Saturday, August 26, 2006

Why I need to get rid of my car.

I drive it once a week and it costs me this much:
Pie chart of transport expenses
Note that "car" includes subcategories not shown: payments, gas, insurance, repair, etc.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Wrong train

Dangit, I got on the wrong train this morning. I was reading the paper when a Purple line pulled in. Not paying attention and just assuming it was Brown, I got on. And then when we were crossing the river into the Loop, the voice told me that Clark and Lake was next. My first thought was, that's funny, the voice is wrong. Wierd. Oops.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

2006 Chicago Air Show

I walked over to the lake today and found a patch of sand with a friend to watch the 2006 Chicago Air and Water Show. Last year I just peeked out on my balcony and observed a bit. This year I made it to the lake. I loved it! Those military jets are so cool. So, so cool. I had to use my point-and-shoot camera because my good digital SLR is in for service :( Man...the pictures I could have taken with my big lens and a tripod a mile closer than last year! Oh well, I got some great snaps!

Sleeeep

Do you ever build up a big sleep debt? I just paid some back, and hopefully put some in the bank. I went to bed on Saturday at 9pm and woke up Sunday morning at 9am. It was awesome.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Cold shower!

I had no hot water this morning. I mean none. Not like the hot water tank was drained but still trickling lukewarm water. No. Icy cold.

I went out last night, so I had to shower—I had the stench of bar on me.

So I steadied myself and plunged in for short bursts. On the plus side, the cold seemed to cut through my hangover. On the down side, I don't think I got the bar stench completely washed off.

And then I had to shave. I microwaved a bowl of water so I could do that with warm water. Totally worth it.

Monday, August 14, 2006

More on Oddmuse

I left a comment on the Oddumse wiki with a feature request on Saturday. Alex replied about three hours later agreeing. It got checked into revision 1.701 about 45 minutes later. How cool is that?

Sunday, August 13, 2006

2003 Bodegones del Sur Tannat

Last night I bought a bottle of 2003 Bodegones del Sur Tannat to a party. The wine comes from Uruguay and is made from the Tannat grape. The wine is a very dry, full bodied red with a smooth finish. At $13 a bottle, it's a must-try.

This is part of my ongoing effort to not buy wines without trying them first. Sam's Wine makes this easy by having informal tastings on weekends. Just show up at the store and there will be a broad spectrum of wines you can try, usually about twenty or thirty different wines in total. While you're there, be sure to listen to and absorb the knowledge from the servers.

Wiki fever

I was recently introduced to Oddmuse, a simple Wiki engine written in Perl. I initially set it up for a side software project I'm working on with friends (we needed a simple way to capture and share requirements and ideas). After that, I made www.pettijohn.com use it. One thing about it that appeals to me is that it's so easy to set up. Literally drop the script in, change one config value, and it works. You can tweak (which I've done), but there are no dependencies on databases or anything (it's filesystem-based). Nice job, Alex.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

So much content

I was thinking about all of the places on the Internet where I create content: blogs, photos, restaurant reviews. The list seems to keep growing. Here's the list and their RSS feeds, as of now: