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2009 Flood
So you might have saw on the news that Fargo is flooding. Everybody around here is a little worried. The river is currently at 26.2 ft. Flood stage is 18. They are predicting it could reach 40. The record is 40.1 set back in 1897. Back in 1997 when Grand Forks got it bad, it got up to 39.6 here. I wasn’t living in Fargo at that time, so this is my first real major flood.
Our house is in the 500 year flood plain, but according to the maps, we should be safe at 41 and 42 ft. Our man problem would be if the lift stations can’t keep up and the sewer backs up into our basement. The closest lift station to our house is currently pumping water onto the street. That makes me a little worried. I drove around town trying to find plugs for our drains, and every place was sold out. I ran into a grocery store, and they were out of bottled water. Town is just nuts with everybody buying flood supplies and police cars escorting sand bag trucks. Schools are closed so the kids can go help fill sand bags. I would help, but I have to work tonight. I am hoping I can find some drain plugs at work tonight. I don’t know what the chances of our sewer back up is, but I would rather be safe than sorry.
The river is suppose to crest by Thursday or Friday. I will be glad when it starts going down. Fears of what happened to Grand Forks are not good. Floods are no fun.
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Money Pet Peeves
One of my biggest pet peeves is people that don’t live within their means. I see it al the time on Twitter. People that can barely afford rent, and then they are spending $2000 on a MacBook Air. I just don’t get it. To me having a nice chunk of money in savings is important. It’s just nice knowing we would be fine for a while financially if something bad should happen.
I also hate when people spend money stupidly. Smoking is gross and bad for you, but mostly it’s expensive. I was talking with the wife the other day and we calculated that her parents probably spend $600-$800 on cigarettes a month. That is crazy. Her parents live in a run down trailer, they barely have a pot to piss in. Neither of them have good paying jobs, but they should be doing better than they are. They have no car or house payment, and no kids at home. I don’t know what kind of credit card debt they have, but I do know smoking and weekly trips to the casino can’t be helping.
Thankfully her parents are happy. They would drop everything in a second to help out one of their kids. They don’t care about material possessions. I often think I care too much about my material possessions. I often feel guilty that I am able to live in a nice house, have nice things, and more toys than any person really needs. I guess that’s the benefit of always being responsible, getting an education so I could get a good job, and not doing stupid things with my money.
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Where is the Good Music
Maybe I am just getting old or something, but music lately has really sucked. I haven’t really found anything good lately. The Forever the Sickest Kids album was pretty good. I like the new Sing it Loud, Jack’s Mannequin, and Punchline albums, but I haven’t found anything super amazing is quite some time.
The one amazing album that I have discover the past year has been Amanda Palmer’s Who Killed Amanda Palmer. For some strange reason I didn’t check it out right when it came out. I wasn’t a huge Dresden Dolls fan, so I didn’t think I would care for her much. Boy was I wrong. I can’t get enough of Amanda Palmer and am starting to get into the Dresden Dolls now.
The cool thing about Amanda is that she blogs regularly, is on twitter @amandapalmer, and even uses TwitPic from time to time. Last week she even showed us her cool undies. She had a blog post a couple weeks ago with a bunch of her videos in it. So go and watch them and enjoy the greatness that is Amanda Palmer.
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Happy π Day
Today is the day we celebrate the the Greek letter that is used as the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Or in other words π.
And another cool coincidence is that it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
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Is It Spring Yet?
So we are in the middle of a pretty big blizzard. Damn near everything in town is closed. All non-essential employees were sent home from work. Sadly, I am an essential employee. I didn’t get to go home early. When it was time to go home, my little two-wheel-drive truck wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get a ride home. When I got home the snow was waist deep on our sidewalk, and drifts in our back yards are as high as the fence. I would takes some pictures, but is still pretty nasty out. Maybe tomorrow.
