More Mexico Pictures

It was wonderful to meet Christina's family in Mexico. Everyone was very warm and welcoming, to the point of conducting large portions of the conversation in English, which was primarily for my benefit! My only regret is that we were so relaxed most of the time we didn't think to break out the camera, so we only got pictures of some of her relatives.

This is a picture of Christina's cousin Miguelangel, and his fiancee.



Here is Christina with her uncle Gus, who took us to Cholula on Sunday.



Here is Christina's Aunt Salme, a friend of her uncle's, and her Uncle Nacho (Ignacio). The dog is Giorgio, and belongs to her cousin Tita.



Here is, clockwise from top left, Christina, her cousin Tita (Salme), her cousin Eduardito (Eduardo), and Eduardito's fiancee.

Mexico Pictures

When we got to Mexico City, it was late, and we stayed at the airport Hilton before heading to Puebla the next day. The hotel room featured a view unlike any I had seen before.



The next day, we headed to Puebla, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn. It had a gorgeous lobby.



And a much nicer view than the Hilton. We could see the historic center of Puebla, including the cathedral where Christina was confirmed. Update: Christina tells me that's not the cathedral. We do have a picture of the cathedral from our window; I'll replace with that one later.



In fact, Puebla is a World Heritage site, the 23rd I've visited.



On Sunday, we visited the pyramid at Cholula.



We also visited the Church of Santa Maria de Tonantzintla.



Coming soon: pictures of the family!

Do the Math

You know, it bugs me when newspaper articles make numerical claims without regard to the underlying math. Today's Washington Post contains an article, "High Gas Prices Send Drivers to Corporate Rental", which opens with this paragraph:

"In April, Silver Spring management consultant Yvonne Braxton stopped driving her 1989 Acura Legend on trips to Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. The standard 37.5 cents per mile government reimbursement -- a figure set for 2004 long before gas prices began soaring -- didn't come close to covering her costs anymore."

Yvonne, Yvonne, let's do the math. $.375/mile * 23 miles/gallon = $8.625/gallon you're getting reimbursed! That'll more than cover your gas costs.

Wait a minute, you might say...why is the government standard reimbursing at such a high rate? Well, the fact is that gas costs are not the major cost of owning a car. Every mile Yvonne drives her car is a mile closer to having to buy a new car, and also a mile closer to needing more maintenance. On the other hand, given that Yvonne is driving a 1989 Acura, she has chosen a very reliable and durable car and chosen to keep it a long time...minimizing her costs compared to someone who buys a new car every 3 or 5 years.

It's possible that her total cost for operating the car exceeds $0.375/mile...if the car is starting to break down a lot and require expensive repairs, for example. In that case, however, the change in fuel prices she says she needs -- to $1.50/gallon, or a drop of about $0.60 -- wouldn't significantly effect the total expenses, and wouldn't help if the current situation is that she isn't "close to covering her costs."

Having driven Hondas, I know that getting reimbursed at the government rate can be a pretty good deal. I still sometimes get work to rent a car for me...if I don't want to push my car past the next maintenance threshold, or if I want Christina to be able to take over the driving (since I still haven't gotten around to teaching her how to drive a stick shift). But I don't use bad math to blame it on gas costs.

The Web, A to Z

For my 500th post, I thought I'd look at various web sites I've been visiting lately. Mozilla, my favorite web browser, "auto-completes" to suggest sites I've visited most recently and most frequenly.

A

A is for Amazon.

B

B is for Blogger.

C

C is for CNN.

D

D is for Dictionary.com.

E

E is for Expedia, the travel site

F

F is for Flyertalk, a frequent flyer discussion site.

G

G is for The Prince George's County Memorial Library System (Geoweb catalog).

H

H is for Holiday Inn. I stayed at 2 Holiday Inns in May, which is unusual for me.

I

I is for The Diamondback, the University of Maryland student newspaper, hosted at inform@Maryland.

J

J is for Jimmy Fallon. I can't remember why I was looking at his site.

K

K is for Kausfiles, Mickey Kaus's weblog on Slate.

L

L is for Linens N Things. I only visited that once, when Christina asked me to look up something, so I'm not sure about the algorithm used to pick these sites.

M

M is for My Yahoo!

N

N is for Number Theory.

O

O is for The Obscure Store, a collection of links to unusual news stories.

P

P is for Pseudoprime.

Q

Q is for...hmm, nothing there.

R

R is for the Redskins!

S

S is for Salme.org, Christina's site.

T

T is for Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall's political blog.

U

U is for United, on which I fly 50K+ miles/year.

V

V is for Vantage House, where I found a link for my previous post.

W

W is for Wonkette, a political gossip sheet.

X

X is for Xe.com, host of the very useful Universal Currency Converter.

Y

Y is for Yahoo! Yellow Pages.

Z

Z is another link I was looking up for the previous post.

Books I Read on the Mexico Trip

OK, I started the first one while getting my oil changed, and finished the second one last night, but I read the bulk of them on the plane or bus or whatever in Mexico.

Count Down

Count Down : Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World's Toughest Math Competition is a book following a bunch of students competing for the US team in the International Mathematics Olympiad. You probably weren't aware there was such a thing. I was -- mainly because when I was growing up, and going to math camps, I knew some of the kids who competed, or aspired to compete, in them.

