The sauerkraut balls turned out good. Sheri has never had them before, but she loved them. She said it has to be our new New Years tradition.



When we got home Sheri started browning the pound of Bob Evan's sausage while I diced half an onion. When the sausage was done we spread it out on a couple layers of paper towels that were on top of a bunch of newspapers to absorb extra fat. Then we sautéed the onion in the same pan we did the sausage.

I weighed out one pound of sauerkraut from the two pound jar and dumped that into a big bowl. Then I minced several tablespoons of fresh Italian parsley and added that. The recipe called for a tablespoon of hot sweet mustard. I took a tablespoon of Colman's dry mustard and mixed it with a tablespoon of water. It ended up being perfect. Gave it a really nice kick without being overpowering. Also added four ounces of cream cheese, a little garlic powder, and a little salt and pepper. Then we added half of the sausage and the sautéed onion. The other half of the sausage I put it in a covered bowl. I might use it in a big omelet.

I had Sheri put on some plastic food prep gloves and knead all of the stuff together. The next time we make them I plan on either chopping the sauerkraut into smaller strands or running it through the food processor. The longish strings of sauerkraut made it a little difficult to mix, and also made it a little messy to eat.

While Sheri was kneading the sauerkraut mixture I started getting the avocadoes ready for guacamole.

Once the sauerkraut mixture was mixed up and the guac was made we went upstairs and took a well deserved nap for a couple hours.

We woke up hungry and went right back to the kitchen. While Sheri put together her seven layer dip I got three bowls out on the counter and put flour, bread crumbs, and two eggs beat with water in them respectively.



I took about two tablespoons of the mixture and rolled it into a ball. Then I rolled it first in flour, then the egg wash, and finally in bread crumbs.



I cooked them three at a time in 365° oil for just a couple of minutes.



The secret to deep frying food is keeping your oil hot enough. If it is good and hot an impermeable crust forms almost instantly and prevents any oil from penetrating into whatever you are cooking. If it is not hot enough no crust is formed and oil can easily penetrate and you have a greasy blob. You also have to cook it longer which also lets more oil penetrate.



This is Sheri's seven layer dip. Deeeeelicous.



We watched The Island and ate our treats. Not the greatest movie but it gave us a couple of enjoyable hours. I would recommend it even though it didn't get the best reviews.

We are upstairs now getting ready to hop into bed and watch the Dick Clark type TV specials.

Don't forget to adjust all of your clocks for the leap second!

It is almost 1 PM and Sheri is still working on the Yale site. It sounds like she is getting to a stopping point, but she still might have to come in tomorrow or Monday.

The mall we need to go to is open until 4 PM. I think after that and a quick stop at the grocery store I will be ready for a nap. I was up late last night, and we got going early this morning just like it was a middle-of-the-week workday.

Sheri's seven layer dip won't take too much too make. I can turn those five avocadoes into delicious guacamole in just a few minutes.

One of the steps of the sauerkraut balls is to mix a bunch of stuff together and chill it for several hours or overnight. If I was on the ball I would have got that part going last night. This might delay things a little bit. Maybe I can put it into the freezer to accelerate the process.

We were going to watch a movie last night, but we were both tired and we thought it might be difficult to stay awake for the whole movie, so we just watched some TV and flipped through some magazines.

Sheri's Yale project needed some extra time to run yesterday, so she left early yesterday knowing that she would come in today for a few hours to finish things up. I came along with her to keep her company and to check out her office. I brought the laptop and plugged it in to the LAN at one of her coworker's desk and am just killing time that way. I also brought the newspaper.

For Christmas I got her a perfume set, but someone else got her the same fragrance so after we leave here we are going to stop at the mall and return it.

After that we have couple of ingredients we still need for tonight, and then after that I think we are just going to go home, relax, and do some cooking.

We have two movies in, Oldboy and The Island. We will probably watch one of those, put a fire in the fireplace, eat some sauerkraut balls and seven layer dip, and then watch some of the New Years festivities on TV as it gets close to midnight.

Who do I know at Charlie's Dodge in Maumee? Drop me a line. Just curious.

To get Sheri on my medical insurance at the new job they said to bring in our marriage certificate. We looked everyplace we thought it could be but couldn't find it. I e-mailed the HR person and asked if last year's tax return that shows both of our names and the "married filing jointly" box checked would work. I don't know how long it will take to get a copy sent to us from the probate court back in Ohio. I don't remember needing to show a marriage certificate at the previous two jobs where she was on my insurance or Sheri's last job when I was on her insurance.

I have been indulging one of my little quirky obsessions in order to celebrate my new job: watches.

For Christmas (I guess this one is unrelated to my celebrating) my sister-in-law Sunny got me a watch I have been wanting. It is a Timex with a digital compass built in. It works fantastic. It has been very accurate, and it even is accurate indoors which I would not expect from all the electrical interference.

mine is the one on the right


This watch was on special (20% off) on the Wal-Mart web site. It is a Casio G-Shock with atomic time setting and solar power. The G-Shock means that it is about indestructible. I forget how many g forces it can stand or atmospheres or pressure, but it is tough. It never needs to have the battery changed because it has solar cell on its face, and it is always accurate because it synchronizes with the atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colorado every night.



Yesterday I got an e-mail from Wal-Mart saying the watch was out of stock and on backorder. There was a line in there saying if they can't fulfill my order in 10 days, and if they do not hear from me that they will automatically cancel my order. In the header it said do not respond to this e-mail, and there were no instructions or link in the e-mail on how to contact them, so I sent an e-mail to their main customer service address with my order number telling them not to cancel. I have a feeling I might get screwed though. Like maybe it was reduced because they are not going to carry that watch anymore. Oh well.

Last night I was looking at their site and saw another watch that has been on my wish list. It was clearance priced, and I was doubtful about the first watch coming through, so I broke down and ordered it. I have another one very similar to it but with a black face. It is of course atomic coordinated. There is another atomic watch in this line with a red face that I am dying for, but I have not seen that one around very much.



I feel like I have been in austerity spending mode for so long that it felt really good just to make a couple purely fun purchases without feeling guilty. Sheri's job is looking good and I feel really good about my new job. Yeah us!

We were talking seriously about going to Washington D.C. for our upcoming ten year anniversary in May, but as a new employee I am on probation for six months, and one of the things that means is no vacation during that time. I think D.C. in June is too busy and touristy, so maybe we will look into going immediately after school starts again in the fall. I guess that would be mid-September. I think the chances of nice walking-around weather would be good and hopefully because school would be back in session the crowds would be minimal. We will have to do some research.

This also means we will have to think of something special we can do locally and without taking any time off work to celebrate or ten year anniversary. Any ideas? The traditional gifts for the 10th anniversary are made of tin or aluminum.

All new employees have to go through a pre-employment drug screening and a background check by the state police.

Yesterday I spent about four hours filling out paper work, watching sexual harassment and workplace policy videos, and meeting some people. For the background check they have a big kiosk near the security office. A guy first types in all of my information; name, Social Security number, driver's license number, height, weight, eye color, address, etc. Then he takes my fingerprints electronically. There is a little piece of glass where he places my fingers just like with the traditional ink and paper method, but it somehow scans my print without ink.

After all of that is entered he sends it electronically to Springfield, IL where they perform all of the background checks. He said it normally takes between 48 hours and two weeks.

I got a call from HR this morning telling me that my background check came back clean before I left the building yesterday!

They also said the drug screening normally takes 48 to 72 hours but they already received the all-clear for that this morning.

My last day here will be Friday, January 6.

My first day at the new job will be Monday, January 9.

I am really excited.

I will be starting an exciting new job within a couple of weeks.

I want to write about a lot of the things going on, but I am reluctant to post work-related information in a public blog, especially about this particular employer.

I thought about creating a new blog at a site that allows me to create locked entries, but that would require anyone that wants to read it to create an account, and I don't want to make people have to do that.

I decided on making an e-mail list that I will use to send out private work related posts as well as anything that I do not want to post publicly.

If you want to be on this list either leave a comment below asking to be included on the list, or send me an e-mail to me at bandswill at yahoo dot com.

I am not going to make any assumptions about including family or friends. I am not going to put anybody on the list that does not explicitly ask.

Perky and Droopy Have a Fight

This is an account of what is was like for NPR journalist Emily Yoffee to pose nude for a college drawing class for a couple nights. It seems like a lot to ask for a story.

Last night as soon as I got home we got right back in the car and first returned a couple things at Target and Marshall's.

Then we went to Chipotle's for dinner. We each had a chicken bol which is all the guts of a burrito, but instead of being wrapped in a tortilla it comes in a bowl. Sheri had hers no beans, and I had mine no rice but with both pinto and black beans. She gets the mild salsa and the corn salsa. I get the hot salsa and the mild salsa.

After that we went to Meijer for a lot of stuff, but the main purpose of the trip was to buy food for our New Years weekend. Sheri is going to make a batch of seven-layer dip. When she normally makes this she doesn't use guacamole, so I guess she normally makes six-layer dip. Avocados were on sale last night so I picked up five and will make some nice chunky guac for the dip.

We are also going to make sauerkraut balls using the recipe from the Hey Hey Bar in Grill located in German Village in Columbus. I am going to get the sauerkraut from Bobak's or course.

