As I was (am?) the senior class president of Washburn High 1986, I have a responsibility to organize the reunions. Well, I didn't do it for the 10, nor the 15, nor the 20, but I decided to really try to organize the 25. I got a facebook page together, I invited people, I organized meet-ups... and only one guy showed up to any of it. So imagine my surprise to get a facebook notification that "we're throwing the 25th" from a few people in the class, asking if I wanted to help out.
At this point, with everything else going on in my life, I'm EXTREMELY comfortable shuttering my own effort and backing the competing party. Same weekend, and let's face it, it's the popular gang organizing it... so it will succeed.
I did run my Senior President campaign on only one platform: Everyone could be in the Senior Movie, and I would do really fun Morning Announcements. And I did both - with a camcorder at a school assembly... and at least I think I did good announcements. I was probably a legend in my own mind on that. So it's no surprise that the "real" leaders of my class would be organizing this sort of thing... I was just a goofball who stole the crown. From my former best friend, actually. But that's another story.
Sigh - I really pity people who say High School was the best years of their life. Moving on:
Bella competed this weekend in Regionals for Synchro, and her team actually won the GOLD MEDAL!!! This is in spite of the fact that during their performance routine, one member decided to get creative and do her own routine separate. It's called SYNCHRONIZED swimming, people. Apparently our girls got enough on the technicals to pull ahead, so good for them! It's been a hard season so far with so much snow and missed practices. But they did it!
That had Bella up VERY late Friday and Saturday nights, and she took her time going down tonight too. She'll be a tired girl for school I imagine. All this Synchro had me and Isaac hanging out a lot. It was very fun.
Ok, it's a short update - my eyes are blearing, so it's off to bed.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Man Date
Isaac and I just got back from a boy's night on the town: We went up to the Chatterbox Pub up the street and had dinner and played "Tee Vee Games" (as Isaac calls it). Isaac has been talking about going there again for weeks, and loves playing Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo, and a game of Candyland too. Mostly Mario. He likes to play Mario, and asks me to play "Moe-WEE-gi" (Luigi). Of course my Mario chops were honed to a fine edge from my year at La Maison Francaise, where my Super Nintendo not only dropped several students' GPAs, but also gave the Native Speaker Jean Michel the idea to go back to France and start Guillemot, which became UbiSoft, which basically was a hugely successful video game company.
Anyway, Isaac and I had a great evening out. He had a hamburger, I had a jerk chicken pizza, and we spent almost 2 hours just having fun.
Other things:
Bella woke up in a TERRIBLE mood yesterday: Pamela and I had tidied up the house and had inadvertently destroyed a space station she had built (a blanket on the floor surrounded by dining room chairs). She saw this first thing and was in tears. She stormed off to the basement. After a few minutes I went down to check on her, and she wasn't talking, but I could see she was drawing something, and wanted me to leave her alone. This was good - we've been working on having her have creative outlets for her feelings.
5 minutes later, she came upstairs with a thundercloud, with raindrops, cut out of construction paper, held over her head with pipecleaners. I almost died, it was so adorable. She got a big hug, and everything was ok. We talked about other things she could have over her head (lightning for anger, sun for happy). But I was very proud of her for recognizing her mood, and doing something to lighten it. And did I mention it was completely adorable?
As Friday was kind of nice, we let Zinsser out the back door (full yard access, not just his poopoo palace). Pamela saw him chomping on something, and shortly thereafter he seemed to be choking - coughing up phlegm. Got us all worried, and by 10pm Friday night we were sufficiently worried to take him to the emergency vet. We got x-rays, and found that there was no pinecone his trachea... but still the coughing and gagging continued. Monday we took him to the daytime vet, and he has Kennel Cough. Turns out a cough sounds a lot like a puke for a dog. Poor Zinsser is now on Antibiotics, and he really needs to rest. He tries to play, and runs around for a minute, then falls down coughing. It breaks our hearts.
So we're giving Zinsser lots of cuddles.
Isaac is in the bath now, and I'm hoping it chills him out a little - he was excited to the point of speaking in tongues when he found out I was taking him to the Chatterbox. I even asked if he'd prefer to go to Edinborough Park, and he said "another day, tonight Chatterbox!!!". So with the 'Box out of the way and a lot of Mario played, I'm hoping he'll fall off to sleep nice and easy.
