My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a new home. The current owners of the property we're buying have kept meticulous records. They have a spreadsheet detailing:

• The type of home update
• When the update was made
• Who did the service (or where it was purchased from)

This information is surprisingly useful to know, and has helped us make some decisions on what to update and what not to update. It also gives us a good picture of the relative ages of each home system (e.g. hot water heater, HVAC units, etc.).

While discussing the selling of our current home with our realtor, I figured I could provide dates for when some of the similar updates here were done. I assumed that I had emails on these items, but it turns out I don't. Maybe I paid for some of these things via a check? And maybe the receipt they sent was a hard-copy? Regardless, I am unable to pinpoint when our hot water heater was installed, for example (this kind of thing is useful to know when selling a home, it turns out).

It's frustrating to know that I had work done to my home but cannot locate the invoice showing me who did it or when it was done. Had I kept better records, this wouldn't have been a problem. Going forward, I intend to do a better job.

For over a decade now, I have logged my daily weight using Libra Weight Manager, a great little Android app. I last wrote about this in December of 2018, so it's high time for an update. Shown below is the latest graph (click to expand):

As you can see, I've gained weight substantially. In fact, I'm now the heaviest I've ever been! The graph starts heading up in 2018, which happened to be the year our first daughter was born, though I started gaining well before she arrived. At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, my weight started to come back down, but has since done an about-face and is increasing again.

Stress likely corresponds (to a degree) with my weight drops. The lowest point on the graph is just before I got married, and the big dip at the beginning of 2020 is pandemic related. My nightly weakness is ice cream; I have some almost every night. This, and an increase in the snacking I do in the afternoon (thanks to working from home) are definite contributing factors. Eating at home has had benefits, however, as I'm eating better meals than I used to for lunch. Prior to working from home, I ate out nearly every day.

I need to turn things around again and lose some weight. I'd certainly feel better, both mentally and physically.

One of my personal goals for 2021 is to increase my writing frequency here at this website. A little over 14 years ago (!) I did some analysis on my posting habits, and I thought I'd do something similar to see how my posting has changed over time. Using a quick Python script and matplotlib, the latter of which I don't use frequently enough to ever remember how to use, I came up with the following two diagrams:

Both graphs show how, in recent years, my posting frequency has really dropped off a cliff (having a kid will do that to you, I guess). Even prior to kids, however, I was posting much less frequently than I did in the beginning.

Now that I have a new publishing platform, posting has gotten easier for me. My personal goal is to post at least three times a month, which should put me on par with 2011, which is the last time I averaged that total.

During these COVID-19 lockdown times of ours, I've been thinking about the interesting research opportunities this strange occurrence must be affording scientists around the globe. For example, in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, weather scientists had a unique chance to study the skies without the influence of aircraft contrails. Certainly those kinds of studies can be done now, since air travel has been greatly reduced. I wonder what other branches of science this shutdown is helping. Are air-pollution studies easier to conduct? Can certain types of infrastructure examinations be completed more easily, without the burden of traffic and congestion? How is electricity use being affected? It's an interesting line of thought to ponder.

This line of thinking, however, goes in a darker direction as well. How many more cases of depression will result from these upcoming months of isolation? Will suicides increase? What about divorce rates? How will children in school be impacted in terms of what they learn? What about their social development?

My daughter, who is younger than 2 years of age, is reaching a critical point in her development as a child. Her isolation from both family members and other children will certainly have a negative impact, at least in the short term. What kind of long term effects will it have? I guess only time will tell.

I've been tracking my weight using the Libra Weight Manager application for Android since June of 2010. It's been a long time since I've mentioned it, but I thought I'd provide an update on where I am:

The figure above shows the entirety of my data set, from 2010 to today. The red line is my weight trend line, while the blue line is comprised of the actual data points (my daily weights). Each horizontal line is a span of five pounds, for a sense of scale.

There are a few interesting things to point out here. Tracking my weight was a great way to lose weight in the beginning (note the ever decreasing slope at the start of the chart). I try to keep myself honest by tracking this data, but you can see that I'm starting to slip (trending upwards). The giant dip near the middle of the chart correlates to my getting married, which I find interesting. I suppose that weight loss was primarily stress based.

