post pages

I think we're getting better. See here for a similar process on kottke.com, one of my favorite sites.

High Five Tribute

O! M! G! (may be fake, tho)

What to Expect when the Price of Gas Falls below Zero

Based on current projections by Rob Cockerham at cockeyed.com, the price of gas will drop below $0.00 per gallon sometime in March of next year.

What does this mean to you, the consumer?

- Big oil companies will be paying you to fill up your gas tank, so you'll pull up to the pump, fill up, and they'll hand you cash
- Driving will be cheaper than doing nothing. You'll drive around all evening after work, listening to the radio and making money.
- Taxi drivers will become wealthy upper-class snobs
- Gas burning SUV's will actually increase your income
- Power plants burning gasoline will pay you to use their electricity, so that they can use more gasoline. Now you can air-condition the neighborhood like you always wanted to as a kid, without your dad yelling at you that money doesn't grow on trees

Belgian beer

I bought some Belgian beer from Specs Liquor Warehouse a few months ago, and I just got around to trying the Orval. It was expensive ($5 for a 12 ounce bottle), but worth it. What a fantastic beer, a light citrus taste with a very bitter hoppy finish.

There are over 450 different varieties of beer in the small kingdom of Belgium. Belgium is to beer what France is to wine. Blue Moon, a Belgian-Style white beer brewed by the Molson Coors, is becoming one of the most popular craft beers in the US, ranking at number two in 2007, just behind Samuel Adams Seasonal. I've been thinking about taking a trip to Belgium and doing a tour of breweries. I wonder how long it would take to sample each of the 450 different beers?

site history

I created a new template based on one of the Blogger default templates, and started labeling all my old posts. I exported the posts from the "What's New" blog and imported them into "drew's blog" with the label "What's New". I also took the site history page and broke it into individual blog posts in the main blog, with the label "Site History".

Drew Version 4.0

I'm in the process of doing some new design for the site, you can see the latest version here. I'd like to incorporate some of the new features of Blogger, especially post labels. I'm going to get rid of the navigation on the left hand side of the home page, I'll convert all of these individual pages into blog posts, and you can just go to the various labels pages to see each of these. This will make it much easier to update the various pages, and integrate the other site content with the blog posts. I'm also going to try to integrate the multiple blogs on the home page ("What I'm Reading Now", "What I'm Reading Now for Book Club" and "Thought of the Day") into one single master blog.

How to Pay for a Home

- More than 2.2 million homeowners are more than 60 days late on their mortgage payments
- One in six homeowners owes more on a home than it's worth.

When I was starting to look for my first house in 2004, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get a loan, or really that I wouldn't be able to get a loan big enough to buy the house I wanted. I was making pretty good money, I'm not rich but I had put away enough for a decent down payment, I didn't have any debt (other a credit card that I payed off every month) and I had a virtually perfect credit rating, but I had never been through the process of getting a mortgage and I expected it to be difficult. I wanted to live close to town, in a part of town near where I was renting at the time. I had become addicted to the short commute to work and all the conveniences, but it is more expensive than living in the 'burbs. Not California or Manhatten expensive, but my house would probably have cost less than half of what it did if it was in the area of Houston where I grew up.

I put together a spreadsheet to figure out how much money I could spend on a mortgage payment, using the last five years of data in my Microsoft Money database to estimate irregular income and expenses, things like bonuses, vacations, gifts, charitable contributions, and car maintenance. I averaged everything into a monthly expense and then used what was left over to figure out how big a mortgage I could afford based on my current income (I am a salaried engineer, so my income doesn't vary much). When I filled out the loan application, the bank approved an amount almost twice as much as the maximum amount I had calculated. I was amazed, I couldn't imagine how anyone could cut back that much to be able to handle such a big a mortgage payment.