By the time we were done at Meijer it was 8:40 PM and we were tired, so we just went home, put away our groceries, got ready for bed, and we both read for a little bit before falling asleep.

A college friend and his wife and son are in town from Columbus tonight and we are going to try and meet up for dinner. Sheri has a doctor appointment I forgot about so unless we eat in town she is probably going to miss them.

On most US cars when you turn on the front window defrosters the air conditioning is automatically engaged. The purpose of this is to dry out the air to help remove condensation better.

The downside of this setup is most people don't realize this and leave their defrosters turned on even when they don't have any condensation or ice on the windshield and drastically reduce their gas mileage. They also put a lot of extra wear and tear on the air conditioning system because it is constantly running.

On most Japanese cars there is a separate on/off switch for the air conditioning. The problem with this setup is that it seems counterintuitive to most people to turn on the air conditioning in the winter when you are trying to defrost your windows.

In a Japanese car you should also set the air control to "Fresh" when you are trying to defrost or defog your windows. If it is set to recirculate the moisture in the air and from your breath will not exit the car and will just condense on the windshield.

The winter Olympics will run from February 10,  2006 through February 26,  2006 and will be held in Torino,  Italy.

Map of Torino

Opinion poll: Is it time to go with the shaved head look yet?

Monday morning Sunny got up early for some after-Christmas bargain hunting. At breakfast I asked Ben if he went shopping with mommy this morning. He looked me right in the eye and with a stern look on his face and in a very very serious tone said "Ohhhh no." and shook his head.

We went to Columbus for Christmas. For a few reasons I could not take Friday off, so we could not go until Saturday morning. I did get off a little early on Friday, but if we did not get on the road until 3 PM, we would not get into Columbus until 11 PM or later. We have had a couple of road trips where we get a late start, but they just kill me. The last hour or two is a fight to keep my eyes open. Working at a DOT you see the accident reports of what happens when people fall asleep at the wheel, and it is just not worth it.

We left the house around 7:45 AM and went through the McDonalds drive-through for breakfast. We each got a large drink so for the first two hours of the drive either Sheri or myself had to stop at just about every rest stop.

After we went through Indianapolis we stopped at a White Castle for a break and a snack. After we got back on the road I could feel my eyes every now and then start to get hypnotized by the road markings so at the next rest stop we switched and Sheri took it the rest of the way in.

We got to Columbus around 4 PM local. We freshened up and I closed my eyes on our bed for about five or ten minutes, and then we went to Sunny and Martin's for the rest of the evening.

For dinner Greta took Italian sausages and peppers and a pan of macaroni and cheese over and Sunny had a pot of Italian wedding soup that she made.

We watched the kids open up a bunch of presents that were not from Santa, and we exchanged a few gifts with each other.

We were tired so we left I think pretty early. If I recall it was before 9 PM. Went home and crashed.

Sunday morning, Christmas, the phone range at 7:30 PM from S&M's. The kids had been up since 6 AM and had already opened up all their presents from Santa. We went over for a couple hours to see what they got and play for a bit.

Martin's extended family was coming over for a massive gift exchange so the three of us went back home for the afternoon. We put a fire in the fireplace, napped on the couch, and ate a crown pork roast.

We got a call once the gift exchange portion of the day was finished and we went back over around 4 PM.

We stayed until the kids started getting their evening baths and then went back home for the evening. I think we watched a little bit of TV but we were all tired and went to bed after just a little bit.

The next morning, Monday, was our travel-day back to Chicago. We packed up and then went to McDonald's for breakfast and to meet S&M and the kids again to say our goodbyes.

We got on the road just a little after 10 AM. We made multiple stops on the way back. Once for Starbucks. (How many of those do you see along the interstate?) Once at a Chick-Fil-A for a late lunch. A couple times for a can of soda and a couple of times for the restroom. I took it all the way home this time and I think we got in around 5 PM.

Call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.

This is even funnier when you have the lyrics. Enjoy.

Lazy Sunday wake up in the late afternoon
Call Parnell just to see how he's doing
Hello what up Parns! Yo Sandburg, whats crackin'?
You thinking what I'm thinking? Narnia! Then it's happenin'!
But first my hunger pangs are stickin' like duck tape
Let's hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes
Magnolia Bakery's got all the bob frostings
I love those cupcakes like Macadams loves Gosling
2 no 6 no 12, bakers dozen!
I told you that I'm crazy for these cupcakes, cousin!
Yo wheres the movie playing? Upper West Side dude!
Let's hit up Yahoo maps to find the dopest route.
I prefer Mapquest! That's a good one too.
Google Maps is the best! True that! Double true!
68th and Broadway step on it sucker!
What you want to do Chris? snack attack, mother ****er!

The chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
Yes the chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
We love that chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
Pass that chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!

Yo stop at the deli, the theater's overpriced!
You got that backpack? Gonna pack it up nice.
Don't want security to get suspicious!
Mr. Pibb and Red Vines equals crazy delicious.
I reach in my pocket and pull out some dough
Girl acted like she never seen a 10 before!
It's all about the Hamiltons baby
Throw the snacks in a bag and I'm ghost like Swayze.
Roll up to the theater ticket buying what we're handling,
Call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.
We're parked in our seats movie trivia's the illest!
What Friends alum starred in films with Bruce Willis?
We answered so fast it was scary
Everyone stared in awe when we screamed Matthew Perry!
Now quiet in the theatre or it's gonna get tragic
We're about to get taken to a dream world of magic!

What the chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
Yes the chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
We love that chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!
Pass that chronic-what? -cles of Narnia!

These are the sites Sheri has done so far I will periodically update the map.

I am working on creating data for a regional (as opposed to just our county) bicycle path map.

A lot of surrounding municipalities do not have GIS or CAD systems. They send us their bicycle maps on paper. I scan them on a large format scanner and then load the image into my GIS application. I also load a GIS layer that occupies the same space as the scanned image.

Right now I am digitizing map a city sent me that just used a marker to draw their bike paths on a cadastral plat!

I find a feature on the scanned image and click on it, and then I find the same feature on our GIS layer and click on it. I do this a minimum of three times. If it looks like all of the features on the scanned image match up with our existing GIS layers I create what is called a georeferenced image from the scanned image. All that means is that every point on the scanned image now has an associated latitude and longitude. It has become a true GIS layer.

A slang term for georeferencing is rubber sheeting because the program will stretch and distort the scanned image a little bit in order to make it fit where it needs to in space, sort of like a rubber sheet.

Then I load the georeferenced image into my GIS application and click along the bicycle paths to create the new bicycle path features for us to use in our regional map.

We are having the cartography lab of a local university create the map for us, but we have to send them the feature data.

Poor Sheri. We are both getting sick, and we would both like nothing better than to take a week off to take care of ourselves, but neither of us can take any vacation or sick days right now. I have felt kind of "gurgley" lately and had a diminished appetite, but no nausea or vomiting.

I was feeling dead yesterday and didn't have any appetite, so I left her a voice mail proposing a plan: let's go straight home, put on our PJ's, get into bed, play 1980's arcade games on the laptop and watch the Radio Music Awards on TV. No chores. No errands. Just warm sheets, cough drops, tissues, and cold drinks.

Do you think that happened? No. She didn't get off work until 10:30 PM and didn't get home until after 11 PM! A 14 hour day when you are already sick.

The extreme cold temperatures we have been having the last couple of weeks have been taking their toll on us too. Yesterday the thermometer read –4° when we got out of bed. That kind of cold just really zaps your energy.

We watched The 40 Year Old Virgin last night, and it had a lot of funny bits throughout the entire movie that made me laugh out loud, but I think if they had cut about 30-minutes of chaff from the almost two-hour movie it would have been a lot better. It had a lot of vulgarity, but I guess you would expect that from the title.

When I was a freshman and sophomore in high school I had a part-time job at a pizzeria/video game arcade called Old Towne Pizzeria. We made a pretty decent pizza, and also had subs, frozen things we dropped in the deep fryer, ice cream, cotton candy, popcorn, etc. When people bought a pizza they would get a few tokens to use in our video games. It was a pretty big place attached to a mall. We probably had close to 100 video games. This was in the early 80's right when Pac Man was the big new thing.

One of the fringe benefits of working there was we got free tokens to play video games. There was one game that stood out as a favorite of mine. You played a robber that ran through mine shafts picking up bags of money. The goal was to get all of the bags of money to the surface and drop them in a wheelbarrow. There were two wardens chasing you through the shafts. There were little train cars running back and forth in certain spots. You could jump in one of these and go faster than you or the wardens could run, plus when you are in one of these cars the wardens couldn't get you.

This was more than 20 years ago and I have never seen this game anywhere else since then, but I can still hear some of the sound effects just like it were yesterday. I forgot what the name of the game was so it has been difficult to do Google searches for it. Every now and then when I am feeling nostalgic I will see if I can find anything about it on the web, but have been unsuccessful, until yesterday.

It occurred to me that there has to be someone obsessed with classic 1980's arcade games that has compiled some sort of database, and I was right. I did a Google search on "arcade games database" and found The Killer List of Video Games. What gave me immediate hope with this website is that they have a search box with a checkbox next to it to let you search the game descriptions rather than just by title.

