I was trying to login to the Chicago Tribune's website for almost 5 minutes, but they didn't have me listed as a subscriber. I was just about to click the button to send a help message to the customer service department when I noticed I was on the Columbus Dispatch website. Old habits die really really hard.

It's a nice Friday morning. I'm in a good mood. Feeling generous. I am going to share one of my power user secrets.

You may have asked yourself "How does Brad stay so incredibly well informed and up-to-date on just about everything?" One of the secrets, besides my incredibly big brain, is SharpReader and RSS feeds.

An RSS feed is a page that is regularly updated, maybe every 30 seconds, maybe every 5 minutes, by a website and is meant to be read by RSS aggregators. The RSS feed is just a listing of all the stories that a site publishes. The aggregator program can sort this feed by date, title, etc.

This is what the raw CNN technology feed looks like. Not too useful like that, but install SharpReader on your PC and it will look like this:



I have about 20 feeds entered into SharpReader at work. Rather than visiting each of the 20 sites several times a day to stay current on things, I just look at SharpReader, which I leave running all day, and I can scan the headlines of 20 sites in a few seconds.

As SharpReader sees a new story come in from a site it will pop up a little window in the corner of my screen for about 5 seconds. It looks like this:



Just about any site you can think of now has RSS feeds: news sites, financial site, sports sites, photo sharing sites, blog sites. I can even turn on an RSS feed for my blog if anyone is interested.

Before the hurricanes hit I entered the RSS hurricane feed from NOAA so I could stay up to date with new developments.

This is a list of all the feeds I am currently monitoring at work:

Hurricane RITA
Hacking NetFlix
Slate Magazine
BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition
Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories
Yahoo! News: Most Viewed
New York Times: Science
New York Times: NYT HomePage
New York Times: National
CNN.com
Google Search: nanosolar
Google Search: xmax xg
Google Maps Mania
Scientific American
InfoWorld: Top News
The Register
Slashdot
CNet News.com
New York Times: Technology
Wired News
HowStuffWorks.com
CNN.com - Technology


It is very easy to install SharpReader and get it going. As far as finding RSS feeds, just look on any of the websites you go to regularly and look for a link that says RSS, XML, or Atom. These all mean pretty much the same thing. Click on the link, and then just copy the address of the RSS page into SharpReader. Let me know if you have any questions.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication

We went to our new Ikea tonight for dinner, people watching, and so I could just check out the place.

This is everything we got for dinner. With tax the total came to $10.88.



Sheri ordered the Swedish meatballs and boiled new potatoes which was on special for $1.99. We have never had their meatballs and they were pretty good. Sheri ate two of the potatoes and 7.5 of the meatballs. Pretty good for her.

I had the poached salmon plate and steamed vegetables for $5.99. I thought it was a little high for what you get, and at first thought I would not order it again, but I changed my mind after we ate and I decided I probably would get it again. The salmon was good, but I wouldn't recommend it to a person that only likes seafood a little bit. It had a pronounced fish taste. I liked it, but it was strong enough that I didn't bother offering Sheri a taste. The lemon cream sauce was good. The vegetables were good, but by the time we went from the serving line, paid, got our drinks and sat down the they were cold.

I also got what they call an open face shrimp sandwich. They were on special for $0.99. They are normally $1.99. It is a piece of good whole grain bread with a sliced hard boiled egg on top, a few field greens, a little dollop of mayonnaise, and about a quarter cup of chilled salad shrimp. The bread might have had a little butter spread on it, but I am not sure. It just might have been some of the mayo and hard boiled egg yolk mixed together. It was good though and I would order it again at full price.

We split a piece of chocolate and toffee torte that that was on special for $0.50. Of course it was very good.

I got a drink which was priced normally at $0.60.

close-up of shrimp sandwich


In case you have never been to an Ikea before they have little rooms set up to give you ideas of how to use and place their products. One of the scenes was a bathroom with a toilet in it. I thought it was funny that they had to put this warning on it.



After walking around for an hour or so we stopped at the snack bar near the exit. I got a hot dog and we split a cinnamon roll and a decaf coffee and did some more people watching. Ikea is about the best place in the world for people watching.

Only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies.

Stated a different way, there were 1,176,000 unique book titles in 2004 that sold fewer than 5,000 copies.

In this month's electric bill there was a flyer from our city's library announcing they now offer audio books to download over the Internet for free!

Just to test it out last night I downloaded and listened to 25 Things To Say To The Interviewer, To Get The Job You Want. It worked perfect. After two weeks the audio book will automatically be deleted from my computer, but it says I can burn it to CD if I want. That doesn't make sense, but maybe I will give that a try too.

Could Google have done anything else to get more street cred than partnering with NASA and getting 1,000,000 square feet of office space at NASA's Ames Research Center?

There was a story in my beloved Chicago Tribune about Chinese barbecue restaurants. They listed these as particularly good. We are going to go into the city on Saturday and try one. The first two on Argyle Street are not in Chinatown. The rest are. Sheri will probably try pork, and I want to try duck. The story said it is common that they chop the duck up whole, bones, head, everything, and serve it that way. You are not supposed to eat the head. It serves as kind of a stamp of authenticity. Should make for some good pictures to post.

Hon Kee Restaurant
1064 W. Argyle St.
773-878-6650
This by-the-books Cantonese joint directly east of the Argyle Red Line stop also has 150-plus other menu items.

Sun Wah Bar-B-Q Restaurant
1134 W. Argyle St.
773-769-1254
The takeout counter is a bit on the drab side, but the House Special Salt Baked Chicken is hard to beat.

