Toyah

I keep meaning to post, but have been too busy to write a properly grammatically-correct entry. So I will have to make do with a bulleted list of unconnected points:

# Still constantly working on the apartment, but the painting is 99.9% done now. I'm going to pull out the old nasty bathroom sink and vanity tonight, and redo some of the wiring.

# So we're more-or-less on schedule to list the house in July, w00t!

# Still so much stuff to do though. But, all smaller projects than what we've done so far.

# I did some research on backyard orchards a few days ago, because that's one of the things we want to do at our next house. Apparently you don't really need that much space for fruit trees: up to 4 can go in one "hole", i.e., a 2-foot square space. And for a backyard they should be pruned very short, no taller than as high as you can reach. We could plant some at this house, if we were going to stay long enough for them to start bearing. Anyway, we're really looking forward to having space for a garden and fruit trees.

# Debbie's feeling better now that she's into the second trimester. And everything is still checking out completely normally and healthy, so yay for us!

On Monday, I watched the much hyped Matt Lauer interview of their royal highnesses, Princes William and Harry. It was an hour well spent.

The interview was prompted by the upcoming 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death, but the topics covered during the interview were much wider. I thought Lauer did a great job directing the interview and intermixing fluff with serious questions. He also avoided asking them about Britain's involvement in Iraq. He did ask each about the possibilities of them being sent to Iraq - I didn't even know that Prince William was in the military, but he is. Currently he has an administrative post, while Harry actually has an infantry command. It's quite clear that William would never be sent to combat, not the heir to the throne, especially not since he is wide perceived as being the future savior of the British monarchy, a monarchy that has been recently rather shaky. Harry presents a different sort of problem for the crown. Since the modernization of of the British monarchy, the royals have tried to seem more "normal" and connected to the lives of their "subjects." There is only so much that a modern, democratized society can take when it comes to a stale, pompous vestige of a feudal (sorry Moy!) past.

I think that the crown and military have made the right choice with Harry by not sending him to Iraq. It would truly be a crisis if he were to be captured and hate to say it, but the Neville Chamberlains would be coming out of the woodwork to get Britain out of Iraq and to give in to any demands that his captors might have. This would then present another GIGANTIC image problem for the monarchy, in that the threatened life of one prince was enough to cause Britain to leave, while the lives of 100's/1000's of regular lads was not. Maybe I don't give the Brits enough credit, but that's how I see it playing out.

The princes came across as quite well spoken, very likable, fairly knowledgeable and an excellent mix of bloke and nobility. They were quite open and honest and not on edge. They were asked what they thought of America. They both said they loved it and that it was so vast and had so much to do and see. Apparently they haven't been rotted by the prevalent attitude of Europe's elite: the feux-contempt for all things American. I think Prince William will be a piece in the continued closeness of the Anglo-American alliance.

It was very clear that they both loved their mother and really do want to honor her memory. They were naturally asked about the intense media and tabloid scrutiny surrounding first their mother and now them. I thought they handled those questions quite well. Prince William did not openly blame them for his break-up with Kate nor for the death of his mother. They said they didn't like the intense scrutiny, but that they understood it and realized that people make a living doing that and that they just had to accept it. It was a very poised and graceful answer, becoming of royalty and yet with an air of "we're just a couple of blokes and things happen."

All in all, an hour well spent. I have to say the princes really impressed me and they were fantastically prepared in such a way as to appeal to an American audience, in my opinion anyway. It will be very interesting to see how the House of Windsor handles itself during my lifetime; I'll be watching.

today has not been a busy work day. i am not complaining, except for the fact that the afternoon is going to take forever unless something comes up to make the time go. i have already taken care of yesterday's reports, today's deposits, today's document control, checked and adjusted my fantasy team, read the most recent report on the stupid kobe vs. lakers situation, and eaten lunch. some of those activities are supposed to come later in the day, so that the afternoon feels shorter.

i am looking forward to the weekend. the tigers weekly baseball game is set for saturday. i am hoping to help continue the winning tradition of the 'weekly' squad. i also would like to repeat the glory last year's MVP performance (preferably with some offense to go along with the glove work).

jennifer and i are expecting wedding invitations to be in this week, so i will develop writer's cramp soon. phone calls to verify addresses should be expected.