I spent maybe a half hour searching on various words and combing through all of the results, but it was daunting because there are over 4,300 games in the database! I did a search on "bags" and that was the magic word. I found it. The name of the game is Bagman. Here are some images:



While I was initially doing Google searches for this game yesterday I kept getting results that included a site called MAME. I glanced over it but didn't think it was anything useful. MAME is an acronym for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

After I discovered what the name of my favorite nostalgic game was I was able to start doing some searches for that to see if I could find any information on it. Was there an on-line version I could play? Could I buy a copy anywhere?

Well this MAME term kept coming up again. It turns out there is a whole enthusiast community out there that is dedicated to not letting these classic games die and be lost forever. The way they go about it is fascination. People buy these old arcade machines and then take out the computer guts of the thing. The game software is stored on a ROM (Read Only Memory) chip. Somehow they are able to copy everything off of the ROM chip and save it to a file. They then upload these files to various websites dedicated to this. There literally thousands of these files available! Any arcade video game you can think of is available out there for free download.

However these files are useless by themselves. They are not programs you can just double-click on to run. They are designed to be used on a dedicated piece of hardware designed just for that purpose.

That is where the MAME software comes in. It is a free download that emulates an arcade machine. So you download a ROM file and you download and install the MAME software and together you can relive your high school days.

So last night at midnight I finally figured out how all this stuff comes together and was able to play Bagman after about 22 years. All of the sounds are exactly the same as I remember. It is just amazing.

Another game I remember enjoying was Tempest. I download that ROM file and was treated to another nostalgic rush as I played that a few times.



Playing the games on the computer keyboard is OK, but a joystick would be easier, so today when we were out I bought a cheap game pad at Best Buy. It works like a charm.



The ROM files are surprisingly small too. The Zipped Bagman file was only about 24 kb and it unzipped to about 70 kb. I routinely save spreadsheets a that are hundreds of times bigger than that.

Go ahead and look for some of your old favorites. The best way to construct a Google search is probably "Game Name" rom mame where you of course replace the words Game Name with whatever game you are looking for.

To run a game you start it up from the command line. If you don't know what that means just drop me a line and I would be happy to walk you through it. It is actually very simple. Enjoy.

We are at Panera’s. I did an hour and a half of freelance work while Sheri read the paper. We split a Turkey Bravo sandwich. After a while she went up and got us a couple sweets and a couple coffees. I still think they have horrible brewed coffee, but their espresso is acceptable. I had my normal (say it with me) small decaf Americano with an extra shot.

We both had a tiring week and just felt spent by last night. We went out to dinner so we could catch up with each other rather than just watching a movie. We were going to go to the Chinese buffet we like but have not been to in a while, but when we got there it went out of business. (Well I don’t mean it went out of business just as we got there. It was like that when we got there.) Our plan B was Golden Corral. Golden Corral is a double edged sword for me. I can actually do very well there, but there are also a lot of dangerous temptations. Last night I did pretty well. I started off with a big salad and a large scoop of crab salad. Then I went up for a bowl of soup. By that point I was starting to fill up. I went and got a small scoop of the bourbon chicken sans rice, a couple pieces of deep fried shrimp, a piece of catfish (didn’t like that and didn’t finish it), and some green beans. All of that wasn’t too bad. I had a couple of their excellent yeast rolls which they bring to the table, and I broke down and got a little dessert. I love their bread pudding and I got just a large table spoon full. I had one sugar cookie and one oatmeal cookie, and I had probably about 1/3 of a slice of their supposedly sugar free blueberry pie. I wasn’t perfect but I did OK. I didn’t leave uncomfortably full which is always a good barometer.

We still both feel worn out even though we slept in later than usual. We are going to look up what ingredients we need on the Internet to make beef stroganoff, stop at the grocery store, and then go home and probably take a little nap. After than we will make dinner and watch Fantastic Four. For tomorrow we have The 40 Year Old Virgin. I am looking forward to both movies.

I am afraid this coming week is going to be tiring and stressful too, so we really need to make sure we get our batteries charged today and tomorrow. I have some really good news, but I don't want to say anything until it is official.

I would love to see the day when it is standard practice to include the latitude and longitude of locations in newspaper stories. Now that virtually everyone in the world, or at least those reading a newspaper, have access to powerful online mapping services I think it is something that people would find useful that want to put more context around a story that interests them.

It only takes an extra 23 characters, including the spaces and parenthesis, to include the coordinates of any location on Earth.

For example this is the exact place that the Southwest jet ran off the runway at Midway Airport and onto a city street. (N 41° 47' 33" W 87° 45' 43")

Or this is the location of the breached reservoir that spilled a billion gallons of water down the mountainside a couple days ago. (N 37° 32' 10" W 90° 49' 05")



Think how useful it would be to tell exactly where a traffic accident happened on a highway.

Where on a sidewalk something landed from a skyscraper. (Not uncommon in Chicago)

Where a record setting fish was caught.

Where a new wind farm is going to be located.

You get the idea.

It would be more foolproof than listing addresses because it can take time for new streets to get listed into the major online mapping databases.

For international stories it would be even more valuable since a lot of online mapping sites do not support international addresses.

Success! This is the 3D surface model from directly overhead. Red symbolizes the highest point in the study area and green the lowest.



I calculated we would need 135,589 cubic yards of dirt.

The rest of the pictures are views from different angles around the project. The model has some rough edges that I might smooth out if I have time, but it has at least given us an idea of the order of magnitude of earth we will need. It was a fun project and I learned a few things in the process.

you can click on all of the images for the full sized view

A while ago I wrote about a project I am working on to estimate the amount of fill dirt we need to order to re-landscape the driving range of a golf course.

I used our existing 2-foot topo line files to create a GIS surface of what it looks like now.

how it currently looks


The next step was to create a surface of how we want it to look after the fill dirt is dumped and graded. To calculate the volume of earth we need all I have to do is subtract the current layer from the new layer.

I finally got around to working on this again yesterday. I thought I would just draw a bunch of topo lines by hand and attach an elevation to each line. Easier said than done. Our minds don't work like that, or at least mine doesn't.

After sitting and staring at my screen for a while I decided on a new approach. One of the things the software can do is take a bunch of GPS points that have been collected and create a 3D surface from those. I will just make my own "GPS" points and add the elevation for each one. My desired end result is a surface, not topo lines, so this will be fine.

Here is what I constructed:


click for full sized image

I started with the highest existing point which will not change. It is the cluster of pure red dots just a little bit up from the bottom. This is the tee. From there they want a 1% downward grade to the north. I plunked points from the tee going north and then calculated the elevation for each point given the distance it was from the tee. For every 100 feet from the tee the elevation will decrease by 1 foot.

The next thing I did was create points around the perimeter of the project and gave them the same elevation as the topo lines they intersected. This is how the new surface will have a nice seamless transition with the existing surface.

At regular intervals around the perimeter I would make a series of points going inward. They want the perimeter of the range to have 33%, or 3:1, grade. For every 33 feet from the perimeter the elevation will increase by 1 foot. I just did the same kind of calculations for each point, but once the elevation reached the elevation of the initial series of points from the 1% grade I just set the elevation the same as the portion of the 1% grade it was intersecting with.

In the dot picture the red dots are the highest, the green dots are the lowest, and the yellows and ambers are in between.

If everything goes alright tomorrow I will model these dots into a 3D surface and calculate how many yards of dirt we need. I will of course post an image of the surface.

Chances are that you will only find this funny if you are a long-time creature of the Internets.

The second Tuesday of every month is when Microsoft releases patches and updates for Windows. Yesterday they released three important ones. Please update your system by clicking here.

We are supposed to have another snowstorm Wednesday and I am not happy about it. Right now they are forecasting 4 inches to fall between 7 AM and 6 PM. I guess I had better bring the snow blower up from the basement tonight.

Yesterday (Saturday) I woke up with a craving for pork and sauerkraut. During our morning errands we picked up a couple pounds of boneless country ribs and and a jar of Bobak's sauerkraut. By the time we got home it was too late to start it cooking in the crock pot because it would not have been ready until 10 PM.

This morning at 8:30 AM before I went out to shovel the snow that fell overnight I put half the bottle of sauerkraut in the crock pot, then the country ribs, then a large russet potato cut in half lengthwise, and finally the rest of the sauerkraut, and turned it on low.

After 8 hours, at 4 PM, we had it for our early dinner. It was good but the meat would have been better if it was cooked an hour or two less. I'll know better next time.

Sheri liked all of it and ate a good amount of the pork. I never cooked country ribs before but I was happy with them and will use them again.

I love Bobak's sauerkraut. It is imported from Poland and has no vinegar listed on the ingredient list which is a good thing because it means they use brine which has much better flavor. The unusual thing about their sauerkraut is the way it is packed in the jar. They cram it in the jar so firmly it is almost like they force it in with a piston. There is almost no juice; it is all sauerkraut. It is packed so tightly I have to be careful I don't bend the fork as I pry it out of the jar. To top it off the two pound jar is only $1.50! The only sauerkraut that is better is the fresh kraut they have in the barrels in the back of the store.

The Illinois State Police have photo speed enforcement vans they rotate among construction zones on the tollway system. The speed limit in construction zones is 45 mph.

With a trooper and a cruiser he cannot catch anyone else when he is in the process of writing a ticket. When drivers see that they kind of take it as an all-clear signal because the only trooper in the area is already busy.