One of my goals in 2019 is to bring this trend line back down about 10 pounds or so. I'll try to post an update sometime in the new year to log my progress.

At 4:30 this morning, I awoke to our daughter (for the umpteenth time) crying out from her bed for who knows what reason. My wife had just put her back to bed after an early morning feeding. Seeing as my wife had just gotten back to bed herself, I got up to give her a break. After calming our daughter down, our cats decided it was immediately time to eat. Rather than put up with another hour or so of cat mischievousness, I decided to go ahead and feed them.

Having fed the cats, I headed back upstairs to bed. About ten minutes later, I hear a metallic thunk from downstairs. Getting up once again, I went back downstairs to find that I had left the can of cat food on the counter. Our incredibly food-motivated calico had eaten about half of the can, and had knocked it onto the floor, spilling cat food everywhere. After ten more minutes of cleaning (and swearing), I was now wide awake. So I decided to go ahead and get up.

At 6:45, after working for awhile, I decided to have breakfast. Something tasted off, but I chalked it up to being sleep deprived. Halfway through the meal, however, I discovered that the milk I was using was spoiled. I ended up having to toss the rest of the meal, and was too tired to make something else.

As I was about to head out the door to work, our daughter started fussing again, loudly. I brought her back downstairs to calm her down and give my wife some more sleep. After another hour, our daughter fell back asleep, and I put her back in her bed. I quickly gathered my stuff and headed to work, dazed, confused, and hungry.

I've loved trains since I was a child, and it's a passion I never grew out of. In fact, one of the best parts of our trip to Switzerland last year was riding the rails, which we did each day. That is one of the (many!) reasons we wish to return to that fantastic country.

Here in the United States, train spotting (i.e. railfanning) primarily consists of watching freight traffic. As fun as it is to see a train in person, I have neither the time nor the inclination to get in my car and ride around chasing trains. To my good fortune, there are plenty of people on YouTube who do enjoy that pursuit and who film their efforts.

One of the best channels I've found to help me scratch that itch is Distant Signal Productions. Danny Harmon, based near Tampa, Florida, wonderfully narrates his railfan adventures. That he works in television is apparent, both from the professional voice-overs to the fantastic video editing. Here are two great introductory videos to his channel:

• Switching Main Line Customers
• Chasing Sugarcane Trains

I learn quite a bit each time I watch one of his videos, and I enjoy it immensely. Another channel worth checking out is Delay in Block Productions, another very professional channel. This video on the Blue Ridge Southern Railroad was exceptionally shot, and fun to watch.

My wife and I welcomed our first child, a daughter, in late October. Our lives have changed so much in the few short weeks since. Former routines have been shattered. Thought patterns changed. Our two house cats even behave differently!

Prior to her arrival, we often got similar comments from friends and strangers: "sleep while you can." If another parent happened to say these words, they inevitably came with a knowing glance or twinkle of the eye. Though unsaid, the implied "trust me on this, and enjoy it while it lasts" always came through with conviction.

Now that we're several weeks into parenthood, I can better identify with those parenting veterans. I knew sleep was going to be a precious commodity, but I didn't know to what extent. Some nights are better than others (and things are slowly improving), but lots of mornings still start in a dense fog of exhaustion. I'm most amazed at how my body has adjusted to this change. As it turns out, we humans can apparently survive on less than 8 hours of sleep a night; who knew?!

In the end, the lack of sleep is small potatoes. When your child needs you, you're there for her in a heartbeat. And when she looks at you and smiles, it gives you the energy to do it all a hundred times over.

Let me get the crux of this review out of the way: the car buying service offered by the North Carolina State Employees' Credit Union (of which I am a member) rocks. Before I get to the details, allow me to provide a little background.

