Wine Country - Trip to San Francisco Day 5

Did a tour of the wine country today. We visited Kirkland Ranch and Madonna Estate in Napa, had lunch at Maya Restaurant in the Sonoma Square, then went on to Viansa in Sonoma. I'll spare you my amateurish attempts to describe the wines we sampled, but in general they were of high quality, with the best probably being the ones from Madonna Estate. We did learn quite a bit about wine making and wine tasting. Getting back to San Francisco late in the day, we had dinner at Tad's. We finished the day up with some quick shopping at Nordstrom and at the Nike and Levis stores.

Berkeley - Trip to San Francisco Day 4

Another day, another college. This morning we took BART to Berkeley. The tour of the school was interesting. There were not as many freaks as I would have expected; maybe it's because school was not in session. As far as the architecture on the campus, it was a far cry from the subtle luxury of the Stanford campus, as you would expect from a public school. The school's main library is a very impressive building; my wife described it as a little piece of luxury in a generally plain campus.

UC Berkeley has six Nobel Laureates on their current faculty: George Akerlof (Economics, 2001), Daniel McFadden (Economics, 2000), Steven Chu (Physics, 1997, who won the prize while at Stanford), Yuan Lee (Chemistry, 1986), Charles Townes (Physics, 1964) and Donald Glaser (Physics, 1960).

Our tour guide pointed out parking spaces with a "NL" sign. Apparently one of the perks of winning the Nobel Prize is that you get an assigned parking space, a quite valuable benefit given the extremely tight parking situation on campus. We saw a car with the NL parking decal in one of the spaces; based on its location it was probably Dr. Lee's car. Later we saw a second car in one of the NL spaces, but it wasn't a second Laureate sighting - it was just a dumbass who got a parking ticket for not realizing a space right outside the physics building was too good to be true.



Saw the town, very pretty. Walked around Telegraph Avenue. Wanted to go see Cody's Books, about which we had heard good things. When we arrived, it had closed. At first I thought it was a shame; then I saw this diatribe posted on the door.

One would think in a society that puts so much emphasis on information that a store like Cody's would thrive. But people wanted a different kind of information that was provided by the Internet. They wanted it fast and often, they wanted it glib. Cody's was offering something that was a little deeper, a little slower. [...] Great books that couldn't get the media hype were forgotten, left on the shelves and ultimately returned to the warehouses. We resisted these trends. But in spite of this, we found that increasingly we were selling more media-driven best sellers and less of our wonderful wide ranging back list. [...] We have celebrated the diversity of the human intellect. It is with great sadness that I must say that the world does not embrace these values today.

As somebody who still reads "great books" on a regular basis and who truly celebrates the human intellect, spare me your righteous indignation. I'm inclined to think that the true reason your store had to close is that you couldn't really accept the reality of your business. Did you regularly berate your customers without even realizing it, as you did by taping this multiple-page lecture to your door? Moe's Books two doors down from your place was a very enjoyable bookstore and seems to be doing quite well.

After that we walked to the Gourment Ghetto neighborhood, which boasts some great restaurants. My wife was positively giddy as we walked around. We ate at Chez Panisse, which is consistently ranked as one of the best restaurants in the world by Restaurant Magazine (#20 in this year's list). The owner, Alice Waters, is often credited as the founder of California cuisine. The restaurant's menu changes daily, so that she can serve only the freshest ingredients. And for lunch it was quite reasonable, only $60 or so for the two of us. For desert we had Ciao Bella gelato next door to Chez Panisse.

We returned to the campus. I bought a math calendar in the campus bookstore. Continuing to tour the campus, we saw the physics building - which aside from the three Nobel Laureates previously mentioned, also boasts the authors of two of my graduate textbooks: John Jackson (Classical Electrodynamics) and Charles Kittel (Solid State Physics). The author of yet another book I used in school, Frederick Reif (Statistical and Thermal Physics), also had an office there until recently.

