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Learning from "The da Vinci of Data" If you recognize this poster, you probably understand why I'm excited to be attending Edward Tufte's Presenting Data and Information course next week.  Think he would be impressed with my chart of optometrists in Stockton?
posted by Brad at 11/30/2005 06:37:00 PM | permalink |
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Libraries are Cool Every time I go to the library, I love it a little bit more. I was especially impressed by the selection (and current-ness?) of their travel books. I'm currently flipping through Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Seattle and Portland, and have the "legit" Frommer waiting in the wings. I was in a hurry, but couldn't help but grab a few books from the "New Releases" section...
posted by Brad at 11/29/2005 10:36:00 PM | permalink |
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Taxes, Fees, Taxes, and More Fees Just booked our flight to Puerto Vallarta - I thought $268 was a good price, until I saw the fees they tacked on... are ya kidding me? $14.10 Tax: US International Arrival $14.10 Tax: US International Departure $26.23 Tax: Mexico International Airport Departure $19.39 Tax: Mexico Tourism $7.00 Fee: US Immigration $5.00 Fee: US Animal & Plant Health Inspection Svc. $13.50 Fee: US Passenger Facility Charge $7.50 September 11 Security Fee
posted by Brad at 11/29/2005 12:17:00 AM | permalink |
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Sudoku is Fun I just finished my first Sudoku Puzzle, have you ever heard of them? Pretty fun if you like numbers/logic.
posted by Brad at 11/28/2005 01:27:00 AM | permalink |
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Dirt Cheap Wall Street Journal? I need another piece of reading material about as much as I need a hole in my head, but this seems almost too good to be true... I should probably preface all this by mentioning that I received a free 1 year subscription to the Wall Street Journal when I took a GMAT prep course with the Princeton Review back in 2003. I only read 10% of the paper 50% of the time, but I loved it - and actually missed it when the freebie ran out. I looked into paying for a subscription, but $215 for a year is a bit above my threshold. So, I stuck it on my wishlist. Earlier this week, I was scanning the Frequent Flier Crier newsletter and noticed a blurb on points.com (a site where you can track balances of miles/points in your various rewards programs and "swap" between them). I signed up for a free account and linked it to my America West and Midwest Airlines accounts, each of which have painfully few miles in them (2320 and 4480, respectively). As it turns out, I can "swap" 1900 miles for a 6 month subscription to the WSJ - a retail value of $107.50. At that rate, a plane ticket would have to cost over $1400 to justify using 25,000 miles to get it for free. Am I missing something? I've been guilty of miscalculations in the past, so feel free to correct me here. Assuming nobody shoots a big hole in my plan, I'm about 24 hours away from making the swap and crossing another item off my wishlist. Now Playing: Zwan - Mary Star of the Sea 
posted by Brad at 11/27/2005 10:42:00 PM | permalink |
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Link to My Backpack Due to popular demand, here's another link to my backpack - new & improved with Susan's wishlist. 
posted by Brad at 11/27/2005 01:04:00 PM | permalink |
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Google, Google Everywhere Google Space turns Heathrow into a testing lab.  
posted by Brad at 11/26/2005 01:53:00 PM | permalink |
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Clementines I don't eat fruit very often, even though I like it and know I should. Picked up a box of clemenines at Safeway this week - I can't stop eating them! So tiny and easy to peel, they are reminding me how much I love fruit. Happy Saturday!
posted by Brad at 11/26/2005 01:04:00 PM | permalink |
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People I'm Thankful For I probably won't take the time to do this tomorrow, but I don't want to pass up this opportunity to reflect on some of the people that I'm thankful for...
Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone you love.
posted by Brad at 11/24/2005 01:12:00 AM | permalink |
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Bye Bye, Blogger? WordPress recently began allowing users to sign up for free hosted blogs, so I decided to give it a try. http://bradleypjohnson.wordpress.com/ I haven't yet decided if I will abandon Blogger, but so far the WordPress experience has been a good one. Note that they support tagging/categorizing posts, which tops my list of gripes with Blogger...
posted by Brad at 11/23/2005 12:50:00 AM | permalink |
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Josh Groban Sings Linkin Park I Netflixed Josh Groban's "Live at the Greek" for the specific purpose of hearing his recording of an unreleased Linkin Park song - "My December". Apparently, you can only get it on CD if you have the fan-club-only version of "Closer". The song is pretty good, although I find that I still prefer Italian ones since English is such an ugly language in comparison. Anyways, I thought the description of Groban on the DVD sleeve was a bit over the top and wanted to share. With a voice so powerful it sounds as if it could move mountains and a face so angelic it can lull a troubled soul...
