| Thruway Revenue Alternatives |
[19 Apr 2009|03:03pm] |
It's wonderful to see how fluid and adaptive the New York State Thruway Authority is in protecting its revenue streams. A mere two days after announcing that in January and February, passenger volume decreased 2.5% and commercial volume dropped 13% compared to the previous year, the NYSTA is offering a workaround (conveniently couched as a safety measure): increased cell phone use enforcement.
Undiscussed by R News is analysis of how the 5% increase in toll prices enacted this year could have affected use.
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| NYT Cream of Tomato Soup |
[05 Oct 2008|09:12pm] |
I tried making the "Cream of Tomato Soup" from the New York Times Cookbook tonight. I was pretty disappointed--I'm not sure if I didn't properly select tomatoes (recipe called for "ripe tomatoes" and I used some fresh tomatoes on the vine from the store), but the soup turned out to taste more of cucumber than tomato, and its color was very pale pink (though I wasn't necessarily expecting it to turn out as red as Campbell's Tomato).
At least the grilled cheese sandwiches turned out well.
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| Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls |
[06 Jul 2008|11:31pm] |
Earlier in the year, Maria and I bought a copy of 200 Waterfalls in Central & Western New York, and we finally took the opportunity to start following some of its directions.
On Friday, we went to three sites: Medina Falls (Medina, NY), Serenity Falls (Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY), and Eternal Flame Falls (Chestnut Ridge Park, Orchard Park, NY). After this, we tried out the Anchor Bar (the claimed home of Buffalo Wings); Maria liked them, but I thought that they were over-crisped and had insufficient sauce.
On Sunday, we toured Stony Brook State Park (Dansville, NY) and enjoyed numerous waterfalls there and some of its trails.
I placed some of my pictures online.
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[16 Jun 2008|10:05pm] |
Our pet emergencies continued this weekend when we took Emmy to Maria's mom's house. Maria's mom lives outside a rural town and has a lot of space--so at some point, Emmy decided that it would be fun to do some digging. She came back up to the house with a black tongue from eating dirt and filthy paws, but when she came in, it was clear that her foot was bleeding.
Today, we took her in to the vet to see how serious things were. The vet was planning to simply use tissue glue to close the paw pad, but under closer inspection, it was too deep of a wound to be so simply closed: a stitch was required. Because we were concerned about Emmy chewing on the sore, she needed a bandage on the foot. She has to wear it in a plastic bag when she goes outside (as long as the ground is wet)--they gave me a retired bag of IV saline to tie around the leg. She also has to take some large antibiotics for the next two weeks, which will give us some great practice pilling dogs (the capsules are simply too big to hide in peanut butter).
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| In the Shadow of the Moon |
[22 Oct 2007|11:15pm] |
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I watched In the Shadow of the Moon tonight (it was a free night for members at The Little, which was nice). I thought it was a really charming and touching movie---absolutely beautiful to watch---but it was disappointing to me because it reminded me how bereft of accomplishments my life has been in comparison to the astronauts'.
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| Caesarean section |
[28 Sep 2007|12:23am] |
I saw a Caesarean section performed today. A few weeks ago, I saw a normal delivery.
I can't wait to be back seeing adults.
I have one more week on the OB floor, then five weeks on the paediatrics floor, and then five weeks on the psychiatric ward. I'm looking forward to psych more than I expected.
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| iPhone |
[30 Jun 2007|06:20pm] |
I went out to the Apple Store today to check out the iPhone. It was everything that I'd dreamed it would be. The on-screen keyboard was not a whole lot less user-friendly than the chiclet-like keyboard on the Treo I use (though not quite as nice as the wide-bodied Blackberry devices like the the 7200 series). I felt that its responsiveness was much better than either the Palm-based or Windows-based Treos I've used or Windows Mobile 5 PDAs.
I did tests with Google Reader (it chooses the mobile edition) and found that it was much nicer than the Treo or iPAQ use because of the ability to fit tremendously more text on the screen.
I configured it to use my work email server for inbound mail--it was pleasant, but I was unable to configure it to check email on a more frequent basis than 15 minute intervals, so I would not be pleased with it for an on-call type of device.