When the opportunity came to buy my house, I had to act fast, the seller wanted to close within a month because she was using the money to buy another house. If I hadn't already been prepared with all the financial calculations, I couldn't have made an informed decision about the financing. I figured out how much cash I could scrape together, and it was right at 20% after closing costs if I spent every cent I had, and I wasn't sure exactly how much the closing costs would be. I was dealing with a fairly conservative mortgage company (Wells Fargo) and they required 20% down or private mortgage insurance (PMI). I had been reading up on PMI and I knew that paying for insurance for the bank was dumb in my case. I had a short term cash flow problem, PMI wouldn't go away very quickly, and it was absolutely zero benefit to me. I also knew that if I spent all of the cash I had to get a 20% down payment, something unexpected could very easily come up and I'd be in trouble. The bank proposed a piggyback loan to make up the difference, so I borrowed 5% of the mortgage amount to apply to the down payment at a slightly higher interest rate (I think 2 percentage points higher than my mortgage rate, which was under 6%). It had a seven-year term but I paid it off in less than a year, since I basically already had the money. Once I paid off the second mortgage, I started applying that amount to the principal on the first mortgage. I have been aggressively paying down principal, although I quit at the beginning of this year to build up a bigger emergency fund after recalculating what 6 months of bills would be without my brother as a roommate. The value of my home continues to go up, but at a slower rate, but even if it had dropped I wouldn't owe more than it is worth.

One of the mistakes I did make in my estimates was the real estate taxes. I looked online and at the tax bill the previous owner had paid, around $1,000/yr, and I used that number in my estimate. My real estate agent warned me that the property taxes were fairly high, but I didn't listen, and I was surprised at the closing when I realized that appraised tax value of the home would double and the next year's taxes would be more than $7,200. This would have been a big problem, even with the mortgage company escrowing the amount, if I had used all the cash I had to make my down payment or if I had tried to buy more house than I could comfortably afford. A couple I know had to refinance their loan after only one year because the previous appraised tax value on their new home was just the lot value, and their taxes were 10 times what they had paid their first year.

I believe most of the blame for the "financial crisis" is not on banks but on borrowers. People spending more than they can afford to, either because of overly optimistic estimates of their costs, failure to plan for the unexpected, or just plain short-sightedness. I read about a woman with two kids who's initial mortgage payment was only $100/month less than her take-home pay. That's not ignorance, that's stupidity. And now her house is being foreclosed upon, and yes, the banks are partly to blame, that's a loan that never should be made, but the person who signed their name to the contract is the one responsible. No one forced her to borrow more than she could afford, and she shouldn't have allowed herself to be talked into such an obvious disaster just waiting to happen. When I look at the small amount of basic planning I did preparing to buy my first house, I know anyone else could have done basically the same thing, and then been better prepared to make financial decisions. I know I could have borrowed more than twice as much as I did, and had a house twice as big as the one I bought, but it would have been way too risky, and I didn't want to gamble my financial future. And now a lot of the people that did make that gamble are seeing the results.

This is the second part of a series, see part one How to Pay for a New Vehicle here.

Really? Really?

Fantasy Football

One of my geeky hobbies is fantasy football. Wait, it gets more geeky. I use my engineering analysis background to perform statistical analyses of the data, and write a mid-season report projecting who has been the most effective team owner. You can download the 2008 KFFL Midseason Report here:
Microsoft Word format (771kB)
Adobe PDF format (211kB)

Texas Longhorns are Still Number 1

I went to the Texas Longhorns(1)-Missouri Tigers(11) game last weekend with my brother Aaron. We drove to Austin on Saturday afternoon with a buddy of his and tailgated until the game started at 7pm. I hadn't been back to Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (formerly Memorial Statium) in at least 10 years, and there have been a lot of changes.

The university spent $150 million to reconfigure the north end zone, boosting capacity above 90,000 by adding suites and seats that will face a new scoreboard. And a big new scoreboard it is. They call it the Godzillatron (it's too big to be called a mere Jumbotron). The high-definition LED scoreboard is 134 feet wide and 55 feet high. Measuring diagonally, like they do for televisions, that's a 1,740-inch screen.

Texas dominated the Tigers from the first series, scoring 35 straight points in the first half and not allowing a point until Missouri kicked a field goal in the final second of the first half. It was great to be back at a college football game, singing and chanting and clapping and yelling; the noise is amazing.

The Longhorn band did a Tribute to Led Zepplin at the halftime show. Here they're playing Heartbreaker (Get it? Heart breaker?)