Our last stop was the law school, which we ran into somewhat by accident. My wife recognized it immediately, without a map, due to the ridiculously long-winded quotes engraved on plaque above the two entrances.

You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice, for these are the truths that through you shall come to their hour of triumph. Here is the high emprise, the fine endeavour, the splendid possibility of achievement, to which I summon you and bid you welcome. (Cardozo)

When I think thus of the law, I see a princess mightier than she who once wrought at Bayeaux, eternally weaving into her web dim figures of the ever-lengthening past--figures too dim to be noticed by the idle, too symbolic to be interpreted except by her pupils, but to the discerning eye disclosing every painful step and every worldshaking contest by which mankind has worked and fought its way from savage isolation to organic social life. (Holmes)

Leaving aside that these quotes are a little too heavy and a lot too long for an inscription over a door, they both struck me as more than little pompous. "You must order the life of mankind"? Justice Cardozo had a somewhat exaggerated opinion of the value of his profession to humanity. "Figures too symbolic to be interpreted except by her pupils"? Holmes had a somewhat exaggerated opinion of the intelligence of his colleagues relative to the general public.

Stanford - Trip to San Francisco Day 3

As part of our vacation, my wife and I were planning to see Stanford and Berkeley (yes, we're geeks - deal with it). We jumped on the CalTrain, to Palo Alto. Got to Stanford just in time for our tour at 11am. We learned that it is the biggest campus in the country (and the second biggest in the world behind the University of Moscow) at 8180 acres.

One of the things our tour guide discussed was the houses on campus. Many are the usual communal homes, Greek housing or dormitory setups you would expect. However, some of them have their own chefs. His own house apparently has a chef who turned down a job at a four-star restaurant to remain at Stanford. Must be nice. No wonder college tuition is through the roof!

Another interesting story that our tour guide told us concerned the physics department. A physics professor whose office was on on the first floor of the building won the Nobel Prize in 1996 (Douglas Osheroff, who shared the prize with Lee & Richardson at Cornell for the discovery of superfluidity in helium-3). A physics professor on the second floor won the Nobel Prize in 1997 (Steven Chu, who shared the prize with Cohen-Tannoudji and Phillips). A professor of physics and applied physics whose office was on the third floor won the Nobel Prize in 1998 (Robert Laughlin, who shared the prize with Störmer and Tsui for explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect). I assume at that point, the physics department started lobbying furiously for the addition of a fourth floor to their building ... alas, the 1999 prize went to tHooft and Veltman of the Netherlands.

Stanford claims 16 Nobel Laureates on their faculty, but this is a gross exaggeration because their definition is way too liberal. If you exclude fellows at the Hoover Institution (which is not in any way affiliated with teaching at Stanford) and emeriti faculty (who are retired), they really have only three Laureates. Interestingly, they are all in physics (Osheroff, Laughlin, and Richard Taylor, a professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center who shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics for investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons). Chu is at Berkeley now.

The first PC to run Google is on display in one of their computer science buildings. They have twin buildings donated by the estates of Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard, the HP founders. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has recently made a large donation to the computer science department.

We toured the Hoover Institution (no, there's no access to Thomas Sowell's office) and went up to the top of the tower, for a fantastic view of the campus and the city of Palo Alto.



We left campus and went into town, where we had lunch at Pluto's. (By the way, isn't it a shame about Pluto's downgrade to "dwarf planet" status?)

We got back to San Francisco and had dinner at Sears Fine Foods. Dinner was good, and for dessert we had their "world famous" pancakes.

Trip to San Francisco Day 2

This morning we took our first of many cable car rides, on the Powell-Mason line. We rode it from one end on Market Street to the other right by Fisherman's Wharf. The first stop was buying a jacket (yes, that's right, a jacket in California in August). We had read that it got cold in San Francisco because of the cold air blowing in from the bay, but we were unprepared for how cold "cold" was. Our touring the day before, particularly walking on streets at the top of hills and riding on the open second floor of a double-decker bus, convinced us that we most definitely needed heavier clothes than we had packed with us. Our first purchase was a nice jacket for $17, but we were somewhat unhappy with the San Francisco logo on it. A little more looking around, and I found the nicest leather jacket. It was only $20, and it's much better than the jackets I have at home that have cost $50-$60. Tourist trap, my butt.