Anyway, Isaac and I had a great evening out. He had a hamburger, I had a jerk chicken pizza, and we spent almost 2 hours just having fun.
Other things:
Bella woke up in a TERRIBLE mood yesterday: Pamela and I had tidied up the house and had inadvertently destroyed a space station she had built (a blanket on the floor surrounded by dining room chairs). She saw this first thing and was in tears. She stormed off to the basement. After a few minutes I went down to check on her, and she wasn't talking, but I could see she was drawing something, and wanted me to leave her alone. This was good - we've been working on having her have creative outlets for her feelings.
5 minutes later, she came upstairs with a thundercloud, with raindrops, cut out of construction paper, held over her head with pipecleaners. I almost died, it was so adorable. She got a big hug, and everything was ok. We talked about other things she could have over her head (lightning for anger, sun for happy). But I was very proud of her for recognizing her mood, and doing something to lighten it. And did I mention it was completely adorable?
As Friday was kind of nice, we let Zinsser out the back door (full yard access, not just his poopoo palace). Pamela saw him chomping on something, and shortly thereafter he seemed to be choking - coughing up phlegm. Got us all worried, and by 10pm Friday night we were sufficiently worried to take him to the emergency vet. We got x-rays, and found that there was no pinecone his trachea... but still the coughing and gagging continued. Monday we took him to the daytime vet, and he has Kennel Cough. Turns out a cough sounds a lot like a puke for a dog. Poor Zinsser is now on Antibiotics, and he really needs to rest. He tries to play, and runs around for a minute, then falls down coughing. It breaks our hearts.
So we're giving Zinsser lots of cuddles.
Isaac is in the bath now, and I'm hoping it chills him out a little - he was excited to the point of speaking in tongues when he found out I was taking him to the Chatterbox. I even asked if he'd prefer to go to Edinborough Park, and he said "another day, tonight Chatterbox!!!". So with the 'Box out of the way and a lot of Mario played, I'm hoping he'll fall off to sleep nice and easy.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
So what else?
I haven't posted so much recently - here's the short version: Work is hard and the project is some degree of doomed, but we're trying, and people are really doing a good job. There are no villains in this story, nobody being obstinate or stupid that I can rail against, just a lot to do and not QUITE enough time to do it without people working a lot harder than I would like them to have to.
There have been a lot of Jimmy Johns lunches (hey, they deliver), and I'm growing a little weary of it... but all told, it's a project, and I get to sleep in my bed every night, so that is worth a LOT to me right now.
I am kicking off another project next week - one that I'll be managing remotely with a "boots on the ground" resource I hired... It is going to require both a lot of trust and a lot of oversight to make sure this goes well, because if it DOES go well, it's my new business line, and I can sell it to a dozen more clients. I had mixed results outsourcing my work for a different project late last year in Allentown - the person did a good job, but didn't really LAND it in the end, so I wound up parachuting in and making it all better. Of course, at the same time I was leaving Cleveland and starting Mpls, so my attention wasn't as focused as it could have been. I learned, and will manage this next one better.
My car is in the shop again - this time for a simple "check engine" light and a burned out headlamp... and they've had it for 2 days and counting, without a call about when I might get it back. But I'm not complaining. Why? Because the loaner they gave me is a $90,000 2011 Jaguar XJ Supercharged. IT IS AWESOME. I'm driving the HECK out of it, and having a lot of fun. I got the phone all bluetoothed in, and the music is flowing... it's a lot of fun. It's a little odd to be driving something that is worth over 7 times the bluebook value of the car that's in the shop. And if they think they're going to tempt me into upgrading this way... well they're right. I am tempted. It would be a lie to say otherwise. BUT temptation can be resisted. Especially when you look at $90,000 as the potential cost of 2 years of a good college.
I make good money these days, but not THAT good, people.
Let's see... Pamela is a busy busy bee: Since Christmas, we've had two big "events" she's been planning - the ECFE Gala we went to 3 weeks ago, and the ECFE winter party she's planning for this weekend. As a result of both, there has been paperwork and party supplies strewn around the house pretty much nonstop for weeks. I am patiently waiting for this to be over.