BBQ King House
2148 S. Archer Ave., Chinatown Square
312-326-1219

2306 S. Wentworth Ave.
312-225-2652 (takeout only)

1835 S. Canal St.
312-492-7888 (takeout only)
The Chinatown Square location has a fairly elegant dining room. The barbecue pork here is particularly good.

Seven Treasures
2312 S. Wentworth Ave.
312-225-2668
A large sit-down area, with perhaps the biggest selection of Chinese BBQ items.

Wing Chan
2157 S. China Place
312-791-9398
A strictly-barbecue spot in Chinatown Square, featuring the usual, as well as pork spare ribs, beef stew and chicken feet.

This gastronomical window shopping can be a peculiar sight for Western eyes. Behind the steamy glass windows, the staples of Chinese barbecue--roast duck, soy sauce chicken, curry squid, barbecue pork--hang on meat hooks, bathed in a natural sheen of glistening juices, with head, neck, beak, tentacle or snout still attached, just to be unmistakably clear what animal you'll soon be devouring.

It is a scene repeated on every street corner in Hong Kong, and just as familiar in Chicago's Chinatown and along Argyle Street in Uptown.

This is authentic Chinese takeout. There is no orange pork, no chicken dishes named after General Tso in proper Chinese cooking--just as you'd likely not find fettuccine Alfredo at a restaurant in Tuscany, much less endless salad or breadsticks.

Most telling is that these barbecue restaurants--with perhaps the tastiest and cheapest Chinese food this side of the Yangtze River--are rarely visited by non-Asians.

"We sell 30 chickens, 80 ducks, maybe 100 pounds of barbecue pork every day," said Wai Chee Yuen, manager of Wing Chan BBQ in Chinatown. "But not that many Americans come. It's usually Asian people: Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino."

While the language barrier can be intimidating, a venture into these restaurants can uncover some of the best food deals in Chicago.

The best way to go at a Chinese barbecue is a rice box. At most restaurants, you can get a healthy serving of pork, chicken and/or duck (mix and match to your desire), served in a heaping box of rice with vegetables for under $5.

Count on choosing from these five dishes:

Barbecue pork (char siu): Tender pieces of pork loin with a honey-like glaze. The darker and crustier the outside, the better. The most popular item among Western patrons. BBQ King House does a good rendition.

Roast pork (siu yook): Smoky chunks of pork with crispy crackling. The best roast pork has a thick fatty layer. It's fine to remove it. But in the words of Emeril Lagasse, "pork fat rules."

Roast duck (siu ahp): Duck meat is leaner than chicken, but duck skin is fattier. That makes for an interesting texture, and in concert with the slightly sweet and livery flavors, roast duck is your best bet at any Chinese barbecue.

Soy sauce chicken (see yow gai): Marinated in sweet soy and boiled, the chicken is chopped into bite-size chunks, bone and all. Always ask for a sachet of ginger-scallion relish (geung choung).

Salt baked chicken (yeem gohk gai): Not as intense as soy sauce chicken, but more flavorful in its "chickeniness." The salt baked chicken at Sun Wah Bar-B-Q in Uptown is one of the best.

For the unaccustomed, there are several issues to address.

First, there is no sweet-and-sour sauce. Don't even bother asking.

If you order fowl, be prepared for lots of bones. Chefs don't leave it in for inconvenience; they say bones make the dish more flavorful.

But that doesn't explain the head that comes with the whole chicken or duck. Like a scene out of "The Godfather," it's a frightening sight finding a chicken or duck head in the bottom of the carton. It's not meant to be eaten (though some people do), but rather, as a sign of respect that yes, that meat you're eating came from this (points to head) animal. Or it might be best to ask the butcher to leave it out altogether.

Intersections vs. Roadway Segments: Within a network, the weakest link is the capacity of an intersection. Stated another way, it is better to have an improved intersection than a wider roadway segment.

What the layperson calls an overpass or underpass, we in the business (and by the business I mean the industry) call a grade separation.

This is because the intersection of the two roads, or the road and train tracks, are no longer "at grade".

I am working on two maps that will be presented next week before a high level federal government official that you all know. It is confidential stuff and I was told I cannot talk to anyone about it. How cool is that?

I thought this portion of the President's speech today was HUGE:

From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 2000s, for I am today setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade.

To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.

We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

I'm proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I'm proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense — I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

Tonight for the first time ever I heard an owl! I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed and I heard him hooting in the backyard. I called for Sheri so she could hear. He kept it up for a few minutes. I feel fortunate.

Harvest season has started. I saw the first combine out this morning picking up soybeans. The corn fields have not been touched yet though.

We had three friends from Brooklyn here this weekend. They flew into Midway Friday afternoon, and they are flying out tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.

They wanted to bring us a "hostess" gift, but must have been indecisive, so they brought us many hostess gifts. The brought us:

• Full hard salami from Katz's deli (I have not weighed it yet. My guess is about 5 pounds!)
  
• T-shirt from Katz's deli
  
• Two jars of Guss' pickles (One of my favorites. Best pickle in the world. There is no other pickle like it.)
  
• Two boxes of frozen Jamaican beef patties (9 to a box)

They brought us something else, it is in the cheese drawer of the fridge, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

Friday night we took them to Lou Malnati's for pizza. Saturday we took them into the city. Today it was raining all day, so we went to Bobak's for brunch and then gave them the full Midwest experience by taking them to our mall in the minivan.

We just got done watching "Desperate Housewives" and eating some Jamaican beef patties. I am upstairs getting ready for bed and work tomorrow. They are downstairs watching a movie and drinking some neat imported beers they were excited to find at Bobak's. They were also pleasantly shocked at the Midwestern beer prices.

I didn't know that Galveston, TX was an island. I love it when I learn something. [map]

It is time once again for my annual urging for people to get their flu shot. You can get a flu shot in most cities starting October 1. Enter your ZIP code on this site to find the location of the nearest place for you to get your vaccination.