It's just over one month, now, until the final installment of the Harry Potter series hits the shelves in America. At this time two years ago I had read zero Harry Potter books. By the end of that summer I had read all six. Having seen the first three movies I thought I would give the books a try. I found them to be fun, easy to read, and impossible to put down. By the end of my binge I had had enough and felt ready for the wait. In a way I am quite glad that I read the first six and had to wait for the last book to come out. I'm sure I will appreciate it much more.

My only concern is my wild-card roommate Justin. The guy plays the role of the imp who cracks jokes on his friends... not big jokes that really get you in trouble, but little jokes that annoy you almost to the point of actually being mad. Justin has vowed to read the book in one night and then tell me the ending (much like when Phil read me the last paragraph of Orwell's 1984 as I was halfway through). I fear that I am doomed to this fate, as there is no way I will finish the book before him. He reads like Johnny Five and usually follows through on his threats. Plus I haven't the time to read it ASAP and I would like to re-read the other books as it has been two years.

The end of a hit series always comes with a little bitter taste, but all good things (Dallas, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, baseball season) must come to an end. The question is; will J.K. Rowling continue to have a successful career?

Labels: books

Labels: work

Back when I was single, or dating, weekends were a time of fun, recreation, and relaxation (and also, sometimes, boring or merely filled with never-ending homework). Now that I am married and own a house, they can be...otherwise.

Saturday we got up early and pounded the streets for an hour or two, hanging door hangers for our VBS that is starting this Thursday and runs until Saturday. Once we were done we headed for Home Depot, which is around 30 minutes away in another town, to pick up our solar-powered streetlamp and look for a new weed-whacker and a new screendoor. Found the weed-whacker, not the screendoor: apparently we will have to special-order the door. Then we came home and crashed for the rest of the afternoon, as neither of us slept well Friday night. No idea why, but that meant our poor dog spent most of the day in his kennel, a most unjustified sentence.

Sunday we did the usual church things, and Monday I stayed home from work to get some serious work done on the house. I intended to spend the morning installing the streetlamp and the afternoon painting the apartment. But as usual, circumstances did not cooperate. Did you know cast-iron is pretty much impossible to cut? I didn't realize the pole was cast-iron: I thought it was steel. Now I think it is cast-iron, because when I went to cut off the top of the pole to make the top flat (if you've forgotten, this is the tall rusty pole with no light on it that has been an eyesore for years)...well, I used a sawzall, and it took 3 blades and four batteries to cut it. I should've used a circular saw with an abrasive blade or something like that, but by that time I was halfway done.

The pole is 4 1/2 inches around, while the lamp has a base that is 3 1/2 inches around, designed to sit over a smaller pole. So I thought I could just sit the lamp base down inside the pole, which indeed worked quite well. To fasten it, I planned to run a bolt through the pole and lamp. But, as I say, the pole is cast-iron. My drill, an 18-volt hammer drill with titantium bit, barely scratched it. So I scrapped that plan and tried an epoxy, since the lamp doesn't need to be held extremely tight, just enough to keep it from wobbling. But naturally, the fit is not tight enough for the epoxy to connect. So I'm still looking for a way to set the lamp securely in the pole. I'm now contemplating wrapping the bottom of the lamp---the hidden part---in tape until it's thick enough to jam down into the pole. Not very elegant, but the friction grip might be enough, and it won't be evident.

So anyway, today my arms feel like lead, from using the sawzall while standing 15 feet high on a ladder. But the lamp looks nice! The light's not quite as bright as I wanted it, but it'll work. I did also get a fair bit of painting done upstairs. If I can, I plan to keep taking Mondays off for a couple of weeks until the apartment is done.

I had the pleasure of attending my third Tigers game of the year this Sunday. It was also the third time that I saw them play the New York Mets, but it had been ten years since the last time I saw this matchup. The day was unique in that the field was inhabited with a flock of seagull-looking birds. The birds would do their thing during the normal play, but the crowd cheering really riled them up.