The house is a mess, partly because of the party fuss, but also because we had a cascade failure of appliances: The Microwave which would take 5 min to boil water started billowing black smoke one day. The dishwasher (both drawers) decided to stop washing and coat the dishes with black oily substance, and the oven burned some scones while leaving the middles raw. Yes, this rogues gallery of appliances joins the Fridge in being officially "dead to me", And you know what happened to the fridge. IT GOT REPLACED.
(And yes, we have tried to fix the dishwasher - they've been fixed 4 times in the 7 years we've had them. It is time to try something else. The rest are all over 10 years old, and frankly we want a change).
The big truck is coming Friday to put in our new Bosch appliances - fine German appliances that will not disappoint us.
And what else? I'm taking my Japanese studies seriously now - I'm sort of turning a corner where I actually am reading those hiragana characters with some degree of fluency, and even a few Kanji. Still a work in progress. But if I can identify "mens room" and "Coffee Shop" with any degree of fluency, my next trip to Japan will be a good one.
That's enough for the night. Good night!
There have been a lot of Jimmy Johns lunches (hey, they deliver), and I'm growing a little weary of it... but all told, it's a project, and I get to sleep in my bed every night, so that is worth a LOT to me right now.
I am kicking off another project next week - one that I'll be managing remotely with a "boots on the ground" resource I hired... It is going to require both a lot of trust and a lot of oversight to make sure this goes well, because if it DOES go well, it's my new business line, and I can sell it to a dozen more clients. I had mixed results outsourcing my work for a different project late last year in Allentown - the person did a good job, but didn't really LAND it in the end, so I wound up parachuting in and making it all better. Of course, at the same time I was leaving Cleveland and starting Mpls, so my attention wasn't as focused as it could have been. I learned, and will manage this next one better.
My car is in the shop again - this time for a simple "check engine" light and a burned out headlamp... and they've had it for 2 days and counting, without a call about when I might get it back. But I'm not complaining. Why? Because the loaner they gave me is a $90,000 2011 Jaguar XJ Supercharged. IT IS AWESOME. I'm driving the HECK out of it, and having a lot of fun. I got the phone all bluetoothed in, and the music is flowing... it's a lot of fun. It's a little odd to be driving something that is worth over 7 times the bluebook value of the car that's in the shop. And if they think they're going to tempt me into upgrading this way... well they're right. I am tempted. It would be a lie to say otherwise. BUT temptation can be resisted. Especially when you look at $90,000 as the potential cost of 2 years of a good college.
I make good money these days, but not THAT good, people.
Let's see... Pamela is a busy busy bee: Since Christmas, we've had two big "events" she's been planning - the ECFE Gala we went to 3 weeks ago, and the ECFE winter party she's planning for this weekend. As a result of both, there has been paperwork and party supplies strewn around the house pretty much nonstop for weeks. I am patiently waiting for this to be over.
The house is a mess, partly because of the party fuss, but also because we had a cascade failure of appliances: The Microwave which would take 5 min to boil water started billowing black smoke one day. The dishwasher (both drawers) decided to stop washing and coat the dishes with black oily substance, and the oven burned some scones while leaving the middles raw. Yes, this rogues gallery of appliances joins the Fridge in being officially "dead to me", And you know what happened to the fridge. IT GOT REPLACED.
(And yes, we have tried to fix the dishwasher - they've been fixed 4 times in the 7 years we've had them. It is time to try something else. The rest are all over 10 years old, and frankly we want a change).
The big truck is coming Friday to put in our new Bosch appliances - fine German appliances that will not disappoint us.
And what else? I'm taking my Japanese studies seriously now - I'm sort of turning a corner where I actually am reading those hiragana characters with some degree of fluency, and even a few Kanji. Still a work in progress. But if I can identify "mens room" and "Coffee Shop" with any degree of fluency, my next trip to Japan will be a good one.
That's enough for the night. Good night!
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
A valuable service
I have been ruminating on the perils of time travel. One of my favorite little stories is here. It's basically a wikipedia chat history outlining newbie time travelers continually trying to kill Hitler, and the weary veterans who go back and preserve the timeline. If it was a book, I would have bought copies for everyone I knew.
