Retrospective

This has certainly been an interesting year.

Personally, it was very good. Except for the foot thing and the wife's back issues (both on the mend), everyone is basically healthy. The kids are doing well in school. We had a fun lacrosse season. We survived no kitchen for 6 weeks. We did a home addition and remained married. The dog didn't get run over by a car despite being able escape the temporary construction fence at will. We had a great week at F8I. Goldie, my 10 year old Subaru Legacy, is still running. We got a Wii. I was able to finish a marathon and swim a mile. We hosted a fun Thanksgiving with friends. We hosted a fun Christmas with family.

Financially, it was pretty much a disaster. We lost close to 40% of our money that was in our 401k and IRA accounts. I don't even want to think about how many years of savings that is. Plus, the government managed to run up another trillion of debt we get to repay bailing out crooks. But, if that is the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'll be a very lucky person. We can pay our bills and live a comfortable life, which is much more than most other people have.

My goals for next year in descending order of fun:

1. Do two triathlons. Another family triathlon with Kate and Sophie is a must. I'd also like to do at least one myself. The NYC marathon is a bonus item here since I couldn't do it last year but that depends on my foot feeling 100% by June.
2. Coach my daughter's lacrosse team. This time around, I want to improve the practices by having a more structured plan for the hour.
3. Learn something new. I've got a couple of contenders right now. The first is drawing. I started on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but didn't finish it. The second is a musical instrument (not Rock Band). I have a guitar I haven't picked up in five years, but maybe something different. Bonus points for doing both drawing and music.
4. Swim 50 miles over the course of the year. Because I don't tend to swim when travelling, that works out to about a 2200 yards every week I'm at home. Easy-peasy.
5. Pass an SAP certification exam. I know the material, I just need to buck up, schedule an exam and take it.

Happy New Year!

1750

I swam a mile today. I was just planning on going for a little swim, but I was feeling good so I just kept going. It took me just a shade under 45 minutes. I'm only 30 minutes and change off of the world record pace!

29

I'm almost there on my quest to swim a mile. My stroke is still horrible, but I was only 300 yards shy of a mile yesterday. I might have been able to do it, but my goggles had completely fogged up and I decided to stop. I think it was all the great fuel I had in me.

Dinner

This was the turkey prepared for the first Thanksgiving we've every hosted at our house.

Cooking a turkey wasn't that difficult but what made it turn out really great was brining it for 24 hours before cooking. The hardest part was carving - I mangled the bird, but even in little bitty bits it still tasted great.

Appetite

The crew and I went for a pre-dinner 2-mile hike to work up the appetite on Thanksgiving Day. It's nice living at the base of a mountain with beautiful trails.

Monster

Jack and I built a Lego army Saturday morning featuring a big green monster pulling a catapult. Here they are marching off to conquer the kitchen table. I think they are being opposed by a rag-tag assortment of clone troopers led by Indiana Jones.

Rain

This sums up the day well: rainy with a lot of leaves on the ground.

There are still quite a few in the trees, but they are probably 75% down.

Ryder

With all this talk about giving huge subsidies to US automakers, it might be instructive to see how successful these efforts have been in the past. Most famously, we have the loan guarantees made to Chrysler in 1979. Although these are popularly thought of a success, the verdict is mixed and certainly they are back to the brink 30 years later. Would we be worse off if Chrysler had ceased to exist in 1980?*

A little lesser known is the British experience in the 1970s. In 1975, the Ryder Report was written outlining a series of steps to save British Leyland and massive (at the time) subsidies were duly issued. After struggling for many years, the rump of this company declared bankruptcy in 2005.

The chart, created using data pulled from the UK's National Statistics Online, shows UK vehicle production for the past 20 years (approximately from the time of the subsidies). Keeping in mind that most of this production is now foreign owned, what did the subsidies really buy them over the long term? How do we know our experience will be different?

A bankruptcy is a healthy thing in an economy because it allows capital to be reallocated to better use. Allowing zombie companies to exist without profits forever does not promote the "creative destruction" necessary for economic growth.

If we are going to do any specific for the people impacted, I would much rather see our monies spent on helping workers that get hurt by the very real potential of Big 3 bankruptcies. With proper retraining and relocation assistance, we could help our economy re-channel the capital and labor trapped in uneconomic activities towards future growth.

*As a side note, we own a Chrysler that I'm quite happy with, but the point remains.

Lair

This new camera I got has a nifty panorama feature. I've seen this before, but those have always used software on the PC to put the pictures together. This one stitches the photos together in-camera so that it is ready to use when you download it. Neat. Now I just need to find a vista that is better than my office desk.

Yellow

One of the first Novemberish days today - overcast and temps in the low 50s. This is another nice tree in the 'hood that we observed on our dog walk this morning.

I snapped this pic with my Pentax Optio M50. I haven't had a camera for a few months since my old one died so I picked this one up for $100 online. I like the form factor but I'm still getting used to the controls.