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Obama & Stem Cell Research
It is so great to finally have a President that isn’t so anti-science in office. It was great to hear Obama lift the ban on stem cell research. Why anyone would want to ban any kind of research boggles my mind. There is so much we don’t know yet. Scientists are discovering new stuff everyday. Why would you want to prevent that? Knowledge and learning can never be a bad thing.
Obama gave a great speech before signing the executive order to lift the ban. He showed his commitment to science, which is a really cool thing. You can see a video of it here. It also personally cool seeing a fellow lefty as President, but I still find it weird using all the different pens.
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My New Eee PC
So I have wanted a netbook for some time now. I had $70 in Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought I would put them towards a netbook. I pretty much had three options at our Best Buy, the Dell Mini 9, the Asus Eee PC 900, or the HP Mini 1000. Of those three I like the HP the best, but I hate the track pad button placement. The Asus and Dell’s keyboards were really cramped. What I really wanted was the Asus Eee PC 1000H, but they didn’t have it. Or more accurately, they didn’t have one on display. I went online and ordered my Asus Eee PC 1000H and was able to pick in up in store minutes later.I really like this Eee PC. The keyboard is a little cramped, but not nearly as bad as the 900 they had on display at Best Buy. It only took minutes to get use to. My only real complaint about the keyboard is that I wish the bumps on the F and J keys were a little bigger. Sometimes my fingers slip of the home row and I don’t notice it.
With the smaller screen, and lower power, I wouldn’t want this to be my main computer. It wouldn’t be good at photo or video editing, but that’s not really the point and not the reason I bought it. It’s a great little internet machine. I took it to bed last night, and thought it was much easier to use than my MacBook. It’s nice and small and doesn’t generate nearly as much heat.
It came with Windows XP on it. It’s been a long time since I have used XP. XP runs great on it, but I am considering installing either Windows 7 or Ubuntu on it. I hear people have installed OS X on these things, but that seams more of a hassle than it’s worth.
I love gadgets, but I don’t like spending money on things I don’t use. It took me a while to get my first iPod because I wasn’t sure how much I would use it, and I ended up using it constantly. I am not sure how much I am going to use my Eee PC, but it is cheaper than an iPod, so I am sure I will get my money out of it.
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I See Naked People
So I always have this reoccurring dream. It’s about this website that has naked pictures of everybody on it. It’s kind of like Facebook, but everybody is naked. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. If I know you, chances are I found you on the site. There is just something sexy about seeing someone naked, even if they don’t look good naked.
Well, today I ran across the site that was in my dreams. Except of course the fact that it doesn’t have everybody on it. It has only 24 people on it, but still a cool site. I wouldn’t call it a porn site, but it has nudity, so it’s NSFW.
Oh, one more thing, what ever happen to pubic hair? Doesn’t anybody have it anymore?
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Happy Square Root Day
Today is Square Root Day. Square Root Day is a rare day that occurs when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year as in, √9=3, or 3²=9, or 3×3=9. Square Root Days only happen nine times a century. The last one was February 2, 2004, and the next is April 4, 2016.
I hear you are suppose to celebrate by eating root vegetables cut into squares.
There is another geeky math holiday coming next Saturday. March 14th is a math holiday that happens every year. It’s Pi day, 3-14 or 3.14.
Then for even more math geekiness I ran across this awesomely funny t-shirt. I want it.
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Palindromes
I love running across palindromes, but I can never remember them. In case you don’t know, a palindrome is a word or phrase that can be read the same forwards and backwards. I always thought the name palindrome should be a palindrome, but it’s not. The two that I always remember are “race car” and “race fast, safe car”. Chris Pirillo recently blogged about his favorite palindrome and asked for everybody’s favorites. Some of them are pretty amazing, but I think Weird Al has some of the best I have ever heard in this video.
Then there is the 224 word palindrome written by Demetri Martin (who is one funny comedian I might add) titled “Dammit I’m Mad“. Amazing stuff.