I've been toying with a time travel story myself, and one of the little nuggets I've come back to is a strange piece of advice I had got from an economics teacher back in junior high school. I don't remember much from his lessons, but once he did explain how compound interest works - how at a decent interest rate your money will double every 7 years at 10% interest. So his advice to us was (REALLY) if you ever got a time machine, you should go back about 70 years, drop a thousand in a bank, and come back to find you'd doubled ten times ($1000->$2000->$4000->$8000->$16000->$32000->$64000->$128000->$256000->$512000->ONE MILLION DOLLARS) To turn a grand into a cool million just sitting in a vault somewhere... wow.
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't daydreamed that scenario quite a few times. Take a grand, step into the time machine, come back, and withdraw a Million. Of course to a 12 year old, the concept of $1000 is pretty high too. But now I'm a man, and as time has gone by, I've come up with several... issues... with this get rich quick scheme. (And hey, let's not rain on the dream: Time travel is the EASY part.)
Ten percent interest was pretty normal in the early 1980s. Nowadays, you try to find a bank that gives more than 3% on interest. At that rate, your 70 year investment of $1000 is only worth about $8000. Hardly enough to buy your unstable isotopes for the time journey. You need to go to the stock market for an over time performance of higher than 5%. And that takes some active management. Definitely not set-and-forget. There's talk about going back and buying 1000 shares of GE or Xerox at IPO and letting is grow and split... but you just know that some time in there, someone would be wondering "who the heck owns 12% of this company? Let's do a proxy, and do a shares exchange for new stock, and if those old missing shares don't turn up, they're worthless..." It's just too risky. I'll at least assume that you would do your homework and pick a bank that you know won't go out of business before you'd withdraw your money.
Plus, really, how do you get that first thousand? Go back to 1930 with a handful of 2010 minted $20 bills? Ha. So you need to buy 1929 issue bills, which in good condition go for about $100 per. So you're paying $5000 for that first $1000. Ok, but we're talking a Million, so maybe that's not so bad. Still, if the interest rate is down to 3%, You're paying $5000 for $8000. Not the best deal.
Gold is always an option, of course. The problem there is that an ounce of gold in 1930 is worth $20. Today an ounce of gold is worth over $1000. So your $1000 in gold to deposit in 1930 will cost you $50,000 in gold to bring back. Again, if you can get your 10%, no worries... but at 5% you're losing money, bro.
Now I know what you're thinking now: You'll just withdraw that $50,000 from the bank - the same bank that you went back and deposited that gold into those years ago. SORRY - that one is going to be a causality paradox... This is the equivalent of you going back in time to give yourself the plans to build a time machine in the first place: The money has to have come from someplace outside of the causal loop, just like you actually need to invent the time machine in the first place. And don't even THINK of funding your time machine development with the funds you've grown by using the time machine. Do not mess with causality. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that once you cross a causal line, the whole timeline you just set up winks out of existence, and you're right back at the moment before the time machine entered your life.
I guess my point in all of this is that even WITH a time machine, it's going to be pretty hard to follow my economics teacher's advice.
I think a potentially good business idea would be to open a time traveler's bank: We'd accept payment in commodities, things that have a somewhat constant value over time, but are perhaps less inflated than gold... or heck we'd take gold too, because who is to say they haven't figured out a way to make cheaply it in the future... though at that point you need to wonder what a time traveler would want with a compound interest bank account when gold can be made at will. In the interest of timeline preservation, we'd need to make sure that none of our deposits are alloys or isotopes that are impossible to create in our current timeframe, and no technology trades of course (unless they want to bring next year's iPad... I'd violate causality for one of those).
Anyway, we would provide a certain level of stewardship for the assets - we'd manage a conservative stock portfolio for a 7% return. We'd also be prepared to cash out based on a certain code word and document combination, with no troublesome need to pretend to be your own great great grandson.
Naturally, we would make targeted investments based on our client's requests, and we may just make some minor piggyback investments of our own (not big enough to create attention) so we could take advantage of the information we have...
The only problem is that if the time traveler does violate causality by dipping into those funds before the time they had left to come back and deposit them (and I could see that happening a lot with the human resistance, trying to stock up BEFORE the robots take over), then the whole time loop would collapse. For all I know I've already had dozens of clients, and each one tripped up causality and I've reset to 2011 each time.
It's possible.
