I Know What I Know

So Sad

scott — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:24:51 +0000

Having Tea With the Tea Party

scott — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:46:59 +0000

James Naughtie talks with the Tea Party people, then travels to NY to talk to people about the Tea Party people.

Sign of the Times

scott — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:29:23 +0000

The Times has a story today about couples’ disputes over e-readers vs printed books. Shelley and I are both laughing at it.

In between the remarkable sentimentality about paperback books is stuff like this:

Ms. Muskat, 29, bought an iPad for her husband, 33, who works at his family’s shoe business, before their honeymoon in June, but quickly discovered that his electronic reading impinged on her old-fashioned reading.

“I brought a book with me and I barely read it,” said Ms. Muskat, a media consultant. “We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, but he had an iPad, and it was almost distracting because it didn’t feel like he was reading with me.”

I DON’T LIKE THE WAY HE’S READING OVER THERE! IT’S DISTRACTING! STOP READING IN SUCH AN UN-READERLY MANNER!

Lately

scott — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:43:01 +0000

Since Monday, I have:

1) Hired two adjuncts to replace two late departures
2) Secured funding for one additional section of freshman composition
3) Finished three syllabi
4) Finished three course websites

Now I only need to:

1) Prep for first day lectures
2) Print out rolls
3) Make copies

Now With Lyrics!

scott — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:57:37 +0000

Oh yeah.

He’s done lyrics for DS9, Voyager, Eureka, Stargate: SG1, and Stargate: Atlantis as well.

So Yeah

scott — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:15:36 +0000

About 2 or 3 years ago, while driving to the airport, we heard a commentator on NPR say that it was a good time to refinance your home loan if you had an interest rate above 6%. When we got back home from our trip, we went about refinancing our house. It worked out pretty well. Our payment went down $250 a month and we lost 1.5% on the interest rate.

It looks like we’re about to refi again, but this time it’s even more impressive. One of our friends/neighbors is a mortgage broker, and he told me that he’s getting people ~3% interest rates on 15 year loans, and the result is that the payment doesn’t change much.

He ran the numbers for us yesterday: on a 15 year loan, our payment only goes up $100 a month.

In These Tough Times

scott — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 02:21:18 +0000

I had to make an executive decision today: I am not going to go see Punch Brothers at the State Room on monday so I can afford to see The Swell Season on Sunday.

In My Head

scott — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:22:25 +0000

I run the trail loop around our golf course most days of the week (I’ll usually take one day off over the weekend). As I run, I listen, usually, to two podcasts: The Best of Today and the Guardian Daily (RIP).

As I run, here’s what generally goes through my head:

“Ooh! Good point John!
Jim, would you let the man finish his answer!
Is that a snake?
No. It’s a stick.
Evan, you need to stop talking.
Snake? No. Stick.
Oooh. That sounds like a really interesting story. I should check the Guardian when I get ba—Snake?
No. Stick.”

Signage

scott — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:13:31 +0000

Shelley and I went for a long walk along the Weber River Parkway this morning and found ourselves endlessly entertained by the signage, which seems to have been composed by someone with little experience composing signs for public parks. (This link is actually to one of the better-written signs).

So We Had This Conversation

scott — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:05:24 +0000

Me: So get this. It’s called a “tank top” because a long time ago we used to call swimming pools “swimming tanks,” and people thought that the shirt looked like a “swimming tank top“—that is, a swimsuit top! So we have an article of clothing whose name everyone recognizes and uses, but which is named after an obsolete term for a swimming pool!

Her: Whatever.