I was never part of that crowd -- for whatever reason, I'm not a "math contest" sort of guy. As I went on in mathematics, I discovered that there were some very good mathematicians who weren't, either, which made me feel better. Some of the math contest people seemed to look down their nose at the rest of us.

Anyway, since I was never part of that world, but knew a little bit about it, I thought it would be interesting to learn more. Turns out, well, I guess if it had been more interesting, the author would have had a lot less filler. There are mildly interesting, but extensive, digressions into things like the nature of intelligence.

Oh, well. Not too bad, and it did allow me to check for people I've met who are mentioned in the book. For the record: Alex Kasman, Julian Stanley and Jordan Ellenberg.

Rendevous with Rama

Rendevous with Rama won both the Hugo and Nebula awards when it was released in 1973. Of course, it is an excellent book...it won these prizes, and it is written by Arthur C. Clarke, one of science fiction's great writers. So I make just a few observations.

First of all, Clarke's pacing is always very slow. But it is slow in a good way -- as a reader, I feel that Clarke is moving at the pace of the universe, and that the truth of the story will be revealed in due time. This slow pacing only really bothered me when watching the movie version of 2001, and then it didn't really bother me; it just induced a nap.

Secondly, I hadn't realized how often Clarke's work has to do with "First Contact" -- initial human contact with alien civilizations. Of course, this book and 2001 fall into that category. Childhood's End and, if I remember correctly, part of Songs of Distant Earth also do. Songs of Distant Earth is also a novel I remember as part of Clarke's slow pacing.

Thirdly, the book ends with a huge cliffhanger. And he didn't write the sequel for 16 years. Well, that would have been annoying if I had read the book, in say, high school.

Draft Day

Well, it's been a month and a half, but I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from the Redskins Draft Day Party I went to. I'm usually out of town or busy on draft day, so it was good finally to be around. Unfortunately, everyone else was either busy (Christina, in particular, was hosting our yard sale) or not in the mood for some draft day excitement.

Here, the masses assemble to await our first-round pick:



Ooh, look, that's us!



OK, so here's my exciting draft day story. After the pick, Joe Gibbs flew out to FedEx Field to give a pep rally for the fans. As he was striding towards the podium, everybody was cheering. In the excitement, I decided to give him the ol' thumbs up. He looked right back at me, and returned the gesture!

I know what you're thinking. How self-centered, Jon, to think Gibbs was giving you the thumbs-up. So, to verify, I looked around at the other fans lined up against the barricades, and nobody else was giving the thumbs-up. QED.



Fred Smoot was also in attendance, and I got him to sign my Smoot jersey.



Finally, how many things can you find wrong with this picture?

Greetings from Mexico!

I'll give an update when we get back, but Christina has posted one at her new travel blog.

Wine Update

1999 Columbia Crest Semillon

We had some people over for fondue last weekend. Christina wanted to find a good white wine to use both in the cheese fondue and serve with it. We're not big fans of white wine, but we settled on the Columbia Crest Semillon. The reasoning behind it was somewhat convoluted. Christina had a recipe that called for using sauterne. I now see that's, "a generic name used in the United States for inexpensive white wines..." I confused it with Sauternes, which is French wine, based mainly on the semillon grape. Oh, well.

It turned out we enjoyed this more than other white wines. I had read some in The Everything Wine Book about lower-acidity white wines. I thought it might be the acidity that caused me not to like white wines. I came up with Gewürztraminer and Viognier as low-acid whites, but there didn't seem anything appropriate (read: in our price range) in either.

2002 Santa Rita Cabernet

We opened this recently to have with some salmon. We're always getting it confused with Santa Maria, but I think I like the Santa Rita better. It wasn't spectacular (it couldn't compare with the Cousiño-Macul), but it was solid. The leftover wine we finished tonight wasn't great; maybe we didn't seal it well enough, or maybe we stored it too close to the stove. I tried some Santa Marias at a tasting at our favorite wine store. They didn't work for me, but what really upset my palate were the Anakena wines. I'm definitely going to have to stay away from them.

Passport

One of the places I drove the Caddy last week was the Bloomington Park Tavern. This used to be my favorite place to play NTN trivia -- they would have a guy giving out prizes to the top finishers. I haven't seen that there lately, and I used up my last two free drink coupons. (I still have a free appetizer.)

Anyway, I got e-mail from someone who had seen one of my previous NTN posts. He maintains a database of top 100 finishes on NTN premium games. I was pleased to see that last week a colleague and I helped the Park Tavern make it into the top 100 for only the second time this year. I was also pleased to win that game at the Park Tavern, especially since the topic was "Coastal California," and my colleague was from, well, Coastal California.

My next US trip is to Burlington, VT, and I was disappointed to find out there are no NTN locations in Vermont.

Car Talk

Who said traveling isn't an adventure? When I travel for work, the company will generally refuse to pick up the tab on anything larger than a compact. This is fine, if slightly stingy, most of the time. But on this trip, I'm taking an extra day (not paid for by the company) to visit my grandmother, whom I don't want to cram into a compact car. A colleague of mine ("Bill") recently discovered that the company was happy if you got a bigger car, but paid the difference yourself. As it turned out the difference for an intermediate car was $1/day. And as long as I was going through the hassle of paying something extra myself, why not spring for $3/day for the full-size. And if I've gone that far, what's $6/day for the premium? I mean, it seemed like fun to play around with XM radio, and I get $50/day food per diem whether I spend it or not. (I just had dinner at Taco Bell.)