I've been toying with a time travel story myself, and one of the little nuggets I've come back to is a strange piece of advice I had got from an economics teacher back in junior high school. I don't remember much from his lessons, but once he did explain how compound interest works - how at a decent interest rate your money will double every 7 years at 10% interest. So his advice to us was (REALLY) if you ever got a time machine, you should go back about 70 years, drop a thousand in a bank, and come back to find you'd doubled ten times ($1000->$2000->$4000->$8000->$16000->$32000->$64000->$128000->$256000->$512000->ONE MILLION DOLLARS) To turn a grand into a cool million just sitting in a vault somewhere... wow.
I'd be lying if I said I hadn't daydreamed that scenario quite a few times. Take a grand, step into the time machine, come back, and withdraw a Million. Of course to a 12 year old, the concept of $1000 is pretty high too. But now I'm a man, and as time has gone by, I've come up with several... issues... with this get rich quick scheme. (And hey, let's not rain on the dream: Time travel is the EASY part.)
Ten percent interest was pretty normal in the early 1980s. Nowadays, you try to find a bank that gives more than 3% on interest. At that rate, your 70 year investment of $1000 is only worth about $8000. Hardly enough to buy your unstable isotopes for the time journey. You need to go to the stock market for an over time performance of higher than 5%. And that takes some active management. Definitely not set-and-forget. There's talk about going back and buying 1000 shares of GE or Xerox at IPO and letting is grow and split... but you just know that some time in there, someone would be wondering "who the heck owns 12% of this company? Let's do a proxy, and do a shares exchange for new stock, and if those old missing shares don't turn up, they're worthless..." It's just too risky. I'll at least assume that you would do your homework and pick a bank that you know won't go out of business before you'd withdraw your money.
Plus, really, how do you get that first thousand? Go back to 1930 with a handful of 2010 minted $20 bills? Ha. So you need to buy 1929 issue bills, which in good condition go for about $100 per. So you're paying $5000 for that first $1000. Ok, but we're talking a Million, so maybe that's not so bad. Still, if the interest rate is down to 3%, You're paying $5000 for $8000. Not the best deal.
Gold is always an option, of course. The problem there is that an ounce of gold in 1930 is worth $20. Today an ounce of gold is worth over $1000. So your $1000 in gold to deposit in 1930 will cost you $50,000 in gold to bring back. Again, if you can get your 10%, no worries... but at 5% you're losing money, bro.
Now I know what you're thinking now: You'll just withdraw that $50,000 from the bank - the same bank that you went back and deposited that gold into those years ago. SORRY - that one is going to be a causality paradox... This is the equivalent of you going back in time to give yourself the plans to build a time machine in the first place: The money has to have come from someplace outside of the causal loop, just like you actually need to invent the time machine in the first place. And don't even THINK of funding your time machine development with the funds you've grown by using the time machine. Do not mess with causality. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure that once you cross a causal line, the whole timeline you just set up winks out of existence, and you're right back at the moment before the time machine entered your life.
I guess my point in all of this is that even WITH a time machine, it's going to be pretty hard to follow my economics teacher's advice.
I think a potentially good business idea would be to open a time traveler's bank: We'd accept payment in commodities, things that have a somewhat constant value over time, but are perhaps less inflated than gold... or heck we'd take gold too, because who is to say they haven't figured out a way to make cheaply it in the future... though at that point you need to wonder what a time traveler would want with a compound interest bank account when gold can be made at will. In the interest of timeline preservation, we'd need to make sure that none of our deposits are alloys or isotopes that are impossible to create in our current timeframe, and no technology trades of course (unless they want to bring next year's iPad... I'd violate causality for one of those).
Anyway, we would provide a certain level of stewardship for the assets - we'd manage a conservative stock portfolio for a 7% return. We'd also be prepared to cash out based on a certain code word and document combination, with no troublesome need to pretend to be your own great great grandson.
Naturally, we would make targeted investments based on our client's requests, and we may just make some minor piggyback investments of our own (not big enough to create attention) so we could take advantage of the information we have...
The only problem is that if the time traveler does violate causality by dipping into those funds before the time they had left to come back and deposit them (and I could see that happening a lot with the human resistance, trying to stock up BEFORE the robots take over), then the whole time loop would collapse. For all I know I've already had dozens of clients, and each one tripped up causality and I've reset to 2011 each time.
It's possible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
