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.