Well, I got to the rental car facility, and instead of the promised go-right-to-my-car, there was a note that I was to go to the counter. Well, I managed to deduce that from "GRANTHAM J CTR" on their big board. Turns out either they were out of the premium, or as a frequent renter, I got an upgrade, because he gave me directions to a luxury car.



So I've spent today tooling around town in my Caddy, going through the Taco Bell drive through, and listening to the BBC on my XM radio. Who said traveling isn't an adventure?

Board Gaming

I went over to Paul's on Saturday for some board gaming. Since Ben and George were running late, Paul, Doug and I played a couple of shorter card-based games first.

High Society

High Society is played with a special deck of cards. Most of the cards represent luxuries you bid on; some represent fortunes or misfortunes (which you also bid on). The winner is the person with the most valuable luxuries (after you eliminate the player with the least money). Before we started playing, we discussed whether there had to be a winner. We concluded that the only way the game could end without a winner was if everybody had the same amount of money, but that was unlikely.

There are some interesting strategic aspects to the game. Aside from the ordinary risks of bidding up one item only to have someone else get another, more valuable item more cheaply (after your cash is depleted), you can't be too aggressive in bidding -- or you'll end up with the least amount of money. Furthermore, the game ends when the fourth "multiplier" card (multiply the value of all luxuries by 2 or 1/2) is drawn -- so you don't know in advance when the game will be over. There's a review of the game here. (By the way, I recommend that reviewer's other reviews, if you're interested in reading well-written game reviews.)

You've probably guessed the punch line -- after much frenzied bidding, the game ended, and we each were left with $25 million dollars. So nobody won.

Ivanhoe

I had played Ivanhoe before and enjoyed it. The goal of Ivanhoe is to win a certain number of different types (or colors) of "jousts". You draw cards, which have different point values on them, and you can "spend" the cards to try to win a tournament. Whoever spends the most points wins the tournament. There are lots of complicating factors here -- you can only spend cards of the same color of the tournament (except for "supporter" cards, which are colorless), there are "action" cards which can, among other things, change the color of the tournament, etc. The colors actually represent different kinds of weapons, but we never really referred to them by the weapons themselves.

Empire Builder

It turns out that "Empire Builder" is the name of an actual train, too. Huh. It's also the name for a train board game, which is what we played when Ben and George showed up.

Empire Builder has a map of North America with various cities labeled. You connect the cities with tracks, represented by colored crayon markings. I assume the crayon wipes off after the game; I didn't stick around to find out. You spend money to build track, which you use to pick up and deliver goods, which make you money, which you use to build more track. The winner is the first to connect six of the seven "major" cities and accumulate $250 million.

We spent most of the game connecting the cities. Only in the last hour or so were people focused on collecting the $250 million. I ended up with $206, good for third place, but I felt like it was close enough that I hadn't seriously misestimated how to play the game. It was a lot of fun connecting up the different cities, and the map-drawing gave the game a different and interesting feel.

It turns out there are other versions of this game with other settings. To give a few examples, India Rails has "special rules regarding pilgrims," Lunar Rails takes place on the moon (I don't entirely see the point), and the forthcoming Russian Rails "begins in the post WWII era, with players drawing rail lines and delivering loads wary of the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union."

Those might be fun, although I'm also intrigued by Ticket to Ride, not in the same series of games. After the 8 hours we spent playing Empire Builder, the 1-2 hour playing time might be a nice change of pace.

Books I Read on the Switzerland Trip

Travel is always a good time for me to catch up on my reading, especially with long transatlantic flights. I read the better part of the following three book on our recent trip to Switzerland.

The Speed of Dark

The Speed of Dark is part of my new Nebula reading project. It's the most recent winner, and the 12th Nebula I've read.

It's a near-future story about an Lou, an autistic man, who, with the help of modern therapies, has found a functioning role in society. His new boss, however, wants to start him on a new therapy to "cure" him of his autism.

That's the source of some of the conflict in the book. The interesting part, for me, however, was the point-of-view. Most of it is told from the standpoint of Lou, through all of his lack of understanding of "normal" human nuances of emotion and behavior. It's thought-provoking about what really is "normal" or "correct" behavior.

The Diamond Age

I had started The Diamond Age during my now-defunct Hugo project. I knew I needed to grab another book before taking to the air, so I picked this one up. It was mostly enjoyable, although it did get a little bit weird during the end. The political/scientific mumbo-jumbo towards the end got laid on a little thick, but some of the characters were very compelling. I'm generally not a fan of "nanotech" fiction, so this is probably as much as I could be expected to enjoy this book.

Fear of Wine

I picked up Fear of Wine on the same having-something-to-read principle. It wouldn't be my first choice in wine books (indeed, Christina got me a wine book that I've been enjoying). But it's nice to pick up a few tips (like the difference between the Wine Spectator and the Wine Advocate) from different sources. This book went into a little bit too much detail about the different regions (in that way, it might work better as a reference work), but it had a lot of stuff I was glad to read.

Cousiño-Macul Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon 2000

Monday, to celebrate Christina's acceptance to the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, I brought home a wine a little bit above the single-digit-priced vintages we usually enjoy. Since I know Christina enjoys Chilean reds, in particular, Cousiño-Macul, I brought home a bottle of Cousiño-Macul Antiguas Reservas Cabernet Sauvignon 2000.

This article does a good job of explaining Cousiño-Macul's recent move to a new location, and how they managed to keep the quality good throughout.

Because of our limited wine-drinking budget, we usually don't end up with winemakers' higher-priced (and presumably better-quality) "reserve" selections. In this case, whether due to age or quality, the softer and more subtle flavors really came through. It's definitely a type of wine I would enjoy having more of.

Bern, Baby, Berne

I'm still not sure if it's "Bern" or "Berne" -- probably one if you're speaking German, and another if you're speaking French. Anyway, last Thursday, after the conference ended, we headed up to Bern for a day trip. The Swiss trains are great -- clean, new and on-time.

The old town of Bern is home to many beautiful fountains. Here's one:


Some of the fountains are less attractive...one is topped by an ogre eating some children:


Here's me outside of Einstein's old house:


We climbed up to the town rose garden. The roses weren't yet in bloom, but we got quite a view:


We also saw the bear pits. Bern was named by a king after the next animal he killed, which happened to be a bear. They've been keeping bears in pits for hundreds of years. Doesn't seem the most comfortable environs:


Bern is a World Heritage Site and the 22nd one I've visited. I updated my World Heritage page with the two Switzerland sites we visited.

Map Update

Well, my blob of visited countries in Central Europe continues to expand. I've updated my travel page by adding Switzerland to my World 66 maps, as well as adding Charleston and Switzerland to my list of trips.

I don't expect to visit any new countries this year, but I have high hopes for next year.

Wisp

George, Ben and I went skiing at Wisp in March. Ben just recently mailed me a picture he took of me skiing there. I've edited it for size, and to crop out the dirty joke.

Moo

We're back from Switzerland. Christina dropped off a bunch of pictures at Moto Photo today. I did get one taken at the conference that I can post now.



I'm not sure if that constitutes cruelty to animals. Or to me.

Trummelbach Falls

Yesterday was the free afternoon of the conference. Christina and I decided to skip the excursion. I didn't see the point of going halfway to the highest train station in Europe, getting out for an hour, then heading back down. If we were going to do a trip like that, we'd go all the way to the top. It's a good thing we didn't -- aside from the price, the clouds took away the view yesterday (as see on the Jungfraujoch channel on our TV).

Instead, we headed to Trummelbach Falls, a short bus-and-train ride away. (OK, and a 5-minute walk.) The falls, according to the brochure, are the only mountain-interior, accessible waterfalls in Europe. They're also really, really, neat. I don't think our pictures will do them justice.



There weren't a lot of signs (an interesting change from most tourist attractions), but I did learn that most of the water from the Jungfrau mountains, and the nearby Monch and Eiger, drain through the falls. Given the spring snow melt, that's a fair bit of water. Lord Byron was inspired to write some poetry by the falls.

I'm sure Christina will give more detail when she posts. That might not be until we get back.

In any case, the Jungfrau region is a World Heritage Site. This marks my 21st World Heritage Site visited. Only 733 to go!

Lufthansa

Since I know that Christina will soon be posting to her newly created travel blog (I'll link to it when it goes live), I'll save the details of the trip for her to report. Instead I'll concentrate on the minutiae of travel that consume me...like what airline we ended up on.

For some reason, I could only get Christina a free ticket to Switzerland on Lufthansa. I am restricted to booking American (the nationality, not the brand) airlines, but I was able to book the flight on the way over as a United codeshare. By the warped logic this sort of thing goes by, that counts. On the way back, they routed her via Boston, a feat I was unable to duplicate. So she'll be on her own once we get to Frankfurt.

Though I had flown Lufthansa on intra-European flights before, I had never flow it across the pond. All in all, it was fairly nice. The check-in agent took our old seat assignments (in separate rows of the plane) and gave us some crew rest seats I guess they decided they didn't need. They were standard economy seats (i.e., not very comfortable), but they were window and aisle in a 2-4-2 combination. All in all, very survivable.

The Lufthansa "Senator's Club" in Frankfurt was a nice place to relax, although there was more smoking than you'd get in an American facility. They had a room with lounge chairs, which was a nice way of relaxing after the plane. Our flight to Zurich was fairly empty, and I slept through it.

Gmail Update

If anybody reading this (whom I know) wants a chance to use Gmail, I have two "invitations" I can pass along. Drop me an e-mail.

Gmail

Well, I've been using Gmail, Google's much-talked about new mail service, for a week or so now. Those of you who know me should know my "main" e-mail address, which I never publish anywhere, and never give to anybody but an actual human being. I have a couple of secondary e-mail addresses, which I feel free to ditch when I get too much spam. I recently got rid of jgrantham.com. My main two other addresses are at comcast.net and yahoo.com. I was intrigued, however, by Google's new e-mail service, so I thought I'd try it out. I was offered a chance to beta-test it, as a Blogger user, so I gave it a shot.

The 1 GB of space is nice. "You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 1000 MB." The main cool feature, though, is how fast it is. They use Javascript in a very creative way...basically, they load a whole bunch of information in your browser. Then when you click on an action, rather than contacting the server, they just re-write the page locally. Want to reply to something? Until you're ready to send, you don't actually need to talk to Google's computers at all. Opening a reply window can be done on your own computer.