Last year there was a bad shortage of flu vaccinations, but we were lucky that it was a mild flu season. This year we might not be so lucky. Worldwide flu activity reports won’t be published for the 2005-2006 flu season until next week.

I have also been keeping my eye on the extremely deadly bird flu (avian influenza A (H5N1)). If a person gets infected with this flu, there is about a 65% chance that person will die.

There are a few reasons why this strain of flu is so deadly, but the biggest reason is that this strain looks completely different to our immune system than any other strain. Our immune systems can mount a fairly good defense to strains of flu that are derivatives or existing strains, but when they get infected with H5N1 the normal defense mechanisms don't work.

Right now almost all human cases are from bird-to-human contact. There has only been 1 and maybe 2 cases of human-to-human transmission. The disease doesn't have the ability to effectively be transmitted from human-to-human, but scientists think that it is "when" not "if" that will happen. It could be a couple weeks or a couple years.

There are no vaccines for this now, and there is a drug they think will save your life if you get infected, but it is in extremely short supply, and I don't think it is 100% effective. When it does mutate to a form that can be transmitted from human to human they think it will spread very rapidly and globally.

Even though the current flu vaccines will not protect against the bird flu, I think it is another important reason to get the vaccine. If the bird flu starts to spread, other strains of the flu will spread faster than normal because of people's weakened immune systems. Therefore being immune from the current strains of flu could save your life if/when bird flu starts to spread.

Last week at Whole Foods I tried a loaf of sourdough rye bread. The only ingredients were rye flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter, which is just rye flour and water. It was wonderful.

The interesting thing is that I made Sheri try a bite, and she loves it now too. She claims (claimed) to hate rye bread, but what she hates is the caraway seeds that are in most rye bread. She went to Whole Foods yesterday and bought two more loaves.

It is in the frozen food section and the brand is French Meadow Bakery.

We went out for some tacos tonight at our favorite Mexican place. Next door there is a Wonder Hostess thrift shop, so we thought we would stop in afterwards for a loaf of light bread.

As we were checking out I finally remembered to ask about the sign behind the counter that advertises bird bread for $0.99. She said they keep it in the back. I paid my $0.99 and she brought 11 loaves of bread that had tears in the wrapper, smushed, stuff like that. The 11 loaves of bread weigh 12.5 pounds by the way. All for $0.99! What a great deal. I already distributed a loaf in the back yard when we got home.

Oh snap! Hurricane Rita is now a category 5!

WTNT63 KNHC 211955
TCUAT3
HURRICANE RITA TROPICAL CYCLONE UPDATE
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
255 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005

DATA FROM RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT RITA HAS REACHED CATEGORY FIVE INTENSITY WITH ESTIMATED MAXIMUM SUSTAINED SURFACE WINDS OF 165 MPH. THIS WILL BE REFLECTED IN THE 4 PM CDT ADVISORY.

FORECASTER AVILA

The season premiere of The Office is on tonight. I am so glad they renewed the show. It is one of the few shows where I actually laugh out loud, and often. It is on NBC tonight at 9:30 PM / 8:30 PM Central. Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott are my two favorite characters.

Dwight


Michael (I think I really get a kick out of Michael because he totally reminds me of someone I used to work with. I am not kidding you.)


I also have high hopes for the premiere of the new show My Name is Earl.

And lastly, it is the premiere of the third season of another one of our favorites: Nip/Tuck on the FX Network at 10 PM / 9 PM Central.

Hurricane expert Joe Bastardi says if Rita strikes Texas with Category 3 strength or higher the damage total could be as high as $10 to $15 Billion, a huge financial hit as the nation continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina. The price tag for Katrina's recovery efforts is expected to top $200 Billion.

Everyone knows what to call a green arrow on a traffic signal: a green arrow. But what do you call it when it is just a plain old green?

Permissive green.

Most people call the traffic lights "timed" when if you drive at the posted speed limit you will get all green lights. In the business (by the business I mean the industry) we call those "interconnects". There is a communication wire that "interconnects" one intersection to the next.

We refer to them more commonly as nouns (We are going to install five interconnects along this stretch of Main St.) rather than adjectives. (These 10 signals are interconnected.)

When I was about in the third or fourth grade our family and the neighbors across the street piled into their station wagon and drove what seemed like an hour or two to a friend of the families' that had a summer cottage on a small lake.

Down near the lake there was an artesian well. Fresh pure water just constantly bubbled up. My Dad told me that it was the Fountain of Youth and told me the abridged story of Juan Ponce De Leon.

Wanting to live forever, and believing every thing my father said, I proceeded to drink almost non-stop from the fountain all day.

I didn't notice, but the neighbor got visibly annoyed when I had to stop every 15 minutes to relieve myself on the long drive back home.

Our espresso maker came with this little attachment that is supposed to make idiot-proof foamed milk. It is a little rubber thing that has a snorkel tube that lets it suck air into the milk. It has worked OK.

Lately I have been digging caffè Americanos. The other day I thought if I substituted the hot water with hot milk (not foamed milk) it would still have the same strength I like, just a little bit richer.

I thought if I took off the idiot-proof foaming attachment I would be able to heat up the milk without adding air bubbles for foam. It worked perfectly.

This morning I was going to do it again and I wanted to make the milk hotter than it was yesterday. I didn't bother getting out a thermometer yesterday and I forgot how hot you can take milk before it scalds, so I just erred on the side of caution and didn't get it too hot. I looked on the Internet for the milk temperature answer and found a page telling you how to properly steam milk. It dawned on me that I do not have to use the idiot-proof attachment to make frothed milk. I read the instructions again and then went downstairs to try it out.

