vttoth — September 29th, 2009
In a single morning, I became over 30 million US dollars richer. At least that’s what my e-mails say:
- I’ve been offered a 40% commission just for providing my bank account details that would allow an official to transfer $20 million out of South Africa.
- I have supposedly received a $650,500 humanitarian grant from the United Nations, by random draw.
- A diplomat presently at Heathrow Airport contacted me concerning my $7.5 million inheritance.
- I also have a $15.5 million inheritance waiting for me in Nigeria.
- Still in Nigeria, it seems that they failed to pay me another $2.5 million, due under some contract.
The total comes to $34,150,500, and all I need to do is answer these e-mails with the requested details.
Needless to say, I won’t.
Categories: Internet |
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vttoth — September 28th, 2009
Today I turned this
into this:
I am almost beginning to believe that I am actually good at this handyman stuff.
Categories: Personal |
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vttoth — September 27th, 2009
Back when I used to work late evenings in an office in downtown Ottawa, one of my favorite retreats after work was the bar upstairs at Friday’s Roast Beef House. Although I have not visited this fine establishment in ages, it was still shocking to hear on the news tonight that Friday’s is closing, after 37 years.
Categories: Local Ottawa |
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vttoth — September 26th, 2009
How times change.
Twenty-some years ago, a certain American president spoke at the Berlin Wall and said: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
He did.
Now it’s time to say the same thing over here:
Mr. Obama, Mr. Harper! Tear down this wall!
That is, tear it down before it goes up. The US-Canada border doesn’t need its Berlin wall.
Categories: Politics |
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vttoth — September 26th, 2009
I was a very brave person today… I peed in a toilet that I just finished installing.
So far, no sign of leaks below.
Categories: Personal |
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vttoth — September 25th, 2009
I’m most pleased with myself tonight. Maybe I have an aptitude for the experimental side of physics, too, as it appears that I was able to repair successfully my subfloor around the leaky toilet. I took some pictures:
Next task is to finish the floor and put the new toilet in. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not… I’m rather tired, so I might skip a day. But then again, I seem to be on a roll…
Categories: Personal |
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vttoth — September 24th, 2009
There are certain areas of life where decades of computer expertise are quite useless, and even a reasonably thorough knowledge of theoretical physics is only of marginal use. Replacing the rotted subfloor around a leaky toilet is one such area.
Yet this is what I am presently engaged in. So far so good… using some rather evil, foul-sounding power tools, I managed to cut out much of a square hole around the drainpipe, I’m only having trouble with some corners where the power tools don’t reach. Unfortunately, I found out that the subfloor in this bathroom is actually an inch thick, as opposed to the standard, 5/8″ board that I already bought… oh well, it wasn’t a big expense anyway, and perhaps I can use that board for some other purpose later on.
For now, it’s back to Home Depot to get a piece of inch-thick wood and also some advice on cutting out those nasty corners. Maybe they can suggest a method that would be slightly more efficient than the hammer-and-chisel approach which I attempted, with some limited success.
While I’m at it, I shall also inquire as to whether it is possible for them to cut my boards to shape to fit around the drainpipe, so that I wouldn’t have to attempt such precision cutting using my fairly limited skills and perhaps less-than-adequate set of tools. Not to mention that I value my fingers, and prefer to have all ten of them in the right place and in full working order after I’m done with all this…
But for now, it’s rest time. I have this nasty tensor algebra program to tackle, but no matter how difficult it is, I sweat a lot less doing it than when I’m cutting a subfloor with a circular saw.
Categories: Personal, Physics |
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vttoth — September 22nd, 2009
I realized that I haven’t written anything in this blog for a whole week.
Back in the old days, when I was yet to convince myself to go with the times and start using the word “blog”, and I was still using my homebrew solution instead of real blogging software, I used to write something every day. I felt compelled to do so, given that I called my blog a “Day Book”. (Not an original idea, I borrowed it from Jerry Pournelle.)
But the blogging software I presently use doesn’t ask me to write something every day. So I’ve gotten sloppy. Or perhaps I have nothing meaningful to say.
Or maybe it is Facebook’s fault… I’m still debating with myself if it was the right thing to do, but I linked this blog to Facebook, so everything I write here shows up there, too. (Translation for those who read this on Facebook: everything you read, right here, right now, was originally posted “over there”, on my blog site.) I don’t know why it should intimidate me, but it does. Maybe it’s the idea that on Facebook, people actually read (sometimes) what I write, which is an odd sensation… I am used to writing in my blog with the near certain knowledge that nobody will read it, so I felt free to speak my mind.
Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been doing too much tensor algebra in recent days, all part of a devious plan to procrastinate, because once I stop doing that, I’ll have to start to think seriously about what I am going to do with a small bathroom downstairs that is in a severe need of repair…
Categories: Personal |
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vttoth — September 14th, 2009
I always loved the music of Vera Lynn, especially her “We’ll Meet Again”, featured at the end of the immortal picture Dr. Strangelove.
But, I admit I didn’t even know that Vera Lynn was still alive, much less that her recently re-released “Best of…” album was about to top the UK charts! Which it did, this week, beating a competition that included no lesser stars than The Beatles, with their remastered albums.
Wow. Congrats, Dame Vera. Well deserved.
Categories: Music |
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vttoth — September 13th, 2009
My wife and I have been married 17 years today. Yes, I can certainly take a few, or make that many, more years like these.
Categories: Personal |
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