David's Mumblings

The Pachelbel Rant

This rant about Pachelbel's Canon in D made me smile. :-) Sort of reminded me of Victor Borge's work. ^ TOP

Posted on 01/20/10 at 11:30:23 by dchaley (David Haley)
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First Person Tetris

This first-person version of Tetris messes with my head! I love the retro 8-bit music though. ^ TOP

Posted on 01/14/10 at 10:10:31 by dchaley (David Haley)
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Rent Happiness

You might have heard about the court case involving Tishman Speyer and Stuyvesant Town, whereby they were found guilty of illegally deregulating apartments (because they were taking J-51 tax breaks for capital improvements). There has long been a question of what this would mean in practice, and it's finally coming to a resolution: rents have gone down; in my case, rent went down by just over $800. Yay! :-) (Funnily enough, because we started renting at the height of the bubble, the rent stabilized rate is not that different from what we would have been paying had we signed about a year later.) Also, our apartment will be re-stabilized, meaning that there are caps on how much rent can change every year, and under what circumstances they can force us out, etc. ^ TOP

Posted on 12/22/09 at 10:05:23 by dchaley (David Haley)
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NYC Signs

On 5th avenue somewhere around 50th St., there's a no-parking zone. There are three signs, from top to bottom: "Red Zone", "No Parking", "Don't even think about parking here". They all seemed to be permanent, city signs, so I suppose that somebody has a sense of humor. :-) ^ TOP

Posted on 11/17/09 at 10:41:15 by dchaley (David Haley)
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401(more)ok

For the first time since I got my work 401k, the value of my account is greater than the amount of money I put in. Harrumph!

Vanguard says some pretty weird (/dumb?) stuff, though. In a newsletter they sent out:

While the U.S. stock market fell 37% last year, diversification helped many 401(k) investors cope. A balanced mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds held up better, falling 22%.1 Diversification isn't exclusive to 401(k) investing, of course. But your plan makes it easy to hold a mix of stocks and bonds.
(The effect of ongoing contributions further softened the markets' blow. Among Vanguard plan participants who had account balances at the beginning and end of 2008, the median change in balances was –14%)

The parenthetical remark is rather odd when you get past the marketese; it's basically saying:
"You lost a lot of money, but if you kept putting money in while losing money, your balance didn’t decrease as much as if you hadn’t put in any money"
So if you put even more money into your 401k just to see even more go away, you should still be happy because you prevented your 401k balance from decreasing as rapidly, and instead made your normal bank account not increase as rapidly. :-) ^ TOP

Posted on 10/30/09 at 08:10:33 by dchaley (David Haley)
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The Perils of Cheap Wine

At the grocery store last night I wanted to pick up some cheap wine. I found a $7 bottle of "Merlot" (yeah... "cheap" in NYC is a relative term, I suppose), but when I opened later that night it I noticed its color was slightly weaker than usual. That's when I saw, in small font on the bottom of the label, the note "Wine Product - 6% alcohol". Sigh!! The ingredients were listed as red wine, water, sugar, and some other stuff. It doesn't taste terrible, but it certainly doesn't taste like red wine. Oh well. Next time I will pay more attention. :-) ^ TOP

Posted on 10/15/09 at 08:02:37 by dchaley (David Haley)
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Free food

I got a pleasant surprise when at a Pret store the other night at closing time. They were throwing out their food because there was some issue with the charity that normally comes to pick up their leftover (boxed) food. They told my friends and me that we could take whatever we wanted, and gave us some plastic bags. So, the predictable result of giving free food to hungry people who just spent a couple of hours at the dojo followed: we all loaded up with bags full of sandwiches and salads. For the $8 I spent on my sandwich, I ended up leaving with some additional six sandwiches and three salads. Not a bad return on the investment. :-)

Incidentally, I guess they really do make everything fresh every day.

Anyhow, I thought it was nice that they gave it to us (and to charity normally) instead of just throwing it out. ^ TOP

Posted on 09/21/09 at 08:01:29 by dchaley (David Haley)
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The rhetoric of "do it now"

I saw this in a political email message:

"But what the media and Congress seem to forget is that it's not just about politics or policy minutiae. It's about real people who are really suffering under our broken health care system—and can't afford to wait any longer for real reform."

"Nazi" policies??

The debate about health care reform is filled with all kinds of nonsense from all kinds of places. Here we have a fine citizen comparing Obama's efforts to Nazi policy during a town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). Frank's response is appropriate. Watch the video on YouTube.

I don't understand how people can so casually accuse others of having "Nazi" policies. Regardless of the merits or lack thereof of Obama's health care reform, comparing it to the murder of millions upon millions of people is, indeed, an idea from another planet. To use the word so inappropriately cheapens the horror of what happened then, and uselessly distracts from important debate now. ^ TOP

Posted on 08/19/09 at 11:50:03 by dchaley (David Haley)
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A tale of a phone lost and found

I cleverly managed to forget my phone in a taxi last night. I tried calling it as soon as I got home, but no answer. I was afraid that it was going to be basically gone because I had no idea which cab I was in (didn't get the receipt). I tried again this morning, and got lucky: somebody picked it up and said they'd bring it to me. It actually turns out that it was the police! I guess the driver dropped it off with them. I was fairly surprised that the police actually brought it to me (instead of having me go to a station) but they did. The officer just asked me a few quick questions about the phone (e.g., what model is it, list some contacts from the address book) and then had me sign something and I got it back. Phew! Very nice of the police to do that, in any case.

Aurelie had the same mishap a few months ago, but when we called the number a passenger picked it up. In that case, they were kind enough to stop near our place on their way back from dinner, so we picked it up from them.

Two lucky strikes, and lesson definitely learned. I usually check my pockets as I leave the taxi; last night I checked just 30 seconds too late -- the taxi was already gone. ^ TOP

Posted on 07/31/09 at 09:50:23 by dchaley (David Haley)
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