Geek On The Mountain

The weekend wasn’t as productive as I had perhaps hoped (surely not so much as Milenka had hoped, naturally), but it wasn’t too bad. I was able to get quite a few minor items done on Sunday. I didn’t get a whole lot done on Monday as we went over to one of Milenka’s friend’s house for a BBQ. We ended up getting ice cream and doing various other things as well, and by the time we got home it was about 11:00. This left me a little time to do some cleaning.

I did end up making the Rice Krispies Treats as well. Although it is indeed really simple, it is a bit of a pain trying to stir everything together at the end. I mostly managed to get it mixed properly. I should have pre-measured out the cereal and then dumped it into the pot slowly while I stirred. As was, I measured cup by cup (I needed 6) straight out of the box. On the all and all, this gave the marshmallow too much time to cool I think, which just made it tougher to mix.

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I saw in the paper the other day (and just now found an article online) that there will no longer be a 3% tax on long distance calls. Apparently there’ve been something like 5 different lawsuits that have ruled the tax as being illegal, and the Treasury Department finally decided to do away with it for real.

More money in my bank account is always nice, but the really interesting thing here is that the tax was originally established to help fund the Spanish American War in 1898. At the time, it was actually a tax on the rich since the telephone was a luxury item. It was renewed multiple times to help pay for other wars, but still, it does seem a bit dated… Also, is long distance really a relevant term any more? The importance of distinguishing between “local” and “long distance” calls is rapidly diminishing.

As an added bonus, you can actually claim what you paid going all the way back to 2003 on next year’s taxes. But if you’re like many people and you have a hard time just finding last month’s phone bill, it may be a bit difficult. I heard there is talk of some sort of standard deduction, however.

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I went into work quite early yesterday, so I actually got out at 5:00. While it seemed like a nice idea to be leaving when it was still light out, this unfortunately meant that it was also about 85 degrees as well. At least it’s not too humid just yet.

Milenka and I went out and and did a little shopping. Among a few other things we needed, we decided to get another fan. We’re using out air, but fans still aren’t bad to have around. We weren’t looking for anything fancy, so the $13 model was perfect. We were at K-Mart when we got it (mostly due to it’s relative location to where we were at the time… I’m not a huge fan of the place and I’m not sure how the place stays open as there’s hardly anyone ever there.), and when I checked out, the cashier asked me if I wanted a one year replacement plan on it. I just laughed. I should have asked how much it was, because now I’m curious. But it really is funny. If it breaks it breaks. It’s cheap, big deal. On top of that, they probably have a 90 day return policy, so if it breaks in the next three months then I can just bring it back anyways. If it breaks much after that, the hot weather will be gone already.

After the shopping, we came home and mostly just finished watching season one of Veronica Mars. We’ve been watching it for a couple of weeks now on DVD. I’d only seen a few episodes here and there, whereas Milenka has probably seen them all at least twice. TiVo is recording the second season for us as re-airs, so we can start watching that as well. According to her though, it kind of sucks. But then, all she cares about are the relationships, so I guess we’ll see.

Today I plan on doing a lot of stuff around the house. I’ll also have to find some way to entertain Milenka, but I’m sure I’ll find something. She also managed to pick up enough food for us to BBQ multiple times, so that’ll be dinner today and tomorrow. But then, with only the two of us, one of which eats half of what most people eat, it doesn’t take much. I’m going to have a go with making Rice Krispies Treats as well. I’ve never done it before, but from what I’ve heard/seen, it’s rather hard to stir the marshmallows. Milenka’s been buying the pre-made ones, but she wants me to make some. I’m not exactly sure what the logic is there though. I assume it’s rather cheaper to make your own, but I’m sure they won’t be quite right either. I like to cook anyways though..

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I haven’t done much lately. Not much of anything even. But then, that seems like my life’s story sometimes. I’ve managed to do a little though…

Around here specifically, I’ve been playing with (free) scripts to track AdSense clicks so I can see what exactly people tend to click on. Not that it’s terribly important just now, but I feel like I just have to know… I’ve had rather limited success thus far. But then, I haven’t spent a great deal of time on it either. Still, I’ve found something that works great for html links, but not so much with JavaScript (which AdSense uses). I do think I’ve stumbled upon something that will work though. More on all that later when it works though.

I managed to end up working today, which is fine with me as I’ll still end up with a two day weekend. I’m not exactly sure how productive those two days will be, but I guess we’ll see. I don’t have any specific plans, though I have a few ideas of things to do around the house. On the up (or maybe down) side, the weather is very summer like. It’s going to be between 80 and 90 all weekend. I’d prefer it stay around 70 myself, but oh well. I guess the air’s going on. This is quite the contrast between last weekend, when we still had our heat on since it we had highs of about 50. It’s supposed to stay around 80 for the next week as well, after which I’m sure it will snow one night.

Bea brought up some of the baby items (most clothes) that we had stored at her house the other day. By some, I mean that there were 9 of those big 18 gallon plastic totes. They were all more or less full. We’ve built up a lot of stuff over the years. At least Milenka has good taste though. We were going through some of the clothes last night and most of the items are exceedingly cute. She does have some items with nasty looking horizontal stripes that look like something of a throwback to the 70’s though. But most of the stuff is good. Some of the baby socks are rather small. They look just about right for my thumb, in fact.

I also had a brief stint of considering using Opera over Firefox in the last week. It pretty much ended up with my deciding that there was no particular advantage in it. There’s more to it than that, though it’s more than I feel like writing just now. I still say Opera is a better choice to recommend to your average user though. But how can I live without forecast fox?

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Milenka has been a tad paranoid lately. She’s constantly worrying about weather or not the babies are dead. I certainly think she has reason to be concerned, however it’s generally so speaking something that’s rather hard to prove or disprove at any given time.

Someone was nice enough (extremely nice enough) to rent a “Doppler” for us. Many thanks to her. I use just the word doppler because this is what Milenka calls it…it’s a small device that falls under the category of ultrasound machines. I believe it pretty much works on the same principal as the machine that produces actual images, but what you get out of this thing are sounds. Specifically, it’s able to detect blood flow, so you can actually hear a heartbeat.

We’ve had it for a few days now and I think we’ve finally gotten some good results out of it. The first day we had it, we heard nothing. This caused much stress with Milenka. Although it’s possible that we’re still a little early to hear a whole lot, our actual problem seems to have been that we weren’t looking quite low enough. The next day, we got an actual heartbeat. But we could only hear one. Milenka was also stressed from this. Finally, just a little while ago, we got two different heartbeats in two different areas, so we’re getting both of them now. This made her feel better. Hopefully it stays that way for a while…

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