I haven't really noticed the controversial context-sensitive ads. Well, in one case, they were, let's say, insensitive. I forwarded my work e-mail (whoops, there's another address) to gmail, and it placed ads on an e-mail a co-worker had sent expressing gratitude for the sympathy she had received on the death of her mother-in-law. That's not bad, in and of itself, except the ads were for "humorous greeting cards for all occasions." Oops. Looking closer, she had started her message with the salutation, "Greetings," which was presumably what the ad-bot keyed in on.

Well, I'm sufficiently happy with Gmail to give it a whirl as the e-mail of choice on that sidebar to the right. Of course, I'm obfuscating the address like I mentioned last year. We'll see how it goes.

Haiku Tunnel

Last week we watched the movie Haiku Tunnel, which was recommended to us by Jon Kochavi last August. We put it on the TiVo wishlist, and it finally came up recently. It's sort of an "independent film" version of Office Space.

It's the story of Jacob Kornbluth (which is the actual name of the guy who starred in, wrote, directed and produced the movie), who temps as a legal secretary. When he "goes perm", he loses his motivation and starts to work on his novel rather than sending out some letters for a lawyer.

Since Christina has worked as a legal secretary, temped, and is working on a novel, she found a lot of familiar things in the movie. She often asked me to pause the movie so she could provide detail about the realism of the story. (Though it gets fairly ridiculous at the end.)

Anyway, in the unlikely event that you come across this film (say, on IFC), it's worth checking out.

Carmenere Update

Well, we ended up opening the Carmenere last night. One of the reasons we chose it was to go with the chicken we were having -- the label mentioned poultry as one of the foods with which it paired well. Indeed, although it was similar to a merlot, it was a much lighter wine. Christina, who prefers lighter wines, particuarly enjoyed it.

Wine at the Piggly Wiggly

Last weekend, when I was in Charleston for a math conference, I stopped by the grocery store to get some Diet Cheerwine. Imagine my surprise to find out that the Piggly Wiggly had a fairly decent wine selection.

Christina and I had seen it suggested on TV that grocery stores were good places to get wine bargains. Due to Maryland's liquor laws, it's rare to find a grocery store that sells wine in Maryland. I believe the law is that a corporation may only have one liquor license per county. In particular, there is one branch of Giant Food not too far from here that sells beer and wine. It's on my way home from work, but I never stop there -- they don't have an automated checkout, so it's actually faster to go out of my way to a different store.

We went there a couple of weeks ago, and the selection wasn't great. The few interesting selections were things we could get more cheaply at Corridor Fine Wine in Laurel.

The Piggly Wiggly, however, was a different story. I was looking for something to bring back to Christina, so I selected the Carmen Carmenere. As we had seen on another TV show, the Carmenere grape had disappeared from the vineyards of Bordeaux over a century ago. It was recently rediscovered in Chile, where it had incorrectly been labeled as Merlot. We're looking forward to trying it.

American Splenda

So Coke announced this week that it was launching a "low-carb" or "mid-calorie" soda named "C2". The news reports I saw first called it "low-carb," which was confusing. Basically, it's a semi-diet soda. "Low-carb" is just the latest trendy term that they're using. This brought up the question -- what's in it?

I'm at the point in my life where I don't need to be gulping down sugary sodas all day -- on the other hand, I do rely on a certain amount of caffeine to get me through the day. And I don't like aspartame (Nutrasweet). A few years back, Pepsi came out with Pepsi One, which replaced some of the aspartame with acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), a more modern and better tasting soda. I drank that for a while, but it's really only palatable when you haven't had enough caffeine to wake you up to realize what you're tasting.

There's another "modern" sweetener that's been gaining popularity -- sucralose (Splenda). As far as I'm concerned, it's a fine sugar substitute and is incorporated into such products as Healthy Pop Kettle Corn. A widely available sucralose-powered soda is Diet Rite -- sadly, though, it lacks caffeine. The same people make Diet RC, but the only place I've been able to find that is Arizona.

Sucralose is also the key ingredient in Diet Cheerwine. I've been drinking a lot of that. Unfortunately, that requires loading up the car with 20-30 cases of Diet Cheerwine on every visit to North Carolina. I think the closest place that sells Diet Cheerwine is about 3 hours away, in Virginia. Right now I'm down to my last case.

While a "mid-cal" cola is not a "no-cal" cola, given the marketing prowess of Coke, it should be more widely available. I hoped that Coke would see fit to use sucralose in C2, to provide me with an alternative to filling up on Vanilla Coke (mmm...Vanilla Coke) when there's no Diet Cheerwine at hand. Well as this article explains, they do use Splenda, but...

Coke's product will apparently contain a veritable cocktail of all the sweeteners that could possibly grace a carbonated beverage. That's high-fructose corn syrup, aspartame (NutraSweet), acesulfam K, and sucralose (otherwise known as Atkins' favorite sweetener, Splenda).

Ironically, one sweetener missing is sugar, but that's understandable given the wacky sugar tariffs the US has in place. Given the present of aspartame, C2 doesn't seem to be a good alternative. Happily, the article also explains, "Pepsi Edge, on the other hand, contains high-fructose corn syrup and sucralose." So I'm looking forward to checking that out when it comes out this summer. And maybe Coke will see the light and ditch the aspartame...maybe by the time C3 comes out.

Books for Sale

I was looking at my bookshelf at work yesterday, and I realized there were a bunch of books I had bought while I was in grad school that I hadn't looked at in years. Since I can get most books I need through the library at work, and since I've been on a push to clear off my bookshelf (I've recycled a bunch of old journals), I thought I'd get rid of them.

