Have I mentioned how much I love my sidekick? So much so that I just traded it in for the sidekick II. I took advamtage once again of CompUSA 2 year replacement policy, and after some working with the folks and the manager, got my new phone for nothing more than the cost of a new two year replacement policy. $475 worth of phone goodness for $40, and that includes the two year replacement warranty. I love CompUSA, very friendly store.

Anyhow, enough gushing about phones and stores, it's time to return to watching The Great Mouse Detective from my Netflix list.

I just had a strange thought that I want to pursue later.

Pennies are the entrophy of the financial world. That is, all currency in my pocket eventually turns to pennies. Almost every transaction I perform results in a net gain in pennies, and it takes a large amount of pennies to gain anything of higher value.

Strange.

Update : A penny is to money as entropy is to thermodynamics. When you spend money, you get some useful work (the stuff you bought), some useful left over energy (large change), and some energy lost to entropy (pennies). Sure, if you get enough pennies together, you can make most of them useful, but some will always be lost to the pavement, cracks between the cushions, and not having quite enough to fill a roll of pennies.

Just as you can't get rid of entropy in thermodynamics, I don't think you'll ever be able to get rid of fiscal entropy; the most you can do is turn nickels into the new unit of entropy.


http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/003815.html

After much time, Denise and I are going on a date. Denise lined up a baby sitter for Mike, and we are going to do things tonight without him. Two problems (1), Mike just threw up as we were leaving, and (2) We don't know what to do. I want to do something 'interesting', that doesn't involve a movie theatre, and we can't agree on anything else. What's good to do when you are alone?

Update : Well, we ended up going down to Channelside for a nice evening of listening to music on the balcony, then seeing the movie Shall We Dance. I'm really glad we saw this movie, because not only was it a really good Miramax production, but the movie we were originally going to see was Surviving Christmas. Once Denise explained the premise for the original, I laid down the foot, and we settled on the latter. Good movie. Not terribly cliche, good development of characters, no significant lying, cheating or other distasteful behavior, and a satisfying end. The ending was a big drawn out however, but I think that was it's only sin. Otherwise a good movie. Denise and I then went around the block for a nice cup of tea to round out the cool night. It was breezy, and the warm tea felt good as a stop between the theatre and our car. it's too bad Denise has to work tomorrow, or we might enjoy staying out a little longer. Our new babysitter Meghan seems to be quite able to handle Mike, which is not saying much as Mike is such an easy baby to attend to. I think we'll use her services again in 2-3 weeks.

Another week of work comes to a close. This was sort of a vacation week, as the bosses were away on conference, which left us peons to fend for ourselves. We did as best we could to entertain ourselves. But for the most part this entailed comming in late and leaving early. For my part, I worked with Bart on upgrading a server, and discussing politics while he tried to do other work. I also set about the task of removing old and unused courses from our system, tasks that amount to routine maintenance. It was a short and not very motivational week for me. I'll need to refocus and bring my A game next week,

Today is my official anniversary date. I had to work, where I was royally chewed out for not hearing my cellphone while a server crashed at work on Sunday. The short story is that a rather strange series of events caused both myself and my backup to miss the signs that the application was taken down, and it took nine hours to bring back online, while the fix took out the student home directories. The bosses are being held accountable, so now I spend a day or two working out new procedures for making sure that we don't miss anything in the future.

To that end, I've produced this handy checklist:
[ ] Pager on belt
[ ] Cellphone on belt
[ ] Helpdesk knows Backup contact info

That about sums it up.

Update : I'm back home now, but Denise and Mike aren't here. They are visiting their NY cousin who is local visiting, so my wife and son are back at Disney, this time staying at Disneys new Saratoga Springs. I really wanted to go with them, but work kept me late, and while I was working, they finally got in touch with their stupid cousin at Disney, they spent the night at the Magic Kingdom and I really didn't want to take the time driving late there and early back to spend an hour at the house of mouse.

So I'm at home catching up on my Netflix queue. So far I've watched Disneys Treasure Island, and Newsies. For a 50 year old movie, Treasure Island really holds up well. Good material to work from, but this was a well produced movie, good timing, no musical numbers, slightly tounge in cheek to keep it from getting too serious. I would recommend watching this movie then following it up with the Muppet version of Treasure Island. What a contrast that provides. Woa.

Newsies isn't bad either, but the musical numbers are tough to watch. Get the DVD and skip the song and dance, there's a decent story underneath.

I should finish my section on lists. Maybe tonight while watching the Great Mouse Detectives.