We walked around Pier 39, saw the sea lions on the dock (amazing sight!) and had a really nice lunch at Chic's, with an outstanding view of the bay. We toured the city further, and had dinner at Lori's Diner.

Trip to San Francisco Day 1

My wife and I finally took a vacation this year. My wife and I went to Boston in August 2002 and to NYC in August 2004. There were reasons we couldn't find time to go on vacation in 2001 (got married and moved to Atlanta) or in 2003 (due to my job change), but I have no idea why we didn't take an extended vacation last year (we just did short trips to Miami and Orlando). I was way overdue for a vacation. This year's destination: San Francisco!





We arrived around noon, checked into our hotel and walked around Union Square where our hotel was located. We then took a cab to Fisherman's Wharf. [After we got back from our trip, I learned about this story which described the Wharf as "the mother of all tourist traps ... dominated by countless souvenir shops, chain restaurants and street hawkers." Crowded? Yup, no question, annoyingly so. Street hawkers? Yup, so walk around them, no big whoop. Chain restaurants? Yup, tons of them, but my wife and I didn't eat at any of them and we managed to find some good local restaurants (which were slightly pricey, but not outrageously so). Not really sure where the author is coming from.]

We bought tickets to Alcatraz; we'd been warned that you had to get them far in advance. Good thing we did too; turns out we could only fit it into our schedule on the last day we were going to be in San Francisco. We had lunch at a great mexican/deli place. Yes, you read right - at this place you could get a taco or corned beef on rye. And it was surprisingly good. (The place had free internet access; we came across quite a few places that did; it seems to be the culture there.) Then, we bought tickets for the double decker tour bus, which gave us a good overview of the town as well as transportation to get around the city to the various sights we wanted to see.

We toured the city the rest of the day. Eventually, tired and happy, we made our way back to our hotel and had dinner at Persimmon, a middle eastern place that was just alright but had the best feature of all - it was just up the street from our hotel.

Cuba

More pictures of the sad state of Cuba after 47 years of Castro's government on my website.

[Thanks to LL for sending me these pictures.]

Twelfth Night

My wife and I saw the Georgia Shakespeare Festival's production of Twelfth Night tonight. I had read the play but had never seen a production. As usual, the company put on a great show. With one exception (also as usual), Crystal Dickinson, who played Olivia, was horrible in her role - completely unable to carry the part in a believable way. At this point I have seen her perform Shakespeare (four times - Macbeth, R&J, Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night), I have seen her perform Williams and I have seen her perform Chekhov. And in each case, she has performed exactly the same role. I have never seen a stage actor with less range.

Yes, Prime Minister

I recently ran across a used copy of The Complete Yes Prime Minister. It's brilliant; beyond reproducing the plots of the brilliant BBC comedy, it provides all sorts of interesting background material, such as Sir Humphrey's private diary, Civil Service memos, personal recollections, etc.(The premise of the book is that it's 2024 and Jonathan Lynn and David Jay are researchers at Hacker College). I read The Complete Yes Minister back in college (1989?) and loved it, but never thought to look for the sequel. I'm glad I ran across it now.

Sidenote: Here is a website that has excellent summaries of the original TV series, as well as photos and other material. Check it out.

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is coming to the SciFi network today March 10 at 9pm. I'm not talking about re-runs of one of the old series, but an original production. Hopefully, it's as good as Battlestar Galactica.

More FEMA Katrina Problems

Congressional committee testimony that luxury hotels billed the federal government up to $438 a night for Hurricane Katrina evacuees raised the prospect of a potential price-gouging investigation Monday. While Skinner did not name the hotel, the Senate panel later identified it as the Millenium Hilton in Manhattan's financial district. The website for the hotel advertises 42-inch plasma TVs in most rooms. Skinner also said FEMA paid up to $375 a night to house Katrina evacuees in Panama City. The Senate panel identified the Florida facility as the Panama City Beachfront Condominiums, whose website says rooms have unobstructed views of the Gulf of Mexico.