Red

Some nice fall foliage from up the street. Too bad my phone camera doesn't do it justice.

Bonehead

I was in Philadelphia for a couple of days this week. I'm not quite home yet, being stuck in Dulles until at least 11:00 this evening waiting for the flight crew to show up.

Since I left for the airport at about 4 PM to make sure I made my 6:50 PM flight without a big hassle (ever tried to find a gas station near the Philadelphia Airport to refuel your rental car?), I basically could have driven home faster than flying. If I'd left at 4PM, I would probably be getting home at about 11:30 PM or so.

As it stands now, I may or may not make it home by midnight. Late flights like this tend to get canceled because the flight crews can only be on duty for so long and if they get signficantly delayed they sometimes can't fly.

Arm

My daughter is really into football right now. The past week, she has bugged me everyday to go out and throw the old pigskin around (well, really a Nerf). The funny thing is she has a pretty decent arm - she can throw it with a darn near perfect spiral about 10 yards. Catching isn't so adept, but pretty reasonable. He last email to me was asking when the Redskins game was on (tonight).

Speedy

Even at her advanced age, L10 loves running through the woods. Here she is on the hike yesterday.

Hike

It was a beautiful day for a hike in the Blue Ridge today. The navigator here is pointing the way with his walking stick.

Voted

Since I will be out of town next Tuesday, I went over to the Municipal Building today and voted. It was a pretty easy process and I got the fun sticker to the left well ahead of all of my friends.

Official

It's official. I've cancelled my entry in the NYC Marathon.

I don't know why I held out this long even though I've known for two months that it wasn't going to happen.

I went for a 5k run Tuesday for the first time in weeks and my legs are still hurting. The foot feels OK though, so that is a plus. The four miler with my daughter tomorrow should be interesting.

Maybe next year...

Slosh

I'm one of the world's worst swimmers. Despite my long limbs and reasonable aerobic capacity, I'm the anti-Phelps. Since I can't run, I've been swimming a lot more and I'm making slow, painful progress. Once in a while, I get something right and I start to think about other stuff while I'm swimming and it feels easy. Then I get tired and start thinking about my stroke again and it all falls apart.

My goal this winter is to be able to swim a mile without stopping. It doesn't have to be fast (and it won't be), but that would put me in a sort of swimming elite - if I were a Boy Scout, I'd even be able to earn a badge.

Wii

I bought my daughter a Wii for her birthday last month. We've just been sticking to the simple Wii Sports game that comes with the console and it is a whole lot of fun. The games are simple enough for younger kids, but have enough challenge for adults. I like it because it is a chance for us all to play together in the evenings before bed after the homework is done. Plus, where else can you get a sports injury playing a video game.

VFINX

This chart shows the S&P 500 for my working career from late 1993 to now. I've been putting money in VFINX, which is a mutual fund that tracks this index as long as I've been earning it.

It's been a rough ride recently and I didn't even bother to open the last statement from Vanguard and it is even worse now since the statement was from the end of September.

I do feel for those who are getting ready to retire now, but for those of us with 30 years to go, it's an opportunity to buy low (and maybe even lower as it all pans out). I'm going to try to worry about something else now.

Decent

I got the latest Okkervil River CD, The Stand Ins, last month. I pre-ordered it and it arrived (with a couple of fun bonus posters) when it was released on line on the 9/9. Initially, I wasn't a big fan. There aren't any songs that just jumped out and grabbed me like Westfall or Plus Ones.

Now that I've had it for a while, I enjoy it and a few songs are standouts (I particularly like Long Coastlines and Singer Songwriter). But, it isn't as strong as The Stage Names or Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See. I really do like the spooky cover - perfect for the Halloween season.

Outage

Yesterday at lunch I went over to Ukrops on Franklin Road. They have an interesting and varied selection of foods available for lunch and a nice cafe with Wifi to sit in and eat. I was planning on calling my wife when I got there to see if she wanted to stop by and join there.

However, when I arrived, I noticed that half the lights in the store were off and there was a note that said they were unable to sell perishable goods because of a power failure. This is the second time in a few months that I've seen this happen at this store. The grocery business has notoriously small margins and I would imagine that not being able to sell high profit ready-made foods on a Friday would ruin their week. I wonder what is going on over there?

Response

I did get a response from all of our Congressional representation on the note opposing the bailout bill passed the other week. Basically, they thought the bill was good enough and needed to be done. I agree with the latter, but strongly disagree with the former. The bill was, and is, a joke. Correction: Congressman Goodlatte voted against the revised bill - I misread the roll call. He send a letter explaining his position which was basically that the bill wasn't missing a few key provisions on creating an insurance pool and wasn't guaranteed to work. There are no guarantees on this sort of thing, but I agree with his basic position.

