vacancy

Today was a good day not to travel. For once, I found myself being The Local Guy while everyone else was sweating the Joy which is Travel during a Texas Weather Event.

By 10am today, everything looked normal outside, but the weather radar painted a bleak picture .. freezing rain turning to snow. Several of them were watching the various airline websites, and watching their flights switch from [ON TIME] to [DELAYED] to [CANCELED]. It's no fun spending the night at an airport, so I advised anyone who couldn't get out of town to call me, and I'd supply lodging for the evening. By the time the evening arrived, there were no calls so the Gene Bob Motel went unused. Too bad - Beta was looking forward to someone to play with.

It could've been worse .. looks like this storm's gonna dump a load on Chicago, Detroit, and places northeast. At least they'll get it in the form of snow, and not our local delicacy: ice.

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Speaking of delicacies, I discovered Cracker Nuts at a local Asian grocery, and fear I may be hooked. Nagaraya makes several flavors of this "crispy peanut" treat; I've already sampled the garlic and plan to fetch a pack of butter flavored next. Yumm.

They also have a flavor called "Adobo" but I'm not sure what that is - probably different than its mud-inspired namesake "Adobe".

impending doom!?

(local radar at 7pm Wednesday)

I'm 2 days into a 3-day class; several visitors have flights tomorrow and are in a mild panic, given the local weather forecaster's tendency to exaggerate. By this time tomorrow we'll know, but I'm expecting this to be yet another non-event. Today's high was 73F or so, and with the ground that warm, I doubt anything frozen will stick tomorrow. Sure, there'll be some thunderstorms tonight (see the radar above) and then the cold front moves through, dropping temperatures by 30-50 degrees as tomorrow wears on.

Naturally (in the class), i'm doing my best to incite a riot calm folks down:

"2 inches of snow? THOUSANDS WILL DIE!"

In Dallas, a Winter Storm Advisory (not even a warning) tends to send the locals scurrying to the grocery stores, where they're programmed to buy ANYthing remaining on the shelf, as if Hurricane Katrina was coming to visit.

(tomorrow's forecast)

bring back the draft!

I have to wonder if this is a stunt: Congressman Rangel Will Seek to Reinstate Draft. I've read about this gent, and it seems as if this is the third time (?) he's proposed returning to compulsory military service (unless your daddy has enough money to sneak you into the Alabama National Guard, like some POTUS we know). Then again, it could be that Rangel (a Democrat) is using this tactic to force a debate on whether we should recall the troops in Iraq (and presumably send them to Afghanistan to fight the resurgent Taliban, or to Tehran to put an end to Iran's Nuke Bomb Program, or to Pyongyang to say hello to Kim Jung Il). With all these Wars On Terror that we'll be fighting for the next hundred years or so, it just makes sense to mandate military service again, although I'd be strongly in favor of only sending Republicans (see Operation Yellow Elephant).

I recently watched a 2-hour PBS show about the 1960's, and it brought back memories of the Vietnam-era draft, along with the anti-war (actually anti-draft) protests, the rise and fall of LBJ and Richard Nixon, and so forth. I was still a bit young to appreciate those days (I entered the 6th grade in 1969 as the decade closed), and was more interested in tricking out my bicycle than what was happening in Hanoi.

Deep thought: Although the Brooklyn Dodgers became Los Angeles Dodgers, it's odd that Draft Dodgers never became Dodger Dogs.

It's only a vague memory, but I recall the periodic "lotto ball" where draft numbers were called by the Selective Service System. I seemed to recall a large drum with 366 balls, one for each day of the year. If your number was called, you had a certain amount of time in which to either report to the local recruting office, or plan your extended vacation to Canada.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix ...

Paula finally headed back to Phoenix on Friday and was "home" 25 hour later, after spending the night in Las Cruces, NM. Now she has to install all the networking toys (wireless-G; gigabit switch; NAS appliance) that she bought while here. It should be easy, but .. (as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say:) "there's always somethin".