"The hotels were taking advantage of an emergency situation involving innocent victims," said Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., after the hearing.

Interesting that senators' first thought is to say the HOTELS were taking advantage of the situation. It couldn't possibly be that the VICTIMS are taking advantage of the fact that the hotel tabs are being picked up by Uncle Sam to enjoy 42-inch plasma TVs and unobstructed Gulf views.

Trip to Walt Disney World

Haven't been to Disney World since 2000.  Had a business trip scheduled for the week of November 28 to December 2, so we decided to append a small vacation to the start of it from Thanksgiving through Sunday the 27th.

Stayed at the Disney All Stars Movie Resort - this was our first time staying on a Disney property despite many trips to WDW over the years.  I was pleasantly surprised.

Spent one day each in Epcot, Disney MGM Studios and the Magic Kingdom.  (We had done a day at Animal Kingdom back in 2000 and were not impressed.)

Ate Thanksgiving dinner at Narcoossee's in the Grand Floridian.  At Epcot we ate at the Biergarten restaurant in the Germany pavilion.  The remainder of our meals were standard Disney counter service.

Who's Responsible?

Gov. Sonny Perdue made it clear that he believes the responsibility of housing the evacuees rests with the federal government. "We are pleased that FEMA is willing to meet its legal responsibility to house the evacuees."

Not to be unsympathetic, but why doesn't the responsibility for housing the evacuees rest with (... radical thought coming up, try to stay with me...) the evacuees themselves?

The Machine Crusade

Well, this book was the crappiest one by Herbert & Anderson so far.

The disappointments started from the very beginning. I started by reading the appendix and was encouraged when I read that "seven League representatives, all of them political rivals or people who have spoken out against Iblis Ginjo, were implicated as machine spies." My first thought was, these guys have started to get their act together. Political intrigue, and they don't even spell out whether or nor Ginjo framed them. Maybe this one will be better than the last one. However, my hopes were violently dashed after a mere 16 pages, when the authors tell me that "it might even be necessary to have someone 'discover' damning evidence of Chen's 'collusion' with the thinking machines." In hindsight, I guess it's amazing that they even held out 16 pages. The apparently overwhelming need they feel to spell everything out is SO annoying. Ginjo is married to the only remaining heiress of the Old Empire. WHY, oh why, must they tell me that he only married her for political reasons? Do they truly think their readers are as dumb as they are?

The premise that the League Parliament would spend time attempting to decipher the meaning of "archaic rune symbols" as a way to determine policy is absurd. The authors are handed on a silver platter an excellent opportunity to study the role that religion plays in governing the masses (particularly given the relevance of such topics to today's "war on terror"). That's certainly the way two authors with one brain between them would have gone with this idea; instead, we are treated to the moronic concept that the government would look for guidance in ancient prophecies of doubtful authenticity and even more doubtful relevance.

As with the earlier book, to call the characters one-dimensional would be to insult one-dimensionality. Since the authors are completely lacking in any ability to write their characters in a believable way, Iblis does not say or do anything charismatic; instead the authors TELL us that he is supposed to be charismatic. Perhaps the most ludicrous treatment of a character is Serena Butler. That she would allow herself to be a willing pawn in Ginjo's play for power, as well as the ridiculously unlikely way in which she acts, defies any sense of internal logic. That she would "hide in the City of Introspection" and "say whatever Iblis told her to say" is so at odds with everything else we have ever been told about her that it completely ruins every line of text surrounding this character. It's almost as if the authors have never met any human beings and thus cannot accurately predict human behavior. Perhaps Herbert & Anderson are thinking machines.