This is one of the first years that at the start of the season I thought Texas didn't have what it takes to go all the way. I hope I was wrong, and I won't doubt them that early again.

Ike's Wrath

This is Interstate 45 going into Galveston. This picture was taken about here:

View Larger Map
Look on the map at all the houses to the west of the interstate, they are probably all gone.

Salt Lake City

I've always liked Salt Lake City, probably because I'm from Houston (flat as a pancake) and it's surrounded by mountains. Here's the view from my hotel room window.

Ridin' the Storm Out 2008

When Hurricane Rita was bearing down on Houston in September 2005, I was in Calgary, and I stayed the weekend to visit Banff and Lake Louise. Now Hurricane Ike is aimed directly for Houston and I'm in Salt Lake City, leaving on one of the last flights out on Friday morning with the storm predicted to hit sometime Friday evening. I think it's better to evacuate when you have a chance, most of the folks I know are staying in case something happens. Hopefully everyone will be okay.

Top 10 Things if Drew Were Elected President

10) I would require IQ test for driver's licenses, voter's registration (clearly needed if I was elected president), and cell phone licenses (yes, I said cell phone licenses). There would be stupid people lanes on the freeway for those that don't make top scores.
9) Report all communists
8) Compulsory border patrol service for all illegal immigrants (don't you just love the irony?)
7) I would immediately declare war on France
6) Presidential cheerleaders. Too much negativity in politics, not enough positive energy
5) They'd have to let me drive Air Force One
4) Reporters who ask me hard questions would be sent to the camps.
3) Balance the budget with a tax on Michael Bolton
2) Immediately grant all terrorists the martyrdom they desire
1) White House Party

My running-mate would be Meg Ryan.

In-N-Out Burger

When I was in San Francisco I made it a point to have an In-N-Out Burger before I left. Now that's a good burger.

Labor Day 2008

Because it’s Labor Day, I’ve been thinking about all of the jobs I’ve had in my life. I don't remember what I wanted to be when I grew up, my earliest memory of a career path is when I was in high school. I wanted to learn about computers (they were pretty new back then, I was one year removed from punch cards on a mainframe at UT) but my dad talked me into majoring in engineering, he said that I could always work with computers with an engineering degree, but if I majored in Computer Science and discovered that I didn't like computers, I was stuck. Even though I really didn't understand what an engineer did, I agreed, and in my first semester I realized that engineering was my calling. There was a big construction wall around the new Mechanical Engineering building, and someone had spray painted "Engineering isn't everything, it's the only thing" on it. Other graffiti was removed, but they left that. It was inspiring, and at the time, I agreed. One professor said (tongue-in-cheek) "I consider anyone not working in the engineering field to be a leach on society." I regret now that my college career was so focused on engineering and left-brain activities. I've come to value my creative side, with reading, writing, and other "liberal art" outlets. If I won the lottery I would go back to university for sure.

My first real job (other than paper routes and mowing lawns) was at the Oakwood Glen swimming pool. A couple of my friends got summer jobs there as lifeguards, and they hired me to come in the morning and clean the pool. It was about 30 minutes of work, six days a week, and I got paid $20/week, which paid for a tank of (leaded) gas!

When I went to school I didn't work my freshman year during the school year, but my sophomore year I had to get a job. I went down to the local Wendy's and applied, and was hired on the spot. That was a tough job at first, mostly mopping, wiping, cleaning grease, on your feet all day long, and then I worked my way up to the salad bar. I occasionally did fries and made burgers, one day I even got to work the grill, but that was a skill position, you had to anticipate how many burgers to have going at the same time. Too few, and everyone has to wait. Too many, and there's a lot of waste. I think I lasted one semester there, I eventually gave my notice when the semester was up. The next semester I was a pizza maker, a much nicer job. No grease, and we ate and drank for free on the job.

In the summers, I became a lifeguard and a swim team coach and swimming instructor at Willow Forest. I made enough money in the summer to last me most of the school year, living large until around April and scrimping by until the summer. Eventually, the pool company I worked for got out of the business of managing lifeguards, and I stayed on as a chlorine delivery truck driver (the world's best!) and commercial pool repair. That was a tough job, I worked 100+ hours a week most weeks in the summertime. The boss worked just as hard as we did, and I really learned a lot about the rewards of hard work and a job well done, and also I learned what I didn't want to do for a living for the rest of my life.