I can make a better quality foam, and more of it, with just the plain steam wand and not the attachment. I just filled my coffee cup half full with milk because I only intended to heat it up, not froth it, but I wanted to try out my newly discovered secret. In no time at all my mug was filled with a perfectly frothed cup of milk with bubbles so small I couldn't see them. With the attachment I got a lot of big bubbles which you don't want.

I am going to get out my stainless steel frothing pitcher later today and see if I can triple the volume of milk, which is what you should be able to do. With the attachment my milk usually got too hot before it reached full volume.

The technique for the plain wand is actually easier than what I had to do using the attachment. You submerge the wand into the milk and turn the steam on full blast. You lower the pitcher until the tip of the wand comes just touches the surface of milk, and then keep it there. If you pull it out too much it blasts the surface of the milk and it creates big bubbles. You also tilt the pitcher so the direction of the steam will create a vortex and keep the milk spinning in the pitcher. That's it! The attachment directions said you had to keep moving the pitcher around to keep the milk swirling. I think that is because the attachment muted the force of the steam and you couldn't use it to add motion to the milk.

The dogs that were flown up here are from a shelter near Little Rock, Arkansas, and they were NOT left homeless by the hurricane. They are clearing out space in shelters a few hundred miles away from the destruction areas to make room for the dogs that were left homeless as they start to get collected and processed.

However, just because they were not directly impacted by the storm does not mean these dogs had it easy. The staff member that flew down to the Arkansas shelter to pick up the 22 dogs had a rough time because the shelter was barely a shelter. It was a fenced in dirt area with a plastic tarp strung up overhead. All of the dogs were severely infected with ticks and fleas and their ears were all chewed up and bumpy from the infestation. Most of the dogs seemed traumatized. Very nervous. Tails tucked up very tight between their legs. My guess is that this "shelter" probably shotguns their dogs every few weeks.

I prefer hanging out with the big dogs. I like their personalities better and I like wrestling with them in the grass once we get to know each other. Most of the other volunteers are women and parents with kids. They tend to be more comfortable with the smaller dogs, so it works out.

The fist dog I took out Saturday morning was huge. As I was taking him out of his run there was another volunteer that I thought was pretty comfortable around dogs. I opened the door and the dog barged out. I had him by his collar but he was all excited and made move toward the other volunteer. No barking or growling, just moved towards her. She took a few steps back and seemed to cower. Oh well.

I took him outside and had to use two hands on the leash to keep control, and even then he was pulling me off balance. We walked about a quarter mile without me correcting him. Just kind of a get to know me period. We sat down. Said a few hellos, did some butt scratching, and then started to head back to the shelter. The first time he started to pull me off balance I gave a firm "NO" and a solid tug on the leash. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me for a couple of seconds. His eyes said something like "Oh, your in charge. Cool." and then was a perfect gentleman on the leash. I only had to use one had on the way back. I only had to give him a couple more corrections. Very smart dog. I would take him home if I could.

He decided he wanted to sit in my lap, so who was I to say no. We guessed him at around 110 pounds. Look at the size of his chest compared to me. He is a monster, but sweet as can be. Maybe we will go back today.



Very playful. My guess is that he is just a little over a year old, so he still has some puppy energy.



He was looking at a couple other dogs that were out and wanted to run over and play, but I made him sit, and he did a pretty good job of staying put.



I could have spent all day hanging out with him, but he seemed very well adjusted so I thought I should go spend some time with some of the other dogs that needed to be socialized.

This little guy was very traumatized. I opened the run door to let him come to me on his own terms, but he wouldn't budge. I stepped in and let him smell my hand. He turned his head away. I gave him a little scratch on the head and then tried to sweet talk him to come out. Nope. I put the leash on to give him a little tug of encouragement. I don't think he ever had a leash on and that seemed to stress him out even more.

OK, different approach. I tossed the leash out of the run, left the door open, and sat down next to him. I could see that his right rear foot looked like it had been cut or broken. Ouch. I just kept talking quietly and gently stroked him. After about five minutes of this he realized I wasn't going to beat him and actually wagged his tail a couple of times and then tucked it back under again. He decided I was OK and moved towards me for more touching.

I tried the leash again after a while but same reaction. I picked him up and carried him outside to a grassy area. He still seemed traumatized, so I just sat there with him and kept talking quietly. I pulled him close to me and held him firmly since he seemed to trust me and just gave him as much time as he needed to get comfortable with the outside. He was shaking at this point. We just sat there quietly for more than 10 minutes. At that point he got up and started to explore our immediate area. Cool!

He is panicked and shivering at this point. I felt pretty bad for him.


Just holding him firmly for reassurance to let him get used to the different sounds outside.


We were in the full sun and getting a little hot so I thought we would go to the other side of the building under a big tree. I tried the leash again and he just sat down and looked panicked. OK, I took off the leash and carried him to the tree.

Long story short, we eventually used some other puppies that were playing to bring him out of his shell and make him forget this leash. By the time we left he was following the other puppies around a fenced in area and would approach people and let them scratch his head.

They are keeping a mom that just had a litter of puppies in the men's room. They were cute. Mom didn't mind us repositioning the pups so they could all latch on. I think she was just exhausted from all of the trauma too.

We went to the humane society last night (Friday) to walk some New Orleans rescue dogs, but the shelter was closed by the time we got there.

We had kind thought we were also going to get a pizza and watch a movie, but when we sat in the parking lot and planned it out, by the time we called in our order, picked it up, changed out of our dog walking clothes and into our lounging clothes, cut and served the pizza, settled in, etc. that it would be too late.