Other characters are equally uninteresting. Omnius continues to behave in absurdly dumb ways. The depiction of Holtzman (as a fool with little understanding of science) is incredibly stupid. The Cogitors are still idiots in jars, so devoid of logic (again, we're told they are brilliant, but this isn't really reflected in anything they say or do) that they boggle the mind. Xavier has long been extremely boring, except when his actions are just unseemly, such as the lightning speed with which he married Serena's sister after her "death." Erasmus is on his way to becoming just as boring. If Jool Noret fulfills any valuable purpose in this book, I have been unable to discern what it might be. And Norma Cenva, one of the saving graces of the first book, is portrayed in very poor fashion in this one.

The writing remains monumentally bad. As just one example of this, consider that in the span of A SINGLE PAGE, the authors used six different similies. And most of them hideous groaners: "like a hammer against an anvil", "like a hawk hunting a helpless pigeon", "like a talisman", "like a morsel of raw meat", "like a spider's egg sac", "like electronic talons". (For the record, they're writing about a space battle.) Ouch!

The last 80 pages are a veritable orgy of death and devastation, as character after character bites it. (It seems like the authors were just in a hurry to finish everyone off to set up the next book.) But the really sad part is that I couldn't possibly have cared less. The vapid characters, the abysmal writing and the improbable plot and characterization (including the amazingly unlikely coincidence through which two of the deaths are linked) all conspire to give the book a thoroughly unmemorable ending. What should have been tragic deaths are just more pages to get through in a fruitless attempt to get to the interesting and/or entertaining passages beyond, which unfortunately never materialize.

The other day I was in the bookstore looking through the first chapter of The Battle of Corrin, and some sentences in it made me realize that I didn't even remember the end of The Machine Crusade. So I went back and browsed through its final chapters again. Having done that, and remembering how truly *BAD* they were, I decided The Battle of Corrin was just not worth reading. I really don't care where Herbert & Anderson take their story.

Revenge of the Sith

Just saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for the second time today. I was moderately impresssed, not a bad effort at all. That was my thought after seeing it the first time, but there were many thing I felt I wanted to see again before commenting on them. Also, I figure by now anyone who wanted to see the movie has seen it, and I don't have to worry about spoilers. The movie did an adequate (if hardly brilliant) job of getting you from the end of Attack of the Clones to the beginning of A New Hope. I guess how good the movie really is depends on what the movie was about.

• If the movie is meant to be about how the Republic turns into an Empire, then it is downright brilliant. Palpatine's handling of the political situation is superb. He understands human psychology intimately and can correctly predict behavior such as the Senate voting to continue the war or granting him executive powers. Furthermore, he is aware that those who prefer security to freedom ultimately get neither. His speech in the Senate chamber where he declares the Empire clearly indicates a deep understanding of the "handling of the masses." The speech in the novelization (browsed through it at Border's) is even better.


• BUT ... if the movie is meant to be about how Anakin Skywalker turns into Darth Vader, then it is mediocre. Palpatine's handling of Anakin is very poor. The only reason it works is because it has to, not from any sense of internal plot logic or consistent character development. From the first scene where he tells Anakin to kill Dooku (shouldn't he be a cowed kidnapping victim, not bordering on ecstasy as he is?), through his attempts to plant distrust of the Jedi Council (transparent!), to his story of Plagueis the Wise (could he have sounded more worshipful?) - it was all strictly amateur night. Granted Skywalker isn't very bright and his thoughts have been clouded by the dark side, but shouldn't even he have seen through this crap? "Don't you wonder why the Jedi Council won't make you a Master?" "They don't trust you." "I would doubt the Council's judgment if they didn't choose you for this mission." If you look really hard, you can see the corner of Palpatine's copy of Manipulation for Dummies sticking out of his cloak. Of course, all of this is nothing compared to the scene where Skywalker barges in on Windu and Palpatine fighting. "I'm too weak. Don't kill me. Pleeeease don't kill me." Come on now! Pleeeease spare me your righteous indignation.

Some other observations about the movie.