In a break from school I worked as an engineering intern for 3D/International, designing HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems for office buildings. I also worked on the construction of the George R. Brown Houston Convention Center, although I was disappointed when I saw the architectural styling. After returning to Hancock Pool Services for another year, I started working at FERA Corporation as a CAD (computer-aided drafting) technician while I finished up my degree. When I graduated, they hired me as a corrosion engineer. Four years later I went to work at El Paso, and with a brief interlude at Enbridge, I'm back where I was.

I am a Total Loser

I made a Wordle of my blog (actually, just the RSS feed, so it only includes about the last 25 posts). Boy am I a total geek!

Phelps Miracle Finish

Sports Illustrated has a series of underwater photos here showing how Michael Phelps beats Milorad Cavic in the 100 Butterfly for the closest of his now presumptive eight gold medals.

I was a swim team coach for summer league age-groupers (ages 4 to 18) during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and we watched some of the swimming events as a team. I saw how important the finish is in winning races, and I showed the team some of the techniques the Olympians used. One of the girls, a 14-year old (her last name was Thomas, I think, her mom was the organizer of the swim team at Willow Forest) came to the pool every day that week and practiced that finish. At the meet on Saturday, she was about a half-length behind this big brute of a girl coming in to the finish of the 13-14 girls 100 IM, and she beat her out at the finish by using the touch she had practiced. It was one of the most rewarding moments I've ever had. Then the other girl's dad came over and asked me to step outside.

How to synchronize files on more than one computer

In a previous post, I talked about how to check email from more than one computer. Like most folks who work for a company, I have a computer at work and a computer at home. My work computer is a laptop because I travel a lot, and when I'm gone I also need to do things like pay bills, work on my fantasy football personal correspondence, etc. and so I need to share some files on two computers.

I used to do it the old-fashioned way (heh) by emailing files back and forth. This was tedious for synching a lot of files, so I bought a USB hard drive. I'd periodically copy personal files I'd need onto the hard drive, and then copy those files to my laptop. I keep everything like that in a separate directory (called Personal, it's kind of a code) and I would just copy the entire directory. The problem with that is that if I changed any of my personal files on the laptop, they would get overwritten.

Then I discovered FolderShare, now owned by Microsoft and part of their Windows Live (whatever that is). FolderShare is a free service that you can use to keep your files synchronized between your computers, share files with friends or colleagues, and download your files from any computer that's connected to the Internet. It's been working great for me, behind my firewall and router at home, and even behind the corporate firewall (allegedly). I don't run it all the time, but once a week or so I'll leave my computer on at home, I leave the software running all the time, and I'll start the software on my computer at work, and bingo bango bongo, it's done. The software is careful enough not to delete multiple versions of a file, but saves them them under another file name.

There is a limit on the size and number of files, a single directory can't have more than 10,000 files. I synch most of my Personal folders, although I don't include my iTunes library (too many files) or My Pictures (too large). I also synch my Favorites list (I have 2200+ links) between home and work, this works great, our corporate pushes out new links periodically and they appear at home automatically.

FolderShare is a great way to work seamlessly on multiple computers. All of your resources are there no matter where you are. It works great, and best of all, it's a free download (it's in beta now, but I suppose that they may charge for it down the road, after all Microsoft has to make money somehow).

In San Francisco

Quiz of the Day

See how many of the most common words you can list in five minutes here.

Long Overdue

I made some long overdue updates to several pages today, including Drew, Football Weekend, KFFL, and Skiing pages. I also updated the little "drew hevle" box in the right hand upper corner of the main with a new picture. I also removed the "beta" from the twitter box, it's been working just fine, and I added a link to the thought of the day page, just click on the "thought of the day".

This is a picture of me in 1981, playing bass at a Klein outdoor party. I was seventeen, and a freshman at UT Austin. This is the first bass I ever owned, an Ibanez Roadster, and I bought it just a couple of months before this gig. I traded it in for one of the Fender Precision basses that I still own.