With the photo speed enforcement vans they can issue dozens of tickets per minute. That is why I lock the cruise control in at exactly 45 mph everyday on my commute when I am going through the construction zones.

I have not seen any stories on the papers about the Illinois results of this, but I saw this article in an Akron, OH paper today and in a 19 day period they issued more than 2,600 tickets and took in almost $500,000, which works out to almost $200 a pop.

If it just cost you $200 that would be tolerable, but your insurance rates will go up several hundred dollars a year for several years. That is where it really hurts.

It the article it sounds like they didn't give drivers very much leeway over the speed limit. If I had to guess I think the Illinois State Police would probably only give you a 4 mph cushion over the speed limit with the photo enforcement. When they have to make a physical traffic stop they only want to do it for the most egregious offenders, but if the cost and risk to a trooper is zero to issue a ticket the bar is much much lower, so why not issue as many as possible.

At 10:24 AM today there was a 2.7 magnitude earthquake in southern Illinois about 55 miles ESE of St. Louis, MO.

Map

There have been three studies* so far that show a significantly higher rate of left-handedness in children exposed to sonograms during pregnancy. The question this raises is do/can sonogram energy damage, or at least change, the neurological development of a fetus.

* K.A. Salvesen, L.J. Vatten, S.H. Eik-Nes, K. Hugdahl, L.S. Bakketeig, “Routine ultrasonography in utero and subsequent handedness and neurological development,” British Medical Journal, Vol. 307, 1993, 159-64. H. Kieler, O. Axelsson, B. Haglund, S. Nilsson, K.A. Salvesen, “Routine ultrasound screening in pregnancy and children’s subsequent handedness.” Early Human Development, Vol. 50, 1998, 233-45.

On the radio this morning I heard a story that said there would be 70% fewer radiologists in the United States within 10 or 20 years. (I forget the exact time frame.)

The reason is because of a trend to send the X-Ray or MRI results via the Internet to radiologists in countries like India, China, etc. They interpret the images there and e-mail back the results.

The average income of a radiologist in one of these countries is around $25,000 per year as opposed to $100,000 to $125,000 per year in the US.

We had a pretty busy day so far.

Our shower has a glass door that swings on a hinge (as opposed to sliding). To keep it shut there is a little spring loaded plastic ball a little bigger than a BB on the edge of the door. When you close the door the little ball clicks on the other side of a metal frame mounted on wall. Over the years the little plastic ball has worn away the spot were it rides over the metal frame. As a result it just barely stays closed. If you bump it just a little while you are in the shower it will open up. This morning the first thing I did was mix up some JB Weld and used a popsicle stick to build the worn-away spot back to its original shape. I have never used JB Weld before, but after it is cured it is just like steel. Literally. It can stand temperatures up to 600º. You can grind it. Tap holes into it. Fix engine blocks. It takes 15 hours to cure so around midnight tonight I will give it a try and see if the door stays locked in place better. I think I got the profile of the repair almost perfect, but I will still take a file to it just to smooth out and rough edges.

After I finished the shower repair we both got dressed and went to the Starbucks that Sheri went to every morning while she wasn't working. She wanted to tell her coffee-clatch that she got a job. Only two of the guys were there. I had a maple nut oatmeal scone and my usual tall decaf triple Americano, and Sheri had their low fat blueberry coffee cake (her favorite) and he usual iced coffee.

We didn't stay too long. For one thing they don't have a vestibule and every time someone came or left raw cold air filled the room. I am not usually a cold person but my feet and legs were cold. Sheri finished the saduko and crossword puzzle in the paper and I skimmed through the rest of the paper.

Sheri's friend Emily just opened up a store/yoga studio across the street from the Starbucks so we stopped up there (it's on the second floor) to see how things looked. Her husband was there so we talked with him and checked things out for a bit. As we were leaving Emily arrived with her son.

We walked across the street and split a large slice of pizza at a new pizzeria that recently opened up. The guy that is running it is pretty young, early 30's and maybe even late 20's, and really nice. He was born in Italy but grew up in New Jersey and Brooklyn. He has a pretty thick Brooklyn accent and a goodfella air about him. He was wearing a very Brooklyn matching workout outfit; matching blue pants and jacket with a tennis shoe logo on it. Another goodfella friend came it. He was driving a Hummer that had the words "Teamster Strike Organizing Unit" on the side. He had the same Brooklyn accent. They hugged and said "Howyadoin?" when he came in. I also liked the young Hispanic kid he hired to work behind the counter. He has these razor-shaped thin sideburns that come down the side of his face and curve towards the front of his jaw. It makes him look like a bad ass and therefore not someone you want to talk to, but when he handed my my soda he flashed this really big sweet innocent smile. He can't be more than 16 or 17 years old. As we were leaving I went up to the counter and asked how much the cannolis and tiramisu cost. He obviously didn't know and kind of said "um, ah, um" a few times and then flashed that smile and said "For you, $2!" with a very heavy Spanish accent. I thought that was hilarious. He was learning how to schmooze Brooklyn-style from his goodfella boss. They earned my loyalty today. They were cool and fun. Oh, another customer came and after he placed his order asked for a cannoli. With his Brooklyn goodfella accent said "You got it." I liked that too.

We rounded the block and stopped in William Sonoma's to look at their espresso equipment. Sheri made a single-serve coffee from a Keurig coffee machine for me. The machine is there so they can demonstrate it to prospective buyers and had a little sign that basically said don't touch it and ask for assistance, but she didn't see it until after. A clerk came up as she was finishing brewing it but she was cool with it. The coffee was pretty darned good. Excellent taste but with a slightly lighter body than what I normally get with my triple Americanos. I would love one of the fully automated espresso machines that grinds your fresh beans on demand, tamps the coffee, brews, and empties the grounds into a container automatically. They range in price from $1,000 to over $3,000 so I don't see one in my future anytime soon.

Last night when we were making our white chili I was horrified to realize I didn't have chili powder OR oregano on hand. Horrified! So our next stop was Penzy's. While waiting in line to check out I realized how lucky I am to have one of the few Penzy's retail stores in existence. The spices you get at the grocery store are no match for what you can get at Penzy's. I added the oregano and chili powder to the white chili when I got home and made it even better.

We stopped and got gas.

We have been meaning to stop at a computer parts outlet store that someone at work just told me about. The place is called Tiger Direct and I think they are mainly a mail order company with just a few retail stores, kind of like Penzy's. A guy at work got a $200 flat panel LCD monitor a couple weeks ago.

Around the corner from Tiger Direct is the Crate & Barrel outlet store. We have never been there in the five years we have been here so we (I) thought we should check it out. They had some really really good prices but we didn't buy anything.

My hands get cold when I am driving in the winter but all the gloves I have are too bulky and don't give me a firm enough grip on the wheel, and Sheri needed a winter hat to cover her ears, so our next stop was T.J. Maxx. The parking lot was a zoo. People were being idiots. A car was waiting to turn left into a spot that a car was in the process of leaving. A car behind the waiting car decided he couldn't wait so went around the waiting car, but I don't know why because the car pulling out was blocking the way. So there were two cars side-by-side blocking the way and a car trying to leave that was blocked in because he was going in the opposite direction as the two side-by-side cars. Multiply that kind of stupidity by about 20 and that is what the whole parking lot was like. Anyway, we did better inside the store. Sheri found the perfect gloves for me by Timberland. They are suede with a very very thin layer of insulation, so it is almost like a second skin. I also found a hat I had to get. It is all wool and crush proof. What do you think?



As you can see our next stop was Menard's for a couple bags of wood pellets for the fireplace.

We stopped at a drugstore on the way home for a couple things including a little tin of Burt's Bees lip balm. I saw a show on the Travel Channel the other night were they spent some time inside the Burt's Bees factory showing how everything is made, so I had to try some. It smells good and has a nice tingly fee on my lips from the peppermint oil. I like the ingredient list:

coconut oil
beeswax
sweet almond oil
peppermint oil
vitamin E
lanolin
comfrey root extract
rosemary extract

Nice.

We are home now. Fire in the fireplace. Pot of soup heating up on the stove. I am going to finish this and we are going to watch either Madagascar or Happy Endings. I am in the mood to watch either one but I think Sheri is leaning towards Happy Endings.

I am going to get a hot bowl of soup now.

For what ever reason, the Illinois Tollway does not have a map showing the locations of their Tollway Oases.

A Tollway Oasis is a rest stop on the Tollway, but all of the restaurants and facilities are on a bridge over the road. All of the highway traffic runs right underneath them. The advantage of this is they only have to build one structure at a location rather than one on each side of the highway.

I made another Google map showing all seven of the Illinois Tollway Oases.

I wanted to try out making a Google map with multiple push pins on it just to see how it works. The first thing that came into my head was to show where I lived during college.

You can click on each of the push pins and a window will pop up telling you what year I lived there.

Here is the map.

Let me know if you have any trouble looking at the map. You can zoom in and out and turn on the aerial photos too.

I am going out to dinner tonight with a product integration engineer.

This week has flown by. I think it was because of the excitement of Sheri's new job.

I just checked the weather for Saturday in Chicago and now it says the wind-chill is going to be above freezing, so maybe we will take the train into the city. As of yesterday the wind-chill was expected to be between 14° and 19° on Saturday.