• How Anakin goes from killing Windu to becoming Darth Sidious's apprentice to killing a room full of small children defies all credibility. One can almost understand his turning on Windu, as Anakin is not particularly intelligent, Palpatine has been playing with his mind for some time and the political situation is not completely clear. However, once he sees Sidious kill Windu in cold blood, he just gets on his knees and says, "I'll do whatever you ask."? Why? The first mission Sidious gives him is to kill all the children in the temple and he goes do it without objection? Why? It's not like Palpatine told him "The Jedi Council tried to kill me. Go kill them." or "Go kill the separatist leaders." No! He said, "Go kill a bunch of innocent children." And Anakin says, "Okey dokey, boss, whatever you say." Seems unlikely. The novel (I know hard-core fans would consider this non-canonical) does a much better job of managing this transition.


• The Jedi handle the Anakin situation very poorly. Clearly they are not politicians. It's almost as if they are going out of their way to insult him. It is clear that he is close to Palpatine, which would make him an obvious candidate to pass information back to the council. However, it is just as clear that he cannot be trusted with this critical task.


• The visual feel of the movie was very well thought out. I particularly liked the graphic symbolism - most scenes were dark and somber, a lot of them with rain. It added quite well to the "dark side" feel of the movie. The occasional well-lit scene such as on board the Tantive IV only served to focus this feeling. The scene where Luke's uncle is looking off into the horizon did a good job of bringing to mind the famous scene from the original movie. And of course the final two battle scenes, Yoda v Sidious and Kenobi v Vader, are very stunning both visually and musical score-wise. Both battles are on a grand scale with their fantastic backgrounds, evoking thoughts of a Wagnerian opera. My only thought is that the background music could have been even MORE Wagnerian.


• The "love" scenes between Anakin and Padme are still ludicrous. The dialogue between them is ridiculous (Lucas should have had someone else write those scenes). And Christensen is the world's worst actor. Their first scene where he learns that Padme is pregnant and he says it's the happiest moment of his life he looks particularly idiotic ... the post-coital scene on the balcony of Padme's apartment is also awful ... and the scene where Padme tells Anakin "you're better than this" ... and the scene ... never mind, they are ALL awful. I don't think I've ever seen two actors with LESS chemistry.


• The space battle that opens the movie is unbelievably impressive visually but basically meaningless to the viewer. You definitely can't tell who's winning or what's going on. However, what is particularly unforgivable is that you can't tell who's who. The entire scene was just too busy.


• I found the gratuitous attempt to introduce contemporary relevance ("Either you are with me or you are my enemy." "Only a Sith deals in absolutes.") poorly done and distracting from the story.


• What could have been one of the iconic moments of American film history, the "birth" of Darth Vader, was handled absurdly - unforgivably - poorly. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO"? You have got to be freakin' kidding me!


• I always found the end of "Return of the Jedi" quite good. Redemption of the fallen hero, blah blah blah. I could forgive Darth Vader his sins in light of his selfless sacrifice in doing the right thing at the end. In a civil war, each side generally believes that they are in the right. So the viewer can forgive murder, torture and other villainy. The destruction of Alderaan was a bit much, but Vader wasn't personally responsible for that (Grand Moff Tarkin gave the order). However, after learning that Vader began his career as a Sith by slaughtering defenseless children, killing the emperor to save his son hardly seems to warrant forgiveness for all his prior sins.


• A final comment to wrap things up. Anakin joins Palpatine because he wants to learn the trick to cheat death. Clearly, Palpatine implied he knew it since he says Plagueis taught his apprentice everything. Yet when Anakin asks about it, Palpatine's response is along the lines of "Yeah, right, sure, we'll get right on that." Not only does he continue to follow Palpatine, but he actually remains convinced that he has the power to keep Padme alive. He really isn't very bright, is he?