At least Paulson has seen the sense of going the capitalization route instead of merely buying bad debt. I guess with the powers granted in the legislation, he could pretty much do anything he wants. We will see if the measures work to revive confidence in the banking system and at what ultimate cost. If the TED spread is any indicator, it hasn't done much yet to calm nerves about interbank lending.

Sleep

I can't believe the Red Sox won that game last night. I love playoff baseball and usually watch most of each game, but these aren't my teams, so I decided to go to bed after the Rays 7th in which they scored 2 runs to make it 7-zip. Nobody comes back from 7-0 with 9 outs to go. I guess I missed a good game, but I did have a good night's sleep.

I was good luck for the Phillies though. I've been in Philadelphia the past two weeks and the Phils looked pretty good in their series with LA. Or, maybe it was that Furcal looked bad. Either way, all of my Philly friends are happy with it. Bully for them!

Bailout

Below is the text of an email I sent to all of our Congressional representation (Goodlatte, Warner and Webb) this morning on the proposed Wall Street Bailout. It's a bad idea to act in haste without collecting the facts. That is part of the reason we have a bicameral legislature with a seperate executive branch capped by judicial review, but I digress.

I know email is not nearly as good as actually sending them a letter but they are getting serious pressure to "Do Something Now". The basic points are lifted directly from Robert Reich, who I thought had an early and accurate view of the proposal (and it seems that his points were incoporated into the legislation floated by Dodd)

Dear [insert name here],


Don't let fear drive a hasty decision towards a poorly structured bailout
that leaves the taxpayers holding the bag. Although some kind of bailout may be
a political necessity, there are some conditions that should be attached for
Wall Stree to see a dime of taxpayer money:


1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall
Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company
shoves onto the public (possibly through warrants or some other structure). If
Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.


2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish
their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and
agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm
profitability.


3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign
contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next,
all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their
activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers.


4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure,
capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The
regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be
convened immediately. Inadequate regulation, lack of oversight and opaque
dealings got us into this mess.


5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the
terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their
homes. This is an extraordinary measure, but this is an extraordinary request.


I know you stand for fiscal responsibility. If you can't bring yourself to
work against the bailout, at least give the taxpayer fair treatment instead of
handing billions of our children's dollars to Wall Street.

Chances are, they will pass a bad bill to "Do Something Now", but I can at least feel like I tried.

Routing

I had a meeting in Alexandria, VA yesterday and used my wife's Garmin GPS to help navigate me to the hotel. It's a nice little system and works well, but the routing it took me on was very strange. By far, the most obvious route from Roanoke to Alexandria is I-81 to I-66. However, the Garmin routed I-81 to I-64 and then through the country to I-95 and then up to Alexandria. Since that seemed a little bit more interesting, I went with it.

The route features very nice bucolic scenery but there was one big problem. I had a rental car (a crappy little Kia Sportage) and I was about out of gas near Charlottesville. No problem - I'll hit the point of interest button on the Garmin and it'll find me the nearest gas station. It was only a couple of miles up but when I got there, they were out of gas. Hmm. I'm right at empty and in the middle of the country. The next closest station was a little out of my way, but I think I can make it there, so I turn off the main route and head towards the station. I'm on fumes when I pull up to this place where I was fully expecting Gomer Pyle to walk out and notice that they hand scrawled "Out" signs on two of their three pumps. Luckily, they have some left in the third and I get $20 worth (5 gallons) which is enough to get me to civilization. I guess those little hurricanes that blew through really did limit the amount of gasoline available.

Oddity

This is a strange house that I've run and ridden past in Roanoke many times. It's very neatly boarded up on the back and sides, but the front and insides are in good condition. It's got beautiful stonework with a lot of detailing.

It is located between Black Dog Salvage and a defunct trailer park and makes you realize that neighboorhoods are not forever - I bet rich people lived here 50 years ago. Of course, a lot of SW Roanoke has that effect.

Volt

GM unveiled the Volt today. It isn't a bad looking car, but certainly not as futuristic as the concept cars were. They are sticking to the story that it will be available in "late 2010". The expected price is somewhere between $30000 and $40000. If it is at the middle of that range, I'd definitely be interested. I wonder if Goldie is going to hold together that long?

More

The finding that more cyclists are actually safer than fewer concurs with my own experiences. Riding around Roanoke is scary because drivers are don't have much experience with cyclists and you just don't know what they are going to do. Even though Seattle was a much busier city with quite a bit more traffic and things to hit, drivers know what the deal is and can navigate alongside cyclists with reasonable aplomb. I guess it is just one more reason to invest in local cycling infrastructure.

Advice

For some reason, our Internet connection went down this morning. I called Cox to see what they could do for me and waded through 20 minutes of automated support (which was basically shut down and restart the cable modem) to finally get to a human being.

