A Half Pair

I finished my first sock last night. I knitted it without any errors (that I know of), but I have decided I don’t really like the pattern. It’s kinda hard to tell that until you’ve knitted one though. I guess. So now I’m doomed to knit another sock just like it, or have a half pair of socks. I went ahead and started the second sock tonight. Maybe the pattern will grow on me after I wear them a bit.

Today at lunch, Jonathan and I went to the Tea Garden, a Chinese restaurant. We stopped at the bank on the way so I could make a deposit. I thought the food was pretty good, and Jonathan said he enjoyed it as well. Plus it wasn’t any more than a deli, except that I gave nearly a 30% tip (on $3.00 on an $11 check). Still a $3.00 tip seemed pretty lean.

We walked back to the office the back way along the railroad tracks. That’s the path I usually tread when I take a lunchtime walk in the summer looking for blooms to log. There were no blooms today.

After I finished the sock last night, I went down to the basement and sawed up some PVC. Then I assembled it into a puppet theater. I think it’s going to work out pretty OK. I had the idea later today that the back drop could be made from a thin white sheet (or white linen of some sort), and then we could project scenery onto it from behind. How cool would that be? Answer: All the way cool.

But of course there’s no time for that for this production. I still need to cut up and stitch the canvas covering together for it. And maybe paint it, but I think that will have to wait too. Plus with the sewing machine out of commission, I’m going to have to wait on doing any stitching anyhow.

I also need to wedge a little time in this week or next to paint my Pinewood Derby car. I guess I should go out and buy some paint.

 

A Long Walk

Yesterday Jonathan’s cell phone arrived. We got him a pre-paid phone for $20 that’ll be good for three months. The crazy thing is that it will be cheaper to buy a new phone than it will be to add more minutes to this one. But for $5.00 per month, I guess we’ll try to save the environment.

He called me on it when he got out of class. It was a pretty nice day weather-wise, so he thought he might walk from the campus to my office instead of taking the trolley. OK! Exercise is good. I hadn’t heard anything from him 40 minutes later, so I called him. He was fine, it’s just that the walk was a little longer than he had anticipated. Google tells me that if he had walked the shortest path between those two points, it would have been 2.3 miles. But he didn’t know the shortest path, and thus took some other route. I guess it must have been at least 2.5 miles.

I figured he might like a little company on his hike, so I set out myself and met him along the way. We went to a burrito place in Concord and had… burritos?

Then we went to my office. I got back to work, and he set up camp in a vacant office. He seems to really like school and it is nice to see him really buckling down. I’m pretty sure he’s going to slam-dunk his first semester.

 

Surplus Citrus

Today I got rid of the last of the January citrus order. A co-worker asked for a half case of grapefruit, but paid me for a full case. When she wouldn’t take the money back, I decided to give her another half case. All I had left after that was a half case of oranges and a half case of grapefruit. I combined them and then split them, giving them to two needy families in our church.

Also, I placed our February/March order today. I did not order any extra at all this time, so I hope I got it right. It’s just too hard (and expensive) to get rid of the surplus.

Today I figured out a way to make yesterday’s “clever” code less stupid. It now uses constructs that should be familiar to any C programmer who has been programming for at least six months. Also, it’s even more concise than before. Plus it compiles and does what it’s supposed to do, so… bonus!

I went for a walk today at lunch. I haven’t gone south on Main Street in a while, but there really hasn’t been much reason to since early November. That particular walk features several plants, but they’re all under a foot of snow still. As I was getting back to the office, I remembered that I wanted to buy a NH State flag for the Pathfinder club, so I kept going and went to Flag Works. I told the lady what I wanted, and she got one out post haste. Then I reached for my wallet and found it to be… not with me. I had taken it out in my office earlier, and it was on my desk. So I hustled back and got it. Then returned an completed the purchase: $32 and some change. Not bad!

After supper tonight I spent a fair amount of time importing material from Wikipedia into my Wikibook. I’ve been fleshing out the Aboriginal Lore honor, and Wikipedia has a treasure trove of info on that topic. I guess I brought over ten articles. I could count them and post an accurate figure, but how fun would that be? None fun.

Anyhow, the honor now has 6 out of 11 requirements completely answered, so that’s… 54.545454% complete. Eleven is easy to divide by (for whole numbers less than 11 anyhow) – just multiply by nine and repeat. So for 6/11, I start with 6*9 = 54. Then repeat the 54 ad infinitum and toss in a decimal point somewhere. Not that you care!