Jess Olson

Ticks

2009-05-30T03:59:29Z

During MelFest, I was pulling about 3 wood ticks off myself a day. Today, I picked up Elvis, and when I set him down, I had a bug on my arm, where his neck had just been. At first glance, I thought it was a ladybug - because of it's size. Then at second glance, I noticed this was brown, and did not have beetle movements to it. When I looked closer, it was a wood tick from Elvis's neck that was as big as a lady bug, gorged on dog blood. Sarah and I got it to the sink, cut it in half and washed it's remains down the sink.

Happy Birthday (Belated) Mel!

2009-02-01T13:39:56Z

Happy Birthday (Belated) Mel, sorry I'm a day late.

Car and holidays

2009-01-13T00:29:20Z

My car is a 11 year old Toyota Avalon. It had a hood with 11 years of paint chips from rocks in it, and I wanted that fixed. One of the soldiers that got back from Iraq early was telling me that the auto skills center on post does body work, including painting. Well, they do the paint, you do all the work leading up to it. So, I got to sand my car, put body filler (a.k.a. bondo) in my car, sand body filler, watch it get primed, then wet sand my car, and then tape off the non painting surfaces. It was a lot of work, but my car looks a lot better.

Our holidays went good. Sarah and I were out to St. Louis to see her sister, and for New Years we saw the little apple drop, in Manhattan. That was a lot of fun. Plenty of college kids, seniors, families with babies, a wide variety of people showed up. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people texting were college or teen girls.

Professional Advice

2008-12-07T20:22:37Z

So, currently I have an "old" router at home, a Linksys BEFSR41v4. It has some limitations. I found this Zone Alarm appliance that looks good, and seems to have built in antivirus, so I could unload it from my computer.

Zone Alarm Z100G

If someone has some good information, experience or opinion, I would love to hear it, thank you.

Linux

2008-08-01T14:45:21Z

http://xkcd.com/456/

So, this XKCD strip is about parents teaching your kids about linux, I've said lots about linux to my dad. When I spoke to my dad last night, he's talking about getting something like an EeePC and running linux. It goes both ways.

Gas

2008-06-02T03:21:43Z

Between April's gas prices and May's the price of gas has gone up a lot. In April I drove 1156.3 miles and spent $152.56 on 43.58 gallons, in May I drove 660.1 miles and spent 106.35 on 27.78 gallons. Part of that April driving is a road trip with good gas mileage and May was only 3 fill-ups, all local, city driving, just commuting to work.

I have a spreadsheet of my gas going back to February of '07. In April on $1 I could drive 7.57 miles and in May on $1 I could drive 6.21 miles. So if I got April's distance per dollar in May, my gas bill would have been $87.14, or 22% less.

mmmm... smell that inflation. IN A MONTH.

Speed Racer

2008-05-17T22:03:31Z

Speed Racer is awesome! The visuals are fantastic, and the story isn't terrible either. Hopefully Stephen Colbert will not be too upset with it, Rain('s character) does not win the Grand Prix.

Buracrarcy: The 15th left arm does not know what the 10 millionth right arm is doing:

2008-04-13T23:32:36Z

This is about a friend's year ending tax payment to the IRS. I had first led with how the IRS cashed my check right away while NM and IL had not yet direct deposited my overpayments.

From #uiuc :
[18:28] (name withheld): i accidentally didn't put enough postage on the return. it got returned
[18:28] (name withheld): luckily i sent it 2 weeks early
[18:29] (name withheld): as (spouse's name withheld) said it seems ludicrous that $.49 delayed the payment of so many thousands of dollars

How is this for parenting - and other news from NYC?

2008-04-04T13:48:27Z

http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subway-alone

Some of you have kids, what do you think of this story? Personally, I like it.

I've found some weird site that apparently has stories I like to read because here is something about congestion pricing coming to NYC. (Congestion pricing is an answer to scarcity of streets for the [high] number of people that want to drive on them.) Instead of paying for the streets in time, you pay in cash. Enjoy:

http://www.nysun.com/blog/culture-congestion/one-cheer-congestion-pricing

LJ and opencongress.org

2008-03-24T13:10:10Z

I've heard a few people complaining here about LJ going pay only ... or some plan of LJ's like that. Given how I know most people here we care some about politics, and keeping track of our congress critters is an easy way to do that with http://www.opencongress.org/. Since it has a blog feature it seems like a very good mix of "Web 2.0"

No kidding

2008-03-06T02:31:33Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030500463.html FBI Director Mueller went to congress recently and the WaPost made an article about it. Mostly, it's about the misuse of "a type of administrative subpoena". Even better from the 3rd paragraph from the bottom:

"Mueller said the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is "particularly effective." He pointed to the FBI's interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government's actions and motivations."