Instead we went out to dinner. We used to go to Red Robin a lot in Columbus, and we have been a couple times here, but I have resisted Sheri's efforts to get me to go the last couple of years because I have been more serious about the food I eat. The main problem with Red Robin are the steak fries. Every burger automatically comes with them, and if you want more just nod to your waiter and he will bring out more for free. French fries, especially if you are diabetic or trying to lose or keep off weight, are about the worst thing you can put in your mouth.

So last night I thought I will go to Red Robin, order a burger, and just tell them no fries. I might feel a little dorky doing it, but so what, it's my health. When we sat down, the first thing that caught my eye on the menu were their salads. Hmmm… this could be a good thing.

I ordered the Cobb salad and it was excellent! It was definitely a meal. It was served in a plate similar in size and shape to a pie pan. It was loaded up with a nice bed of greens rising above the rim of the plate. Then placed in pie shaped sections around the top of the greens were all of the toppings. The toppings were:

grilled sliced chicken breast (with a very good seasoning and a nice grilled taste)
sliced black olives
chopped hard boiled egg
avocado slices
diced bacon
crumbled bleu cheese
diced tomato

I ordered it with ranch dressing. At first I thought I would have liked it better if everything was already tossed together rather than in sections on top of the lettuce, but it turned out to be easy enough to work everything together myself. The next time I order that I think I will ask if they can substitute extra avocado for the bacon.

Sheri had the Bleu Ribbon Burger which has their steak sauce, bleu cheese, onion straws (onion rings cut into strips so you can bite the burger better), tomato, lettuce, and chipotle mayonnaise. She ate half of it and brought the other half home. She finished it about an hour after we got home. She left about half of her fries.

By the time we got home it was too late to get into a movie, so we just watched a little bit of TV and went to bed.

We are going to go back to the shelter this morning and spend some quality time with the New Orleans dogs. (Actually I don't know exactly what city or state the dogs came from. I will ask today.)

The Buckeye game is televised in Chicago today at 2:30 PM, so I will watch some of that this afternoon. I have a COBRA bill and a credit card bill to pay this afternoon too. Besides that nothing else is planned for today.

This is what the raw topo lines look like that I based the 3D rendering on from my post just a little bit ago. The area in the 3D image is along the bottom edge of the topo and just a little bit to the right of center.



You can click on the image to see the full-sized version. Also very cool.

I worked on my project to estimate the amount of fill dirt we need to order to change terrain on a section of golf course. The area that has a blue line around it is where the change will take place.

Green is the lowest; red is the highest, and yellow is in between with the color changing gradually between different elevations. This model is based off of topographic lines with 2-foot intervals. (i.e. every line indicates a 2-foot change in elevation.) The further apart two lines are from each other, the flatter the land is. When the lines are bunch tightly together it indicates a very steep hill. I think it is easier and more natural to visualize terrain from a 3-d model like this than from looking at raw topo lines.



You can click on the image to see the full-size version. It is pretty cool.

The next step is to build a layer that shows how they want to land to eventually look. Then all I have to do is subtract the calculated volume from that layer from the calculated volume of the initial layer. The volume will be calculated above that plane that bisects the land 732 feet above sea level, which is the lowest point in the area of interest.

The animal shelter we volunteer at got a small airfreight company to donate a cargo plane to fly a shelter worker down to New Orleans and bring back a planeload of abandoned dogs. The plane should have got back last night. Sheri is going to the shelter this morning to see what they need help with. My guess is a lot of the dogs will need baths from being covered in that nasty humanwastetoxicchemicalwhoknowswhat soup that NO is covered in. They are going to double-up in the runs to make room for them all. We don't know how many dogs they are bringing back yet. I bet a lot of the dogs are just going to need attention from the trauma they have been through over the last couple weeks. Maybe we will go back tonight so spread some loving around.

The nice thing about Google Maps is that it will plot out latitude and longitude coordinates in either DD or DMS format.
(Decimal Degrees or Degrees Minutes Seconds)

It is safer to use N and S for latitude and E and W for longitude rather than relying on Google to guess it correctly. In the US the latitude is always north and the longitude is always west.

For coordinates in DMS format just leave out the degree, minute, and second characters (° ' ") and leave a space between each degree minute and second. The lat and lon indicators can go either in front of or after, just be consistent. Therefore this coordinate pair:

38° 53' 51.4" N
77° 2' 11.7" W

would be entered into Google Maps as

38 53 51.4 n 77 2 11.7 w

- or -

n 38 53 51.4 w 77 2 11.7

Go ahead and copy either line into Google Maps and see that it works.

Decimal degrees work the same way. You can enter it like this:

n 38.8976111111111 w 77.0365833333333

or like this

38.8976111111111 n 77.0365833333333 w

For DMS you do not need to have all three pieces either.

You can use degrees only:

n 38 w 77

Or you can only use degrees and minutes:

n 38 53 w 77 2

If you send me an e-mail (no comments so you don't give the answer away to others) and tell me where these coordiantes are I will send you a post card. Don't use the last two examples where I don't use seconds. Use one of the first examples.

Why is it going to be so fascinating to watch the President on prime time TV tonight, and how is the situation he faces tonight different than on all other nights since 9/11?

1. He has never seen his poll numbers take this kind of hit among Republicans before.

2. He has never seen his poll numbers on "strong leader" and "can handle a crisis" take such a hit before.

3. He has never seen his efforts to build the Republican Party among African-Americans be so thoroughly undermined before.

4. He has never had to take "responsibility" for such death-infused tragedy before.

5. He has never had to rethink whether he has put fully qualified people in critical jobs before.

6. He has never had so many well-meaning Republican strategists and Administration aides whole-heartedly agreeing that the White House was too slow off the mark in dealing with a crisis before. He has never had to dial back on his view that "it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life" — at least in public — before.

