November 30, 2002

7:15pm

After choosing to repair my car earlier this month, it has run great! Until the radiator started leaking. Which I had fixed yesterday, returned to me today literally minutes before leaving for church, and broke again (alternator not hooked up, oops!) on my way back from church - I was lucky to pull off to the side of the road, uphill, in front of the back exit to my subdivision.

I think my web project for December is going to be highlight the pictures from my cruise last year (I can hardly believe it's been over a year since I've been on a cruise!) that turned out pretty and nuke the rest. I mean, how many copies of fuzzy moving church stained glass windows do we need? I suppose I could blur them to make it unobvious that it was I who moved the camera before the picture had taken.

Dinner time! Last one with Tim until christmas time. Yay! (Yay dinner, not yay last one).

November 28, 2002

1:30pm

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

November 17, 2002

12:00noon

I'm not sure what to say. I've been kinda numb, kinda frozen, kinda volatile all week as a result. At least church went well yesterday. And, I'm going to play for the kid's praise thing later today, and on December 8th - the day after my hosted christmas party.

November 10, 2002

10:00pm

Today was a lazy day. Woke up late (ie: slept in), watched from TV (that patrick stewart movie, Safe House), went in to work via the PO Box, stopped at supersmokers BBQ for supper, came home, finished the movie, printed out all transactions on the LLC to categorize them for year-end taxes and bills, and chatted with a friend.

November 9, 2002

11:00pm

10:30pm

Here I am, sick again. My fever (didn't even know I had one, though that would explain the lack of appetite all day - just 1 small bowl of generic cheerios with milk) broke about 20 minutes prior to church starting. There I am, just playing piano softly prior to church, feeling out of tune with the liturgy (and I think the music reflected that), and I start to sweat out a storm. I walk away a few minutes later, to wipe down my hair and soak up all the moisture. Whew!!!

As a result I didn't make it to Eric's non-housewarming party, which I was definitely looking forward to!

But I'm also caught up on my TiVo except for two movies (The Producers, which people recommended, and a Patrick Stewart movie about this guy who has alzheimers and national security information), and just about caught up on the finances for the LLC. I'll tackle generating 'statements' for my tenants so that they know exactly where they are, tomorrow.

November 6, 2002

5:20pm

Apparently my "better form of voting" has already been thought of by better thinkers than I. Oh well. :)

I hate being sick: it's not as relaxing as one might think.

November 5, 2002

9:45pm

A better form of voting

It occurs to me that the american-style plurality-of-votes style of voting we use has got to have room for improvement in races or issues where there are more than two choices.

Obviously with two choices (yes or no, this or that person), the standard majority of votes suffices to indicate the affirmative will of (at least half) the people.

But in races where you have three (or more) candidates, such as recent Presidential ones, it would be better if each voter could rank their preference for which ones they want (from 1 to 3, or more). Count up all the #1 places for each candidate. Eliminate the least-numerically voted person, take all voter's preferences for those who had placed that candidate as number 1, and transfer their vote to their second choice person. Repeat until the winner has 50%+1 of the vote.

Advantages: people who vote for third-party candidates don't need to feel like they would waste their vote and switch to their preferred candidate instead. This would permit a truer reflection of the People's preferences, while still allowing them to choose "well, if not the libertarian person, then I'll indicate the demopublican with my second choice".

Oh well, it'll never happen: the current parties in power benefit too highly from the polarization of the current situtation.

9:30pm

I voted today. I went to the bank, rent in hand. I did the 3-day notice. I dropped off my dry-cleaning. Oh yeah, and I did the hard drive advance exchange swap for upgrading my parents' TiVo to 100 hours (from 30). I like those people at DigitalRecorder.TV. :) I snuggled for just a few minutes with Charlie, and here I am, trying to get finances all caught up.

My car may be in need of substantial repairs to the engine. It's also in need of minor repair (spot welding) in the driver's side seat frame. It's a toss-up on whether I want to pay for that, or start having 48 months of car payments. (It's hard to pass up 0% financing.)

Part of what leads me to think of a new car is the inconvenience of getting the current one fixed. Other than that, it really is a no-brainer to fix instead of replace. I've been doing the Networking thing to see if people I know know anyone who does engine (gasket) work. So far some promising leads, but nothing panning out for real, yet.

9:30am

Today's tasks include voting, going to the bank, giving a 3-day notice, dropping off dry cleaning, working, and snuggling with the cat again.

November 4, 2002

11:45pm

12:15am

Wow!

Friday night was awesome. The concert was muy excellente. Not so much that night, as in the last two days of (music) ministering at church.

After 2 hours of a musical retreat & concert, I was totally refreshed and reinvigorated. Well, maybe not totally, but certainly enough that I feel like a new person. I bought 4 copies of his new book "The Joy of Music Ministry", and he was so kind as to autograph them afterwards - one each to my choir directors at church, and one to myself. I haven't really even reached the first chapter - having read the foreword and the introductions - but I can already tell it will be equally invigorating.

This week should prove to be as busy as last week, between collecting the rent, voting on Tuesday, choir practice on wednesday night, the memorial mass on thursday, and church on saturday. Oh yeah, and work, too. :)

November 1, 2002

5:30pm

4:30pm

Elonka and I solved the PhreakNIC 6 code today.

Actually, I was home, sick with the uglies. We had figured out the first 4 layers of the code in an hour, and an 11-character exhaustive search of the 4th layer's password would have taken about a month on computing equipment available to me. Once the password was social-engineered from the creator, the remaining layers took just another hour.

Our response submitted was:

Elonka geek chick
Andy Midwest Wizard Olde
Together solved what Scott wrote
PhreakNIC Code Six Oh

... which didn't exactly meet what the designer (Scott) was looking for, but did show that the code was solved.

And my high-score on Bookworm is above 1.6 million, although my computer crashed before I could complete the game (by losing). Here's a capture from that game at just over a million: