The Swiss Empire

Earlier this week, with Christina working late, I found myself playing a fair bit of Europa Universalis 2. This is a strategy game recreating European politics and wars from the early 15th century to the early 19th century. In honor of our recent trip to Switzerland, I decided to play, well, Switzerland. I admit to playing on the easiest level; my excuse is the game's historical fidelity is so good, it would otherwise be impossible to expand beyond the two "provinces" of Bern and Schwyz. Here is a look at our holdings in the early 18th century.



Here is a look at the larger European picture. The white blob to my east is the Austrian Empire, my continuing nemesis. I'm in a little bit of trouble because they're more technologically advanced than we are (but we have these marvelous knives!), and my main ally has been France (the blue blobs to the West), but they've been weakened by rebellions, and for some reason they're not too fond of me any more.

Why I Hate Comcast

We currently have cable modem service through Comcast. Recently the service has been fairly consistent, so my main annoyance has been the fact that they charge us $15/month extra for not subscribing to cable. So when I got a flier yesterday offering us "emergency" service for $4.95/month, this seemed (and was advertised as) a savings of $10/month. The only catch is that the promotional rate was only good through the end of the year.

So I thought I'd call them and find out how much it would go up. If it stayed under $15/month, I figured I was in good shape. After I called and asked about the promotion, the customer "service" representative asked me to fax her the flier because she was unfamiliar with the offer. I was flabbergasted. Wasn't there some sort of code on the offer that I could read off to her? No, she needed me to fax the flier. I probably could have done so, but on the principle of not encouraging their incompetence, I declined.

Now I remember why I don't have cable service from them.

ANTS pix

Someone went nuts with a digital camera at the conference I was at in Vermont earlier this month. They managed to capture me in a few pictures -- here are some of the clearer ones.

1. On the bus to the conference dinner
   
2. Waiting to board the dinner cruise
   
3. Grabbing some food on the cruise
   

Yosemite

My parents and Rudy just got back from a week in Yosemite. My father sent along this picture.

Where's Jon?

I noticed that the conference I went to in Switzerland last month posted pictures from the rump session and banquet. My vanity required I look through them to see if I was visible in any of them.

Can you spot me in any of these three pictures?

1. Rump Session 1
2. Rump Session 2
3. Banquet

Vermont Pictures

OK, I finally got around to downloading (and uploading) pictures from my Vermont trip.

We had Wednesday afternoon free for excursions. I decided to drive up the Champlain Islands, in the middle of Lake Champlain. I was motoring along when I surprised to come across a drawbridge.



The view on the drive was quite nice.



I drove to the northern end of the lake and took a left to get to New York State. I knew which road I wanted to be on, but I wasn't able to find that road -- just the truck detour for the road. Oh, well, I figured -- at least the truck detour would get me there. I drove along and came to a stop sign where the highway I was on ended on another road. I looked to my right and saw a big "Welcome to the United States" sign and a border guard. Uh-oh. I was wondering how I was going to explain myself, when I realized there were two lanes, one of which went past the border check, and the other of which I was about to turn into. To my right, there was a "Welcome to Canada" sign. I felt like I was in some sort of weird purgatory.

I drove through Lake Placid, which seemed over-touristed, to the Adirondack Park Agency Visitor Interpretive Center near Paul Smiths. I had a nice walk on the trail.



There was a path over a marsh.



And wildlife.



On the way back, I decided I didn't want to drive around the lake, so I took the ferry. There was a nice view of the sunset over New York.



On Thursday night, the conference dinner was a cruise, also on Lake Champlain.



Here are mathematicians enjoying the buffet.

Green Mountain State

Here I am in Vermont at a math conference, and I'm finally adding it to my list of states visited. It's more than just a checkmark on a list -- it's interesting to see how life here compares to elsewhere in the US.

Quaint. That's the word for it. Everything is so darn quaint around here. They seem to take their quaintness fairly seriously -- where they do have chain stores like the Ponderosa Steakhoue near my hotel, it's clear that local authorities have negotiated a tamer look for the signs. Anyone who has seen the new IKEA sign hovering over the Beltway in College Park can appreciate that.

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.