I want to make a pot of the delicious white chili that we had at Tim and Lisa's house Wednesday night after our drive from Chicago. The couple changes I will make are:

1. Grill the chicken before it goes into the pot to give it a little bit of a smoky taste.
2. Two cans of green chilies instead of one. I really like green chilies. I might even see if they have some nice fresh ones in the produce section. Mild ones like anaheims.

I also might garnish each bowl with a little fresh chopped cilantro. We also might have some masa flour in the pantry for making corn tortillas. I might add a third cup for both flavor and body. I usually do that for my regular chili.

Lisa sent me two recipes, and I will probably borrow a little from each one. I will publish the recipe of what I end up taking from each one if it turns out good.

I have been busy at work today doing fun projects. That's always nice.

I don't think I have ever been really happy with the gifts I get for Sheri. If anyone has any good Christmas ideas please send me an e-mail. It would be so much easier if she were a guy.

Sheri called me after lunch but before she went back to work. She is having another good day. Things are making sense. She made two iced triple espressos and says they are turning out pretty good.

Last night I took a stack of newspapers that were in the passenger seat and put them on top of the van before we went out for dinner. This morning Sheri didn't see the papers up there and drove off with a flurry of newspapers trailing the van and blowing all over the neighborhood.

We talked about taking the train into the City on Saturday to see the Christmas decorations, walk through the Marshall Fields on State Street one last time before it turns into a Macy's, and maybe go ice skating (her, not me), but the wind chill is going to be 19°. That might make it a little uncomfortable. We'll see.

These are the two coffee machines Sheri has at work.

So far she has had better results with the Nespresso D300.



It uses little capsules of pre-ground coffee that you can only get from Nestle.





She said it makes a pretty good espresso on par with what you get at Starbucks.

You can get this machine at Amazon.com for about $400, and from what I can gather the capsules cost about $0.45 each.

The other machine is the Keurig B2003.



It uses a similar looking pod. The ones they have at her office are from Gloria Jean's Coffee.



She said the coffee tasted weak and crappy, but I looked on the web and there is a way to brew the coffee to the strength you want it. The way she was doing it gave her the weakest cup of coffee possible. If you push the "Start Brew" button a second time before it is done brewing it will stop the brewing process resulting in a stronger cup of coffee. She will give that a try today and see how it goes.

However I don't think the Keurig machine is an espresso machine, so I would imagine even if she gets it to make a decent cup of coffee, the Nespresso machine will still make a better cup. She has the flexibility of pouring straight espresso over ice and adding milk for an iced espresso, or if she is cold she can use the hot water dispenser to dilute the straight espresso to Americano strength.

From what I can find on the web both the Nespresso machine and coffee capsules are cheaper than the Keurig's. $400 versus $800, and $0.45 per capsule versus $0.55.

They sell cheaper Nespresso machines that start out around $180. At about $2.25 for my normal triple Americano at Starbucks it is possible the Nespresso system might not be out of the question at home.

Three shots of espresso from the Nespresso machine would cost about $1.35, which is $0.90 less than a triple shot at Starbucks. If these numbers are correct it would only take 200 drinks to break even from the cost of the machine at home rather than going to a coffee shop.

Sheri isn't starving so we are going to go to Red Robin for our dinner and for her to tell me everything about her first day.

It only took her 35 minutes door-to-door this evening!

Anything you would ever want to know about pigs and how they relate to pipelines.

I just got a call from Sheri about how work is going so far. There are a few other new people in the same position, so her boss is having a training session for all of them. They are in a conference room watching the boss do things on a laptop that also has a larger display attached to it.

So far she said it all makes sense. She likes the people and she likes what the actual job entails. She said there will be a couple more hours of training after lunch and then they can have the rest of the day to get comfortable at their desks.

She said the coffee machine uses pods to brew each cup individually, but she said it was not that good. She tried a French roast pod but it tasted weak. There is also an espresso machine but she has not seen anyone use it yet. They have an ice machine so I can see her figuring that out and then making her iced espressos right at work! That will save us a few bucks each day.

She was on her way to a McDonald's drive-through when she called and she sounded really good. Her voice was light, happy and enthusiastic. I didn't detect any dread or sense of "what did I get myself into" tones.

We talked about going out for a nice celebratory dinner tonight, but so far we have not decided on where. Our top of the line choice is Sullivan's Steak House. If we do that I would probably get a steak and she would just take a few bites, we would each get a lettuce wedge (her absolute favorite for some reason), and we would probably split one side, either creamed spinach or au gratin potatoes.

If that seems like too much food or effort I don't know what our second choices are yet.

One thing I hate about the traffic reports in Chicago is all of the highways have multiple names. Sheri and I both drive on I-88 and that can be referred to as:

Reagan Memorial Tollway
East-West Tollway
I-88

I-294 is a little better and only has two names:

Tri-State Tollway
I-294

The traffic reports only have a few seconds for their segments and talk really fast, so if you are listening for I-88 and they call it the East-West, by the time you make the connection in your head they are on to the next highway and you miss what they said.

They also rush saying what direction they are talking about (eastbound, westbound, etc.) and if you miss that you don't know if what they are talking about applies to you or not.

An even bigger gripe than that is when they give the traffic condition first and then the road segment it applies to. You kind of don't pay attention until they mention the road you are concerned about, and if they say the road name after they give the traffic you have already forgotten what they said. For example:

There is a 20-minute delay because of a large accident with injuries in the westbound left lane of the Reagan Tollway.

You don't realize what they said applies to you until they get to the last two words. How long is the delay? What lane should I get in? Was that eastbound or westbound?

The ideal order to deliver traffic information is:

1. Road name
2. Direction
3. Traffic information

For example:

On the Reagan Tollway the westbound left lane has a large accident with injuries. Expect a 20-minute delay.

It may seem minor, but when you have your hands full trying to dodge morons with a death wish talking on their cell phones, your mind is pretty much already at full capacity and the little things like that make a difference in comprehension.

Sheri made it to work OK but it took her about an hour and fifteen minutes. I was listening to the traffic reports on the way to work and they said the segment of highway she had to drive was unusually congested this morning, so hopefully that drive-time is a worse-case scenario. She said for quite a distance on I-294 she was creeping along between 10 and 15 mph.

She has to drive about 12 miles on I-88, and she said that was no problem this morning, and she has to drive about 9 miles on I-294, and that is where the congestion was.

Sheri seemed to be in very good spirits this morning. If she was nervous she fooled me. Her mission from me for today: get a picture of their "fancy coffee machine", and if she can't do that without making a scene at least write down the make and model so I can look it up on the Internet.

It was nice for me again to wake up with her. I didn't like waking up every morning and not be able to turn on the lights, radio, or TV or be able to talk with her.

I mixed up some of my magic chocolate no carb no fat soy protein drink for her this morning. I poured her about a cup and she drank almost half of it. Better than nothing.

She said she was going to stop an Panera for three shots of espresso for her drive in. I suggested she stop at the Dominick's nearby that has a Starbucks inside. She said she would just go to the Panera. I didn't understand because the Starbucks would be on the way, while the Panera would require a little bit of a detour, and the Starbucks has a little bit better espresso. After a minute of my questions and trying to figure out why she sheepishly admitted that she had coffee from Panera the day she had her interview for this job. Awwww… That is cute.

Good luck Sheri. I love you!

A real-time picture (well, updated every five minutes) of an interchange along Sheri's route to work. This is the I-290 - I-88 split. This is a map of the where the camera is.

Sheri will actually be taking I-88 to I-294 north, not I-290. The map will make it clear.

High winds have caused us to momentarily lose power at work twice this morning.

I have been really good for probably the last month not drinking things with caffeine. On the drive to Toledo we made a stop and I was thirsty. A cold bubbly Diet Coke sounded good, but I wasn't going to give in. A cold club soda or sparkling mineral water sounded equally as good, but fat chance of finding either of those at a highway rest stop.

That left me with the option of a bottle of water. It sounded boring and unsatisfying. Then I thought of 7-Up. It is close to sparkling mineral water because it is not as sweet as other soft drinks.

They didn't have 7-Up so I got Diet Sprite. I have never been too crazy for the lemon-lime soft drink category, but I was really thirsty and it hit the spot just right.

That positive experience and the fact that I need to find a replacement for my Diet Cokes let me look at the diet lemon-limes in a new light. For some reason I don't find the caffeine free diet colas as satisfying. It is probably in my head, but I just don't get as much enjoyment from them. Over the Thanksgiving weekend I had several lemon-limes and some cranberry ginger ale. I enjoyed all of them quite a bit.

Fast forward to today. We went to Meijer for a little grocery shopping. I noticed some different looking Fresca bottles next to the regular Fresca bottles. Fresca is a diet grapefruit soda that I have always liked, but I go in cycles with it. Anyway, the new bottles were two new flavors. One was peach-citrus and the other was black cherry-citrus. We opened up the peach one tonight and we both love it. The grapefruit is the dominant taste while you are drinking it, and then you are left with a nice fuzzy peach aftertaste. We will be getting the peach Fresca again. I will let you know how the black cherry Fresca is when we try it.

Sheri and I went to Toledo for Thanksgiving with my family. Here is a little summary:

- Wednesday -

I went into work for just a half day in the morning. I got back home around 12:30 PM and we packed up the car with our bags we packed the night before. We also loaded up the GPS and the XM radio.

