Argh. There's some sort of

Argh. There's some sort of bug in my installation of Adobe Acrobat...every time I start an MS office application (Word, Excel, etc) I get various errors in the PDFMaker macro. There doesn't seem to be a way to just remove the PDFMaker stuff, you have to remove all of Acrobat. Double argh. Oh, and it's really cold in NYC today isn't it? Nice and windy too.

The ACLU has a great

The ACLU has a great TV ad up on their site (I haven't seen it on TV myself, I suspect it gets better distribution on the net).

Midnight Oilslick

It appears that Midnight Oil is breaking up. Peter Garrett announced his departure from the band in a statement on their website, according to this "Sydney Morning Herald" article.

I have to admit, I find it ironic that the announcement was made using a graphic with no ALT text (given the band's politics and the lawsuit I was tangentially party to in Sydney).

Update: The "Sydney Morning Herald" posted an in-depth review of the band.

The furnace is acting up

The furnace is acting up again, just in time for the cold spell. It works, to some extent too well, the blower doesn't shut off. Since the blower doesn't shut off, the burner doesn't reignite. To reignite the burner you have to set the thermostat just a bit higher. Repeat.

"Frisket" is at "Monster Mutt"

"Frisket" is at "Monster Mutt" today. She insisted on walking over, even though it was just a shade above absolute zero outside.

For those of you complaining about the network at our house (ok, so the ding-ding on AOL and Sametime was annoying every few seconds), I upgraded the firewall we use to a Linksys BEFSX41. This is a nifty new box which features built-in filtering of content (which we likely won't use of course, but could be useful for blocking ad sites), dynamic DNS (er, again, won't use), a 10/100 uplink to the WAN (moderately useful, the WAN itself is 1.5Mbs but the connection now is full-duplex), uPNP (still unclear on the concept) and a bunch of other nifty features including inbound VPN support.

Attention all Apple/Mac collectors

Shreve Systems is closing its doors. Anything left from their fire sale on the web site will be auctioned off. Now's a good time to pick up that Newton keyboard you've been looking for.

This doesn't bode well

So, I continue the dubious hunt for employment. This past week I decided to troll around through my list of headhunters picked up over the years.

Every mail bounced.

That is, I got returned mail from all seven HH's, either the specific contact was no longer employed, or in two cases, the domain didn't even exist.

Adventures In Home Ownership, Chapter 355

Today I replaced the thermostat. I bought a nifty Honeywell digital thermostat with all sorts of features for heating, air conditioning, and humidifying. We only have heat to worry about so the other nifty features will go unused for now. Replacement was easy, there's only two wires to the furnace and took all of ten minutes to do. The hard part continues to be the stupid blower, it refuses to shut down after a heating cycle. Turns out there is a White-Rodgers thermocouple fan limiter at the center of the problem. This is a part that the heating guys replaced in November, and I suspect they either broke it on installation. You can see the dial circle one way and then back as the heat goes on and off. The limiter works fine (if the air box gets too hot it shuts down the burner), but the fan off just doesn't work at all. I tried changing the settings in various ways but you have to wait for a heating cycle to check to see if the changed worked or not. The switch will work for a couple of cycles then fall back into always on mode. You would think that the heating guys would fix this but we had one out on Friday and he insisted it was working correctly. At least the burner works. I expect we'll get a holiday card from Con Edison since the blower basically stays on all the time.

The job hunt is looking

The job hunt is looking better. I have two interviews this week. (Well, one is the standard IBM mega-interview with up to 9 different people over the course of the day).

Humor me

(Warning: the following may not be humorous to anyone who thought the Supreme Court voted correctly in 2000):

• Why we must invade Iraq
• Technical Difficulties
• Gulf Wars II: Clone of the Attack

The results from yesterday's eleven

The results from yesterday's eleven (!) interviews at IBM Research were inconclusive (other than that after ten hours and eleven interviews my brain's wiring was dysfunctional). Friday's interview is with an organization who'd like to bring some rings to the Big Apple.

I was in the process

I was in the process of filling out the form to claim my "share" of the proceeds from antitrust litigation against the recording industry when I noticed that it asks for my birth date and a portion of my social security number. Not!. I normally put down 1/1/1970 ("0" in unix timestamps) as my birth date, I suspect that would cause more trouble than it's possible worth ($20) in this case.