Mike Ruocco submitted this picture to Are You Hot or Not, and I got an 8/10 (not too bad, I thought).

I’ve got two Fender Precisions, both 1970’s models, one fretless. I’ve also got a Yamaha BB1200, and I just had a custom G&L L-2500 5-string bass made, in Belair Green. I play through a Gallion-Kruger head and a 4x10 Hartke cabinet.

Recruiting Corrosion Engineers

Our job market is as hot as it has ever been, I regularly get several calls a week from recruiters looking for corrosion engineers. Our company is taking an active hand in recruiting prospective corrosion personnel from colleges and universities, and they asked me to help them come up with a description of what a corrosion engineer does.

Corrosion Control - we keep exciting things from happening

Corrosion Control - real-life application of the Nine Tenets of Constancy

Corrosion Control - crushing the laws of Thermodynamics, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? When someone asks me what I do, I usually tell them it's a combination of MacGyver and that guy Q from the James Bond movies.

How I Got Roger Staubach's Autograph

My friends Kevin and Leslie and their kids took this video of Roger Staubach signing my business card. They sent it to me as a gift because Roger was my childhood hero. It couldn't have been a better gift!

Gasoline Costs

One of the nice things about using personal financial software (I use MS Money) is that you can very quickly break down where your money is going. Here's my expenditures for gasoline, not counting vacations or business travel (I use different categories for those), over the last eight years. One note, I have a company car that I use for commuting to work, and the company pays for the gas. In the summer of 2005, I left El Paso for Enbridge, and returned in November of 2007. I didn't really think that having a company car helped with my gasoline bill much, since I only live 8 miles from work. I calculate that my commute contributes about $400/year, but from the graph it appears that there is a larger contribution than I thought. I do drive to the airport 20 or 30 times a year, that contributes another $300 or $350 per year. Maybe I'm getting a better deal than I thought? For once?

Drew Bobblehead

Yeah, I probably watch The Office a little too much.

Le Tour 2008 Week One (or should I say Weak One)

As I predicted last year in this post, "there will be many more drug scandals before I regain confidence in the fairness of the race." Former US Postal and Discovery team member Manuel Beltran was arrested by French police Friday after testing positive for the banned red-blood cell booster erythropoietin (EPO). He was re-tested on Saturday July 5th after pre-race blood tests showed abnormalities, but the results of the followup testing weren't available until last Friday. (Photo from lequipe.fr)

Under a new French anti-doping law, Beltran faces a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $121,600 (€76,000). He has been expelled from the Tour, and will be fired from his team pending the results of the testing of the "B" sample. He will likely get a two-year ban from professional cycling, which will be in effect a lifetime ban since Beltran was planning to retire this year after a 14 year career as a top climbing team rider.

This is yet another of Lance Armstrong's teammates who have proved to have been doping. That doesn't make him guilty, but the fact that Lance was able not just to beat but to dominate the best cyclists in the world, when many of them have subsequently been proven to have been doping, makes it more difficult to defend him (and Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton).

Top 10 Tour Disappointments
10) Time-trial specialist and US team Team Garmin-Chipotle member Dave Zibriski's absence due to a back injury.
9) David Millar promised to be a GC contender in the Tour for Team Garmin-Chipotle. After the first mountain stage, he isn't even close. On a day he needed to gain time, he finished 55th in stage 8, losing more than four and a half minutes, and is now 25th overall.
8) French polka-dot jersey winners who can't climb. What an attention-whore Thomas Voeckler is. Not one of the polka-dot jersey wearers so far could hold a real climber's bike shorts.
7) After a fantastic time trial in stage 5, Stefan Schumacher fell near the finish in stage 6 when he ran into the back wheel of Kim Kirchen. He lost the overall to Kiki by 16 seconds, and probably would have had three more days in the yellow jersey.
6) Fabian Cancellara's time trial, the presumtive favorite as a time trial specialist and world champion for the last two years. Everyone was ready to give him the stage win and the yellow jersey. He finished fifth.
5) Robbie McEwen. Or lack thereof.
4) Some of the greatest sprinters in the world are absent from the Tour once again. Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was banned for one year after testing high for the asthma medication salbutamol. Petacchi holds a therapeutic-use exemption for the otherwise banned substance, he is presumed innocent with levels of up to 1,000 ng/ml, but tested at a level of 1,320 ng/ml. Tom Boonen, last year's green jersey winner, was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition.
3) Juan Mauricio Soler, last year's polka-dot jersey winner, abandoning because of a fall on the first day of racing.
2) No Alberto Contador (last year's winner) and American Levi Leipheimer (least year's third place finisher) because of the arbitrary ban of Team Astana.
1) We're still talking about drugs in the Tour de France.