But how? Well, I'm going to try an experiment by listing them for sale on Amazon.

The first one I have for sale is Differential Topology. I should have priced it lower -- I meant to undercut the other sellers. As soon as I can figure out how to drop the price, I will. This seems like a good way to clear off my shelves, make a little spare change, and get the books into the hands of people who are interested in them.

And if anybody reading this is interested in differential topology...

American Splendor

Christina and I watched American Splendor last night. It was an enjoyable movie. It's a weird subject: it's a movie based on a comic book based on Harvey Pekar's life. Pekar is in the movie in several different ways -- as an actor playing Pekar (the main way), as himself being interviewed, as an actor playing an actor playing Pekar in a play, in archival footage of Pekar on the Letterman show...

The movie, as you can imagine, plays around in interesting ways with frames of reference. As Christina remarked, it doesn't have much of a plot, though. I found it fairly enjoyable. It wasn't great, but it was worth a 101 minute running time.

Hugos vs. Nebulas

In a previous post from 2002 that kicked off my Hugo-reading project, I wrote:

The Hugos are awarded annually by a vote of science fiction writers (as opposed to the Nebulas, which are fan-driven).

Oops. Turns out, I had that exactly backwards.

Sigh.

I guess it's time to start over again. I made it up to 24 Hugos. Looking at the Nebula list, looks like I've read 11.

1. 1965: Dune, Frank Herbert
   
2. 1970: Ringworld, Larry Niven
   
3. 1975: The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
   
4. 1984: Neuromancer, William Gibson
   
5. 1985: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
   
6. 1986: Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card
   
7. 1992: Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
   
8. 1993: Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
   
9. 1994: Moving Mars, Greg Bear
   
10. 1998: Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman
    
11. 2002: American Gods, Neil Gaiman
    

Of course, there have only been 40 Nebulas awarded (to novels), so it'll be a shorter list to make my way through.

Dixie

Ah, the South. Last night, I went to a chili dinner hosted by one of the professors here. The directions took me into a relatively new housing development called "Belle Hall Plantation." I found myself turning on "Antebellum Lane" to get to "Old South Way." As I alluded to Friday, I find the nostalgia for the "good old days" down here somewhat frightening. I guess "Plantation" is supposed to convey lazy afternoons on the veranda sipping cocktails or some such...rather than slaves in the field picking cotton. Or if I'm suspicious enough, I would suspect it is supposed to convey the former for one set of potential home buyers and the latter for another...if you know what I mean.

If that's the goal, it didn't entirely work. As I approached the professor's house, I had to bring the rental car to a dead stop to avoid a couple of kids -- one white and one black -- happily playing in the street together. That's the weird thing about the South. For all the messed up racial symbolism, there's at least as much racial integration down here as there is in most of the North. I'm still glad I don't live on Antebellum Lane, though.

Goats

Another article that I saw in the paper today (which I can't find online) was about South African wines, specifically Fairview. Apparently, they have wine called "Goats Do Roam", which is a takeoff on the French "Côtes du Rhône". I like antipodean wine, so I want to try some of this, especially since the article said that they just signed a deal with an American importer. The fact that it upsets the French only makes it better.

Amusingly, this wine was on the menu at Vickery's, where we went to dinner for the opening of the math conference I'm attending. But hanging out with mathematicians put me more in the mind of drinking beer, so I passed this evening. I'll have to keep an eye out for it once it appears in my local wine store, though.

Dead-Enders

As I was reading the paper this morning, I was struck by how sad it was to see forces loyal to the previous regime defying the United States and refusing to acknowledge their military defeat. It also explained why hotel rooms in Charleston, SC, are so hard to come by this weekend. They're burying some Rebel sailors they dug up from a Confederate submarine. Ah, the South.

I guess I shouldn't make too much fun. They're a lot nicer down here than people are back North.

Pacific Peak Merlot

As I've mentioned recently, we've been expanding our knowledge of wine. One of the issues we've come across is that to get good wine, you have to spend a little bit more than you'd want to for a glass or two a day. So we've been looking for an OK wine to stock around the house. We've recently come across Pacific Peak Merlot, which is a fairly mild wine that Laurel's Corridor Fine Wine stocks in the "double" (1.5L) size. This newspaper column describes it thusly, "You can even taste a very slight hint of plums in this one. It's pretty light but has good balance and no major faults."

Hellboy

Ben and I went to see Hellboy yesterday. It was very enjoyable in the don't-think-about-it-too-much-before-it-falls-apart sense that X2 fell into. The violence was a bit excessive, but the hundred or so 8-year-old in the movie theater with us didn't seem to mind.

Afterwards, we came back here, met up with George, Paul and Doug for some board gaming. We played the Settlers of Catan -- well, I suppose technically the Seafarers of Catan expansion. George doesn't play Settlers any more, so we started it before he got here. Unfortunately for him, he showed up about 2 minutes into what turned into a 3 hour long game. We then followed it with a game of Carcassonne.

How to Tell You've Been Living Too Long in DC....

Parents, if your kids answered in the affirmative to today's Washington Post KidsPost Fact,

Did you know that Condoleezza Rice took figure-skating lessons for years as a child?

it might be time to involve them in some activities...you know, soccer, music lessons, that sort of thing. Not so much the Young Republicans.

It just seems like a weird fact nobody's kid should really be expected to know.

