The Blog of Harald

With the brakes ($600) and leaking radiator ($300) fixed, the mechanic took the car out to investigate the other problem: a vibration in the front end. Turns out that there are two problems: the left front wheel bearing is loose and needs replacing ($100), and the left front rim is *bent* ($unknown).

Maybe I’ll have my car back on Thursday :-). Ah well; safety first, right?

(I’m still ahead of the game; I did get the car cheap, after all…)

My car died on Friday. The brakes failed, because left-rear steel brake line had rusted through and ruptured under the pressure. It turns out that all of the brake lines (front and rear) need to be replaced, from the master cylinder on out. The mechanic’s going to be busy for a couple of days (it’s about an eight hour job, apparently; about $600).

We were both astonished; we’ve never seen that level of corrosion on a five year old car. It looks like they’ve been soaked in a salt bath and then fired with a blowtorch! I’ve seen this level of corrosion on cars that have been dumped at the back of the junkyard, but never on a young car! The rest of the underside of the car is in good shape; it’s just the breaking system. Very strange…

Anyway, I’m carless! Meanwhile, My wife and I still need to get to work; the kids have an Art and Music Festival on Tuesday afternoon; the roofer is coming on Tuesday to inspect the raccoon damage and give me an estimate; and I have a service appointment for the *other* car on Thursday (which I’ll probably just reschedule).

And on top of the new car repair expense, I owe money to CRA this year. *sigh.

Gareth’s synopsis:

bq. Cheesy!

later:

bq. Ok, cheesy and predictable!

The classics of my childhood, disemboweled by an eight-year-old… :-)

Eureka! I finally understand :-). The picture at the bottom, with the men reördered by height, did the trick for me.

defective yeti: The Twelve Man / Thirteen Man Problem

So my daughter was excited about today’s Da Vinci Google logo; apparently they were talking about his birthday in art class today.

Should I be afraid that my 6-year old knows how to “Google”:http://www.google.com/ ?

That’s it; I refuse to watch anything on FOX anymore. They badly mishandled “Firefly”:http://www.tvtome.com/Firefly/ and then cancelled it. now they’ve cancelled “Point Pleasant”:http://www.tvtome.com/PointPleasant/index.html.

I have to wonder: Why are they ordering these shows to begin with? Are they grasping at straws for another ‘hit’ like “Buffy”:http://www.tvtome.com/BuffytheVampireSlayer/? Are they just looking to tease SF fans so that they’ll all go by the (profitable) DVD box set after cancellations? Or maybe they’ve just got it in for “Joss Whedon”:http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-402 and “Marti Noxon”:http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-407 :-)

Anyway, I don’t get it, and I’m not going to play anymore…

Some lowlife types broke into our car last night, tried to hotwire it (which you can’t :-), and so instead stole some makeup, my wife’s handsfree phone adapter, and the ownership, registration, and insurance papers. Grr.

The cops don’t think that identity theft is likely; the thieves want the ownership papers so that they can bleach out and replace the name on the paper with someone else’s. The cops don’t normally check VINs at traffic stops, so this helps them legitimize a different stolen car of the same make and colour.

Still, I’ve been on hold with Trans Union for over half an hour now, waiting to put a “fraud protection” flag on my credit info. (Equifax answered the phone right away :-)

A couple of weeks after we talked to the Toronto Star and said “Please, please, stop sending us your free newspaper, because we’re just throwing them into the recycle bin” they upped the frequency from just the weekend to seven days a week!!!

I’m really tired of throwing out massive amounts of newspaper. It’s bad enough that the Mirror is delivered three (four?) times a week, but now I’m getting the Star too! aaaah!

(I already have a box full of newspaper in the basement for arts & craft work, so that solution is out…)

(grumble)

Man, it was hard getting out of bed this morning. To make matters worse, I couldn’t get to sleep at any reasonable hour last night; probably fretting over the lost hour of sleep :)

I’ll bet that the people who are complaining about DST in April won’t remember in July and August when they’re enjoying an extra hour of afternoon/evening sunlight.