Josh didn't really inquire much on the problem and immediately suggested that we replace the Motorola Surfboard modem we have. It is about 8 years old, so the idea made some sense to me. On the way to the RAC, we were going to stop by the Cox service center to pick up a new one. Luckily, they have the convienent hours of 9-12 on Saturday and since we were there at 1 PM or so, we were unable to receive any service. When we got home, I tried the television and the cable box was kind of hung (it showed a screen saying the channel it was tuned to was unavailable and wouldn't respond to any commands at all). After it cleared itself up in a few minutes, the cable modem went back online and is happily working away.

Besides the size of the bill, this is the only negative experience I've had with Cox. The cable service has been very reliable and the tech support has usually been reasonable. This time, I just got lucky to avoid spending $75 I didn't have to.

Regional

I can't quite figure out the logic used to decide which NFL games are shown in the Roanoke market. The Redskins are always shown over anyone else. But why aren't the next two closest teams (Carolina and Baltimore) always shown as well? Carolina is the closest NFL team by about 60 miles and I would imagine have some following in the region (although I'm not personally a fan). Baltimore is also fairly close (although I could see Pittsburgh or Cincinnati also making some sense).
Instead of having any of those games, we had Jets at Miami and St. Louis at Philadelphia. What possible sense do either of those games make? I guess the premier of Favre for the Jets had some intrigue nationally, but the premier of Joe Flacco was just as interesting to me.

Out

I'm going to have to bow out of the this year's New York Marathon. After 3 years of trying to get in and a decent start to training, I hit a patch of plantar fasciitis that I couldn't get over. Even if I get better tomorrow, I don't think I would be able to make up for the three weeks I've been on the shelf and be properly trained for the event. No sense risking further injury when I can defer my entry until next year. Since I can't run, maybe I need to pick something else to do.

Hen

Before you ask, of course I'm voting for the Obama/Biden ticket. How many chances do you think I'm going to get to have a fellow Blue Hen in the House?

Laker

Not only is she the governor of Alaska, a hockey mom and darn good looking, but apparently she led the Lakers in 3-pointers in 1992.

Cabinets

The cabinets were installed in the kitchen today. There is still a lot of work to be done, but you can start to see what it is going to look like. The work triangle (sink-cooktop-fridge) is going to be much better than our previous horrible arrangement with the cooktop tucked away in a corner next to the sink. Plus, there is more floorspace in the food prep area than I initially thought.

We did discover a minor flaw in our kitchen layout - there isn't a good place near the sink to put a garbage can. The can is in a cabinet across the way. Not horrible, but it would be more convenient to have close at hand to the sink.

Silver

Every cloud has a silver lining. We have a very heavy rainstorm in the area today and it has saturated everything. The bad news is that we discovered a leak in the new kitchen roof. The good news is that it was found before all of the finish work was done. The guys think it is a seal around one of the vents. Hopefully, they can fix it quickly.

Exile

When you work from home, a noisy construction project is very disruptive. Yesterday while we had tile cutting and a lot of heavy machinery digging outside of my office window, I was reduced to taking conference calls in my own ersatz phone booth. Our upstairs closet outfitted with a folding chair - we still have the funky wall paper from the previous owners in there.

Otherwise, I've just been spending an inordinate amount of time at Starbucks (usually mornings) and Ukrops (which has a nice quiet upstairs cafe with WiFi). We still have at least a couple of weeks to go, so I'll probably be pretty well known by the end of this thing.

Trail

Yesterday afternoon I went for a moutain bike ride for about an hour. The weather was perfect and it was a lot of fun to get out after being sidelined with injury for a while. It's neat to be able to actually climb a (small) mountain and ride trails entirely within the city limits. I was a scofflaw since I know that bikes aren't allowed (although they aren't clearly marked) but I didn't see a soul up there on the trail - I guess everyone is out of town this week.

Mad

I think I've found a new show to watch. Since The Wire went off the air, I've not followed any particular television show. The show is Mad Men on AMC. I had seem part of one episode a few weeks ago and it seemed interesting, so I watched a couple of episodes On Demand last night and I'm hooked.

Mad Men is set in 1962 in an advertising agency in NYC and has some great characters and interesting story lines. I don't know how historically accurate it is (my guess is very), but these people break every rule we have in the 21st century work place. Everyone smokes and drinks brown liquor (all the time). I'm not a big fashion guy, but the attire is excellent as well.

I guess I know what I'll be doing on Sunday evenings now.

Redeye

I'm done with the redeye. I flew from San Francisco to Atlanta and then to Wilmington, NC earlier this month, departing SFO at 10:25 PM PT and arriving ILM 9:44 AM ET. I had some trepedation about the flight beforehand because I was assigned seat 30D on the 767 from SFO to ATL. That is essentially in the middle of a row in a sea of humanity in a small aluminum tube. More or less a death sentence for enjoyment of the flight.