I recall that the approximate distance between Dallas and El Paso (635 miles) is the same as the number of the Interstate highway which loops around Dallas (I-635). Beta's been asking permission to update her blog so I guess she has something to say about the last couple weeks.

either way, it's still $20

I typically use a tire (tyre, to you Brits) pressure gauge in the car, when I remember to check the air. Often that's about once a month, unless I notice the car's a bit sluggish taking a corner.

So, when it came time to replace a front floor mat, I spotted (nearby) an acceptable price on a set of Indicator Valve Caps for the tires (Tire Check, by Kleen Wheels). Now, as I'm approaching my parked car, I can glance down and see when one/more of my tires has lost enough air to merit a stop at the air pump. The indicator is difficult to master: green=good and red=bad. Golly, I hope I can remember this. The set of four was $20.

Speaking of air, I recently asked the "experts" about the trend of some car service places to fill tires with nitrogen instead of "plain air". The merchants claim that the nitrogen molecules are larger, and hence won't leak as fast. For $20 (i.e. $5/tyre) that should be true, but my local experts say it's basically a marketing ploy (i.e. "crap"). Maybe if I was driving a racecar around Texas Motor Speedway, but not on the way to the market.

ISBN-13

I have to wonder if the transition to ISBN-13 will cause the crumbling of western civilization.

Recently, I noticed my newest books now sport TWO (2!) ISBNs: ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. The new ones are needed in much the same way the phone companies had to adapt new area codes to deal with the plethora of cellphones and other communication devices (does anyone remember the pager? - now we just use Text Messaging instead). Since I keep an online list of all my books (so I don't buy duplicates) I'll have to adapt them to ISBN-13 which arrives 1/1/2007. I guess this is good; that means that more books are being published, and the demise of The Paper Book (to make way for e-Books) is still A Future Event.

I haven't been this excited since I started getting 5 different phone directories every year.

What makes this a sad event is that I was just getting the hang of the ISBN-10 system. I figured out that the first digit always seemed to be a 0 or 1; followed by a hyphen; followed by a code (of semi-random length) indicating the publisher; followed by a number for the book itself; followed by a final hyphen and what I assumed was an edition number (which sometimes became -X). Turns out the last digit was a "check digit" and had nothing to do with the edition: wow.

Yes, I could read the ISBN FAQ but that would suck all the joy out of deciphering the scheme. I suppose by the time They transition to ISBN-next (inevitable) I'll have it all figured out.

The ISBN-10 scheme would conceivably produce duplicates when the hyphens were removed (0-13-123456-4 is the same as 0-1312-3456-4, right?) but the online bookstores seem to remove them (for URLs, etc.) without consequence. The new ISBN-13 appeared to be an ISBN-10 with a prefix "978", but there's more to it than that (which I discovered after reading another ISBN explanation). It turns out the conversion of ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 digits requires a re-calculation of the check digit, which is done programmatically. Bummer.

Worth noting: my oldest books don't have ISBNs : only Library of Congress book numbers. I suspect there was a transition back in those days, too, although I don't remember civilization collapsing. I may have been in class that day.

Ref: International Standard Book Number = ISBN. This has nothing to do with the DDC (Dewey Decimal System), for which I am eternally grateful.

in search of L-tryptophan

There's a new QSR chain in town called Raising Cane’s that's not far from me (NW corner of Campbell/Coit). Their specialty? Chicken Fingers. Yes, you heard right. Every time I've driven by, there's been a long line at the drive-thru, so I tried it at 3pm today and was only 3rd in line (tolerable).

My verdict: not half bad. The "fingers" seemed larger than most, and the fact that they were made from fresh chicken left them juicier than expected. Also noteworthy: they have the old-style "crinkle cut" French fries. I'm sure I'll return, but have to wonder how well they'll do with such a limited menu. Reminds me of the original McDonald's, or White Castle, or In-N-Out Burger (all of whose menus experienced creeping featurism as the years passed).

Anyhoo, Turkey Day's coming soon, so I'll have to stop by the grocery and fetch some turkey hotdogs or turkey bologna, to get my dose of L-tryptophan. Cane's ain't got no turkey on the menu.