It’s a good thing I was *planning* to stay home today (and do laundry :-), ‘cos it’s wintering outside!

Ok, so it snowed in mid-April last year, too. Still, I’ll be happy to see spring _really_ start…

I’d take pictures, but we seem to have misplaced our digital camera. I really hope we didn’t leave it in Ottawa somewhere (the hotel doesn’t have it, sadly).

Happy (O)e(a)(o)st(e)r(e)… circle the letters that match your belief system

(found on “blog of the photo”:http://photo.tenebrophilia.org/?showimage=228

Today is the first snowfall of spring, a fine Canadian tradition….

Everyone else has blogged about this by now, but what the heck:

New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense – Features

My favourite:

bq. 1 The placebo effect

bq. DON’T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

bq. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it’s not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

Who woulda thunk it? An interesting twist on the usual “mind over matter” explanation…

* “Christian creationists bully IMAX theaters over evolution”:http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/19/christian_creationis.html

* “Legislator wants cheerleaders to keep their routines clean”:http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/rssstory.mpl/metropolitan/3090937 – Bill would ban sexually suggestive performances at school events

* “Canadian blogger blocked from U.S.”:http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/business/11176472.htm – “His response was, ‘You can’t make a living from blogging. Stop lying and tell me why you’re really here.’ ”

* Baseball, steroids, and the U.S. Congress – where the heck did *that* one come from?

* “Terri Schiavo”:http://blog.sethgodin.silkblogs.com/My-story-is-better-than-your-story.3903.entry – isn’t it atually “illegal”:http://www.skyseastone.net/jvstin/unjvst/004515.html for the US government to make laws that apply to a single individual?

bq. Maintaining badly written code is like trying to solve a crossword puzzle set by someone who can’t spell.

(taken from “Simon”:http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2005/03/18/quotes)

Dummies::Dungeons & Dragons For Dummies:Book Information

Next they’ll be letting just anyone play on the Internet…

For 22 years, pundits have been predicting the demise of Apple (and in particular, of the Macintosh), because Apple never be #1 against Intel, Microsoft, and HP+Compaq/IBM/Dell.

I’ve been trying for almost as long to convince people that there’s nothing wrong with being content “owning” 10% of the marketplace (Apple’s consistent share of the personal computer space). But it’s a hard sell.

Now people are starting to talk about one factor contributing to Apple’s success:

Seth’s Blog: Thinking about the Long Tail (part 1)
“Seth’s blog: Where is the rainbow? (long tail, part 2)”:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/03/where_is_the_ra.html

There are perfectly reasonable business models out in the Long Tail. And in the long run, I think companies working out in the tail will be more successful than those searching for the next “big hit”, or competing to stay on top of the puppy pile…

I knew it was bad over in Africa, but “this stunning graph”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/02/the_african_cli.html really drives it home. Check it out.

(via “Antipixel”:http://www.antipixel.com/blog/archives/2005/03/04/the_african_cliff.html)

When you’re as braindead as I am these days, “Tetris 1D”:http://www.tetris1d.org/ will appeal to you.

For a slightly harder time, try “Notepad Invaders”:http://robmanuel.blogspot.com/2005/02/notepad-invaders.html

Three weeks later there’s still a raccoon in my attic; She either doesn’t want to come out, or is too stupid to find the trap door on the “soffits”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soffit. At one point we thought she was gone, because there were no noises in the attic for days, but then suddenly there were again.

I’m going nuts listening to animal sounds above my head :-)

Update: she spent all night Sunday/Monday clawing at the (repaired, reinforced) soffits above my bed. No sleep makes for an extremely grumpy Harald.

Update 2: Apparently the trap door has been used, and there are footprints in the snow on the roof. So the noise we heard (all night) was probably our delinquent tenant trying to get back into the house. I certainly hope so…