I've been driving a 1999 Mazda Protege since June of 2000. The Protege is an extremely reliable car, but mine was really starting to show its age: rust was visible in a few places, the pin stripes on the side were flaking off, and the car had gotten quite loud on the road (the wind and road noise were pretty unbearable). Having talked about getting a new car for a year or two, I finally decided to take action. In searching for a new car, I had a few essential criteria:

• It should be a four-door sedan
• It should have a quiet and smooth ride
• It should be a step up in quality from my Protege

I ended up test driving five vehicles, all in the same size and price class: the Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata, Mazda 6, Nissan Altima, and Toyota Camry. All of these vehicles have their own strengths and weaknesses (e.g. the Mazda 6 was the sexiest on the outside, but had a rather loud and "active" ride), but I was able to whittle it down to two cars: the Altima and the Camry. I ended up choosing the Camry (though it was admittedly a tough choice; the Altima is a pretty nice vehicle).

Once I knew what I wanted, I started looking at local dealers' prices. My dad reminded me that our credit union had a car buying service, so I looked into it, mostly out of curiosity. Their process typically works as follows:

1. You select the make, model, and year of the car you're looking for.
2. You select the color and options you're interested in.
3. You provide some contact information and submit.

Once the credit union has your information, they'll look for a car that most closely matches what you asked for. They'll then negotiate a price for that car, and will let you know what that price is. The turnaround time for this entire process was only two days (I submitted the request on a Monday and had a quote the very next day). My primary goal was to get an anchor price that I could use when negotiating with the local dealers.

The quote I received for the car I was interested in was way less than I expected it would be; nearly $5500 off the sticker price! Not only that, but they offered me nearly double what Carmax would have given me for my Protege! Needless to say, I was stunned at how competitive the deal was. Car shopping is an intimidating process and the negotiation phase was something I wasn't looking forward to at all. This service shortcut that headache altogether!

I decided to not even bother trying to negotiate for a better deal elsewhere. I'm sure there are people who could have gotten a better deal, but I decided that my time and efforts were worth something, and SECU's offer was very tempting. The car was delivered to my local SECU branch (they can deliver to your house, if you so desire), and most of the paperwork was handled for me. I essentially drove to my bank and swapped cars with the driver who delivered it (after signing the requisite forms, of course).

All in all, I would definitely use this service again. I'm so impressed with how easy it all was, and it took the most frustrating aspect of car buying out of the equation completely. If you're a member of a credit union, I highly recommend checking out this kind of service if it's available. It just might be the way I handle car buying from now on.

Back in June of 2010, I began tracking my weight using the Libra app for Android. For those who don't recall, this app uses some of the tracking ideas presented in The Hacker’s Diet, a fantastic (and free!) weight loss book.

Over the weekend, I finally got the trend line to dip below my target weight for the first time! Here's a snapshot of the latest chart:

This new goal line is slightly modified from my original goal, which can be seen in the old chart:

As you can see, I used to be up in the "overweight" section for someone my height; now I'm down into the "normal" range! I cannot recommend this app highly enough. Simply tracking my weight has been a useful tool in helping me to get a little healthier. Hopefully it can help others out there as well!

Way back in February of this year, I started a Musical Voyage: listening to my music in order, sorted by album title. Today, I finally finished the journey with Van Halen's "5150" (an album I consider mediocre at best; I never was a Sammy Hagar fan). I found this to be an interesting way to enjoy my music. Sometimes the jump from one album to the next was very pleasant (e.g. Relayer by Yes to Revolver by The Beatles); other times, it was jarring and unexpected (e.g. from Best of Schubert to Best of The Doors). I heard a ton of stuff I rarely listen to, reintroducing myself to some terrific music. Occasionally, I even heard something I didn't like (and which I've subsequently purged from my iPod). At least I can buy some new music for myself now; upon starting this goal, I set a rule that no new music could be added. There's several things I've been eager to get, and now I finally can. Mission accomplished!

