In a year and a half of my super long commute, I am now up to my third harrowing experience driving - first was the blizzard 13 Dec 2007, second was my flat tire 18 Nov 2008 (which I apparently never blogged), and this third one was a truck losing a wheel right after I drove past. I did see the aftermath of a dump truck that lost a wheel over the ( Read more... )

Well, payoff. As of tomorrow's payment, I'm done with my car loan! Hooray!

Any suggestions on what audiobooks I should look for next? Or if you don't know audiobooks as much as any ol' books, recommend one there too. I prefer sci/fan, especially ones that play with the border between the Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Hard science without good characters and plot (like Gregory Benford) drives me insane, but speculative fiction ( Read more... )

With some help from jethereal the other day, and his awesome TI-89, I have solved my commute. The optimal speed for me to drive based upon gas mileage and time spent is 95mph. Since I also want to take into account safety and tickets, this means drive as fast as I feel is safe and won't get me ticketed, so my current trend of going 75ish seems good to me ( Read more... )

I was reminded by mathsex people that (1) if I assume gas mileage and speed are equally important, that I could just average the optimal speed for both and I get around 65mph for the ideal driving speed, or (2) a potential way of giving a more realistic value to my time as compared to the gas mileage is to put a dollar value on my time - according to my ( Read more... )

B/c the LJ goat didn't transcribe my recent voice post despite it being public, I did. And I finally got around to posting it on mathsex so if you care you can follow it there.

I just finished the audiobook of The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman. I wanted to read it for a while after sclerotic_rings and others told me to, but never got around to it. Then I saw they're making a movie of it with Nicle Kidman as Ms. Coulter. So when I saw an audiobook of it at a B&N, I grabbed it up. It's a short one, only 9 CDs total, unabridged, ( Read more... )

...you drive your car for the first time since PAX and can't figure out where the shoulder buttons are for skidding and getting red sparks.

I think maybe tomorrow I'll spend at the RMV getting my vanity plates. I keep getting sick of the half-hour phone waits, and it's really frickin' hot out so the AC would be nice. And I can bring my report that I'm working on for my externship and have absolutely nothing else to do so I'm so bored I have to work on it. Yeah, going to RMVs in ( Read more... )

My goodness, the floors are absolutely gorgeous! It's really just amazing. They're a beautiful light wood, warmly almost yellow, and as far as I can tell it's the original wood too, just had the old covering stripped and then relaminated. Well, except for the very outer entryway which had wood put in instead of whatever gunk it used to be. It's ( Read more... )