Music in stores

I should say at the outset that I don't normally mind music in stores. It is not like the old days when they piped-in that execrable Muzak. The problem today was that at Linens-N-Things there was an issue with the sound system: The songs were interrupted with moments of static and silence. It was roughly as distracting as candle stores which assault your nose with gag-reflex inducing levels of scent.

From there we went to Market Basket where the quality of the sound was first rate, song choice--not so much.

Cavalier King Charles and a ball..

RoK Days Chez Pecchia

Friday while jogging I found a growth of coral mushrooms. I decided to pick one and carry it with me in case I didn't have the chance to come back later.

Once I got home from work I looked-up a recipe for this kind of mushroom and the first one I found was for Coral Mushroom Namul (Ban Chan) It looks as if it is one of multiple side courses in some kind of special Korean meal. They say it can be part of a Ban Chan array. I don't have full understanding of what this might be, but it sounds good!

I made the dish (with modifications) and it was good. I added a hot pepper (minced) and used soy sauce rather than sesame oil since there was already plenty of oil in the dish and I didn't want to add more.

This morning while mowing the lawn I noticed that our Rose of Sharon has begun blooming. This is the national flower of South Korea.

I think I figured out the odd thing from this March post

I think I figured out this mystery: There is no land at 0.0, 0.0 so it is unlikely that there is a server there. What I would bet on is that when a new server is set-up, it defaults to 0.0,0.0. So that is the explanation: (I hypothesize) We are seeing servers which are new or are being reset and they go to the default setting. What is odd is that it is so rare. Maybe GeoID normally filters them out of their view, but sometimes one slips through.

This has happened before, not to this extent though. I normally might get 2-3 hits per day but sometimes, for reasons I don't understand yet, I get a huge deluge of hits. Just in case one might think that it is just GeoID not working right, I don't think that is the case: The site counter jumps too.

Here is another odd thing: I see a hit from location zero longitude and zero latitude. So, on the equator and due South of London. It is odd, because there doesn't seem to be any land there.

Drill Here, Drill Now

Critics of drilling here in the United States can often be heard to say, "It will take 10 years to get the oil and therefore won't decrease the price of oil".

A couple of points:

--They made the same claims 13 years ago when drilling in ANWR was being considered--we would have that oil now if it wasn't for them.

--The price of oil is somewhat based on expectations of what the future price will be. If you are holding oil and you expect the price to go down then you will sell as much as you can now. If you expect the price to rise, you may hold onto you stocks until the price has risen.

--Any production within the United States will decrease our trade deficit and thus strengthen the dollar. Hence, the price of all imported items will decrease, including oil.

--Finally, if the price of oil is expected to remain strong even if we drill for more; isn't that an argument for drilling? Doesn't that assure profitability? The biggest threat to a project is that after the money has been sunk into it the price will fall and prevent investors from recouping their expenses. Do critics of increasing our oil supply think that the future price will be so low that these projects won't pay for themselves? I don't think so, they are the ones saying the price will stay high no matter what. They unknowingly give the best argument for drilling here now. Just an added thought: Couldn't a prospective producer of oil (say a company building a shale-oil plant) sell the oil to be produced on a futures market? This would take away the risk of oil prices falling in the couple of years it would take to build the plant. Of course it limits the up-side as well.

Surenna gets a good start

This was an un-posed picture; she saw the cover and took an interest in the story.

I always thought this guy looked like Sen. Batson D. Belfry

The clean shaven version of this war criminal--just caught, always reminded me of Sen. Batson D. Belfry from the great SHOE comic strip.

Success = Ambition

The exhaust work I did on my car has held-up for more than a week, so I am becoming confident that it will last a while.

There is actually an interesting paradox which was brought up by this "repair". The repair was done via improvisation and so there was some doubt if it would hold up for even a few seconds. The longer it holds up the more confident I get that it will continue to hold-up. But, everything wears out at some point, so as time goes on we get closer to the point when my repair will fail.

I purchased new spark plugs a couple of years ago, with the full intent to install them at some point. Well, the day came and I couldn't find where they go! All my life spark plugs just screw into the side of the block--they are easy to find since they have wires going to them. Not on this particular car. I did a quick search on the web and found the answer: They are under a cover!

I can't wait to look under the hood to see if I have a cover like the one in the picture.

Update: The whole job took 15 minutes and all the tools I needed were in the toolkit which came with the car.