Over the course of the next few months, I am going to try something my dad did last year: listening to my entire music library in order, sorted alphabetically by album title. This sort order should provide a fairly diverse musical experience. iTunes tells me that I currently have 4174 songs in my library, which comes out to 12.4 days of non-stop music. I'll be going from The Beatles' Abbey Road to Van Halen's 5150 (iTunes places numerically titled albums at the end for some reason). As I make progress, I will occasionally tweet my location in the library. My current plan is to use the #musicstream hash-tag on twitter to demarcate my progress. I'm looking forward to hearing the music that I don't listen to often; there's plenty that I frequently overlook.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to serve on a jury for the first time. The experience lasted for three full days and I learned a lot about how the process works. Now that the case is closed and I can openly discuss it, I figured I'd write up a little bit about my experience. I'll go through each day's proceedings, the case itself, and the outcome.

Day 1: Wednesday

Court is held in the Durham County Judicial Building, located in downtown Durham. The building itself is fairly old and could really stand to be replaced, something that Durham is currently working on (the new building is currently under construction). Jurors are asked to report the first day at 8:30 AM which, as it turns out, is really when the building opens to the public. Going through security to enter the building was a bother. Men have to remove their belts, and everyone must empty their pockets and pass through a metal detector. All bags are also x-rayed. I lost my pocket knife in the process, as you aren't allowed to take "weapons" into the building. I could have taken my knife back to my car, but it was a good three to four block walk back to the juror parking deck, so I just decided to simply toss it.

Upon reaching the jury pool room on the fifth floor, I checked in and took a seat. Although I didn't count, there were apparently over 100 potential jurors (numbers 1 through 160 had been called to report that day). After everyone was checked in, we all watched a short video about the process of a judicial case. The jury clerk, a very nice lady, then came out and gave us further information and instruction. After that was complete, we sat. And sat. And sat some more. Our lunch break was quite long that day (12:15 to 2:30), which allowed me to kill some time. The day ends at 5:00, so at 4:00 we all figured we were going to get through the day without being called. At 4:10, that all changed. All the jurors were called into the superior court room to be seen by a judge. The judge apologized for the delay (he had been held up by a previous case), and asked us all the report at 9:30 the next morning to be selected for a case involving assault on a female. Before letting us go, he asked if anyone had any reason for which they should be excused. It was interesting to see which reasons he allowed and which he denied. One individual was a convicted felon, which got him off the hook immediately. Two people were excused for either being a current or former corrections officer. Other folks tried to be excused, but the judge only allowed a few to go (most of the excuses were denied). He then released us all for the rest of the day.

Day 2: Thursday

I decided to show up a littler earlier than requested, just to err on the side of caution, so I came back to the courthouse at 8:45 the next morning. After going through security again, those of us from the previous day were seated in a sectioned-off area of the jury pool room. Around 9:45 or so, we were all called back to the court room from the previous day. After being seated, the judge explained to us what the case concerned. We were to be trying a criminal case in which a male was accused of assault on a female. The state was prosecuting the case, as the victim had either chosen not to appear, or was unable to (it was never made clear why she wasn't present).

The court clerk called 12 names, mine being one of those 12. We proceeded one by one to the jury box, and were then questioned by the attorney representing the state. After each being asked a number of questions, the state attorney decided to excuse three jurors. Three more names were called, and those folks were asked the same questions. Once the state was satisfied, the defense attorney then questioned each of us. He was dissatisfied with several jurors, and asked that they be removed. It's interesting to note that each side can choose to excuse 6 jurors for no reason at all. Beyond that, they must have a valid reason for which a juror may not serve. I'm not fully clear on all the rules, but it was very interesting to see how each side handled the selection process. Choosing jurors literally took most of the day, during which I got to hear the same set of questions 7 or 8 times (this got quite boring). At about 2:45 or 3:00 in the afternoon, both sides were finally pleased with the jury, and all other jurors were excused from duty. There were a total of 12 jurors plus 1 alternate.