Dear BusinessWeek

2008-01-15T01:54:22Z

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/12/1215_homeland_security/source/5.htm

This is a SH-60, made by Sikorsky, owned by United Technologies, not General Dynamics. I'm sure G.D. makes some neat radios and computers work together, try that, it'll still look cool.

Funny stuff for the election.

2008-01-02T20:10:09Z

The GOP Primary Field in Buffy Villains. It's very funny. If/when there is a a version of Dem candidates somewhere, I'll laugh at that as well.

1st Boneheaded thing of this year.

2008-01-01T14:26:02Z

I made coffee this morning and hopped in the shower. I get downstairs to discover I did not put the coffee pot in the coffee maker where it goes, the pot was sitting on the counter behind the pot. There was coffee everywhere.

The most important thing is that I at least laughed at myself and didn't get angry.

Housing and stock market cartoon

2007-12-31T04:37:02Z

http://www.stockmania.com/index.php?showimage=12 (Yes, it start's at "12")

Many of you will enjoy this, it's a bit over the top, but very good and once in a while he's a little off, but it's pretty accurate as well.

No More TV!!!

2007-12-12T01:09:14Z

Sarah and I gave away our 2 TVs and turned off the cable TV!!!!!!!!

I feel good!

right where it's supposed to be?

2007-12-06T22:11:25Z

This is an article in the NY Times called A Bundle of Joy Isn't Enough? and it's about women getting presents after childbirth, for going thorough childbirth. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy I can't get pregnant, but to me the, funniest thing is that it is in the "Fashion and Style" section.

"Little Boxes"

2007-11-20T03:31:38Z

Little Boxes by Pete Seeger is a '60s counter-culture song. Back when Joe and Laura Gross got married, Rene Hendrix point out the houses -in or just South of San Fransisco- that inspired the song. I found this link on Calculated Risk.

Restaurant Geeks

2007-10-22T18:29:06Z

http://www.punny.org/money/fight-thieving-restaurant-servers-with-checksum-tips/

Paranoid Restaurant Geeks on the attak! They are showing you how you can work a check sum into your tip and final price to make sure your server is not cheating you.

Phone advice

2007-10-19T14:12:04Z

I just got my HTC Excalibur (aka T-Mobile Dash). I do not get a T-Mobile push email account - what a BlackBerry has. I am going to create on for specifically for the phone at either gmail, or yahoo or hotmail. This phone uses Win. Mob. 6, does anybody know what would be the best email provider in that case?

I will look up mobile anti-virus software, anybody have and good suggestions or know what to avoid?

Thanks!

Welcome back higher interest rates!

2007-10-17T02:18:55Z

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/10/so_much_for_tha.html

Remember that budget surplus/balanced budget haded off at the end of the last decade? Yep, it was nice. The current deficits were decreasing, but no longer! Now the government is running bigger deficits - from a slowdown in tax receipts. When the government has to borrow more money, interest rates go up.

Nobel Peace Prize

2007-10-12T11:37:51Z

If you have not already heard, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Good for him.

Ghawar (largest oil field, in Saudi Arabia) and Cantrel (Mexico, Gulf of) on decline

2007-09-30T16:08:15Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1e3FDD65k

Saudi's largest oil field is in decline, this guy thinks it's 4 to 5% and has heard more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fo3sxhBylw

This guy says Mexico's Cantrel is down 20%. (Though he didn't' say from it highest production ever or year-over-year or wha metric.)

Solar Powered houses will be big!

Unbuntu

2007-09-30T00:17:06Z

I am 'upgrading' from Vista H.P. (which I have not had too many problems with) to Unbuntu 7.0? . I have some free time so I will try to get everything working before I need Falcon View again.

Extinction

2007-09-23T14:07:34Z

On Friday I saw Resident Evil: Extinction. It was good and what I expected to see; lots of shooting and violence, this time there was less tight fitting clothes. How Alice kills the birds was some great CG, and could be a good set up for the 4th movie.

There was a preview for Ironman, it looks good.