It was a hot day in the sun, but the Tigers made it worth my while. After falling behind 3-0 in the first they broke out the bats and pounded out a 15-7 win. Lia and I attended this game with a large group of teachers (& friends) from her school. Two little kids in the group were seeing their first game. Little Kirsten was cute... I hope I didn't ruin the picture...



I still remember my first game: a 3-2 win in a night game over the Cleveland Indians. I told Kirsten about how much fun I had at that game and that I had correctly guessed the game's attendance. She seemed like she may be a fan someday. She asked me a few questions about the game which I was happy to answer.

For you non-baseball fans I direct you here. There is still time!!!

Labels: baseball

Ok, so I was supposed to being posting on Fridays, but others have posted on Friday, so I think it's ok that I'm posting a bit late.

Anyway, the subject of my post is the French and their fear of American hegemony via Google, yes, Google. In a short little article I found in the Journal Exchange of the WSJ from January 18, 2007, there is an article that originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph from Jan 14; it's a little blurb about a book entitled "Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge" by Jean-Noel Jeanneney (wow is that French). Jeanneney argues that Google's claim of "universalizing knowledge" is false, because it is an English-speaking run company, and thus it will be organizationally biased towards English literature in its digitalizing of the world's libraries.

He postulates that knowledge cannot be independent of its organization. For instance, "Google might digitalize books in a way that provides language advertisers could link to, rather than the clearest possible copies." Ok . . . so he is saying that hyperlinks are inherently indicative of American hegemony. Yes, and the world is flat and France is the center of the universe. This is just silly. Google is an international for-profit business, ie, they are going to do whatever makes the most money. What makes the most money for Google is having the fastest, best operating search engine in the world. (In fact, I'm waiting for the day that Google revolutionizes online legal research). As we good Hillsdalians understand, what this means is that, provided that France is a worthy market, Google will adapt to make its searching and digitalizing of French and other non-English literature as effective as it can to meet the needs of the French market.

Now, if France is not a worthy market, well then maybe it needs to wake up and join the 21st century, possibly dropping the 35 hour work week and un-socializing its economy. We will see what the new PM can do with that.

Mr. Jeanneney concludes that "[o]nly a government project can overcome such biases and deliver truly universal knowledge." Yes big brother, yes. Seriously, did anyone else laugh when they read that? As we know and as history has shown over and over, only the free market defeats institutional bias, which may be why Mr. J needs a government project, after all, I doubt he is too willing to let go of his anglophobia.

The little blurb concludes by noting that Germany has recently pulled out of a joint venture attempting to create the "Google-killer" named "Quaero. " The dispute that caused the crumble was over how many media the search engine should search. Of course Google would never collapse over such a dispute. With the free market behind it, Google says "search them, all of them."

This is as good a time as any, and possibly a bit late, but Toyah readers may be interested to know that the A-Train family is expecting an Junior A-Train in December. Mrs. A-Train has been experiencing some morning sickness (really, more like all-day sickness), but all things considered she's been handling it pretty well.

We were hoping to be moved into better and bigger house before getting in the family way, but the renovations to make it sellable have taken too long. We are still hoping to get the house on the market this summer, but even if it takes another year or so that should be okay: Junior A-Train won't take up that much extra space right away.

Labels: Family

USA Today is printing lists of 25 as part of the 25-year anniversary of the newspaper.

I found these lists very entertaining. I always like the end-of-year and all-time lists that different sources create. I almost always find fault, but the discussion is the fun part.


-The quote from the Challenger caught my attention. Does anyone remember if "major malfunction" was a phrase coined by that incident or if the NASA guy used a famous phrase in his response to the incident?


-Also, as big a sports fan as I am, I found the NFL draft list a bit out of place.

Check them out and see the majority of our lives summarized in 11 (so far) lists of 25.

Upon graduating Hillsdale I chose to forego the real world in favor of graduate school (just like Phil and J-Rock). While those two guys have long since finished their three-year commitment I am going to be entering my sixth year starting in the fall.

