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random bits
Sometime before the end of Daylight Spending Time, I want to replace
my car. My current favorite is the Honda Fit, but that's based on
specs and reviews; I've never driven one. (So I want to go to a dealer,
but I know that once I do that I set things in motion, so I should do
this when I've set aside time for car shopping.) I just checked
edmunds.com and was surprised to find that people are currently paying
sticker price. Either the recent kudos from Consumer Reports
had a real effect, or there's a shortage, or something else is going
on that I haven't thought of. Maybe I should wait a few months and
see if that changes.
Aside: in PA do you pay sales tax on the purchase price of the new car, or on the purchase price minus your trade-in? Last time my trade-in was 15 years old so I didn't notice nor overly care. This time, according to Edmunds, my trade-in is worth close to $10k, so this matters. (I try to always have a bottom-line figure in mind before walking into a dealership.)
I got a bizarre phone call recently. The caller was an attorney
(he didn't say with whom), and he was calling because he had found
my name on a list of people who had worked on DCE, the Distributed
Computing Environment (which I did from 1990 to around 1995).
He said only that he was researching "prior art". He asked what my
role on the project was and I told him (peon for one of several
companies working on this joint project). He asked how
familiar I was with the code base, and I said "well, it's been 12
years, umm". I apologized for not being able to help him more, and
he said it's ok; he's got a couple hundred names. (Belatedly I
wondered where he got his lists and how many interns or whatnot
he used to get current phone numbers for all of them.)
Last night at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lorimelton and ralphmelton's
excellent Saint-Patrick's party, I ran into someone else who worked
on that project. I asked if she'd gotten a similar call or if
he'd lost steam before getting to the "S"s in his list of names,
and this was news to her. It occurs to me now that hers is a more
common name than mine, so he might be filtering his list based
on probability of getting the right person.
Someone recently commented to me that with the growth of the internet,
Google is becoming less useful as a way of finding answers because of
all the junk you get in the results (such as fora where someone else
asked the same question but no one has answered). I said that for
more targetted queries, I'm trying to train myself to go first to
Wikipedia -- which might not have the answer, but is likely to have
outbound links, so someone else has culled the search results for me,
maybe. For broader queries and when I just plain forget, I still use
Google.
As an example, I said (while feeding drugs to my cat), I wonder how antibiotics work. That is, they always tell you to take the full course even if the symptoms go away earlier; why is that? So, off to Wikipedia I went, and came up empty. And thence to Google, where I found a page on howstuffworks.com called "how do antibiotics work?" (bingo!) -- with no answer to my question. So I still don't know. It's not important enough for me to invest real effort (maybe I'll ask my vet next time I see her), but I was disappointed to fail so soon after describing what I thought was a good approach.
That aside, though, Google and Wikipedia have made it much easier to go from "I wonder..." to "oh, that's the answer", which means I'm much more likely to actually chase down answers to random questions a little bit. If I had the internet in my pocket that would be even better, as I wouldn't lose the things that come up in conversation while out.
Short takes:
I accept responsibility for the rain earlier this week; the karmic consequences of the carwash were worth it for the desalination. However, the drop in temperature that turned the rain to noisy rain and thence to snow is not my fault. (I think the noisy rain was freezing rain rather than sleet. I learned the difference Friday when I got curious.)
Earlier this week Erik was not very interested in food, but after a day or so of that (and getting fluids) he was back to having an appetite. Then yesterday he ate two cans of food, approximately 10% of his body weight. What's up with that? Today is back to normal. I'm not complaining (I want him to eat), but I'm puzzled.
Security
audit of Hogwarts, from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif){kind=small}
securitymentor2.
I am interested in finding movies (or TV shows) in Hebrew with English subtitles. (I need to improve my comprehension of the spoken language.) Bonus points for science fiction, fantasy, and non-police drama. Ultra-bonus points for anything I've already seen in English (B5 or West Wing dubs, anyone?). Anti-points for romances, fast-moving action flicks, and children's shows unless they also have something of interest to adults (e.g. yes for Rocky and Bullwinkle, no for Barney). I don't care about DVD regions. Anyone have any thoughts on where to look for such things?
Re: Antibiotics
My vet currently has me "pulsing" Erik with antibiotics (N days on, M days off) for his hepatitis. If you get N wrong, though, it seems like that could make things worse. I wonder if there are medical (as opposed to economic) arguments against just giving them to him all the time. Mind, I'd rather not spend the money, but I'd also rather not make my cat worse.
Re: Antibiotics