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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "the_bus" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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09:36 pm
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Annetta's pattern and number art project
Annetta has a kindergarten art class a couple of times a week as part of her curriculum. Recently the art teacher to paint something with numbers and patterns. As I understand it, the kids were free to make up whatever they wanted.
Here's what Annetta painted:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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10:30 pm
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Noodles and Company
We have noticed two restaurant openings in our area, Hai Ky (in the old Triumph Cafe location) and Noodles and Compnay (in the old Fresh Choice location.) Being in the mood to try one over the weekend, we chose Noodles and Company because Hai Ky looks like one of many such Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants in Austin.
Noodles and Company has three sections to their menu: Mediterranean (pasta), Asian (noodles), and common American pasta dishes. Pauline and I chose Asian for us and pasta for the kids.
My Bangkok Curry Noodles were pretty tasty, some heat, but surprisingly sweet. Pauline's Pad Thai barely resembled and didn't taste like it at all. Annetta's Mac and Cheese was quite good. Patrick's pasta in marina sauce was pretty tasty but nothing special either.
Portion sizes were also wacky. Kids got small bowls, which were more than enough for them. We got large bowls, and Pauline had twice as much as me. Mine seemed only slight large then the kids.
Overall, we weren't favorably impressed. It struck me as a place where someone who loved cooking pasta dishes created their version of Asian recipes based on tasting the dish on a trip they took once. Firebowl and Pei Wei are way better.
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04:25 pm
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Our New LED Christmas Lights
Last year I picked up some LED outdoor Christmas lights in the after Christmas sales. I knew that LED lights are much more efficient than incandescent so I figured this would be a worthwhile replacement of the lights we had.
Now that I have the power meter, I decided to measure the power consumption of my old and new lights. The old light strand had several strands that formed three semicircle patterns, so it had a lot of little lights. I got a reading of nearly 60W from one of these strands.
The new lights are blue LEDs arranged in "icicles" along a 9' strand. I got a reading of almost 3W from one of these.
I put up two of the new strands in place of the three strands of the old lights. The new power consumption is under 6W versus the old consumption of 180W. (All values calculated rather than stringing everything together and measuring.)
Hopefully everyone who puts up Christmas lights is replacing their lights with the LED lights as the old ones burn out.
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11:51 am
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Cable Box Energy Wastage
I have been curious for some time now about the energy consumption of various devices and appliances around the house. A couple of months ago I saw a Belkin power consumption meter on sales on Amazon, so I bought one to see what I could learn.
We have three cable TV set top boxes in our house, although we mostly use the TV in the living room. The kitchen box is nearly always "off", but I know it's consuming some power all the time because it's on standby rather than completely powered off.
The cable box was using 18.5 watts just to stay on standby and rose to 19.2 when "on" to watch TV. The box was an old one, vintage 2000. I took it back to Time Warner to exchange for a newer one.
Time Warner gave me the next model up, although I don't know how old this one actually is. My new box consumes 15.5 watts on standby, and goes up to 15.6 or 15.7 when on.
So an easy ~17% improvement in power consumption by switching out the box. In the overall power consumption picture of our household, this is quite negligible because the A/C, refrigerators, and washer/dryer set are likely accounting for 90%+ of our power usage.
Even so, this was an easy 72 Wh a day to save, which means saving just over 26 kWh a year. I wonder just how many old box Time Warner has out there still in service that ought to be retired and thereby give us a cheap power savings.
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12:43 pm
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Visa says I'm in the 1%???
This weekend I got a credit card offer in a nice black envelope. When I opened it, I found the offer was for the Visa Black card. Supposedly this is the most exclusive card in the world.
So exclusive, in fact, that only 1% of households in the US qualify. Huh, I'm in the 1% now?
Curious, I looked through the terms and conditions. To my shock, the annual fee was $495 dollars, plus $195 for additional cardholders.
No wonder this is so exclusive. Only 1% of households might be dumb enough to pay this fee!
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02:26 pm
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Recent changes
This year has been quite busy for me, and I'm happy to say that the past couple of months have brought some welcome changes. This should result in less stress and more time doing what I like doing.
The major change is switching to a new job. I'm still at the same company, but I've switched teams to return to a software development role. For most of this year, I was a sales engineer for a software product. The job is a technical sales role, but being a sales role, there's no software development to speak of. That job also required a burdensome amount of travel. Now I'm back to coming into the office everyday, using software development tools, and doing work that is interesting to me.
The other big change is Annetta has started kindergarten. We now have to get up early during the week and get her off to school. Thankfully, it's resulted in less work because she buys the school lunch and she knows and follows the morning routine. She really enjoys kindergarten, too, which helps.
The kids have also both started taking some basic gymnastics classes. Patrick is the only boy in his little class, but he really seems to enjoy it. For a 3 year old, he's quite coordinated.