The Godfather Party

Ben had never seen the movie The Godfather when he bought The Godfather DVD Collection. He decided it was worth having a viewing party for the movies. That was a couple of years ago. Since then, Ben has bought and moved into his own home. He showed it off last weekend with a Godfather party.

We bought him a propane grill as a housewarming present and helped set it up. After grilling of food and much drinking of beer, we sat down to watch the movie. I think I was the only other person there who had not seen the movie. We had to rewind a couple of times as people sometimes talked over the key scenes in the movie, but overall it was fun to watch with a crowd.

I enjoyed seeing the movie, both for the movie itself and for all of the references (e.g., "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.") that I will now understand when people make.

Drywall Party

OK, I'm a week behind on this, but last weekend George came over to help us and show us how to put up some drywall in our laundry room. Somehow, our contractors had found it within the scope of finishing our basement to put up a wall and insulate it, but not to drywall it. Ben stopped by later to help.



Before and after...or...halfway through.



Christina learns how to cut the drywall.



They put me in charge of guarding the T-square. (Photo Credit: Christina)

Up to #18

Christina and I went over to the Santa Fe Cafe Tuesday night for a little NTN playing. (And 1/2 price hamburger night.) Unfortunately, we couldn't play because they hadn't had the charger for the game boards plugged in for the past several days. Sigh. That place is really going downhill.

Since we were more interested in NTN than 1/2 price hamburgers, we made the drive up to Damons Arundel Mills, where we enjoyed a NTN-filled (and smoke-free) dinner. As a result, I made it up to #18 on the Santa Fe list (ironically), and Christina made it to #48. We've debated the ethics of turning in #47 for having a name that violates NTN's terms and conditions against offensive names. More likely, we'll just have to find a new location if things keep up.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Friday night, we went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on opening night. After the aforementioned trip to the wine store, we had a nice dinner at Remomo. In theory, the Dining Miles should top up Christina's account enough to get a free ticket to Mexico. Anyway, after I had read one reviewer describe ESotSM with, "This is the best movie I've seen in a decade," it seemed worth a shot. It's by the same guy who did Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, so if you saw either of those movies, you have an inkling of what you're in for. But just an inkling -- one piece of advice I'd give you is not to read anything about the movie -- just go see it. Part of the fun of the movie for me was figuring out what exactly was going on. (As in a puzzle, not as in a muddled plot.)

I don't know that I'd describe it as the best movie I've seen in a decade, but it was definitely an excellent film. One I'd definitely watch again. 5 stars.

Wine Cellar

After watching Simply Wine With Andrea Immer we headed out to Corridor Fine Wines in Laurel last night to pick up some wines. Now that we have that and our wine chiller, I wanted to keep better track (so I can remember we liked in the past). I found bottlecount.com. You can see our "wine cellar" here. In particular, the idea of getting a California Sangiovese and a Concha y Toro Casillero del Diablo came from the show.

Tourney Update

Well, Day 1 of the tournament wasn't too kind to my picks. In retrospect, Dayton, Southern Illinois, BYU, Arizona, and Princeton weren't the best underdogs to pick. In retrospect, Nevada and Manhattan were. I picked 5 underdogs? And none of them right? Yeesh. I'm off already today, with 2 underdog picks already backfiring on me. Fortunately, I didn't pick the underdogs very far through, so I still have all of my second round picks alive.

Tourney Time

Well, the NCAA tournament has started again, and this year both of my alma maters are in the NIT. Well, Georgia was in.

My picks are here. I picked 4 ACC teams in the "Elite Eight". Hmm.

Render Unto Caesars

 

We had a nice weekend vacation. Saturday night we headed to Newark, Delaware. OK, that wasn't the major part of the vacation. We mainly chose it because it was on the way to Atlantic City, and it had a Hampton Inn, which allowed us to notch our 20th Hilton Hhonors night of the year.

The next day, we headed off to Atlantic City and Caesars. Huh. I just noticed that the web site refers to it as "Caesars", not "Caesars Palace." I guess that's only for the Vegas location. Christina's friend Heidi was celebrating her 40th birthday, and we joined in. We had a lot of fun, but I didn't pull out the camera until Monday morning, as we were leaving the parking garage. Sorry.

I had never been to Atlantic City before. I found it like what I imagine Las Vegas would be -- if you put it in New Jersey. Sigh. Still, it whetted my appetite for a potential visit to Las Vegas this December for a math conference.

Where have I been?

Inspired by Jeanene's post, I am creating maps of places I've been to. I'm only counting overnight stays as visits.








I've also added these to the bottom of my travel page.

Christina has her own maps.

Laundry Room Remodel

We have a number of things on our to-do list for the house. Remodeling the laundry room was lower on the list. That was the case, that is, until recently. It's a long process to how we got to the need to do this, but it started, strangely enough with an EPA regulation.

The EPA told water authorities to start removing organic material from its drinking water. (Leaves and stuff.) Soon afterwards, water pipes throughout our area started springing pinhole leaks. Including some of ours. Fortunately, most of our cold water pipes are not in the side of the basement that we're currently finishing. Unfortunately, the one that leaked was. So we had to make that unexpected repair on a fairly urgent basis. Our plumber warned us of the lousy condition the rest of our cold water pipes were in; we resolved to get those done relatively soon.