The flight was completely booked and nothing I did could get me out of that seat. I tried to upgrade using (worthless) points, but got denied. I tried calling. I tried the website every 4 hours. My persistence paid off and on my last try before I rebooked to Friday (cutting into my vacation), I hit the jackpot and grabbed an exit row aisle.

The flights were smooth and everything departed and arrived on time. I even got some sleep. But I felt like death warmed over the next day. Even after a nap, I was extremely tired and my legs were killing me. If I can't handle a flight in the best seat in the house outside of first, then I shouldn't be doing it. So, no more redeye for me.

Crowd

When I left the house this morning at 8 AM, there were a large assortment of workers in there. We had a crew of electricians working in the kitchen. We had a crew of roofers finishing up the last corner of the standing seam roof. We had a large crew from the floor finishers hustling us out the door (from the original Lee's Floors, not to be confused with the raft of imitation Lee's Floors in the greater Roanoke area). Poor Ellie was very confused about all the activity and our kind neighboors let me put her in their yard. Jack didn't seem too happy about being awakened early and thrown out of his comfortable bed (actually a sleeping bag on the floor at this point, but he still looked grumpy). All I can say is that it was much quieter at the Roanoke Airport (which has some kind of construction project of its own going on).

Ick

I've got a summer cold. Right now, it is a seriously sore throat and some slight pain in my sinuses. I can't swallow without feeling like I'm choking down a quantity of hot coal dust. Not having a kitchen doesn't help since I can't make myself hot beverages to soothe the beast. Ugh.

dog

This fall, we are contemplating adding another dog to the family. A puppy has been firmly ruled out by the wife and I concur (puppies are cute but a whole lot of work). So, it seems like a good thing to do is try to find a rescue dog. The preference would be for an Australian Shepherd, less than 5 years old, that is housetrained and used to other dogs and kids and is located within a day of driving of Roanoke. The Australian Shepherd Rescue Page has a number of listings, but it might take some time to match all of our criteria.

Five

While the wife was off doing something mature, I had a great day imitating a four (almost five) year-old with a drivers license and a credit card. We started the day by getting up late and wrestling for a while. Then we took the dog on a walk and hunted down bad guys in the neighborhood. Afterwards, we went to McDonald's for lunch and got a cool Star Wars toy that led right into the main event - an early showing of Clone Wars.

Although it has been throughly dissed by most of the movie reviews out there, I had a good time. OK, the plot was pretty transparent and the animation wasn't that impressive, but there were some pretty cool battle scenes (most of the movie). Maybe it is something best seen with a kid. My son had a great time and exclaimed "That was the best movie I've ever seen!" when we got to the parking lot.

Even after that, I did one more kid activity (I fixed a bike). Then it was on to yard work and I was a 30something once again. Which reminds me, it's back to work tomorrow.

Slug

The marathon training took a hit over the past couple of weeks due to a combination of injury and travel (i.e. laziness). I think I have a mild case of plantar fasciitis. The pain is more in the arch of my foot than the heel, but it seems to match up in other respects. I have had a lot of stiffness in my legs during and after running, so I'm going to try to treat it with some better stretching, acetiminaphen and some ice. Wearing flip-flops for the past week certainly didn't help. If it doesn't respond, I'll make a appointment with the doctor.

The best thing about having a marathon on the horizon is that it forces you to train smart - you want to be in good shape, but it is more important to be pain free. 26.2 on a bad wheel is no fun at all.

Back

We just returned to Roanoke from Figure 8 Island on Friday. The home renovation project is still going and now we have a construction zone bisecting the house where the kitchen used to be. This means we have to walk outside to get to the family room since the area is sealed up (although there is still dust everywhere). After being in the ultra relaxed environment of the beach for a week, this is a nice shock.

Today, they are in there banging around and sanding the hardwood floor in the bedroom. We did the ecologically sensitive thing and used the hardwood from the kitchen floor (which will be replaced by tile) in the bedroom. We should know the results tomorrow.

Sidewalk

One of the reasons I chose to live in South Roanoke were the presence of sidewalks and mature trees. To me, both of these items are essential to a livable neighborhood. Sidewalks, so that the area can be experienced on a human scale, and trees because they are beautiful and provide shade and a place for squirrels to live (along with some problems).

One thing that would be an excellent addition would be a sidewalk extended up Franklin Road to Avenham and proper crosswalks at Franklin and Wonju. The sidewalk would just need to be extended maybe 200 or 300 yards south on Franklin and then around the bend to the sidewalk along Avenham.

I'm surprised that they didn't build a crosswalk at Franlkin and Wonju when they redid the intersection there to allow for two left turn lanes. I thought they were going to build that in and they did put in one crossing, but didn't finish the job. This is a gnarly intersection to cross on foot because it isn't square. Do they think people wouldn't want to walk to the store? They certainly won't if they have to battle their way across traffic.

Trees along Franklin would be nice as well, but I'll settle for just being able to walk safely to the store.

