Okay, I'm not a big fan of the interface, but I've just spent the last hour playing with this (flash required) online gallery of Japanese wood block prints. Lots of great prints, and despite the interactive gallery aspect to it, I prefer it to a lot of the other websites I've seen on the subject. (Link found via metafilter.)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 May 2003 at 12:53 AM

I'm spending a long weekend in Evansville where I have had the chance to witness firsthand the insanity that is my parents' kitchen remodeling project. Even in an unfinished state everything looks very good. Unfortunately, it bears only a passing resemblance to what my parents envisioned, primarily due to a number of misordered cabinet doors and drawers.

Anyway, Evansville continues to amaze me with its otherworldliness. Today, in what I assume is a journalistic scoop of some kind, the Evansville Courier and Press reported that the Evansville police department had replaced the bicycles used by the six officers who patrol on bike. The officers practiced using their bikes at an obstacle course consisting of a great deal of orange cones arranged in an empty parking lot. This was page one, above the fold material.

I don't really know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'll at least get out of the house, mainly because I want to stay out of the contractor's hair while he works tomorrow, but beyond that I don't really know.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 May 2003 at 12:39 AM

They NY Times is reporting that this fall we will be joining the rest of the world in using high tech Monopoly money as our currency. That's right, we'll have to get used to something other than the austere shades of green and grey. That's right, the $20 bill coming out this fall will have "peach, turquoise and gold tones ." Take a look at the link above for a picture.

Apparently the $1 never gets counterfeited, as its been the roughly the same since the 1930s, while the $20 was last updated in 1998. I'm beginning to wonder now if the $1 will ever change.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 May 2003 at 1:56 PM

Why do dress shirts always come with pins holding all of the folds in place? If you buy any other clothes, they never use pins to hold all the folds in place. One of the shirts I bought yesterday used nine pins to hold keep all the folds in place. And its not like these folds are keeping the shirt from becoming wrinkled. Dress shirts are the only clothes that I can think of that look worse right after you buy them than at any time in the future. I always have my dress shirts dry cleaned because I don't like to iron them, but it irritates me a bit to have to take my newly purchased shirts to the dry cleaners before I wear them.

Anyway, I bought two suits yesterday. I took a slightly different approach than I did the last time I bought a suit and told the sales guy my upper limit before we started on the accessorizing. This worked out pretty well, as the total bill (including alteration and taxes) came out to $3 less then the limit I gave him. And I put it on the store's credit card, so I should be getting a $50 certificate in the mail in the future, which I'll probably use on another shirt and tie.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 21 May 2003 at 1:37 PM

I've decided that I don't really like going to concerts. I always look forward to seeing a band, but when I get there I just stand around and listen to some crappy opening bands, fight to hear what the people around me are saying between sets, and then watch a disappointing show by the headlining band. So no more concerts for me. Or at least no more concerts without reserved seats and a good live band for me.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 18 May 2003 at 12:32 AM

So I graduated today. I did the commencement in the morning and the graduate recognition ceremony in the afternoon. (As prophesied by Dr. Loui last year, the graduate recognition ceremony reception really does have the best food.) The I had dinner at Cardwell's in Clayton. I had a strip steak and a bottle of wine. The meal was very good, but I shudder to think of the price.

My parents, keeping true to form, forgot both their camera and the card they were going to give me. However, they did remember to bring their graduation present to me: a set of blazer buttons. For those of you unfamiliar with blazer buttons (as I was until I received some as a gift a few hours ago) blazer buttons are replacement buttons for a sports coat (strictly speaking, a blazer is a sports jacket often with notched collar and patch pockets). In this particular case, the blazer buttons feature the WashU logo. To recap, I received a replacement set of buttons for a blazer that I do not own from my parents for graduation. You can, no doubt, guess what my reaction was when I opened the box.