Top 10 of the Tour
10) Having a commentator that seems to know something about cycling. Craig Hummer replaced Al Trautwig and he seems to be growing on me, he's dominating the commentator picks. TDFblog described Al Trautwig as combining "bombast and ignorance in staggering proportions!" Hummer doesn't quite have the chemistry with Bob Roll that Trautwig had, but he's doing a great job. Much better than Kirsten Gum. Although not in a sweater.
9) The commentary of Jonathan Vaughters. He's a thousand times better an interview than Johan Bruyneel, and Bruyneel is better than the rest of the team managers. When he used the f-word on live TV, Robbie Ventura's expression was priceless.
8) After a 200 km breakaway, William Frischkorn of Garmin-Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end, settling for second place on the day.
7) Thor Hushovd winning a stage and the leading sprinter in the standings for the green jersey.
6) Bernard Hinault pushing the protester off the podium. The only thing worse than socialist Frenchies are activist socialist Frenchies.

5) Mark Cavendish's domination in the sprints, with two stage wins so far, and possibly more to come if he can make it over the mountains.
4)The cameras and Tour coverage gets better every year. I remember watching Greg LeMond winning the Tour over Laurent Fignon of France in 1989 by 8 seconds. It was on a one-hour tape delayed special, and that was the only coverage of the race that week.
3) Christian Vandevelde in third place overall in the GC standings. Wow. I would have bet money that he'd be toast by now. Go Christian! Another American Tour de France winner would just kill the Frenchies.
2) American teams Columbia's and Garmin-Chipotle's performances. These are teams to be reckoned with.
1) Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia in both the green and yellow jerseys. So far...

New record time to the airport

On a recent trip, I was running very late for my 7:30 pm flight, I wasn't able to leave my house until 6:38. Traffic wasn't too bad, I got to the airport in good time and parked in the terminal parking lot. There was an open space right up front, and when I walked up to the elevator the doors opened before I hit the button. I arrived at the check-in desk at 7:05, I had checked in online but I had to check a bag. There was an open check-in kiosk, and I walked right up. I breezed through security and I was sitting on the plane at 7:15.

From door to door, 37 minutes. I love Houston Hobby airport, and I love Southwest Airlines.

Progress on the GTO restoration

The guy working on my GTO called me this evening, and the good news is that he's got the car off the original frame, and the replacement frame is ready to go. The bad news is that there was more corrosion (ironic, isn't it?) than we thought, and a lot of welding of replacement cross members will be needed. This equals more time and more money. But it's coming along, I plan to go down this week to take a look at it.

Le Tour 2008 (or should I say La Tour 2008)

Well, we're four days into the 2008 Tour de France, and it's been exciting despite the absence of two of the three podium finishers, Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer, both of the barred Team Astana, and the green jersey winner, Tom Boonen, who was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition. The winners of thirteen of the yellow jerseys from 2007 were banned. The most interesting chapters of this Tour promised to be Mauricio Soler dominating the mountain stages (oops, he fell and broke his wrist) and Fabian Cancellara (who won seven yellow jerseys in 2007) again dominating the time trial events (oops, he came in fifth in today's individual time trial). No Michael Rasmussen, Alexandre Vinokourov, or Alessandro Pettachi. No Floyd Landis. No David Zabriskie. No Fred Rodriguez or Chris Horner. No Johan Bruyneel. No Al Trautwig, even! (although that might be a good thing, Craig Hummer seems to be growing on me)

I'll still watch every minute they broadcast (three hours a day on most days, today was four because of the ITT). There will always be compelling stories, most every day, with underdogs like Romain Feillu, wearing both the white and yellow jerseys yesterday after a 200 km breakaway (William Frischkorn of the US team Garmin Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end) and Stefan Schumacher, winning today's stage over the best time trialers in the world.