We would have left shortly after that but we didn't schedule the mail to be stopped until the day after Thanksgiving and the mailman had not delivered the mail yet. While we waited for the mail to arrive I had a couple turkey sandwiches for lunch, so the extra time worked out OK anyway. The mail showed up before I finished my second sandwich so we ended up only being about 20 minutes behind schedule.

We started driving around 1:20 PM and everything was going great until we got on I-294 from I-55. Parking lot. I think it took us about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get from there to the Indiana tollway. It normally only takes about an hour.

Traffic was fine until about halfway there. There was some bridge construction that only left one lane open for a couple miles. That added another 30 minutes of delay to our trip.

The final delay on this trip came one mile before the last Indiana toll plaza. Another parking lot. It took us almost one hour to creep from the "Tollbooth 1 Mile Ahead" sign to the actual tollbooth.

The normal four hour drive ended up taking more than six hours. We stayed with my sister and brother-in-law and they were waiting for us to have a hot dinner. They made a pot of delicious white chili, three packages of grocery store sushi, and cheese and crackers. Sheri and I split a piece of pumpkin pie for dessert. I loved the white chili. I can't believe Gourmand Brad never tried this before. It is definitely going to be added to my repertoire.

We got in late plus we were worn out from the stressful drive so I think we went to bed before 10 PM.

- Thursday - Thanksgiving -

Thursday morning I got up and took my still-frozen dough ball out of the refrigerator to defrost. Lisa made some cinnamon coffee cake the day before for breakfast and we all sat around the kitchen table for a while talking and having breakfast.

Mom and Dad came over in the morning and brought the dishes they signed up for. I think I my dough was ready to go and I started forming hard rolls between 1 PM and 1:30 PM. Tim started heating the deep fryer oil around this time.

The oil was ready to go when I put my first pan of rolls in the oven. After my second and finale pan of rolls finished baking I went outside to babysit the deep fryer with Tim. There was a constant and extremely cold 20 MPH wind that was not only painful on any exposed skin, but it also kept trying to blow out the flame and prevented the oil from reaching the proper temperature. The oil is supposed to be 375° but we could only keep it at 200°. After a while we put a piece of cardboard almost directly in contact with the deep fryer to protect it from the wind and we were able to get the temperature up to a little over 300°. Before the cardboard we had the grill and a two or three foot diameter metal disk as windbreaks, but there was still a lot of wind that was getting to the flame and preventing enough heat from getting to the pot.







The turkey turned out great and so did everything thing else on the table. This is what I can remember from the menu:

turkey
Mom's stuffing from Grandma's recipe
Stove Top stuffing for Lisa
candied yams
Tim's mashed and seasoned cauliflower
brussel sprouts
green peas
salad greens
my hard rolls
gravy
our family's traditional cold raw cranberry salad (it is not Thanksgiving without this!)
green bean casserole
black olives
green onions

I think that covers it. For dessert we had a pumpkin roll. It was a like a jelly role but the cake part was pumpkin bread-like, and the jelly part was sweetened cream cheese. It was really good, but I missed the pumpkin pie.





After dessert we all watched The Polar Express. We all really enjoyed it. Mom and Dad packed up shortly after that was over. The rest of us watched the Charlie Brown special that was on TV and then Finding Nemo. I was tired and Sheri and I went up to bed before it was over. She finished Finding Nemo in bed and I fell asleep.

- Black Friday -

Sheri and I got up at 5 AM for some Black Friday bargains which I already wrote about on Friday.

Lisa had to go into work for a few hours. She got back home about the same time Mom came over. Dad had to work Friday afternoon and evening. We had a big lunch of leftovers and then the six of us ran some errands.

Tim and Lisa needed ornaments for their new 12-foot Christmas tree so we went to Hobby Lobby. We told them about the 40% off coupons they have on-line, but once we got to the store it said only valid on regularly priced items. All of the stuff they got was already half off. They did have two remote control electric outlets that were $15 each and not on sale. Sheri and I each took one and a coupon an saved them $12.

Then we went back to Office Depot because Tim wanted an external USB numeric keypad like I got.

We stopped at Radio Shack so Tim could get one of the Bluetooth headsets for his cell phone that were on sale for $9.99, but at that price they were all sold out.

We stopped at K-Mart for a few things and then headed to Cabela's. That is always a fun spectacle to experience. I found a Cabela's t-shirt, but by the time it was ready to check-out my early morning adventure was catching up with me and I didn't have the energy to stand in the long lines, so I abandoned my shirt and we left.

For dinner we grilled up the three pounds of spicy Polish sausages I brought from Bobak's. We also fried up a pan of rinsed sauerkraut and onions. Very good.

Mom left for the night and we watched a little bit of the Star Wars movie on TV. Again I was too tired to finish it and went to bed before it was over. Sheri went up too and finished it in bed. I fell asleep listening to the audio book America on my brand new MP3 player. I downloaded the audio book that afternoon from our library back home. It is pretty good. It is like a Tom Clancy story. America is the name of the nuclear submarine in the story and thus the title of the book.

- Saturday - Today -

Lisa had to go into work again this morning. We took our time getting up, showered and dressed. We left the house around 10 AM to meet Lisa and Mom and Dad at Nick's Restaurant for brunch. We always have to get a Nick's fix when we visit Toledo. The last two times we went Tim and I split the Nick Omelet. It is $11 and is almost too much food for the two of us! It is a large oval plate of stuff covered with a large plain omelet. The pile of stuff has sausage, gyro meat, green peppers, potatoes, cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms(?) and probably a bunch of other stuff I am forgetting. Delicious. Sheri loves there fresh hand-cut French fries so she ordered those and a two over-medium eggs. Nick only has one size order of fries and it is huge. It comes on a large oval plate and is stacked as high as he can pile them on. They are some of the best fries ever. Not greasy at all and good potato flavor.

We said our goodbyes to Mom, Dad and Shawn (Shawn was spending the night with them) and then went back to Tim and Lisa's house. Lisa gave me her keys and I followed them in her van.

We packed up the car started our drive back home. After maybe 30 or 45 minutes Lisa called me on my cell phone and asked if I had her keys. Yes I did. They have a spare key so we didn't have to turn around. We will just drop them in the mail on Monday.

The drive back home was much better than the drive on Wednesday. It was easy traffic except for the construction zone when we first entered Illinois. It added about 30 minutes to the drive. I listened to a couple chapters of my audio book on the way home (while Sheri was driving of course) while she listed to the XM radio. The earphones that came with the MP3 player do a really good job of filtering out sound, so her radio playing didn't interfere too much with what I was listening too. Very cool. That will be useful in the future when she want to watch TV and I want to listen to something.

We got home, unpacked, freshened up, and got the house going again. I turned the hot water heater back up from the vacation setting. Sheri started a few loads of laundry. I had a couple of the sausages they sent us home with from Friday's dinner. We have a fire in the fireplace now and are just watching TV. We don't have any movies in from our Blockbuster On-Line account. That is about it for today. We will watch Mad TV and Saturday Night Live late this evening.
We have a few errands and chores to do tomorrow.

I didn't plan on getting up early for Black Friday bargains, but Office Depot had an ad in Thursday's paper for two things I was eventually going to buy anyway. One was an external USB numeric keypad for only $3. These are normally in the $20 range.

The other was an MP3 player. If it was any other MP3 player I probably wouldn't have noticed the ad, but it was the model that I had decided I was going to buy when I finally decided to plunk down the money for one. If have seen it on the Internet for between $100 and $120, but Office Depot had it on sale for $59 today.

The store opened up at 6 AM so I set the alarm for 5 AM. The operative word there is "set". I forgot to actually turn it on. It turned out OK though. I woke up and looked at the clock at 5:15 AM.

Sheri was nice enough to go along with me, and will become an important part of the story in a bit. We brushed our teeth, threw on some clothes and went out the door. We left the car outside overnight the windows needed scraping before we left. It was very very cold, I wasn't dressed warmly enough, and I think just having woken up a few minutes ago my body temperature had not risen to its normal level yet. In a matter of just a few minutes I was shivering uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering.

It was just turning 6 AM and we were passing a Shell station. We were almost on empty and I thought it would probably be better to be a little late for the store opening than to run out of gas or get fuel line freeze up. Sheri got a hot cup of coffee for me while I pumped gas.

We got to the Office Depot parking lot about five minutes after the 6 AM opening but there were still people waiting in line outside. We sat in the car with the heat on until we saw people starting to go in. We got to the end of the line but it wasn't moving anymore. There was an employee with a clipboard inside the store talking to each person before they could move past him. I didn't know what was going on.

After a few more minutes he announced if you were there for one of the computer systems you didn't have to stop and talk to him. It turned out he had a ticket for each of the special sale items. You told him what you wanted and he handed you the ticket for it, and then you went someplace else in the store to pick it up. I guess it was a good idea so they could know exactly when the last of the special sale items had been sold.

As I was waiting there I heard him say to someone over his walkie-talkie not to sell any MP3 players without talking to him or without a ticket or something like that. I didn't pay too close attention to it, it just kind of stuck in my head.

By this time Sheri had stepped fully into the store so she could warm up. I signaled to her to go see if she could find the items on the shelf. Just in case.