Timeless

I can't believe that this article was written 36 years ago. If you updated a few of the concepts (carbon, terrorists, hybrids) and the numbers, you would have an article that could be published in The Atlantic next month.

Slower

I drove to Maryland this past weekend with the kids. As an experiment, I decided to see how much better gas mileage the Silver Surfer would get if I drove at the speed limit for the entire trip. It is about a 250 mile drive each way with about half of it on interstates and half on highways plus a little bit of stop and go driving while we were there. The mileage computer (optimistically?) read 23.8 MPG at the end of the trip. This compares to about 20 MPG on other trips where I don't really pay attention to speed (read: drive 5-10 MPH over the limit along with most of the traffic).

According to the calculator here, driving 65 MPH vs. 75 MPH saved me about $10 and took an extra half hour each way. I saved about $20 driving at the speed limit at the expense of an extra hour on the road. Whether it is worth it or not depends on what else you would be doing with that time and how much you like (hate) being in the car.

Mobile

We had the first concerted effort by our daughter to lobby for a mobile phone this past weekend. She was with her teen cousin who, like many teens, is constantly texting. Plus, some of her friends have recently acquired mobile phones. She's eight.

Now, if we were in Norway, I could see it - she might get caught in a snowdrift or attacked by a rougue reindeer. But, in Roanoke, I don't think so.

Railroad

I'm all for getting rail service to Roanoke. If they could get the rail transit time to DC and Richmond down to close to the driving time (within 25%) and the cost was reasonable (the IRS rate for driving is $0.585 per mile), I think they would get a lot of traffic both business and leisure.

Plus, isn't Roanoke supposed to be a railroad town?

Inside

We now have two gaping holes in the back of the house. It's been a noisy and dusty process and this is one week that I wish I worked in an office, but we are making good progress. As you can see from the photos, we are weather proof and have a lot of the plumbing and electrical roughed in.

The only real issue we've run into is that the door manufacturer built 5' doors when 6' doors were specified. It was their mistake but it would have taken another 3-4 weeks to get the proper doors delivered, so we took their offer to sell the doors at cost. Another foot of door would have been nice, but the time lag would have been a real pain to coordinate across all of the various activities. Also, it puts us almost $1000 ahead on the budget.

#8

Columbia, MD where I grew up, was ranked #8 in America's Best Places To Live. The pros were the strong economy and amenities. The con listed was traffic. It was a good place to be as a kid - lots of parks and bike paths, good schools, a big Mall. We are not planning on leaving Roanoke anytime soon, but Columbia would be on my short-list if things don't work out.

Fair

We had an very American Sunday evening last night. A friend invited us to go to a Salem Avalanche game. The Avs lost to the Nats 5-3, but it was one of the most action packed games I've seen in a while. The game featured a huge collision on a play at the plate which resulted in the catcher hobbling off the field (the runner was safe), at least two batters getting beaned in the noggin, a bunch of errors and a home run. Who says baseball is boring? Plus, we got to sit in one of the luxury boxes up on the mezzanine and the kids got to run the bases after the game was over.

Oh, but there was much more. The Salem Fair happened to be going on right across the street at the same time. We saw the Bearded Lady, the Incredible Tatooed Man and the Creature That Ate Sheboygan and that was just the crowd. All of the kids got to go on a ride ($5 per ride?) and they had a blast. Quite entertaining.

Free

While pulling in the recycling bin the other day, I spied a Natty Light can in the grass near the side of the street. Darn kids. I picked it up to throw it in the bin and noted that it was full. Free beer! Natural Light is not exactly a gourmet beer, but I don't mind it in the summer because basically it is hop-flavored water. I picked it up, took it inside, washed it off and put it in the mini-fridge (college!) A few hours later, it was cold and, boy, was it tasty.

My wife was appalled that I would drink a beer that I found on the curb, but I don't see the problem at all. It is in a can so I'm not going to get some kind of contamination (especially if poured in a glass). Anytime someone wants to throw full beer cans on my lawn, please feel free. I especially wouldn't mind Amstel or something similar.

Mini

Now that the kitchen remodel is picking up some steam, all of the old appliances are failing. A couple of weeks ago, the kitchen faucet started dripping like crazy. The the garbage disposal started to die. A couple of days ago, the refrigerator gave up the ghost.

Since a repair call for a refrigerator with an expected life of a month is not going to happen, we have gone back to our college days and bought a mini-fridge. This monster features enough space inside for a six pack of beer and a quart of milk. Plus, we moved some of the magnetic crap from big fridge so we hardly miss it. What else do you need?

21

I don't know whether to be relieved or distressed that this poll indicates that 21% of Americans are insane. When you sign mortgage papers, it is pretty clear how much you are going to have to pay back (all of it, plus interest) and what the consequences are if you don't. If you can't afford it, don't sign the papers. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.