7. He has never had to be dependent on an inexperienced Democratic governor of a poor state for his own political health before.

8. He has never faced the possibility of long-term blame for something (the rebuilding of New Orleans and other devastated areas) that is to a large extent beyond his control — and which he will say tonight should be left largely to the choices of local people — before.

9. He has never had to be so deeply self-conscious about tossing off sarcastic remarks, half-baked cracks, and casual comments before.

10. He has never been so denied the cushion of his nonchalant confidence and relaxed superiority before.

11. He has never been perceived as such a potential liability by others in his party looking to hold their seats before.

12. He has never lacked "The Other" — an enemy to demonize and to contrast with himself and his policies in the eyes of the media and the public before.

13. He has never been rolled by Nancy Pelosi before.

14. He has never been without Dr. Rice or Ambassador Hughes down the hall during a crisis before.

15. He has never had two open-ended spending commitments (Iraq and Katrina) of tens of billions of dollars before.

[yoinked from The Note]

I hesitated to include the picture because I don't think it photographed very well, but this was a very good batch of loaded nachos that I made for us during the game.

I lined a jelly roll pan with a piece of tin foil and then layered it with reduced carb tortilla chips with flaxseeds from Trader Joe's, about two chips deep. I covered them with a good layer of shredded sharp cheddar and then the other half of the diced sweet onion I mentioned earlier, and put the whole thing in the oven for about five minutes. The oven made the onion even sweeter.

When it came out I ladled most of a can Hormel chili onto them that I had heated in a pan on the stove. I spooned several tablespoons of fat free sour cream into a sandwich baggie, punctured a hole into a corner with a toothpick, and piped the sour cream evenly over everything. I topped the whole mess with pickled jalapeños and we enjoyed them on the couch while watching the Buckeye game. (I slid the tin foil, along with the hot chips, from the hot pan to a cool one so we could hold them.)

These are the three egg plants sliced up and cooking on the grill that we got at the farmer's market yesterday. After they were grilled up with a little bit of charred and smoky goodness I put them into the food processor with lemon juice, olive oil, Tabasco, salt, cumin, and tahini for a very good batch of baba ganoush.

These four tomatoes are from our garden. The onion and avocadoes are not, they just happened to be next to the tomatoes when I took the picture. Sheri has picked four more since I took this picture.



Half of the onion, one of the tomatoes, and all of the avocadoes ended up in one of the best batches of guacamole I have made or tasted.

It's going to be hot here today, so no bike rides or working in the yard. I think we are going to Panera to read the paper and have a light bite to eat, and then maybe go to the mall to walk around and people-watch.

I have my third quarter estimated taxes due to the IRS by Thursday, so I want to get that done today, and a few other bills that need to get paid today. Other than that, no plans.

It is going to be hot and humid here through Tuesday, and then from Wednesday on it will be nice with highs in the mid to upper 70's.

Living in Columbus for about 15 years made me a little tired of the people that took their Buckeye football too seriously. It's one thing to be disappointed when they lose, but it is entirely different to hear a grown man call a radio talk show to analyze the previous weekend's game with the kind of emotion you would expect from someone trying to save their house from being torn down.

Fast-forward to present day and living far away from Buckeye country where there is NO talk of the Buckeyes. This morning I wanted to soothe my wounds a little bit (or maybe it was pick them), but there is very little in the newspaper; no Coach Tressel show on TV; no Buckeye-dedicated radio talk show to listen to. And then it struck me. I don't know why I didn't think of it before (or maybe it took me four years away from it before I needed it again). I tuned into the web cast from the all sports AM 1460 radio station in Columbus.

It is kind of like the need to go through the whole funeral home ritual to come to terms with the loss of a loved one. To get over the loss of a big game it helps to hear the pain of other Buckeye faithful.

I think listening to AM 1460 on the web the day or two before a big game will also help to get me more into the spirit. Like I said before, in Columbus there was no way around it. There were pre-shows and post-shows all over the place. I was hard not to hear some of the hype. Here any Buckeye news is buried on page 14 of the sports section.

Even for the Bears or Cubs in Chicago there is nothing that even approaches the intensity of the Buckeye football fan community in Columbus, and I guess I miss it.

Sheri snapped this picture this morning at the farmer's market, and I think the composition of the picture is excellent. The repeated symmetry. The darker berries on the left and the lighter ones on the right. The blue of the baskets tying the whole picture together. I could see enlarging this and putting it one of our walls in a frame.

No one commented about the post in which I said "I know what his wallet says." above a picture of Lt. Gen. Honore. A postcard to anyone that E-MAILS me the correct reference I was making. Only e-mails will be accepted for this one. No comments.

I didn't mention this before, but you probably figured it out; I get a percentage of what anyone buys through the Amazon links on my blog.

If I write about something that I have recently bought or used I might put an Amazon link for that item in the post. If it is a $20 book and you buy it, I get a buck. If it is a million dollar IBM laser printer, I get $50,000. I will change the big ad at the top of the blog depending on my current interests. Right now it has OSU stuff.

GO BUCKS!

When I first started this blog a few years ago Blogger did not have a comment feature. A few companies popped up that provided a service that allowed someone to have comments on their blog, and that's what I did. The service I decided to use costs $10 a year. Cost was obviously no big deal, but if the company goes out of business, I lose all of my past comments.

Since then Blogger has added a comment feature. I have been putting off switching over until tonight. So now when you leave a comment it will be stored on the same servers that my blog is stored on and not a server in Israel. (I think that is where my old comment company is located.)

The main problem is that any comments made prior to tonight are lost. I guess I had to do it sometime.

Obviously the look of the comments page will be different, but I think it will be a little more functional and more integrated with the blog site.