When I finally got up to him and told him I wanted the MP3 player he looked to a guy next to him and said "He wants an MP3 player too." He wrote the SKU number down, asked for my name, and walked away. Huh? I was going to follow him around the store until I got my MP3 player, but just then Sheri came walking up with the MP3 player!

They were in an aisle inside of a locked case. She stood there blocking access to the case until an employee with a key showed up. There were only three of the MP3 players in the case, so she said she wasn't going to move until she had one in her hands. She said other shoppers tried to be sneaky and get in front by pretending to browse the selection, but she was having none of that. By the time an employee got there she said there were at least five other shoppers waiting for one, but she got the first one out of the case. Those others more than likely got there before we did too. Yeah Sheri!

We picked up the external numeric keypad (no line for those!) and used it to hide the MP3 player. I was afraid if we tried to check out they would ask for our ticket or something. We stood there for a minute trying to decide what to do. Maybe walk around the store for a while until all of the people that were clamoring for an MP3 player left. Sheri decided that once it is in your hands they can't take it away from you, and if they tried she would put up a huge stink. OK, if she was up for a stink I was up for checking out.

They only had two lines opened up and they each had over 10 or 15 people in them. Sheri spotted a girl working a register at the customer service desk. It was facing the front of the store so people couldn't really see it was a checkout line. There was only one person in front of us too.

We thought a nice hot cup of coffee would be good as a reward for a successful (and first) Black Friday shopping trip. There was a Starbucks just around the corner. By the time we sat down with our cups of coffee and a blueberry muffin to split it was still only a few minutes before 6:30 AM! I somewhat expected to spend maybe an hour or a little more at Office Depot.

So my big thanks to Sheri for a successful trip as well as a very fast trip.

We got back home and Sheri went back to bed for a couple hours. I tried out my numeric keypad and MP3 player. I downloaded a couple technology-related podcasts from NPR and a couple from This Week In Tech.

I laid in bed and listened to about of an hour of them with my eyes closed. It worked great. I wanted the player mostly for these kind of things and for audio books I can download from our library.

The title of this article alone has anthropological and sociological value for our times.
(the tips are just ok)

Top 10 Things To Do For Mom's PC Over Thanksgiving

We had a small snow event early this morning. We laid down 325 tons of salt that cost of about $16,250.

Our trucks get about 5 mpg and we have 734 lane miles so we went through about 150 to 200 gallons of diesel.

We ran for about three hours from 4 am until 7 am. All told, overtime, fuel and salt cost us about $150,000.

That works out to about $350 per lane mile. A mile of our roadway averages about 2.35 lanes, so that works out to about $825 per centerline mile to clear just under an inch of snow.

The new AT&T logo if you are interested.

This year's survey of the most dangerous cities and safest cities was released today. Here are the results:

Listed as the most dangerous cities are:

Camden, New Jersey
Detroit, Michigan
St. Louis, Missouri
Flint, Michigan
Richmond, Virginia
Baltimore, Maryland
Atlanta, Georgia
New Orleans, Louisiana
Gary, Indiana
Birmingham, Alabama

At the other end of the scale, the safest are named as:

Newton, Massachusetts
Clarkstown, New York
Amherst, New York
Mission Viejo, California
Brick Township
New Jersey
Troy, Michigan
Thousand Oaks, California
Round Rock, Texas
Lake Forest, California
Cary, North Carolina

General Motors has lost $4 Billion dollars so far this year! Billion. With a B.

Also, each vehicle GM sells has about $1,500 in employee and retiree health care costs baked into the price. Ouch. How do you deal with that? The Japanese auto makers don't have anything like that to deal with.

Here is a quick weekend-recap:

- Friday -

I had to man a table at GIS day, so I was away from the office. It finished at 2 PM and it was closer to home than the office, so when it was finished I just went home instead of to the office. If I went to the office by the time I got there it would almost be time to turn around and go home.

I got home and Sheri was having a bad day. She decided a Lou Malnati's pizza and watching a movie would help her. It did (and me being home of course!). We picked up Robots, but it turned out we got an unwatchable scratched copy and could only watch the first 10 minutes or so. I forget exactly what we did after that, but I think it was just watch TV and go to bed.

- Saturday -

We got up early to get stuff before the Michigan vs. Ohio State game. We went to Burger King for breakfast and to read the paper. We also brought the laptop, but not to surf the web with. We brought it to listen to the pre-game radio shows streaming from 1460 AM in Columbus. It was difficult to listen to though because they had the background music in the restaurant turned up too loud.

We got some bread, tomato, and romaine lettuce for our turkey sandwiches, as well as some potato chips. We enjoyed watching the game. It was an exciting close ending.

Sheri exchanged the Robots DVD and got a good copy. We watched it in the early evening and liked it.

That night we watched Last Days. One of the most boring and slow movies EVAR! We fast forwarded through it in about 30 minutes, but it is still 30 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Watched Mad TV and Saturday Night Live.

- Sunday -

I read most of the paper on the couch from about 8:30 AM to about 10 AM.

Sheri gave me a haircut.

Took a shower and then left for some errands.

Went to Meijer first. We both got a coffee from the Starbucks that is just inside the store. Just the previous day I was asking Sheri why Starbucks doesn't have a loyalty card where they give you a punch each time you buy a coffee and then your 10th one is free. The one inside this Meijer does! You buy five and your sixth is free. We only needed King Arthur flour and an air filter for my car.

We then returned the Robots DVD.

Next was Trader Joe's for for wine and soy protein.

Home Depot for some enzymes to pour down slow drains to open them up.

Tanked up the van so Sheri doesn't run out of gas driving to her interview tomorrow.

Gordon's for a pound of yeast and 2,000 packets of Nutrasweet.

Bobak's for Maxwell Polish sausages and buns.

We both had a slice of leftover pizza when we got home.

Then I started making dough. I will freeze the dough after it rises and and gets punched down a couple times. On Thanksgiving all I have to do is defrost the dough, form it into hard rolls, let them rise on a cookie sheet for a bit and put them in the oven. No mixing bowls or dough hooks to wash in the hectic Thanksgiving kitchen that way.

I replaced the air filter in my car.

I balanced the checkbook and went through a day or two of mail.

I did a few things on the computer, which brings me to now. I think I am going to make a turkey sandwich soon. We are going to watch The Poseidon Adventure tonight until Desperate Housewives comes on, and then switch to that.

A study was done that shows caffeine consumption reduces a diabetic's sensitivity to insulin by up to 37%!

It reduces a non-diabetic's sensitivity to insulin almost as much; between 23% and 33%.

This is of concern for weight loss and weight maintenance because of the following scenario:

1. You have a cup of coffee or some soda.
2. Your cells cannot use insulin as efficiently to absorb glucose from your blood for a while.
3. Your blood sugar spikes.
4. Your body senses this and dumps extra insulin into your blood to get rid of the sugar.
5. The large load of insulin causes your blood sugar to drop too low.
6. Your body thinks it is hungry and needs food so you go and get a snack, thus adding more calories.

I have stopped drinking beverages with caffeine in them completely for about two weeks now. With this information there is no way I can enjoy a regular cup of coffee or regular Diet Coke anymore. I will occasionally have iced tea, but not the gallons I used to drink.

Hopefully this will let me drop a few more pounds too.

For those of you that are into getting up early on Black Friday for bargain hunting, these three sites will help you plan and prioritize your morning. They collect leaked ads, circulars and flyers from stores before they are published and put all of the deals up on the web. I see that Best Buy is going to have a $379 laptop!

For copyright reasons Sears is listed as Sbears and Kmart is listed as Jmart on the BK2005.com site.

www.bf2005.com

www.blackfridayads.com

www.gottadeal.com

Can you believe this is Jenny from the block?

Over the last 15 years or so I think I have pretty consistently followed the patter of:

1. Subscribing to National Geographic magazine.
2. When it is time to renew after 12 months I think "Eh, it enjoyed it OK, but not enough to renew again.
3. Wait three years.
4. Repeat.

I am almost at step two right now.

I just heard and interesting statistic from the book Freakonomics:

A swimming pool in the backyard is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than a gun in the house.

I think I have mentioned this before. Every night I fall asleep listening to the radio (Mostly news. Never music.) with a little earphone in one ear. When I wake up in the middle of the night to roll over sometimes the earphone is still in my ear and I will keep listening until I fall back asleep, and if it has fallen out I will feel around for it and put it back in my ear.

Because of this daily use I go through an earphone about every three months. My latest one somehow got a sharp bend in the middle of the cord and exposed the wires. I made my quarterly stop at Radio Shack after work tonight to pick up a new earphone. The normal conversation usually goes something like this:

Me: I need a mono-earphone with a three-foot cord and an 1/8" plug.
Clerk behind counter: (handing me an earphone package) Is this what you want?
Me: Yep. That's it.
Clerk behind counter: That will be $3.27. Do you need a bag for that?
Me: No thanks.
Clerk behind counter: Have a nice evening.
Me: You to. (exit store)

This is how the transaction went down tonight.