Bailing people out of this creates a nasty moral hazard problem and penalizes all of us that play by the rules. If there were frauds perpetrated (and there were), take 1/1000 of the money allocated in the Senate bill and hire enough prosecutors to charge everyone involved under the appropriate statues (mail fraud for one if any documents were sent by USPS).

Mall

The potential bankruptcy of Steve & Barry's is bad news for Tanglewood Mall. It seemed like they were just getting that mall off the carpet when the economy slid out from under them.

Train

I just started my training for the NYC Marathon. I'm following the First To Finish plan again which has worked well for me in the past. I'm keeping my plan online so I can see and update it from wherever I happen to be.

Energetic

The Economist has an excellent survey on the future of energy in their 21 June issue. As usual with their surveys, the writing and research are solid.

It won't be easy to move away from fossil fuels, but this survey gave me hope that it is possible to significantly reduce consumption of oil in the next 20 years. It happened the last time there was a tripling of the oil price, so it stands to reason that a similar transition to a less oil intensive economy and society is probably on its way. This time, it will be more permanent.

Nudge

The book of the week was Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The book is about helping people make better decisions by shaping the way choices are presented. These nudges can do a lot of good things among them increased rates of organ donation, improved diet and provide for a better retirement.

The principles of "choice architecture" are based on the same foundation as behavioral economics in general. In this view, people act human rather than as the automatons with perfect information and foresight presumed by simple economic theory. These principles are well explained in the part one which describe the way people tend to interpret data and make decisions. If you don't know much about behavioural economics, this is as good a short introduction as you will find.

There are many interesting examples throughout the book where they bring the power of choice architecture to bear. For example, in cases where the true cost is difficult for consumers to understand (e.g. credit cards, mobile phones), Thaler and Sunstein propose a disclosure regulation called RECAP for Record, Evaluate and Compare Alternative Prices. Mobile phone companies would be free to charge as much as they want. However, they would have to provide customers and potential customers with a clear and unambiguous presentation of exactly how much they would pay for each service. In this way, consumers could compare the costs of complex products in a way that would be of the most use for them.

The authors justify nudging people into making the right choices by what they call "libertarian paternalism". This idea holds that as long as people truly have a choice, structuring the choices so they are optimal for the individual and society as a whole is a good thing. The potential for conflicts of interest when structuring choice architecture is examined as a potential liability. Thaler and Sunstein believe that it would be relatively simple to control through the use of the publicity principle, where a policy should not be made unless it can be publicly defended.

As an econogeek, I found Nudge to be an enjoyable read. Even the less geeky would find the intuitive ideas compelling. Many of the policy suggestions are difficult to argue against and we may very well see some more of them happen.

Bike

We bought our daughter her first "real" bike last weekend. It's a black and red Giant Boulder. We got the smallest frame size available and it seems to fit her OK. The standover is a touch too but the top tube length seems right. As a low-end bike, it is a heavy beast and we are working on getting her up the hills in the neighborhood. It's tough at first, but she's getting it.

Creepy

The stock market has been quite creepy in the first half of 2008 with the S&P 500 down almost 10%. I don't even want to look at the quarterly results from our IRA and 401k plans.

I guess I will look on the bright side. I'm not selling stocks at this point in my life, I'm buying them. If the whole point is to buy low and sell high, I'm at least doing the first part right.

Windmill

I stumbled across the Windspire personal windmill on the web. I don't think we have enough quite enough wind or space in our backyard to make this work and it isn't cost effective, but it would make you the greenest person on the block.

Using the numbers from the proposed rate increase of 23.9% for Appalachian Power (Yes, Virginia, there is another rate increase on the way), a customer who uses 1000 kWH per month would pay about $0.088 cents per kWH. Assuming you could generate and use the specified 2000 kWH per year, you would save $176 per year for a payback period of 28 years.

Financially, you would do better with insulation but that isn't nearly as fun as a 30 foot tall windmill in your backyard (or your front if you really want to show off your green cred).

Roof

Another few days and we have half a roof on. A few more days and we should have a complete roof. After that, the windows and doors come in and then the real fun starts: we start to bash through the external walls.

Refined

I got an email from our Representative yesterday touting the fact that the House Republicans have put forth H.R. 3089, The No More Excuses Energy Act. Among other things, the bill would "allow the issuance of tax exempt facility bonds for the financing of domestic use oil refinery facilities." Since this amounts to a subsidy for constructing oil refineries in the US, it is probably at least worth considering if this would have any downward effect on the price of gasoline.

As shown in the chart to the right, there isn't much correlation (coefficient of correlation is 0.05) between the level of refinery utilization and the price of gasoline, at least for the three years of data I could lay my hands on at the EIA.

Another data point is the current profitability of companies that refine oil. Since the price of gasoline is high, they must be making a mint, right? Wrong. Demand for distillates is down as Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April 2008 than in April 2007 earlier, according the Department of Transportation. Since the primary profit driver for a refining company is being able refine as many barrels of oil as possible, the reduced demand is killing them.

