So Pithy

It’s sort of strange to think that when this all started I was just settling into a strange city half a world away where I hardly had any access to the latest news (at least at first.) All these months later I had the benefit of not only the internet but CNN’s and NBC’s amazing virtual reality technology.

Back then, by the time I was able to figure out the results, they were, you know, results. Tallies of votes. Now I got to hear CNN explain how conservative they were being, calling races once the votes had been counted–except, of course, when they called states with 0% of precints reporting or when the other candidate was ahead in the votes that had been counted.

How did I ever get by?

So it recently came to my attention that thus far I have spent a little less than 25% of the pesos I bought. I leave VERY early on Saturday, so tomorrow’s it. I need to either:

1. eat a lot more food,
2. eat much more expensive food,
3. buy things, or
4. change a bunch of money back tomorrow.

Hopefully I can make it to a bank tomorrow to change at least some of my money back.

In Mexico they name schools after Horace Mann, just like in the United States.

My first full day in Mexico City is behind me. Highlights:

• shopping around for the best exchange rate really pays; I got an extra 100 pesos by walking ten or fifteen minutes out of my way (and waiting in line ten minutes)
• parts of Mexico City remind me of Prague or Stettin, other parts of Las Vegas, others of Dar es Salaam
• I found breakfast baked goods heaven; cheap, self-serve, huge variety; will take photos next time!
• nobody at the conference hotel knowing anything about the conference is not fun
• my Spanish is terrible
• gotta love all the VW bug taxis (there are tons of them in Mexico because of the VW plant/plants)
• lunch at a Lebanese restaurant, dinner alone at an authentic Mexican place
• $30 spent on food so far, more than half on that lunch; going to stick to authentic places from here on out, they’re cheaper

Here’s something I just figured out: although you can’t easily change your user shortname in OS X, you can change the case of your home folder without adverse effects, assuming you’re using the default file system. Thus “jason” became “Jason”.

Sadly my upcoming trip to Mexico City will preclude my participation in the Des Moines marathon a week from today. It does not, however, keep Deb and I from marathon cleaning and laundry sessions yesterday and today. And it opens up the possibility of maybe running the Disney marathon in January. We’ll see.

In other news: I’ve finally found a stand-in for the muesli I so loved in Germany, and I once again have a desktop PC that works.

Last week I did something stupid. I bought new RAM for my desktop. That wasn’t the stupid part (though buying it at Best Buy wasn’t exactly smart, and upgrading such an old system was perhaps questionable.) No, the stupid part was not paying close enough attention to where the slot was and trying to force it in backwards. In the end, I succeeded in frying the motherboard.

So today I ordered my new desktop. Sort of. New case and power supply, new motherboard and processor, new RAM (my old RAM and processor are probably still good, but try finding a motherboard compatiable with both.) Combined with my old drives, monitor, etc, I’ll have a new machine with some four times the processing power and eight times as much RAM, all for a little over $200. Not bad for something stupid.

Seems to me that instead of replacing the current penny with four different versions of the penny (depicting different stages of Abe’s life) it would make more sense to just get rid of the penny altogether. For further reading… er, viewing, see the West Wing.

It is worth noting that I do not support getting rid of our dog Penny, but I am definitely against replacing her with four new versions.

Not playing tennis today allowed me to get a decent amount of work done, including completely reorganizing what had been Chapter One into chapters One and Two and finishing a (very) rough draft of the former.

Skipping breakfast after my run allowed me to eat lunch at Olive Garden at a normal time, rather than having a late breakfast, a late lunch, and a too-late dinner.

An off day from running tomorrow means that as long as it doesn’t rain I can play some football in the morning.

Ah the joys of not doing things.

It’s amazing what a time-suck working on other people’s websites can be. I’m not complaining, really; the fact that time goes by so quickly while I’m working on them is a good indication that I don’t find the work boring, though it can become tedious. It’s just an observation, really.

Similarly, I’ve found that time passes so much quicker while writing my dissertation than it ever did while researching it. Two hours writing is nothing–two hours in the archives took forever.

I’m a bit put off by the commentators who make statements like “The USA hasn’t won gold in this event since 1996.” Guess what: there have only been two summer olympics since 1996! That means a whole lot of countries haven’t won the gold in that time, not just the USA. And why is the USA supposed to have won gold in that time?