In Friday’s Seattle Times there was a brief mention of the Polar Bears‘ annual plunge into the chilly waters around Puget Sound. Since I’m a bachelor this week, I figured why the heck not and casually mentioned this to a coworker who offered to come take pictures of the nuttiness my wife would be missing. […]
On alternate years, the Social Security Administration sends me a statement estimating various theoretical payouts should I retire or die. I showed up in their system in 1981, when I made a cool $1,337 working in the local grocery store bakery after school. Like Susan, some of my compensation was under-the-table (the forms required to
A $255 death benefit? Read More »
Yeah, I know it’s only three seconds, but at the trend is positive. Soon, perhaps as early as March, I’ll be able to bike to work in the daylight!
Happy winter solstice Read More »
You may have seen this funny engineering depiction of a home designed for Santa. Here’s what an actual engineer had to say: I checked the drawing for accuracy and noticed the following: There is ADA accessible signage on the roof, but no ADA compliant roof access. 1/4 kip tree stand loading spec seems excessive unless
Engineering plans for Christmas Read More »
A “Joe-Job” is when a spammer sends out thousands of emails, masquerading as someone else. When the (334) emails bounce or (three) people respond, it comes to the lucky joe-jobbee, e.g. me. The deluge of mail headers this morning suggest distributed spammery, so I’m not even going to bother with firing off futile requests to
Last night I got my utility bill and Holy Moly, it’s more than double last month’s thanks to a colder-than-normal month and an increase in utility rates. (Hey, Fed, I found your inflation.) Anyway, there has been a lot of interest in my previous musings on the ongoing cost tradeoffs of gas versus electric dryers.
Gas versus Electric Dryer II Read More »
I always loved receiving holiday newsletters because they present a blog-like view, in Cliff’s Notes-length of what’s been going with a family during the last year. (My mother-in-law is the Jedi Master of these.) Hoping, perhaps naively, others shared this enthusiasm, we’ve put together one of our own for the last decade and a half.
Generic Seasonal Greetings Read More »
We had the (near) perfect plan for kid-sitting so we could attend my company’s holiday party on Friday: we were going to swap turns with another family whose company party was Saturday night. My youngest daughter was acting sluggish Thursday night, a sure sign of imminent malaise. The other family was okay with exposing their
Coughing, sneezing, itching, wheezing Read More »