Please let me know if you run into any problems while trying to use the new comment feature. Thanks!

We had a nice Friday evening. We drove to our downtown and went to Sur La Table so I could buy a one ounce Scharffen Berger 62% semisweet chocolate bar for my desert later in the evening. The chocolate was $2.25.



Then we walked to Noodles & Company for dinner. I had their Chinese Chop Salad with grilled tofu. (Sesame-soy tossed chopped vegetables, field lettuces and cabbage topped with red pepper, cucumber, crunchy wonton strips and black sesame.) Sheri had a small macaroni and cheese.

After dinner we walked a few stores fronts down the street to Starbucks. Sheri got her usual iced coffee, and I got a tall decaf triple Americano. They had a couple new baristas behind the counter and my Americano tasted weak. It tasted more like a double rather than a triple. I nibbled on my chocolate bar and read the New York Times business section.

After hanging out there a while we walked back down the street to the candy store and got a pick-and-mix bag of goodies. We went out side and found a bench to sit on, have some of our candy, and people-watch.

Because my coffee didn't quite satisfy me, we stopped at the grocery store on the way home so I could get some Starbucks decaf espresso beans. They didn't have that exactly, so I got about a quarter pound of the self serve decaf French roast store brand and made my own Americano when I got home. It was good.

I took a shower and am in bed now. I will watch a little TV and surf the web for a while.

GO BUCKS!

The three supervisors in charge of our road crews, mechanics, etc. each have a heavy-duty truck issued to them. Each truck has a 100-gallon tank and an electric pump mounted on the back. During big snow events they each top off their tanks with diesel and go out and dole 25 gallons at a time to the plow trucks as needed while the drivers take a break. That way the plows avoid the need to come all the way back to the campus just for fuel, which could take an hour or more for some routes. I thought that was a pretty good idea.

I knew the OSU vs. Texas game tomorrow night (7 pm CDT) is going to be big, but I didn't know how big.

A story in my beloved Chicago Tribune today says that tickets for the game are on eBay for $1,500. The same article told of a guy flying in from Paris, France just for the game. It says this game will be one of the season's best. Ohio State is favored by 1 point.

I am going to make a batch of my critically acclaimed guacamole for the game. Sheri also picked up some stuff today to make some loaded nachos. (frijoles refritos, chili, fat free sour cream, cilantro, sweet onion, shredded cheddar)

We are going to play our Ohio State Marching Band CD loud throughout the day to get in the proper frame of mind for the game.

We will go to the local farmers market tomorrow morning to get some more stuff. Don't know what. I have not made cucumber salad in a while, and that sounds good on a hot day, so I might get some cucumbers for that, and see what else catches our eyes.

We are pretty sure when we go to Toledo for our second annual Lake Erie perching expedition we are going to travel via Amtrak.

With our AAA discount the roundtrip cost for both of us is $117.

At $2.99 per gallon the cost of the trip in gas alone if we drove would be about $65.

An oil change costs about $30 and is good for 3,000 miles, which translates to about $0.01 per mile. The 500-mile trip would therefore cost about $5 in oil change expense.

I am not going to quantify the wear-and-tear expense.

So the difference between the train ticket and the direct driving-related expenses is only $47.

The 2005 IRS mileage deduction for charitable contributions or moving expense is $0.15 per mile. (It is $0.405 for business travel.) This is probably pretty close to what it actually costs you to drive when you factor in oil changes, tire wear, fuel, wear, filters, etc. but does not factor in your fixed costs like insurance. At the IRS rate the drive would cost about $75, which makes the difference for train travel only $42.

An extra $47, and I am guaranteed that I won't get in an accident; get a speeding ticket; have to change a flat tire; get stuck in traffic. I can take a nap. Read the paper. Walk to the club car for a soda. Use the restroom whenever I need to. Seems like a bargain to me. Plus I am not putting 500 miles of wear-and-tear on the car.

The times are pretty convenient too. We would leave Union Station around 5:30 PM Chicago time and get to Toledo around 10:30 PM Toledo time.

For the return trip we would leave Toledo around 6:00 AM Toledo time and get to Union Station around 9:30 AM Chicago time.

IBM is announcing their Infoprint 4100 laser printer. It can print 330 pages a minute. (5.5 pages per second)

The bare-bones model starts off at about $500,000. One with all the bells and whistles will go for about $1 million.

I am going to stop by Office Depot on the way home and see if they have any specials on one.

I picked the first four ripe tomatoes from my tomato plants yesterday. I had two for dinner last night and one for breakfast this morning. I am committed to not letting any of the tomatoes going bad, so I will eat them at every meal if need be.

They are pretty good too. Very juicy. Good flavor. Nice texture (not mealy). I picked the largest one a week or two ago that was still green as an experiment to see how it would ripen off the vine on our counter. It should probably be ripe enough to eat tonight.

I could be wrong, but I don't remember ever planting tomatoes at our Columbus house. Last year was the first year we planted tomatoes here, but for some reason they didn't turn out good. Not much flavor, and even worse… mealy. I hate that. It could have been they were planted too late; watered too much; not watered enough; heirlooms; not fertilized enough. I don't know, but these are much better than last year's try.

Remember that the intelligence communities warned they have picked up chatter from terrorist groups indicating they are planning attacks around the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. That is just a week away. I hope we are not spread too thin now between Iraq and New Orleans.

One of the greatest gifts that God has bestowed upon the homeowner is the Fluidmaster 400A Fill Valve.



I think this might be about the fourth or fifth one I have installed, or at least it seems like it.

The tomatoes that Greta sent up are too ripe now to dice up for pico de gallo, so I blanched them this morning, removed their skins, and am cooking them up for a nice sauce. I didn't add any sugar, but the tomatoes are so sweet you would swear I did.