We're still busy, but now everything feels more manageable.
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10:08 pm
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Parking lot rage... at Costco?
Today I was involved in the most bizarre parking lot incident of my life. I'm still completely baffled by the inexplicable behavior of the other person in this little "drama".
This afternoon we stopped at Costco to pick up a few things while Annetta was in Chinese class. The parking lot was extremely full and people were jamming lanes jockeying for position for the few spots opening up. I dropped off Pauline and went to search for parking.
I went out to the far end of the lot, quickly found they were full, so headed over to the few spots behind Terraburger that tend to be empty. Several were, so I rushed toward them.
I realized I was going a little fast and didn't carefully check both ways well, so when I saw someone coming from the left I hurriedly stopped, with the nose of the car sticking out into the lane. The lane is very wide there, the oncoming truck was the only vehicle coming and had plenty of time and room to make a small adjustment, so I decided to wait patiently for the truck to swing wide and continue on out of Costco's lot.
But as the truck started to pass, it slowed then pulled to a complete stop. The person driving looked over at me and appeared miffed, so I thought she was making her point and would move on. So I looked back and simply waited for her to pass.
The she began to wave her arms and possibly talking (it was hard to tell), seeming to signal, "Oh, you want to go over there" by gesturing toward my car and the empty parking spaces. I watched the drama queen do this several times, and started to get angry and worried. My irritation must have been plain on my face, because DQ just sat there and kept gesturing bigger. I was worried that she would get worked up and get out, so I back up and bowed my head and gestured for her to continue to on.
Surprisingly DQ backed up, left a little opening at the front of my lane, and resumed gesturing. By this time, cars were starting to line up behind and someone looked like they might try to pass. So now I felt I had to get out of there before it got ugly. Without making further eye contact, I zoomed out of the opening and turned right to travel down her lane and zoomed past another couple of lanes and quickly turned into the last one. I wanted to get clear of her and return to sanity.
For most of the way I could see DQ still sitting there. I had to stop for some traffic, so I paid attention to that and didn't see her leave. Thankfully DQ didn't follow me.
A short wait later I was able to turn and headed back to those free spots. By now I could see that the traffic had cleared out and there was no sign of DQ. I parked and went about my business.
I still have no idea what DQ was trying to accomplish. As much as I would have enjoyed yelling at her, I wasn't about to get out of my car and walk up to her giant pick up. I mean, normally when someone was going to fast and ends up sticking their nose at a red light, people just honk or give a dirty look and continue on their way. But she seemed happy to sit there and even back up traffic. I can't explain this bizarre behavior, other than to believe that DQ must think the behavior of people on Jerry Springer's show is acceptable and normal in real life.
How odd and disturbing.
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11:07 pm
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Busy IKEA weekend
For some time now, Annetta has needed a longer bed than the little one she's been sleeping on. Finally this past weekend we headed to IKEA to pick up a twin size bed.
The IKEA trip was fun for everyone, partly because we could essentially eat for free so we added a couple of slices of cake for dessert, and partly because Annetta went to Smaland to play for an hour while we shopped and picked up all the boxes.
The real work began after we got home, when we had to assemble all the parts. We bought the Odda twin bed with drawers for storage, plus the matching Odda headboard featuring a pull out set of shelves.
The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent assembling the bed, which took about three hours. We spent some more time rearranging the kids' room for the new bed. Sunday afternoon we put together the headboard, which took about another hour and a half. Annetta was surprisingly helpful, mostly in sorting out all the little bits and pieces. Thankfully we got almost all of the work done while Patrick was napping.
Annetta is quite happy with her new bed, somehow Patrick is happy sleeping in his bed in a new place in the room, and we're thankful just to bed done with this round of assembly.
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08:29 pm
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Back to regularly scheduled life
I returned from Sweden at the end of last week. Luckily we enjoyed absolutely beautiful weather my last full day there. A couple of colleagues and I went to the "old town" and walked around for a while until we found a restaurant for dinner. I'm glad I got a little bit of time to see something other than the hotel and office.
While not the best picture, here was the view (on one of the not so nice weather days) I had from my hotel room window.
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12:39 pm
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Guns, Germs, and Steel in progress
I'm most of the way through The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I'm losing steam in the hunting and gathering section. So I bought Guns, Germs, and Steel and downloaded to my Kindle.
Surprisingly, in examining the role of farming in the rise of centrally organized cultures, this book asserts that most domesticated crops have undergone large transformations from their wild varieties. Omnivore's Dilemma focused on this effect for corn, but apparently it's happened for most other crops. It's just that most other crops haven't become hugely industrial like corn.
I had always thought that the vegetables in our garden were pretty similar to the wild varieties. Interesting that it's not the case.
Tags: what i'm reading
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