posted by Brad at 11/22/2005 10:41:00 PM | permalink |
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Black Friday is Coming Call me crazy, but I'm a big fan of early morning shopping on "Black Friday" (a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving). It's fun to pore over the ads while you recover from eating too much turkey and pie, plotting out where you're going to go and what you're willing to sacrifice your body (and dignity) to get a deal on. Well the Internet is upping the ante, with several sites dedicated to leaking the ads ahead of time. This is potentially bad news for the retailers, who could theoretically see competitors adjust their sales based on the contents of leaked ads. But it's great news for people like me, who want to participate in the shenanigans but have a 10 AM tee time to worry about too... BF2005.com gottadeal.com blackfridayads.com
posted by Brad at 11/21/2005 07:06:00 PM | permalink |
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Yes, Nick is Fine. We're going to head into San Francisco for the evening before Nick heads back to the frozen frozen-ness that is Minnesota. He came out to visit expecting a tan, but will return with 3 abdominal incisions and an equal quantity of the finest Syrah that Lodi has to offer...
posted by Brad at 11/20/2005 05:59:00 PM | permalink |
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Welcome To California, Nick! My brother Nick flew out to CA last night to visit us, but we never made it to my house. He was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital early this morning with early appendicitis, and should be waking up in the recovery room any minute now after his laparoscopic appendectomy. More to come...
posted by Brad at 11/18/2005 10:57:00 AM | permalink |
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The Onion = Funniest Stuff Ever Nick linked to this from his del.icio.us feed, but I lauged so hard when I read it that I had to share... 133 Dead As Delta Cancels Flight In Midair
posted by Brad at 11/17/2005 07:05:00 PM | permalink |
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Wish Me Luck In an unprecedented moment of decisiveness, I just told my HR manager that I want to pursue a career change to the Consumer Insights function. Farewell IS?
posted by Brad at 11/16/2005 05:56:00 PM | permalink |
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I <3 My Commute? Aside from the lack of traffic, one of the best things about my 20 minute commute each morning is driving through the smell of crushed grapes this time of year - definitely one of the things I'm going to miss when we move back...
posted by Brad at 11/16/2005 10:42:00 AM | permalink |
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The Worst Damn Sports Fans? Pay no attention to the fact that it came from the April 2005 issue of GQ and I'm just reading it now, but imagine my surprise to find Minnesota listed #7 in "The Top Ten Most Obnoxious College Sports Schools" In 2002 and 2003, Minnesota fans waged two full-blown riots, setting fire to a TV-news van and causing around $200,000 in total damage, all after winning the...NCAA hockey championships? We don't want to think about what they'd do if they won a title that mattered. Ouch. Looks like the Gophers are #2 in the WCHA behind Wisconsin - not a big fan of that.
posted by Brad at 11/14/2005 07:53:00 PM | permalink |
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Google is Watching You (Right Now) Back in March, Google acquired Urchin; a San Diego-based software company that specialized in web analytics software. Yesterday, they unleased a free version of the software branded as Google Analytics. I've submitted my site to be "Analytic-ized", so you can expect another report after a couple weeks of Google monitoring all your visits & clicks & links, oh my!
posted by Brad at 11/14/2005 04:15:00 PM | permalink |
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Speed Reader? I've been reading The World is Flat since borrowing it from Brie before our LA trip, which means it's taken me 23 days to read 374 pages. That leaves me 4 days to read the remaining 89 before they pack up all her belongings on Friday, we'll see how that goes. In other news, I'm a little mad at Google right now - I was led to believe that I could see Good Night and Good Luck at 1:15. I sat down in the theater around 1:28, which was just in time for the credits. Problem is, they were the end credits.  I had to settle for Chicken Little :(
posted by Brad at 11/14/2005 01:09:00 AM | permalink |
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Showered with Gifts On Tuesday, I exercised my right to vote and was rewarded with the coveted "I Voted" sticker - good thing the election was a huge waste of time. On Wednesday, I wooted for the first time and now anxiously await the arrival of my Saitek A-250 wireless speakers. This morning, I managed to hold back the tears while getting a flu shot and was rewarded with a Tootsie Roll pop for my efforts. Did you know that Starburst makes soft-center lollipop too? They're yummy. And then within about 5 minutes this afternoon, I was offered tickets to tonight's UOP Tigers basketball game and the Sacramento Kings game on Sunday - I guess this weekend will be ballin' outta control...