Life in academics is actually pretty nice. I've been working harder than ever this summer, both trying to publish a paper and preparing for my August comprehensive exam. But it's not so bad. The work schedule is very flexible as you pretty much work on your own stuff. If I feel like working from home, that's ok once in a while, but I'm usually on campus at my advisor's office.

The math department is full of people that are up for extra-curriculars. Wednesday nights we bowl a couple of games and that usually spills over into a trip to a local watering hole. We are currently in the graduate softball league (3-1 record, not as good as The Highlands; our name is the Liouville Sluggers, named after mathematician Joseph Liouville) and there is usually a get-together once a week at someone's place.

Unlike law school, graduate school in mathematics offers opportunities to teach each semester, covering tuition and providing one with a modest living. Like Anthony, I've begun to put away some money for the future, though it's not the maximum.

A lot of people, when they hear how long I've been in school, give me the "How can you go to school that long? I'm so done with school!" If school were the only thing going in my life and I was paying college rates to be here, I can assure you I'd be teaching at a community college by now or working as an actuary. The flexible work schedule, the variety of weekly activities, the good people I work with, and the steady-state $$$ situation keep Matt a happy boy. But I promise, provided I pass my comprehensive exam this August, I'll be done in two years. Then I'll have to enter... academia somewhere else!

It's not my goal in life to become rich, but I do think that planning for the future is an excellent idea. To that end, I've been contemplating on money management lately, and it seems to me that getting rich is not that hard, even if you're just an ordinary average middle-income family.

The most important thing is to pay off debt. Not long ago, I was thinking about budgeting some money for investment, above what goes into my 401k, but every investment advice on the subject I could find advised paying off debt first, because the interest you lost on debt is higher than the interest you gain on investments. Which is probably true, but a lot more boring.

The second thing is to live below your means. Just because you can afford it, doesn't mean you really need it. Living below your means doesn't mean being a cheapskate, or never ever spending money on a luxury, but it does mean that luxuries are the exception.

Third, if you are living below your means, you should be able to save some money. Save as much as you can, and don't blow it all when you do dip into the savings. Save it wisely too: your bank's interest rate for savings may not be the best available. Last month, following advice from the Bank Deals blog, I found a good deal from GMAC Bank and moved the bulk of our savings over to GMAC. Setting up the account was not as easy as it should've been, and took a good 4-5 weeks, but it has an interest rate of 5+%, and transferring is fairly easy, so the money is still quite accessible.

I can't predict the future, and it could be that terrible disasters will befall me that no amount of prudent planning can deal with, but on the law of averages: paying off debt (and not accruing more), living below our means, and saving our money should eventually result in something like wealth. Of course, for any of this to work comes the fourth and hardest part: lots and lots and lots of patience.

Labels: Money

John Wayne's 100th birthday was last weekend. Though westerns are not appreciated like they were in heyday of The Duke, even those of us who are not cultured in the western can appreciate the impact and prominence John Wayne has had on and in American culture. I've been reintroduced to JW recently through Peter Schramm and his podcasts on westerns with John Marini of the University of Nevada-Reno. After listening to their discussions, and after reading a book on the Parker family in Texas (Quannah Parker and his mother, Cynthia Ann, were the most famous members), I've recently taken time to watch The Searchers (loosely based on Cynthia Ann's story) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both films, directed by the great John Ford, are terrific and worth a look. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is especially rich in veiled and not-so-veiled lessons in American political and democratic philosophy. (To fully appreciate the significance of the west and Wayne's character in Liberty Valance, I recommend that you listen to the Dec. 11 and 15 Schramm podcasts before you begin watching the film.) At any rate, I'm developing a better appreciation for The Duke and, through the miracle of blockbuster online, I am slowly working my way through the John Wayne repertoire.

More on Wayne and Westerns:

• Schramm has a post and link to a bio of The Duke by Ronald Reagan on the Ashbrook Center's No Left Turns blog. Check it out.
  
  
• There's also a good article at Claremont by Marini on the significance of westerns, with some reference to John Ford.