Blazer buttons aside, I'm not overlooking the fact that I can now exercise the "rights and privileges" that were granted to me today to control the weather (or so claims Ron), but at the end of the day all I really feel about graduation is tired. Perhaps tomorrow when I wake up after a full night's sleep, I'll change my mind about this, but I'm pretty much underwhelmed (if that's a word) about this Master of Science thing.

Oh, on the good news front, I now have summer work lined up at a major car rental company. I'll be working in their information systems group in Clayton. Advantages are that I now have a job so I might actually be able to pay my rent. The disadvantages are that I now need to blow all of my remaining money on suits, as work requires professional attire.

Comments: 4 Posted by david on 16 May 2003 at 10:49 PM

Two weeks ago I left St. Louis in the midst of final exams to travel to Minnesota for a friend's wedding. The intent was to make a quick drive up there, go to the wedding, get hammered at the reception, and head back here for my final on Monday. Of course, it didn't turn out to be that simple. Because I didn't want to make the drive alone, the first leg of my trip north took my to the southwest; in Evansville I met up with my friends from high school and set out in a rented van for Minnesota.

At this point I need to reveal the stupidity of our plans. You see, the trip from Evansville, IN to Buffalo, MN was estimated at 12 to 13 hours. So our departure time was calculated by finding out when we needed to arrive in MN (5pm on Friday) and subtracting the necessary time for the trip and a few stops. This had us leaving around midnight. The more I thought about this plan, the worse it seemed. Fortunately, the others came to the same decision and the departure time was moved to 7pm by mutual agreement. This still left us driving through most of the night, but it did mean we wouldn't be doing the entire trip when we were very tired.

Anyway, we were on the highway by 7:30 on Thursday night, and the first half of the trip went pretty well. However, not long after we made it into Wisconsin (our route took us north through Illinois and then across Wisconsin to the Minneapolis area), things took a turn for the worse. Just after we entered Wisconsin we went through a construction area, which bounced our Chrysler Town & Country around quite a bit. Not long after that I noticed (I was riding shotgun at the time) that we only had half a tank of gas left. I mentioned to Jared, the driver at the time, that we were burning a lot of gas. Then I noticed that I could stare at the needle on the gas gauge and watch it drop. I woke up Luke in the seat behind us and made him confirm what I saw. Jared made a joke about the gas tank having a hole. Sadly, his joke proved to be rather ironic, as our gas was pouring out on the highway behind us. By the time we reached milemarker 155 on I-90 we were out of gas. The time was approximately 2:30 am.

John looked under the van and told us that the filler pipe that connects to the gas tank had been ripped open and the bottom of the gas tank was gauged up. We were lucky our exhaust or a random spark hadn't ignited the gas we were pouring out. We called 911 and they dispatched a wrecker. We got to ride in the van while it was on the back of a flatbed truck from where we broke down to a nearby hotel, where we spent the next few hours until Enterprise opened up. We got a new van and were back on the road by 9 am, but I still haven't seen a bill for the van we wrecked.

So the moral of this story is that Wisconsin is an evil, evil state and it should be avoided at all costs.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 15 May 2003 at 4:40 PM

I've just returned from the world's longest road trip (30 hours on the road, two vans, an hour siting near mile-marker 155 on 1-90 in Wisconsin at or around 3 am, etc.) to Minnesota by way of southern Indiana. Details will follow once I've caught up on the two days of sleep that I lost.

Unfortunately, my room did not clean itself up while I was gone. I was really hoping the mess would just disappear. I guess spending 30 minutes throwing all the random papers in my room into the big plastic box I bought for that purpose and shoving the whole lot under my bed will be a good study break tomorrow.

I read The Dante Club this morning. If you like historical fiction you'll probably enjoy it.

Someone with the screenname washcomsci IMed me this evening while I was in the other room catching up with the tivo-like device. I don't know who you are, washcomsci, but if you IM me again, I promise to talk to you if I'm in my room.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 May 2003 at 1:47 AM