Although this analysis is full of holes (what about imported distillates? etc.), it does indicate that the cause of high prices at the pump now is probably not due to a shortage of refining capacity. If I can figure this out with 15 minutes of work, why is the US Congress still trying to subsidize refining? Could it be lobbying influence? Nah.

6 Cents

Almost unbelievably in this time of hysteria surrounding gasoline prices, the Virginia Senate passed a bill to raise gas taxes by $0.06. That is 1.5% of the retail price of gasoline right now.

According to the API (pdf), the surrounding states all have higher tax rates currently and this increase would bring us into line with them and still well below the national average of $0.494. Considering the funding shortfall in Virgina's transportation budget, this seems like a small price to pay. I'd rather pay the money to VDOT than Saudi but I'm sure politics will rule and we will do without new roads instead of forcing politicians to go on the record favoring a tax increase that is probably in our long term interest, no matter how small.

Frame

A couple more weeks and we have almost complete framing. Everything looks good and I like the way it is turning out. It makes the house look huge, even though we aren't adding that many square feet. We should be under roof next week and start getting the windows and doors in.

The next thing is to pick out a tub for the bathroom and other plumbing fixtures.

Shrinkage

There is some consternation out and about on how food and beverage manufacturers are trying to sneak one past the American consumer by reducing the sizes of their packages (and presumably charging the same price). While I'm not too happy about getting less ice cream, maybe this is a good thing? The last thing Americans need to be doing is eating super-sized vats of Country Crock.

I recently read that Australians are fatter than we are (good on ya, Aussie!) Maybe the shrinkage at the grocery store will help this trend continue.

Letters

I stumbled across FontStruct the other week but didn't have a chance to take a look at it until recently. If you ever wanted to make your own font, you now have no excuses. I hope to have a chance to make a few of my own and post them out there.

Numbers

I stumbled across this report (pdf) about the Roanoke region recently. It isn't thrilling reading, but if you are curious about the demographic and economic data about the area, it is worth a quick glance.

Population of Roanoke City in 2007: 90,902
Decline since 2000: -1.5%
Roanoke City median household income 2005: $33,501
VA median household income 2005: $54,207
Roanoke City with at least Bachelor's degree: 18.74%
VA with at least Bachelor's degree: 29.46%

The fact that the ratios between the income numbers and the Bachelor's degree numbers are just about proportional is telling. We don't need no education.

Hiatus

I've been crushingly busy with work the past couple of weeks and we've been in our typical early summer busy mode which limits my extra energy for writing anything on this weblog. Just to keep it from gaining cobwebs, I'm writing this quick post.

Part of that early summer busy mode was the Bath County Triathlon. The race was a lot of fun. We did it as a family team with my wife swimming, me cycling and my daughter running and finished in a respectable time. The weather was absolutely perfect and we had fun at a friends post-race party at the family farm in the beautiful countryside. The only downer was that a friend came down from NYC to do the race and had to scratch due to a rib injury.

Floor

After another few days, we have a floor and some of the framing of the interior walls is starting. We need to start picking the finish items soon (tile, bathroom fixtures, etc.)

The past two weekends, the people working on the project have put in at least a few hours on Saturday morning. I don't exactly need to hear it six days a week, but I'll trade a few quiet Saturday mornings for a project completion before the kids go back to school.

Uneventful

I took a business trip to Peoria, IL this past week and it was absolutely uneventful. Delta was on time both ways and the weather was cooperative. Pleasant, even. A very nice contrast to my last trip there.

The only mild surprise was how crowded the flights (all four were booked solid) and the Atlanta airport were. With all the recession talk and airlines cutting back like mad, I half-expected it to be a ghost town.

Walls

Another week and we have the beginnings of a wall. The project passed inspection on Monday, so it should be smooth sailing for the rest of the framing. My thoughtful wife sent me this picture today of the latest progress and it looks good. I missed all the fun of having the power turned off to move the circuit over to the left hand side of the house.

We did our first (and hopefully last) change order this past weekend to screen in the new porch instead of leaving it open. It should be really nice during the outdoor season. Last weekend, we went to a party hosted by some friends who have recently added on a screened-in porch and it was a very nice space. I'm looking forward to it and the price wasn't all that bad (I'll just have to drive Goldie, our 1999 Subaru wagon, for another year or two).

Wood

Here is the progress to date on the home project. They have started to frame in the floors over the crawl space. To do that, they had to relocate the downstairs heat pump unit. After the move, the system works fine. So, that is good (especially since it is hot right now).

They have been pulling out some of the bricks to reuse them, thus the gaping holes in the exterior brick facing. This is not a quiet process. It makes the same sort of sound as cavity drilling at the dentist. I spent a lot of time working at Starbucks and Mill Mountain Coffee this week.