Tomorrow should be another great stage for the sprinters, and I think that's one of the most exciting things to watch in sports, which means that there'll be a breakaway that stays out. Or a big crash in the final turn. Ho hum, come on Pyrenees.

Video of the Day

I love to read the comments on YouTube.

Analysis of a phishing email

I received this email at my work email address, it appeared in my Junk E-mail folder in Outlook. This is kind of unusual since I rarely receive spam at work, I think we must have pretty good spam filters.

-----Original Message-----
From: by-joc@sympatico.ca [mailto:by-joc@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 8:56 AM
To: winner@freelotto.co.uk
Subject: Congratulation

You won the sum of $2,000,000.00 you arehereby advice to get back to us, to claim your prize.

Contact Mr. Richard Smith
Email: (contactrichardsmith01@btinternet.com)

Claims Requirements:
1.Full Names:2.Home Address:3.Sex:
4.Phone Number:5 .Nationality

Clues that the email is not legitimate

People who speak the English language rarely use the term "Congratulation" in the singular form, as in the subject field of this email.

The email address winner@freelotto.co.uk is not my email address, there's no reason why my email wouldn't appear on an email to me, unless it's a bulk email, and I don't think a large number of people won $2M.

The sender's email address is (purportedly) by-joc@sympatico.ca, which is a free webmail address from an ISP in Canada. A legitimate email would be from an organization.

You wouldn't expect an email from Canada for a UK lottery, or vice versa.

"You won" is kind of abrupt; most would use "You have won" or "You've won". "Advice" should be "advised", and the language "get back to us" is very informal compared to the rest of the sentence. Overall it looks like it was written by a non-English speaker, which is unusual for a British official but may be normal for a Canadian.

"Arehereby" is a typo, also the language seems overly stern for a congratulatory email. You would expect an email of this type to have been proofread.

If this is an email from a lottery in the UK, you would expect the winning amount in British pounds "£2,000,000.00" or euros "€2,000,000.00", not in dollars "$2,000,000.00".

The email provides a third email address for contact, from a third ISP which turns out to be a free webmail address from an ISP in the UK.

The weirdly punctuated list of personal information to be provided to claim the prize. It doesn't seem normal to request the sex of the winner.

Restaurants

I updated the Restaurants page by adding a restaurants blog, similar to the Books page, where the blog posts are the last restaurants I've visited, and the page lists the last twenty. A quick change, it took me less than an hour to create the template and test it out. I won't have two separate blogs, "Where I'm Eating" and "Restaurants", like I have in books, I'll just track them as I go (out).

Best. Golf Tournament. Ever.

Indy 500

Tony and I went to the Indy 500 again this year, this was our second time. Tony's really into it because his family is from Indiana, but I didn't really know much about Indy racing. I've become a much bigger fan since we started going, it's really a great spectacle, with attendance estimated as high as 500,000, although no one knows exactly how many were there. Here's a picture Tony took from our seats. This is the front stretch going towards the start/finish line, you can see the pit crews watching the racing. And NASCAR fans can just suck it if they think their cars are fast.



Photo (c)2008 Tony "Squirrelly Curly" Lynch

Things I Learned Today

I knew the first six, but I didn't know San Antonio was seventh. I wouldn't have bet that San Antonio was bigger than Dallas (that kind of devalues that expression, doesn't it?) I think most folks who don't live in Houston are surprised that Houston is fourth. I didn't realize that New York was as big as LA, Chicago and Houston put together.

Rank	City	State	Population
1	New York City	New York	8,250,567
2	Los Angeles	California	3,849,378
3	Chicago	Illinois	2,833,321
4	Houston	Texas	2,144,491
5	Phoenix	Arizona	1,512,986
6	Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	1,448,394
7	San Antonio	Texas	1,296,682
8	San Diego	California	1,256,951
9	Dallas	Texas	1,232,940
10	San Jose	California	929,936

From wikipedia, the table lists the incorporated places in the United States with population estimated by the United States Census Bureau on 2006-07-01.