Cuba kicks out some foreign companies

In a further sign of economic retrenchment, Cuban officials have closed scores of foreign businesses that were welcomed here a decade ago to bail out the nation's faltering economy. Some of Europe's largest companies formed joint ventures or other arrangements with Cuba's state-run enterprises, including Swiss food giant Nestle, cigarette producer British American Tobacco and Spanish hotel-management giant Sol Melia. Sherritt International of Canada also has invested heavily in boosting Cuba's oil, nickel and energy production.

But many smaller companies also took advantage of the economic opening in the 1990s, importing everything from toys to spark plugs to hospital equipment to sell in Cuba. Diplomats and business executives say it is primarily these small and medium operators who have been asked to leave Cuba as Fidel Castro and other officials express confidence the island's economy has recovered sufficiently to withstand the companies' departure.

[...]

Rather than reaching out to European companies, Castro is strengthening economic ties with Venezuela, an important ally now providing Cuba 90,000 barrels of discounted oil daily. Cuban officials also are counting on an economic lift from China, which has promised to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to boost nickel production, a key Cuban export.

[...]

But some diplomats and business officials do not share Castro's optimism about Cuba's economic future. Local manufacturing and other activities remain severely hampered by a dearth of investment and an unmotivated workforce. Cuba also does not have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to repair its deteriorating electrical grid, water system and other infrastructure. By pushing foreign investors out, Cuba risks permanently damaging its international reputation even though it may need those investors should the island suffer another economic collapse.

I hope the Cuban government throws out all foreign companies, so that everyone involved in propping up the regime loses their shirts.

I hate it when newspapers try to do math for me...

...and get it wrong!

Since convenience stores make a profit of only 2 to 3 cents per gallon of gas pumped, owners say they have to sell an extra 3,000 gallons to make up for every sport-utility vehicle that takes off with a $30 tank of gas.

If they make 2 to 3 cents a gallon, wouldn't it take 1000 to 1500 gallons to make $30? Wouldn't 3000 gallons make them $60 to $90?

Happy Birthday to me

I just learned that Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico has the exact same birthdate as me.

Nerd God

Ebay

I was bidding on a book on Ebay, and somebody sniped and outbid me in the last few seconds of the auction. I just learned the word "snipe", although the tactical benefits of bidding on an item at the last second had already occurred to me on my own. Now, I'm not a veteran ebayer, but even I know not to bid the price of a book beyond what the book can be had for at Amazon. D'OH!

Looking for a new dry cleaner

In Cuba, they have this saying: "Hay que estar con cuatro ojos." You have to go around with four eyes, meaning you have to keep an extremely careful eye on everybody because everyone is trying to pull one over on you.

The dry cleaner in the lobby of my building recently raised his prices, so the last time I went to pick up my cleaning, it was a lot more than I was expecting it to be. Once I had gotten home, I realized that the extra charge was a lot more than could be accounted for simply by the higher prices. Unfortunately, by that time I had discarded my receipt as well as taken all the clothes out of the plastic so I wasn't even sure how many items I had picked up.

So this time, I made a conscious effort to double check everything when I went to pick it up. I was expecting it to come out to $16.95. The owner tells me $17.95. I told him, "I'm sorry. I was expecting $16.95. Are you sure?" I was taken aback by his reaction; he actually raised his voice to me, "Not $16.95; $17.95." Perhaps he thought if he was "adamant" enough, I would drop my objection. "Well, please check. I get $16.95." He pulls out two receipts, "There. Seven shirts, $7.70. And five shirts and one pair of trousers, $10.25." He pulls out a calculator and adds the two numbers, "$17.95." He was practically shouting at me by this point. I was a bit confused for a moment and was wondering if maybe I had in fact mis-added. Then I realized that if five shirts were $5.50 and the pants were $3.75 that only added up to $9.25. I pointed this out, so again he pulls out the calculator and FINALLY reluctantly hands me another dollar in change and apologizes for the error.

I don't believe for one micro-second that this was an error. But even if I'm wrong and it actually was an innocent error, the rude way he decided to approach it guarantees that I will never be back. Idiot. I dropped $440 at his establishment over the last year. Now I'm going to spend it somewhere else.