posted by Brad at 11/11/2005 05:28:00 PM | permalink |
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Racine Museum Gets (some) Funding It appears that the Racine County Historical Museum will get $90K of the $127K they requested, so hopefully that means they won't close as I had previously fretted over.
posted by Brad at 11/10/2005 01:59:00 PM | permalink |
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To Tip or Not To Top "Let me guess. Lodi?" I didn't even have to tell the courtesy shuttle driver where I work, that's how many times I've brought my car in to Stockton Mazda. Today is the last hurrah before I kiss the warranty goodbye, so they are just checking into a few creaks & squeaks to make sure things don't fall apart 2 minutes after the odometer rolls over 48,000 miles. After he dropped me off and we made arrangements for the pickup this afternoon, I started to wonder - should I be tipping this guy? It's the same kid who will hand wash my car after they are done working on it this afternoon. But this is all under warranty, so I'm not sure what the etiquette is. Suggestions?
posted by Brad at 11/09/2005 03:22:00 PM | permalink |
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A Plethora of City Data I think it was Terese who asked me what the population of Sacramento is. My original guess of 750,000 was met with her comment of "oh, same as San Francisco." So I lowered the bar, thinking that perhaps 500,000 was more realistic. The correct answer? 407,018 Lifehacker clued me in to city-data.com today, where they've "collected and analyzed data from numerous sources to create as complete and interesting profiles of all U.S. cities" as they could. I've been poking around for a couple minutes, looks pretty comprehensive. They are offering 5 $200 prizes for submitting photos of cities, what are you waiting for?
posted by Brad at 11/08/2005 07:13:00 PM | permalink |
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oxyhgv It took the comment spammers a bit longer to find me since I'm not hosted on blogspot, but they have forced me to turn on word verification for comments - I hope that doesn't discourage anybody from telling me how they really feel. For you Blogger users out there, there is also the (slightly more extreme) option of censoring your commenters. I'm a glutton for punishment, so feel free to hate on me in public and I'll take it like a man.
posted by Brad at 11/08/2005 03:33:00 PM | permalink |
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients Last Thursday, Bush announced the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom - no higher award can be given to us civilians (by him at least). The list is an interesting mashup...
posted by Brad at 11/07/2005 05:45:00 PM | permalink |
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Analyzing "California Love" Lyrics We watched The Untouchables last night - I thought the name of Kevin Costner's Prohibition-enforcement character sounded familiar... Now let me welcome everybody to the wild wild west ...turns out 2 Pac knows a thing or two about Chicago in the 1930's.
posted by Brad at 11/06/2005 12:15:00 PM | permalink |
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This Flask Has 120x Zoom Daniel came back from the U2 concert in Las Vegas last night, this morning he is - washing out his binoculars? Turns out they are actually 16 oz flasks, maybe I need to update my wishlist. 
posted by Brad at 11/06/2005 11:42:00 AM | permalink |
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Online Flight Check In, It's Fun I've been waiting for midnight to check in for tomorrow's flight to San Diego, but apparently Southwest has changed it's tune and now allows you to check in 24 hours in advance...  ...is it just me, or did NWA used to let you check in 36 hours in advance and has since scaled that back to 24 hours?
posted by Brad at 11/04/2005 01:50:00 AM | permalink |
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Tagging Posts in Blogger I've been using Blogger.com to write The Myth for the past 558 days, and keep waking up hoping to discover that they've added support for categorizing posts. If you don't know what I mean, check out Scoble's latest post as an example and read the fine print: Filed under: Blog Stuff, Maryam @ 12:54 pm # Comments (5) "Blog Stuff" and "Maryam" are links to "categories" that allow you to "tag" you posts as being related to one or more "topics." This would allow me (or you) to see all the posts I've written about Pekoe, Susan, Geek Stuff, etc. While today is not my lucky day, I did learn that you can vote for new features - and guess what tops the list?
posted by Brad at 11/02/2005 06:58:00 PM | permalink |
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My Teeth Are Clean Just got back from the dentist - should have made the appointment for later in the afternoon so I didn't have to come back to work. Apparently my "home care" is good, which is dentist speak for "your gums didn't bleed all over us." To celebrate, I am eating various candy bars scattered about the office from various halloween-related sources. Maybe I'll skip flossing tonight too - I really am a rebel at heart. Or is that a Horlicker?
posted by Brad at 11/02/2005 05:36:00 PM | permalink |
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A Shout Out from Einstein
posted by Brad at 11/01/2005 11:03:00 AM | permalink |
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