Sheri and Sunny went off to another mall, and later on they plan on going ice skating.

The ball cock in the downstairs toilet has a slow leak you can hear, so I am going to go to Home Depot and to pick up a new one and replace it.

After that if I need a shower, I will, and then I think I will take the Sunday paper someplace, get a drink, and relax there for a couple hours. Starbucks? Panera? White Castle? All are options.

Tim and Lisa went to Columbus for the football game and the associated festivities, and if I understand correctly, they only printed off one map, and that was to their hotel. After the game they found themselves at a different starting point from what was on their map, so they called me for turn-by-turn directions from where they were. I felt kind of like an OnStar operator.

They called a little later in the evening because they thought they took the wrong turn from their hotel to Easton. It turned out they did not and were taking the right way. I did not hear from them again so I assume everything worked out.

I don't think the slow emergency response in New Orleans was because of racial bias as has been suggested by various people.

It is going to be fascinating to find out what the actual problem(s) was/were.

Remember a few days ago I made the observation that Speedway had gas at $3.31 per gallon while Mobile and Shell had it for considerably less at $3.09 per gallon? It is normally reversed: Speedway is the discount pricer while the Shell's of the world have the premium priced product.

Well I read a story in the paper today that explained what I saw. The discount and independent gas stations buy their gas on the spot market, while the big guys lock in prices with long term contracts. Normally the independents can get gas cheaper on the spot market, but because of all the supply disruptions the spot market has gone crazy, while the big guy's locked-in contract prices protect them from short term price fluctuations.

The story said to expect to see the discount stations having significantly higher prices than the big guys for quite a while.

You've heard the saying "Youth is wasted on the young." Well I just thought of a similar truth of life: College is wasted on the young. Or at least they don’t realize at the time what an awesome experience they are really getting and how much insight those classes will provide them on how the world functions.

I remember sitting in undergraduate economic classes and being mildly interested at best. I would love to be able to go back and sit through all those classes again now that I have a better understanding and appreciation of how the world works.

Supply and demand curves are beautiful in their simplicity and elegance. A couple simple lines can predict such complex phenomena.



I enjoyed, appreciated, and gained much more from my graduate school classes than my undergraduate classes. If you work at a company that will assist you with tuition and you don't take advantage of it, you are cheating yourself out of a wonderful experience. The hardest part is just getting the ball rolling again, and that is not really that big of a deal. Once you start taking classes everything just sort of falls in place.

Tim and Lisa got seats in 22B. If you stand in the open end of the horseshoe and look to your right, that is where their section is. It is about at the 30 yard line. It is on the east side of the stadium and under the overhang of C deck, so they should be in the shade.

They just cut to sideline reporter Sam Ryan for the Buckeye game. Meow. What a hotty-boom-ba-lotty! She is wearing a small little tank top too. She beats Jack Arute or Lynn Swan any day.

I got up and went for an 11.88 mile bike ride. At the end of my normal route there is a circular path about 1.7 miles around. This is where I like to work on improving my distance. It is fairly level with just enough undulation to keep it interesting. For some reason I ALWAYS ride this circle counterclockwise, so just to mix it up and be wild and crazy I did two laps counterclockwise and one lap clockwise. It is a gorgeous day here and lot of walkers, runners, and bike riders were out. I didn't see any horses on the trail today, but there were a good number of road apples.

I got home just as Sheri and her sister Sunny were leaving to go shopping at Nordstrom Rack and maybe the Oak Brook Mall.

I am going to shower up and settle in to watch the first Ohio State Buckeye football game of the year.

Greta sent along a large Founder's Favorite pizza from Donato's for me (She must love me!), so I will get to enjoy some Columbus nostalgia as I enjoy the game. Thanks Greta! The Founder's Favorite has pepperoni, sausage, ham and hot peppers on top of natural provolone cheese.

Greta also sent along a bag of extremely ripe tomatoes from her garden. I think I will chop those up between plays for some of my award winning pica de gallo. I just need to pick up some sweet onion, cilantro, and a lime. I might sprinkle and extremely small amount of cumin in it too just for a light background taste. You shouldn't even be able to notice the cumin unless I were to point it out to you.

I didn't feel well last night so I only had a few bites of the pepperoni pizza that Sheri and Sunny got last night from Lou Malnati's, a couple of small squares of the Donato's pizza, some peanuts, and a sugar free popsicle.

Tim and Lisa are at the game today.

GO BUCKS!

I know what his wallet says.

I was assigned a neat project today. I have to estimate how much earth we will need in order to change the topography of a section of a golf course.

I will feed the 2-foot topos of how the land currently is into a 3D modeling tool. Once it is in a 3D format I will sculpt the terrain to how they want it to look. When it looks the way they want it I will just find the difference between my starting plane and my ending plane and, voila, I will know the volume of earth they will have to buy.

This is an aerial of the land I will be modeling.

This is a neat screen shot of the software. You can click on it for a larger image.

At Least Ten U.S. Airports Face Closure Due to Jet Fuel Shortages...

Major airports in the East and Southeast could run out of jet fuel as soon as next week if refinery and pipeline shutdowns aren't resolved soon.

Shortages appear most severe at airports in Charlotte, Tampa, Orlando and Fort Myers, Fla. But two of the USA's busiest airports could also be affected — Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson and Washington Dulles.

Industry consultant John Armbrust says the supply disruption could cause some airports to run out of fuel in a week or two. John Heimlich, chief economist at the airline trade group Air Transport Association, says two weeks is more realistic.

[full story]

We have a Speedway gas station in town that is selling regular for $3.31 per gallon. That's kind of weird because I passed a Mobile on the way to work that was selling regular for only $2.99 per gallon.

Back the truck up.