One of the eternal questions

I went to college at a place that bills itself as "A Technological University", so lots of my friends from those days are engineers and the like: people with a higher-than-average propensity to build stuff. E.g., I know guys who etch their own circuit boards. I know a guy who was taught how to build a Dobsonian telescope by John Dobson.

One of the questions we've kicked around, is "What's a reasonable household toolkit?"

Yes, every home needs a pair of Vise-Grips - but does every household really need a welding rig? How about a generator? (I can recall helping a friend at school fix his car at the curb; and then his roommate came out to help, carrying TWO toolboxes. He dropped the first: "Wrenches." Then dropped the second toolbox: "Other stuff." Uh, thanks.)

Esquire magazine (of all places) addresses the question this month: "31 Things Every Man Should Own". THEIR list ranges from the obvious to the silly:

Cast-Iron Skillet
Valid Passport
Multipurpose Tool
Waiter's Corkscrew/Bottle Opener/Knife
Ax
WD-40
Cordless Drill
Weekend Shoulder Bag
Giant Wool Blanket Never Removed from the Trunk of the Car
Chain Saw
Work Gloves
Carpenter's Level
Boots for the Shop
Boots for Everywhere Else
Jack
Claw Hammer
Lantern
Chef's Knife
Flying Disc
U.S. Road Atlas
Air Pump
Jumper Cables
Charcoal Grill
Card Holder
Pocket Knife
Grease
Lucky Charm
$1,000 Hidden in Your House
LED Flashlight
Money Clip
Joy of Cooking

Well, I suppose it's a start on a list. I'm trying to think if anybody I know owns "a lucky charm". Or if anybody I know here in the snow belt DOESN'T own a pair of boots. Or why a "flying disc" is such a high-priority item (in the Top 31?) Or why they spec a simple "shoulder bag" and not some sort of pre-packed "go kit". Admittedly, it's a general list of "things" and not just "tools", but either way, it seems woefully incomplete.

So, what did they miss?

". . . fifteen seconds, MacGyver!"

I've already blogged about The Death Car: I have an old Civic Wagon that I keep on the road as my winter beater. I'm trying to stretch another season or two out of it.

The rear bumper is held on with plastic clips. But the sheet metal that these clips pop in to is rotting away, so the right side of the bumper is waving in the breeze - and now, the unsupported weight of the bumper is beginning to unzip the anchors along the top of it, popping them out from the right side to the left, as each clip in turn is forced to bear more weight.

So when I got to work on Friday and parked the car, I realized that the bumper is distinctly falling off the car. This is not good.

A quick inventory showed that I had a Swiss Army 'Classic' in my pocket, and a desk in my office that was chock-full of paperclips. It was the matter of a moment to take my pocket knife, punch a hole in the plastic bumper, and twist a paperclip through to hold the bumper on to the car until I could drive home and make a slightly more permanent repair.

It worked.

Saturday, I went out with a drill and put a few more holes in the bumper, and attached it to the car more firmly with several nylon cable-ties. Two minutes with a drill and a nickel's worth of ties and I'm good to go.

It's just rude to have major car-parts fall off your vehicle and inconvenience innocent bystanders...


Coda: I was telling this story around the watercooler at my office, and co-worker noted:

My brother who lives in Arizona tells me that a campesinio will pay a
coyote up to $5,000 to bring him into the United States, where he can find work and not have to drive a car like that.

the self-referential OCD experience

One of my kids saw an episode of "Monk" at somebody's house, and expressed an interest in seeing more. (We don't have cable....)

One of the local libraries has it, but their run (five seasons, twenty?-some discs already) was (of course) all jumbled at random on the shelf. And it's only logical to start watching it from the beginning, right?

So in order to find and bring home the earliest disc they had, I found myself carefully arranging their run of "Monk" DVDs into chronological order...

There's a simple explanation, really

Inaugural Day.

Two Supreme Court Justices.

Both of them, Republican appointees.

One of them is 88 years old, and tasked with administering a 74-word oath, and does it perfectly.

The other is 53 years old, and completely botches the administration of an oath only 35 words long.


So what's the obvious difference here?

The one who was hopelessly incompetent at the simplest aspect of his job was the Bush appointee.

Well, that cheers me up.

Steven F. Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics for linking two of the fundamental forces (EM and the weak force), and thus bringing us that much closer to a grand unified theory of everything.

In her book The Canon, Natalie Angier reports that Weinberg "recently switched from particle physics to cosmology because the math in particle physics was getting beyond him."

I find this to be very, very heartening.

Reverse Weimar

Price inflation now seems to be built into the economy: since WWII, there's been a relentless 2-4% upward trend. (And occasionally more: sometimes much more.)

Computers and electronics have been running against this trend, being insanely deflationary. (Just wait a year or two, and the device you lust after will be half its current price. Or more capable. Or both.)

What's new and unprecedented in my experience is the sudden collapse of energy prices. (Last spring, the price of fuel oil was still heading upward even after the heating season was over; gasoline peaked in July, and, in a few short months, has dropped by fully 50%.

We all grew up on the horror stories of runaway Weimar-style inflation - all the stories of people rushing to spend their pay before the afternoon round of price increases....

But here's the reverse, an effect I never anticipated seeing:

albanygasprices.com 11/25/08:

Lowest observed 197.9 Sunoco Rotterdam
Average Albany prices:
Today 2.145 So, down 1.6¢ from yesterday
Yesterday 2.161 down 13.6¢ from a week before
One Week Ago 2.281 down 69.1¢ from a month before
One Month Ago 2.836 down 93.3¢ from a year ago
(One Year Ago 3.078) (The peak price was in July)

That's down 69.1¢ in 31 days; that's a decline of >2.2¢/day
(Hell, I paid 419.9 on July 22 (so, down ~$2.22/gal in about 156 days)

So all this month - all this season - it's been worth it to wait as long as possible before buying gas.

Which means this price deflation hass had a perverse effect:
the price of gas is dropping so fast that it's encouraging me to use the bus.
Because the longer I can delay filling up, the cheaper the tank of gas will be.

Normally, a tank lasts me about two weeks of commuting.
I last filled the Miata on Nov 2nd, $23.00 at 249.9
I would have been due for another tankful about Nov 14th, when I filled the MPV at 217.9

But if I take the bus to work for a week, I can save a few bucks on a fill-up.

Today - 11 days after 11/14 - there are several local stations at 199.9 or below:
50 cents less than I last paid for the Miata, 18 cents less than I last paid in the MPV, 13.6 cents lower than just seven days ago.

So I'd be saving $5 from fill-up to fill-up, but saving $1.50 of that just by delaying the extra week. A day of commuting by bus is only $1.90. A full 5-day week is only $9.50. Just delaying the next gasoline purchase offsets 15-20% the cost of riding the bus. That's astounding.

A sign of the times

Remarkably, there are still people who think that "Which party wins" makes no difference in people's lives.

I was crossing the Plaza at lunchtime, and saw an Office of General Services crew putting up the official State xmas tree. Because, you know, we now have a Democratic governor.

Which is a sign of the times: under the previous Republican administration, they used to use prisoners to put up the official tree.

Because, you know, nothing says "The true spirit of Christmas" like having the community's holiday decorating done by slave labor. It really warms the heart.