Dave's Journal, Jan2018
Okay, just so I have this straight, sir.
You have 4 kids with food allergies, speech disabilities and medical issues.
You're looking for an experienced nanny to give them full time care and schooling ....... and the salary is $14.08 / hour ??
(And, no, I'm not gonna ask where the 8¢ came from.)
Weather continues to be awful. After this storm blows over, we are heading into negative degrees for a few more days. This is my last year snowblowing the dirveway. After this, we hire a plow guy like we did when we first moved here.
The border color of this box and the line color is "the 2018 color of the year" - ultra violet. Yep. Someone has the moxie to name the color every year. Okay... I can live with it. The fashion people are jumping all over it.
I definitely have to get OUT OF THIS HOUSE !!!
Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire isn't just cold - at minus 36 degrees [air temp] with a windchill of 94 below, it's tied for the second-coldest place on Earth . . . . In fact, according to the latest data available from the Curiosity rover on Mars, Mount Washington feels colder than the surface of our celestial neighbor, which was measured at minus 78 degrees.
Speaking of Mars, this is a pretty exciting "tweet" between Elon Musk and the CEO of Boeing Co.
So maybe the first human colony on Mars will not represent a country, but a corporation?
The first people who fly with SpaceX to Mars should be OK with the possibility that the decision could cost them their lives, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said.
SpaceX aims to ferry 1 million people to the Red Planet over the next 50 to 100 years using the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a rocket-spaceship combo that Musk unveiled Tuesday (Sept. 27) during a talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Well, he unveiled the ITS in concept; neither vehicle has been built yet.)
Musk painted a picture of a not-too-distant future in which 1,000 or more ITS spaceships, each loaded up with 100 or 200 settlers, zoom off toward Mars simultaneously from Earth orbit. But it's naive to expect that everything will work perfectly from the start, he said.
Emma's in year 2 of her nursing degree, and works between semesters doing private care for older people. Nick is studying criminal justice stuff and taking a "terrorism and homeland security" course next semester. He also is (as legend tells) a gifted baseball player.
Deb and I aren't into anything that interesting, but I'm like really smart (almost like a special kind of genius or something) and Deb talks a lot and has lots of friends.
We missed Dave at the Golden Globe awards last night, and wondered why he skipped out on it.
Dave: Well I had some snowblower problems and missed my flight to LA. Which is just as well because my black suit (with the #Stop All The Bullsh#t Speeches, Please lapel pin) came in a few sizes too large. Anyway, I had snowblower problems.
Here's what we can call a "picture story" of my day....
No exotics (lambroghini, etc), no luxury's (Bentley, etc), but a good show of what dealers had to display.
Jake's favorite car, a Lambroghini Aventador was not there, but we found one online for only $199,800.
And . . . Lea Seydoux, just because . . .
Very innovative product we saw at the car show - an electric motor wheel ($1000) that you can fit to your bike, or whatever (see pictures). This was fascinating, and they had lots and lots of stuff they had put these wheels on for their car show demonstration. The company only sells the wheel (there website: GEOO), and they say it takes 60 seconds to install it on your bike, or dolly, or .....
The things they had installed the wheels on were very interesting in themselves. Looked like some homemade frames on some of them.
Keep in mind, at $1000 / wheel, this gets expensive real fast!
I am often sarcastic and people sometimes have a hard time believing how I feel, but sincerely I am presently in shock. I "discovered" Dolores O-Riordan (the Cranberries) a few years ago on Youtube. Here greatest stuff dates back 25 years, but the world caught on late to her music.
I love her stuff, and seeing her Youtube videos.
She died today. Died ! It's gonna take me some time to "process this".
Well, empty nest syndrome has hit me and Deb today - Loretta and R and J and R and J went home today. Too quiet around here; we just puttered around.
Just checked Loretta's GPS a minute ago and she is back home, treating the kids to McDonald's.
I stumbled onto this painting a few days ago and I keep getting lost in it; imagining I'm in this crowd having a good time.