I disabled the WiFi and tried to guess how unpleasant it would be to use as a data device over the EDGE service. I did not find it to be significantly worse than the Treo's data service (which is much faster) but I think that's because the Windows Mobile 5 Internet Explorer appears to render HTML/CSS very slowly--the iPhone does a much better job.
I did not buy it today because my Verizon contract goes until September, but I had a hard time walking away from it. I think that I will be switching--Verizon does not offer comparably-priced Blackberry data plans (by my read, Verizon would cost $20/month more than AT&T; Verizon does not seem to have a consumer-priced data plan). The only question is when.
Update: More about the keyboard. I forgot to mention that I did have trouble with the "two-thumbs" method of typing. I got a lot of Ps rather than Os. The workaround that I adopted while I was playing was generally to use my left thumb for the left side of the keyboard and my right index finger for the right side of the keyboard. I did generally hit the modifier key (change the keyboard template from alpha to numeric/symbol) with my index finger, even though it's on the left side.
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| RIP Mr. Wizard |
[12 Jun 2007|10:57pm] |
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Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) passed away today at 89 due to cancer. He is a big part of the reason that I like TV and science.
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| Walking the Dog |
[28 Feb 2007|11:02pm] |
About six weeks ago (which goes to show how often I post), Maria and I got a dog, a yellow lab mix, Emmy, from Rudy's Rescue.
Although Emmy is a joy to have, we still had some growing pains with her and wanted to improve our own knowledge of dog training, so we have been working through Dogs At Your Feet training, which is excellent.
Here was the route that we walked tonight (3.5mi in roughly an hour, but the sidewalks are not cleared from ice or snow). I tried to hit all of the vertices (but missed Crittenden & Mt. Hope) and edges (but missed many more) without retracing my steps (which I didn't technically do because of sidewalk on both sides of the road, but still didn't do well).
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[08 Jan 2007|03:07pm] |
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | | The Midland | | | Philadelphia | | | The South | | | The Northeast | | | North Central | | | The West | | | Boston | | What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
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| Pivotal Moments of Rochesterians |
[02 Jan 2007|10:30pm] |
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My fiancee is perpetually interested in hearing about folks' defining moments; since everyone has (some), she's working to put together a book about the Pivotal Moments of Rochesterians. If you have any suggestions of people, famous or not, please nominate them.
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| Engaged |
[10 Nov 2006|09:03pm] |
A lot of things have happened this year that I didn't expect:
- I wrecked my motorcycle, broke my leg, and spent a long time recovering.
- I applied to, was accepted to, and am doing pretty well in, the nursing program at work.
- I bought a house in Rochester.
- I got a cat.
- I got engaged.
I met Maria about a year ago, had some great times hanging out with her before the accident, and then things went pretty quiet while I was recovering. After I got back on my feet, I started seeing her more and more seriously and I realized that I wouldn't want to be without her for the rest of my life (she feels similarly). So I proposed, she accepted, and that's that.
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[02 Oct 2006|09:42pm] |
Long time, no write.
I'm tentatively planning on following up with a more general-interest entry, but for now, I'm going to write about shavegeekery.
( --more-- )
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| Wordplay, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest |
[08 Jul 2006|11:35pm] |
Today, I saw Wordplay and Dead Man's Chest with my folks and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gazhaban.
Wordplay was funny and clever. It made me very happy to be at the movies, and it had enough non-crossword material that I didn't feel as guilty for dragging my mom and gazhaban to a film that I was more interested in watching with Dad (A Prairie Home Companion, which we watched two weeks ago, fits into this same category). 4/5.
Pirates 2 was utter dreck. At best, it was a popcorn movie that just went too long without a sufficient plot or decent characters to back the time up. More critically, it was a big-budget B movie that still ended up looking like something hacked together with 1950s technology. The Kraken just didn't interact with the ships very naturally. I slept through about a half an hour in the beginning, didn't feel like I missed out on plot, and still felt that the movie ran too long. If this was the only kind of movie that I could see, I would stop seeing movies. 2/5.
I feel like I need to re-watch The African Queen so that I can get the bad taste out of my mouth and see a good adventure movie with a boat...maybe soon.
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