FYI, I'll be in the United Kingdom from December 6 to 13. If anyone in London or Oxford fancy getting together, please feel free to email me.

Many thanks to lathany, who unintentionally inspired me to look for Kindle books in Japanese. Not only do they exist, but there are lots of out-of-copyright works for free.

For my techie friends: I need a tool that will let me image a hard drive (including unallocated space) to a USB hard drive. I can currently load to a Windows recovery disk DOS prompt or to Ubuntu live, but the drive itself is not bootable. Any thoughts on a good tool? Currently looking at gddrescue, but would use anything loadable off a thumb drive

Does anyone have a spare Google Voice invite, by any chance? I'd like to transfer my former work/current cell number to someone other than AT&T before traveling.

Thanks.

UPDATE: I have one now, thank you. Sadly, it appears that I can't port a phone number to it.

Cheerfully, plans for the lengthy England trip proceed apace. The bad news is that there is no way I will be able to attend this year's Gaudy at Pembroke. I'll have to make sure to catch the next one, but it's sad: I was hoping for the chance to run into college acquaintances I don't otherwise meet.

From the Fading Lady:
Although the proposed tax has been called a “millionaires’ tax,” it would affect those with incomes starting at $300,000, who would be taxed at a rate of 7.85 percent. The highest bracket would carry a tax rate of 8.97 percent - the same as New Jersey’s current highest rate.

Let me state this more correctly:
Although the ( Read more... )

...tonight the wife and I will be recalculating what we need to put on our W-4s for withholding, as we will both be married and working full time this year, and paying approximately five figures more in taxes for the privilege of being wed. I was going to write a short summary of why this works--as I never did explain to lathany why a marriage penalty is ( Read more... )

Really.

From the L.A. Times review of the Nissan Cube:
Here is one of the great unspoken truths about the drive for a more fuel-efficient vehicle fleet. It will be utterly impossible to achieve energy security or to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions unless we are able to lower the average vehicle weight. It doesn't matter if you're advocating grid- ( Read more... )

I found a wonderful speakeasy style bar down in the East Village. Introducing Death and Company. Not near as grim as it sounds, but great drinks, relatively quiet, and a very smooth atmosphere.