Me: I need a mono-earphone with a three-foot cord and an 1/8" plug.
Clerk behind counter: (handing me an earphone package) Is this what you want?
Me: Yep. That's it.
Clerk behind counter: We have stereo ones too for both ears. Wouldn't that be better?
Me. I don't need it in stereo. It's just for one ear.
Clerk behind counter: What do you need it for?
Me: (feeling annoyed but I don't think it showed)I listen to the radio in bed on my side. I lay on one ear so it is uncomfortable if something is in that ear.
Clerk behind counter: (with a tone like she is going to change my life)Did you know we have a special pillow speaker for this exact use?
Me: I don't like those. I prefer a mono-earphone.
Clerk behind counter: Well, OK. Do you need any batteries tonight?
Me: No.
Clerk behind counter: (sounding somewhat disappointed)Is there anything else you need this evening?
Me: No
Clerk behind counter: Did you find everything you were looking for?
Me: Yes
Clerk behind counter: That will be $3.27. Do you need a bag for that?
Me: No thanks.
Clerk behind counter: Have a nice evening.
Me: You to. (exit store)

I much prefer my normal Radio Shack conversation.

I discovered this neat free software called FreeMind. It is a genre called mind mapping software. The idea is that you the way you think is with a bunch of interconnected ideas. This software allows you to dump all of your thoughts into it and then link them together, allowing you to see the big picture of what you have to do. People use it for all sorts of things from planning a party to designing software to planning industrial processes.

I started using it today at work to keep track of things I have to do. The end result might be a few maps, but there may be a number of dependencies for each map. This software allows me to put all of these dependencies in one place and manage them from there rather than trying to keep it all straight in my head or on paper.

You can download FreeMind from here.

This is what I have so far:


click for full-sized image

We saw an ad in the paper yesterday for a 10 pound fully cooked and smoked Butterball turkey for only $12.99 at Aldi, so Sheri picked one up today for us to try. It is frozen, and we put it in the freezer until we decide when we are going to eat it. I think I want to eat it during the OSU vs Michigan game this weekend, but I am not sure yet. I am pretty excited to try it though. This could be my new favorite treat.

I set up my model building area in the front room. I brought home some map drafts from work to tape to the table to protect its finish. This is how I have it set up so far.

We went to Whole Foods for lunch. We did a lap around the store first to see what samples they had out. They must have just refreshed all of the samples because all of the sample trays were full. Lots of good stuff. The highlight was a plate of $23/pound salmon candy. Stupid name, but it was just smoked salmon that had been cured with brown sugar. Delicious.

For lunch we both got our own carton and picked some things from the hot salad bar and ate it in the seating area in the front of the store. The main thing we each got was King Ranch Casserole which is chicken, cheddar, tomitillo sauce, tortilla chips, and spices. I also got one potato and pea samosa, one piece of boneless curried chicken, and a spoonful of Thai cucumber salad.

We got a cart and did some provisioning for our dinner. We had to stop at Dominick's on the way home for a couple things Whole Foods didn't have.

We got home just around 2 PM at the same time the house cleaner was getting her supplies out of the car. She was supposed to have started around 11 AM. We were tired and were planning on a nap, but it actually worked out good because we got a lot of yard work done. We got all of the leaves in the yard to the curb. I pruned a branch from the big maple in the back yard and cut that into bite-sized pieces, and disconnected the garden hoses, emptied the water from them, and coiled them for the basement for winter storage.

When we were at Panera's yesterday I smelled a combination of things that instantly reminded me of a sandwich my Mom made when I was younger, but I have not had since I was probably in grade school. I called home right then and there to see if she remembers them and what exactly was in them. She told me and I made them for dinner tonight.

It is pretty much a Devonshire sandwich with a few shortcuts. We start with a piece of toast and put couple slices of turkey on, then a slice of bacon, and finally slice of tomato. I warmed the turkey in the pan I fried the bacon in just so the turkey wasn't cold. I drained the excess bacon fat out but there was still enough flavor left in the pan to add a little extra taste to the turkey. Finally we ladled the special Devonshire sauce of the open-faced sandwich. The sauce is just a can of Campbell's cheddar cheese soup (undiluted) and a half cup of plain yogurt. Mom's recipe calls for sour cream, but the yogurt tastes just as good and is better for us.

Sheri never heard of them but loved it and finished her whole sandwich. She wants me to make them again.

While Sheri was talking on the phone with her Mom after dinner I hard boiled eight eggs and made a pretty good batch of egg salad. I added:

Hellmann's reduced fat mayonnaise
A squirt of Gulden's mustard
Dill pickle relish
Sweet pickle relish
A teaspoon of prepared horseradish

Perfect.

We were going to watch a movie, but Mad TV is on in 30 minutes and then Saturday Night Live. They are both new and the guests sound pretty good, so we are just going to watch that tonight.

I have written before that one of the best things to happen to my health is my discovery of cheap soy protein powder at Trader Joe's. Before this I would usually skip breakfast, but then around 10 AM I was ravenous and couldn't control myself in regards to eating donuts or candy that coworkers bring in.

I mix four scoops of the vanilla flavored soy powder, two cups of water, and eight packets of Nutra Sweet in our blender. It tastes pretty good and keeps my satisfied until between noon and 1 PM.

It is definitely not a chore to drink it every morning; it tastes pretty good, but I was looking for ways to jazz it up a little. I experimented with cocoa powder and it was a success. Two or three level tablespoons gives it a nice rich chocolate taste.

If the story ended there it would be great. I made my healthy morning ritual a little more enjoyable which ensures I will keep doing it. However I recently read some studies that said cocoa has twice the level and activity of antioxidants of red wine and three times the amount in green tea!

Every article about this, though, laments that cocoa is always eaten with heavy doses of saturated fat thanks to the coco butter used to make chocolate bars. With my recipe though I am getting just the straight healthy cocoa powder and no added fat. I am also getting a nice dose of fiber. Each tablespoon has about 4% of the RDA of fiber, so I am also getting about a tenth of my fiber for the day.

My office was closed yesterday (Friday) for Veteran's Day, so Sheri and I had a fun-day.

We got a pretty early start (8:30 AM) and went to Panera's for breakfast. I didn't want to overdo it there so I mixed up a glass of soy protein before we left.

Sheri had her usual Spinach & Artichoke Soufflé and I just had a toasted bagel with light cream cheese. I had just a little freelance work to do while Sheri read her book and worked a couple of puzzles from the paper. We ended up hanging out right into the lunch rush. We were getting hungry for lunch and trying to figure out what to do. We were already there and comfortable so we split a Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich.

Sheri found an on-line coupon for 40% off at Hobby Lobby and I have been wanting to put together a plastic model lately, so that was our next stop. I wasn't a huge modeler when I was a kid, but I put together a few of them, and I guess I have had some nostalgic feelings surfacing lately about building them.

I wanted to build a World War II era bomber. My first choice was the B-29 and my second choice was a B-52. If they didn't have either of those my third choice was a B-17. They didn't have any of those. They had a huge 1:400 scale Queen Elizabeth and a 1:350 scale Titanic. They were each about three or four feet long! Sheri was pushing me to get one of those but they were $90 each ($54 after the coupon) and that just seemed like more than I wanted to invest in this right now. (Maybe if I really enjoy putting this next model together I will think about it.)

I ended up getting the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier. With the coupon it was only $13. I also picked up a tube of plastic modeling cement. I took the cap off for a little whiff and that instantly brought back a lot of memories too. (No, not from huffing, just the smell.)

I am looking for a little air brush to hook up to my compressor to give it a really finished look. Testors has one for only $15.

After that we went to Meijer to pick up some food for dinner. We got the $3.99 8-piece Friday chicken special that we tried last week and liked so much.

While we were having breakfast at Panera I read a New York Times article on-line about the increase in popularity of organic milk, so we tried a half gallon of that too. You have heard of pasteurizing milk to kill harmful bacteria. That is where the temperature of the milk is increased to 145º for 30 minutes or 163º for 15 seconds. The article I read said that a lot of organic milk is "ultra pasteurized" to extend the shelf life for a few weeks. This almost completely sterilizes the milk by increasing the temperature of the milk to 285º for two seconds. The only reason I can come up for this is because organic milk doesn't sell as fast or has to travel farther distances to the store because there are fewer organic dairies. The article said there are pros and cons of ultra pasteurizing. It is possible that it can impart a burned taste to the milk, but the story also said it can make the milk taste creamier. You know what? It really did taste creamier. We could not detect any burned taste. Maybe that is only if it is done wrong. The high heat can also change the protein structure a little bit which can make it more difficult to whip cream that has been ultra pasteurized.

We went home, put a fire in the fireplace, ate our chicken and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A really fun movie! I am not sure if I liked the voice that Johnny Depp used for Willy Wonka, but I got used to it.

This morning (Saturday) I had to get up early for a doctor appointment. My doctor bought a new machine that lets him do hemoglobin A1c tests right in the office rather than sending the blood out to a lab. This is great because he can change meds and courses of action during the appointment rather than waiting a week after the appointment. The 30 pounds I lost is really making a difference. My A1c was 6.1% which is in the upper range of a non-diabetic! (Lower is better.) A year ago my reading was around 7.5%. The target for diabetics is to be below 7%. He said if I can get it below 6% by my next appointment in four months we will start to drop and reduce meds. My blood pressure was really good too; 112 over 80.

We are at Burger King now doing our normal weekend hanging out. After this we think we will go to Whole Foods for some food for this evening's movie, Last Days. We also need to rake some leaves in the backyard and take them to the curb. We were going to do that yesterday, but by the time we got home from our day out we only had an hour of sunlight left and we both felt kind of tired.