Once all the other jurors had been excused and left the courtroom, the case started. Since the state attorney had the burden of proof, she got to go first in the opening statements. Once she had completed, the defense attorney gave his opening statement. After he was finished, the state began to offer evidence. Two witnesses were called to the stand: a person who had been in the room at the time of the incident (albeit with her back turned), and one of the responding officers. We heard testimony from both of these witnesses. I found it interesting that, because the victim was not present, no hearsay from her could be entered into evidence. This affected the police officer's testimony, since he was reading from a filed incident report. The jury was asked to step out of the court room on a number of occasions, as the lawyers wrangled with the judge over these sorts of legal matters. At the end of testimony, and after the defense attorney got a chance to cross examine the witnesses, the state essentially rested their case. The day was spent by this point, so we were asked to return at 9:30 again the next morning to hear evidence from the defense. I should point out that jurors may not discuss the case with anyone (even other jurors) while the case is ongoing. This made all of the jury breaks fairly boring, as we could only chit-chat with one another about random stuff.

Day 3: Friday

At about 9:45 or so on Friday morning, the case got underway again. The defendant took the stand and testified on his own behalf, giving his side of the story. We found out during this testimony that he had been previously charged with two offenses: a drug charge with intent to sell and distribute, and assault on a minor under the age of 12. At least one of these charges was dismissed, presumably the assault charge (he had apparently served some time for the drug charge). The judge later told us that we could only use these previous charges to weigh the truthfulness of the defendant's testimony; we could not use it to make a decision on the current charge against him. In other words, we couldn't find him guilty of assault just because he had a prior assault charge brought against him.

Once the defendant had completed his testimony, we were asked to step out of the jury room while he stepped down from the box. I also found this to be interesting. Perhaps the judge deemed it necessary since the witness stand was located on our side of the courtroom. Once we returned, the state recalled the officer to the stand as further evidence. This got thrown out, however, on some technical grounds that we weren't privy to (the jury was again asked to leave the courtroom while the lawyers argued their position). Returning once more, we got to hear closing arguments from both sides, and we were then given the case. The judge instructed us to evaluate three points in the law concerning the active charge against this individual:

1. The victim was a female
2. The accused was a male
3. There was an intent to harm on the part of the accused

Once we were given the case, we then went to the jury room to make our decision. It was clear from testimony that an injury obviously happened (the victim's mouth had been injured to the point of bleeding), but whether or not it was intentional was debatable. The defendant claimed that it had been an accident. According to testimony from all of the witnesses, there had been no arguing beforehand, nor were there any arguments afterward. This, coupled with the fact that no witness really saw what happened, helped us lean towards a "not guilty" verdict, simply because the state attorney had failed to prove that the defendant had intended to do harm. I should point out that this defendant had driven the victim quite a long ways to Duke Hospital to have her son checked out by doctors, going well out of his way to help her. Seeing as he had been friendly enough to do that, and that he had asked about the child's well-being during an interview with police, seemed to indicate to us that there was no intention of harm on his part.

The reading of the verdict was an interesting and tense moment. After the jury was called back in, our foreman handed the verdict to a deputy, who then handed it to the judge. He looked over it, then gave it to the court clerk to read aloud. The defendant was asked to stand, and then the court clerk began to read out her boilerplate statement. She eventually got to the decision itself, the reading of which really reached a crescendo (it read something like "We the twelve members of this jury hereby find the defendant..."). I couldn't imagine being in the defendant's position, waiting for those few words that indicate whether you're free to go, or are on your way to jail. After the verdict was read, the jury was excused and our time was considered completely served. Now that I have served, I cannot be recalled for jury duty for two years.

I'm very glad I got the opportunity to serve on a jury. Although there was a fair share of boring moments, I found the experience quite educational. Plus, I get $52 for my three days served ($12 for the first day, $20 each for days 2 and 3)! This was definitely an experience I'll never forget.

I've been slightly overweight for quite a long time. Two months ago, I decided I would start tracking my weight daily, in an effort to try and motivate myself to shed a few pounds. Desiring a tool to make this easy, I immediately searched the Android marketplace and found Libra. This incredibly handy tool uses a weight trend line as described in the excellent book The Hacker's Diet.

Allow me to quickly talk about The Hacker's Diet. Written by John Walker, founder of AutoDesk, this book tackles weight loss as an engineering problem. The author is funny, to the point, and provides a careful analysis of how weight loss works. The briefest summary: you will only lose weight by eating fewer calories than you need. Exercise won't do it (though it helps), and weird diets (Atkins, South Beach, et al.) won't do it either. Read the book for further discussion and analysis of this viewpoint. The author presents a pretty solid case that's hard to argue against. Best of all, the book is available for free as a PDF!