It's called "The Bean King Drinks" (the old guy on the left is the bean king - whoever that is?), by the painter Jacob Jordaens (1638).
Well, I did some homework to find what this was all about ....
According to old Netherlandish tradition, on this day a large pie was served at table with a single bean hidden somewhere in it. He who found the bean in his slice of pie was declared to be the Bean King. . . . . According to the rules of the festival, the Bean King chose for himself a "queen" and appointed an adviser, a treasurer, a chamberlain, a musician, a cook and a jester. The participants in the feast were obliged to submit to the royal pair in everything and even imitate them, and when the Bean King lifted to his lips yet another glass of wine they had to shout "The King drinks!" in chorus.
Sounds fun. Next party, I'm in.
Deb's right. I can't deny it. I'm a snob.
So, yeh .... Deb's right .... I'm a snob. So be it.
I'm trying hard not to be judgemental, but .... but .....
This is a new restuarant, O'Naturel, open to the public, in Paris. And, as liberal as I am, this scene raises a few questions about who the #### would eat here??
Questions like ..... Would you put your napkin in your naked lap? .... How clean are the chair seats? ..... How clean are the naked bodies walking past your table? ..... That hair in your salad - where's that from? ..... If someone stands at your table talking to you, what do you keep your eye on?
Of course, the first question should be .... Why would you travel to a restaurant and then take your clothes off to eat?
Some numbers I looked up (U.S. only, various data sources), just because I wanted to know...
I spent essentially my whole career working at GE. It was once a standard of corporate excellence. Big, cash rich, powerful, growing relentlessly. Now it is in very serious trouble.
General Electric CEO John Flannery said Wednesday he is working on reshaping the company .....
Flannery announced last week that he may have to break up GE to save it - essentially dismantling the house that Jack Welch built.
The company might be divided into three separate, publicly traded units comprised of its energy and power business, aircraft engines and health care. Everything else might be sold.
.... GE reported a loss from continuing operations of $10 billion for the fourth quarter, compared with a profit of $3.5 billion a year earlier. . . . The company reported last week that it had found $11 billion in charges stemming from its insurance business and changes to the U.S. tax code.
The SEC is investigating how exactly GE "found" an $11B "glitch" in it's accounting.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop: how will this impact the GE Pension Fund ?? (Which was known to be underfunded by 40% even before this news came out.)
Bad Movie. Bad Bad Movie.IMDB user ratings for this classic earned 2.1 / 10. Plan 9 from Outer Space, normally considered the worst feature film of all time, earned a 4.0 / 10, so we have a new loser, folks.
Worse than the plot, worse than the directing or acting (acting?) is the production itself. Astronuats flying to Jupiter via a German WW2 vintage rocket: tables and chairs, no space gear anywhere, smoking cigarettes and communicating to Earth by telephone. Flight control is one throttle sticking out of the table.
Definitely a "fast forward" movie (it's on Youtube). Great for snickers.
A classic '50's vintage trailer that I stumbled on just a few minutes ago.
Is this "dated" or what !
People these days don't realize how very cool I was back in school (1962-1966, 17-21 years old). In every way - I was a jazz head, and a folk head (I'd train into the Manhattan library and take out Library of Congress 78RPM records of actual down home in-the-field blues singers from the early 1900's). I wrote poems for the literary magazine (one was so controversial, the faculty advisor got reprimanded for letting it go to print ! ), I dressed like no one else in my engineering department - boots, jeans, corduroy jackets, striped shirts and ties - specifically Rooster brand ties right out of the New Yorker magazine.
In fact, the one most coolest thing about my dress code was those ties.
They sold at (what today we call) "upscale stores" at (what today we call) "discount pricing".
I still remember the lady behind the counter (dark hair, dark eyes, lots of eye liner, probably 30-35 years old at the time, looked like she'd seen some sh#t in her life, nice smile).
Maybe she remembers me too. It's possible. Maybe.