Fast forward to the present -- our plumber asks us whether we really want to tie the new pipes into the enormous old, rusting laundry sink. We consider this, and despite our suspicions that this is a good way for the plumber to drum up extra business, it makes sense. So we order a new laundry sink.

Once we have everything pulled up, however, we have a rare opportunity to get at the entire floor of the laundry room. Though we weren't planning to re-do the floor just yet, why spend more energy doing it later, when we have the chance now? This, too, makes sense. Further, the wall behind the (former) sink and the washer (now moved out of the way), is pretty nasty, so we'd probably better do something about that.

This is how we ended up last night resurfacing the basement wall. All because of an EPA regulation. (Don't get me started on how the pipes need to be replaced before we can get DirecTV in more than one room.) Here are some pictures.



Here is the wall before much resurfacing has transpired (although you can see some on the right-hand side). The pipes tie into the former laundry sink and are due to be replaced (tomorrow).



Here is the wall post-resurfacing. There's still more to be done, but the part behind the (new) laundry sink and the washer is the most pressing.



While I'd like to be able to take credit for this remarkable transformation, I proved rather inept at my abortive attempts at resurfacing. I instead assisted Christina, who has done the lion's share of the work on this project. I'd better hurry up and post this before she gets back with the glue for the new vinyl floor tiles.

Up to #19

Well, after a couple of recent outings, I've made it up to Number 19 on the Santa Fe Cafe's NTN rankings. Number 18 is within striking distance, though I don't have any immediate plans to play trivia. Christina has dropped to Number 49 despite some recent play, due to other people around her ranking playing more.

Tour of Duty

Last week, I finished reading Tour of Duty, by Douglas Brinkley. I started reading it before the Maryland Democratic primary, in part to figure out for whom to vote. The book left me with mixed feelings. I ended up voting for Kerry, but it was perhaps in spite of the book. Not that the book made him unlikable...

Of course, since I voted absentee ballot, my vote wasn't counted until after Edwards had already dropped out, so I'm not sure what the point of all that was.

The book made Kerry seem like a thoughtful, principled man. I like the idea of having a President who reads books and thinks about things. You know, like the good old days. Nevertheless, I'm a bit concerned about electing somebody who feels so defined by Vietnam. I recognize (even more after reading the book) that Vietnam was an important part of last century's American experience, but I might prefer someone a bit more forward-looking.

On the other hand, Edwards started hitting the protectionism note a little too hard and began to seem a bit inexperienced. So I went with Kerry. And I'll go with him again in the general election. I'm just wondering...should I read A Charge to Keep first?

Mall Walking

After too many times of staying in the same hotel when I come to the Twin Cities, I decided it was time for a change. In fact, my only New Years Resolution was not to stay at any Residence Inns this year. Last week, I stayed at the Hampton Inn Minneapolis/Bloomington (Airport Area) (not actually the closest Hampton Inn to the airport). It was OK, but not great.

This week, I'm at the Homewood Suites by Hilton® Minneapolis-Mall Of America. It's basically Hilton's version of the Residence Inn. It's great. I can't really explain why I like it better. It's got the same features -- a hot breakfast (thought after a series of flight delays yesterday, I overslept and missed that), a manager's reception, a kitchen in the room. I can't convincingly argue that any of those features is particularly better. But I just had a series of minor annoyances at the other hotel -- no soda (or juice) at the manager's reception one evening, newspapers gone most mornings by the time I got downstairs -- that I am happy to be at a place where everything is going smoothly.

One thing about this place amuses me. It is (literally) across the street from the Mall of America. Yet they still run a shuttle to the Mall, every hour, on the hour. Ah, America.

Eschewing this service, I walked across the street tonight to do some quick shopping. It seemed sort of weird approching on foot this giant structure surrounded by enormous parking garages. But after a minor detour, I made myself in and found my way to my destination, The Walking Company. I had originally wanted to get brown versions of my black dress shoes. I was told, however, that those shoes had been discontinued, and I was offered an "updated" version of them. Whatever. I still spent what I planned to spend, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Minnesota doesn't levy sales tax on shoes. Good deal.

I walked out of the mall a few minutes later -- I was amazed at how quick a trip I had made to any mall, let alone this mega-mall. I crossed the street behind a group of businessmen (they didn't wait for the light -- they must not be from Minnesota), and was happy to realize I wasn't the only one who chose to walk tonight.

Christina's new site

Recently, we started the process of moving Christina to her new web site. The weblog is the first thing to move. I mention it mainly to give me an excuse to link to it, so Google will notice it.

This is Funny

I came across a recent article at The New Republic, which answered a question that had been going through my head. The Republicans have been attacking Kerry for things he said and did 30+ years ago. Do they really want to move the debate in this direction? Here's a good example:

Kerry in 1970: In His First Campaign For Congress, Kerry Wanted To Defund CIA. In 1970, Kerry told The Harvard Crimson he wanted "to almost eliminate CIA activity." (Samuel Z. Goldhaber, "John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs For Congress," The Harvard Crimson, 2/18/70)

Bush in 1972: After Smashing Into Trash Cans, Bush Wanted To Fight Future Head of CIA. "In a now famous incident, [Bush] took his then-16-year-old brother, Marvin, out drinking and ran over a neighbor's garbage cans on the way home; and when confronted by his father, he challenged him to go 'mano a mano'outside." (Lois Romano and Mike Allen, "Guard Records on President are Released," The Washington Post, 2/11/04)