The trend line in a weight chart tells you where you're headed: am I gaining weight (line going up), maintaining it (horizontal), or losing it (line going down)? With this simple tool, I was able to see in no time at all that my weight was going upwards at an alarming rate. After waking up to my weight gain, I set a modest goal of losing 9 pounds (I was 9 pounds above the "overweight" line for someone my height).

After reading The Hacker's Diet, I made one simple change to my lifestyle: I altered how much I eat at each meal. I didn't change what I eat; only how much. And wow what a difference that has made! Today, I weighed in at my goal weight for the very first time! Here's the proof:

As you can see from the chart, I started heading up, turned the corner, and have been headed down ever since. My trend line hasn't yet hit my target weight (as of today's measurement, it's scheduled to hit the target on August 21), but at least it's heading in the right direction. It was a great feeling to hit my target this morning. I'm looking forward to shedding a few more pounds and maintaining a healthier weight.

So that all of my regular readers are aware, I am taking a much needed break from blogging during the month of February. I've been in a writing funk lately, and I figured that a small break would do me some good. Updates will resume in March.

In the spirit of it being New Year's eve, I thought I'd share a few random goals I have for 2010:

• Simplify CoLT and Googlebar Lite where possible
• Actually release the next version of Paper Plus
• Continue the improved 2009 trend of taking and posting more pictures
• Back up data earlier and oftener
• Get more exercise
• Eat healthier fare (and cook more often)
• ???
• Profit!

Whatever the new year has in store, just remember this:

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace.

Happy New Year! :D

When I moved into my new house at the end of September, I took on a lot of new financial responsibility that I've never dealt with before (mortgage, monthly utility payments, outstanding debt on large purchases, etc). As such, I've been a little overwhelmed in trying to keep up with what payments I've made and, more importantly, where my money is going each month. In short, I want to track my money.

There are a number of avenues I've briefly explored, some of which require a lot more effort than I think I'm willing to exert. Mint.com looks really interesting, and looks a lot like what I want, but I'm leery of giving out my banking and credit card information to a third party. The same can be said for Quicken Online. Non-web software solutions are a possibility, but obviously restrict my ability to view the data from anywhere. They also often require more manual input than their online counterparts.

How do you keep track of your money? Do you have a tried and true means of seeing where you spend? How do you keep track of what bills have been paid? Any tips from you seasoned veterans would be helpful for a newbie like me.

I am in the process of looking for ideas for a rewrite of Paper Plus, as well as for the next release of CoLT. If you have an idea, please leave me a comment here, or on the appropriate articles:

• Paper Plus Rewrite?
• CoLT Improvements Coming Soon

Apologies for the infrequent updates: my sister recently came back to the US for about a week (which was fun), then my grandmother came to visit (which I also enjoyed), and now I'm sick. So there you have it.

A two-part series on Unicode support for PHP web applications is coming, provided I can feel better and get rid of my writer's block.

Last night, I spent several frustrating hours trying to untangle a problem with the update manifest for my Firefox extensions. After releasing my updated extensions, I noted that while CoLT automatically updated without any problems, Googlebar Lite did not. I double-checked, triple-checked, and even quadruple-checked everything I was doing. Everything I had done for CoLT was exactly what I was doing for Googlebar Lite. But the automatic update consistently failed.

As past experiences have taught me, simply walking away from the problem is occasionally all that is needed. Taking a mental break is a surprisingly effective way of going directly to a problem's solution. And this is exactly what happened last night.

Being well past my usual bed time, and having made no progress towards a solution, I decided to call it a night, and so headed to the bathroom to take a shower and brush my teeth. As I stepped into the shower, the solution instantly occurred to me! I was incorrectly using a wild card in the minVersion value in my installer manifests (2.0.0.* instead of 2.0). Immediately after getting out of the shower, I rushed to test the solution. Lo and behold, it worked.

Sometimes, all it takes is walking away.