The transit strike is on

The transit strike is on hold for now. Personally I can't believe the union is insane enough to threaten it, though I understand they need some sort of leverage in the bargaining (it's clear that the MTA held off any negotiating until after Pataki's reelection).

Annoying news helicopter is circling

Annoying news helicopter is circling overhead. You would think they'd never covered traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge before.

In The Heavy Cost of

In The Heavy Cost of Chronic Stress, the NYTimes goes into depth on the physical effects of a long term, high stress lifestyle.

LoTR: TTT

Spent the morning and mid-afternoon watching The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers today. I liked it better than the first installment, it doesn't feel as long (though actually it's a minute or two longer). My viewing hint: when you see Elrond go into a monologue, feel free to take the next five minutes to take a break (it's kind of a built in intermission).

Just discovered that Peter Jackson,

Just discovered that Peter Jackson, Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortensen from LoTR: The Two Towers are on Charlie Rose tonight. Peter Jackson "would like to make a smaller movie". Elijah Wood appears to have suffered from a tragic haircut. Viggo went into a rather spontaneous but eloquent rant about the rush to war in Iraq (he has "No more blood for oil" inked onto his shirt).

Ah...I love having three PBS

Ah...I love having three PBS stations in the area. Turns out Charlie Rose runs at midnight on WNYE.

In Tax Twist, Big Vehicles Get the Bigger Deductions

Ok...I admittedly own an SUV. It gets decent mileage, it's built on a minivan (vs truck) frame, and we only almost never drive it in the city, only trips out of the city (Hamptons, Po-town, Illinois, etc). That said, this article on the NYTimes disgusts me. The gist is that due to a confluence of normal tax laws plust incentives passed after the thing last year, self-employed people and small business owners who buy the mega-SUVs can deduct over USD $24,000 from their income this year where in the past they could deduct maybe $7k-8k. Basically in the we have to wreck the ecology to save the economy mood of the past year, any vehicle over $24,000 generates a $24,000 capital tax credit. If you buy a Hummer, you can deduct up to $34,912 of the $48,000 vehicle price. (If you buy a Hummer and drive in in the streets of NYC you are absolutely insane).

In Tax Twist, Big Vehicles Get the Bigger Deductions

Ok...I admittedly own an SUV. It gets decent mileage, it's built on a minivan (vs truck) frame, and we only almost never drive it in the city, only trips out of the city (Hamptons, Po-town, Illinois, etc). That said, this article on the NYTimes disgusts me. The gist is that due to a confluence of normal tax laws plust incentives passed after the thing last year, self-employed people and small business owners who buy the mega-SUVs can deduct over USD $24,000 from their income this year where in the past they could deduct maybe $7k-8k. Basically in the we have to wreck the ecology to save the economy mood of the past year, any vehicle over $24,000 generates a $24,000 capital tax credit. If you buy a Hummer, you can deduct up to $34,912 of the $48,000 vehicle price. (If you buy a Hummer and drive in in the streets of NYC you are absolutely insane).

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!

Yes, I'm screwing around with

Yes, I'm screwing around with how this looks.

I concede defeat in my

I concede defeat in my attempt to use style sheets in a nice way. MSIE, Opera, and Netscape 7 all implement the "standard" in just enough different ways to make any use of positioning useless.

'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain

I should come up with a bad-lyrics-to-stick-in-your head category.

Lisa and I watched the

Lisa and I watched the NYE fireworks of Sydney as they were broadcast live on CNN. They were spectactular as expected, my only question is why-o-why did the soundtrack (which I assume was either from Channel 9 or some other local station) include the voiceover Cry havoc and let slip loose the dogs of war. That's not quite the phrase I'd like to ring in the New Year with.

New York City 31 December 2002

Happy New Year! These are some pictures of the Lower Manhattan skyline taken tonight. Apologies for the blurriness, "Frisket" was not being a helpful assistant.

Note: It's not intended to be a seamless landscape. Assuming the Saudis don't have another go at us, I'll take a better set of pictures tomorrow.