You can get there from here.

Just did the second in a series of weekly weight circuits meant to make me fast. Holy crappola. It's been a couple of years since I did them last and forgot how much it hurt. It's one thing to remember dragging my feet as I walk out of the weight room. It's another to try and pick them up one at the time until I reach the door.

I'm rowing more forcefully this year. Not quite as fast just yet, but I haven't gone above 28 ticks either.

May has slid by too quickly.

I think the authors of this article are either out of touch with reality or working for computer manufacturers.

http://tinyurl.com/4w98ya

I wouldn't entrust a laptop to a kindergartner no matter how much it weighed. The kid can't read or write, but you're giving them a multipurpose general computing device? Teach reading and writing with paper and pencil first. Then when they have the motor dexterity to use a pencil, introduce them to the keyboard.

When the time comes to put a computer in a kid's backpack, here's how I see it working. Assignments in the early elementary school grades are very targeted, with specific rules and expectations. Why shouldn't the kid's computer be the same way? They can't take their paper math assignment and use it to play with Pokemon without some legitimate creativity. I envision an elementary school kid's laptop with a small screen, small keyboard, enough flash memory to store an assignment with video, meager general purpose computing power, and GPU for powering video. The teacher would load the day's assignment into the flash (no operating system = big savings!) via wi-fi, and the computer simply wouldn't have anything else on it. (Again, no operating system. Just the assignment.) Sturdy case material, no moving parts, low-power everything. You could absolutely mass-produce that for $100.

But first, pay me for my $0.02.

Massachusetts' favorite forms of taxation:

• Pay-as-you-go (I-90/Mass Pike)
• Pay again (Exit 18/Mass Pike)
  
• Pay-before-you-go (gas tax)
• Pay when you get there (Mass. taxes ALL your income, even if it's earned somewhere else)
• Pay when you buy it (sales tax)
  
• Pay if you're eligible for state health insurance but don't take it.
• More working their way through the legislature as fast as the pipeline can carry them.

\begin{rant} I'm pretty sure I don't get to partake in anything I'm paying for. I'm all for alternative forms of energy, but paying $2.5 million for the Deer Island wind turbines that will save $100,000 sounds pretty useless to me. If they last 25 years and require no major maintenance, their rate of return is ZERO. If they make it 30, they earn 0.67% per year, without benefit of compounding. At 50 years, that goes up to 2% return, and at 100 years, 3%. Even if they last until the end of time without rebuilding, they will never see a 4% annualized return on their investment. Compare to a 30-year bond, which earns similar rates, but compounds. A 3% bond would beat the turbine by a factor of six over 100 years, and the bond isn't subject to New England weather. Environmentally, I'm presently imagining the petroleum consumption required to build these things.

Am I missing something, or do other people have problems making governmental finances add up to the bottom line? \end{rant}

Then I had to laugh at the places in the instructions that instruct you to copy the number from your IRS form to the state form. Sounds a lot like, "Well just give me whatever you gave Uncle Sam and we'll call it square, alright?"

I'm not sure how anybody gets a-head in this state. I'm ready to lose mine. Maybe that means I should go back to the lab and work some more.

I really like radio shows. Real ones. With good content and perhaps some good music. Two come to mind from today: Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and From the Top, a show featuring mind-bogglingly good young classical musicians. 11-year olds who can play Mozart are disgusting.

Since I only have a radio in my car now, I do quite a bit of my listening via live Internet streams or podcast. Laptop + wi-fi + streaming radio = very complicated technological solution to something you can do with an ordinary radio. Except doing it this way means I can still listen to KQED in San Francisco wirelessly even though I haven't lived there for several years. Yay, technology.

An off-topic reply to this

I do like Obama, but I think the front runners of the Democratic party (and our current administration) haven't a clue about long term [fiscal] responsibility. McCain understands the way the bureaucratic cogs in Washington work and has a very good sense of short term vs. long term effects. In other words, what might be a great idea for 4 years (free health care, woohoo!) might be a very poor one in 40 years when it's time to pay for it or else. He thinks like a Republican, even if parts of his party don't like him.

From top to bottom: a bunch of streetcars in various poses (Note the green car at Toulouse Street. This picture will soon become rare if not impossible.), Cafe du Monde, Preservation Hall.

I have developed a little personal tradition of rowing on Easter morning. This year's early Easter has made me reconsider those plans. For one thing, there is still ice in the south end of the lake, which isn't a huge deal because I can easily stay north of it. It will be 20 degrees at dawn though, and that's a little chilly for the fingers. On the upside, it won't be windy.

Looking to get the boat out for the first time this year tomorrow afternoon when it's 40 degrees and manageable. We'll see how that goes. I can solve cold fingers if I really want to. I certainly don't plan spending a lot of time out there.

A