Category: Personal

I loathe crappy pens.
Only problem: I lose pens all the time, so losing expensive fountain pens and the like is a pain.
I’ve made up for this by buying disposable fountain pens like the Pilot Varsity, but those have trouble on certain types of paper.
The best inexpensive ballpoint I’ve written with is the $1.50 Pilot G2. I’ve never had issues with smearing (I’m left-handed), it writes smoothly and consistently, and it’s cheap enough that I don’t cry if I lose it. Basic Bic pens almost always work (but the knockoff ones suck), but I prefer the retractable point on the G2.
Thanks to the internet, I recently discovered — to my immense glee — that Mont Blanc rollerball refills fit in the G2 barrel with only a slight bit of filing on the plastic cap opposite of the point. Once about 1/8″ of material is removed, it fits perfectly. My main G2 needed a refill last night after a substantial amount of writing, so I bought a pair of the Mont Blanc refills as well as a 12-pack of new G2s (just in case). The Mont Blanc refills were only about $12 for a pair, so now I have a $7.50 pen that writes as well as a $200+ fancy pen. While losing a $7.50 pen is a bit more of a hassle than losing a $1.50 pen, at least I’m not losing something really expensive. If so, I do have spares.
Since the Mont Blanc refills apparently last longer than the G2 refills (gel pens go through ink like crazy, while the Mont Blanc refills are designed to write for 10,000 meters), I may end up actually saving money this way. We’ll see.

I’m looking at grad schools overseas, mostly in Europe.
As part of the process, I need to make some calls to these universities to chat with faculty, administrative staff, etc.
If I were to call, say, Switzerland from my Verizon cellphone, I would pay about $1.49/minute. If I wanted to pay $3.99/month, the rate drops to $0.08/min to landlines and $0.32/min for mobiles. That gets expensive quick. Qwest landline rates are comparable. I used to use Vonage, and calls to Swiss landlines are free on their standard World plan, but I don’t have their service any more.
Enter Google Voice. I already use it as my primary number and for voicemail, so deciding to use it for international calls was easy. One simply pre-pays for credits in blocks of $10 (which don’t expire) and then places a call from the web or dial-in phone interface. Costs me a whopping $0.02/min to landlines, which is much more palatable.
Since each endpoint is an actual phone, rather than a computer (like Skype, which has slightly higher rates), call quality is consistently good. The calls probably travel over some IP connections at some point, but there’s no jitter/lag that I could detect.
Even cooler: inbound caller ID works through Google Voice when international callers call me, at least those from Switzerland.
Hey, big phone companies: Vonage and Google can offer the same (and frequently more) services you do for considerably less money. Nickel-and-diming people for things like Caller ID, call waiting, and voicemail is losing you money. Your infrastructure was paid off a long time ago. Get with the program.
FTC Disclaimer: Do you see any referral links? Does it look like Google pays me money? If so, I’d have some Scrooge McDuck-style money vault and fancy food and drink rather than eating Clif bars and Dr. Pepper.
Google: I’m sure I can find some room in my condo for a Scrooge McDuck-style money vault if you feel the need to ship me a railcar worth of gold coins. Just sayin’.

My friend and I bought a bar of bacon chocolate.
Major letdown.
It tastes like salty milk chocolate. Sure, it’s decent chocolate, but there’s really no flavor of bacon at all. The saltiness is just odd.

I’ve been playing some Fallout 3 recently, and if the end of the world ever happens, I’d like to think that life in such a world would be similar to certain aspects of the game.
Specifically, that people would be generally decent folk, and continue to help advance human understanding, even in hostile environments.
That said, I suspect that in reality, things would be a bit more like the bands of raiders and other predatory groups in the game. Oh well.
Update: I obviously meant “world”, not “wirkd”. Stupid iPod keyboard. I’m going to leave it unchanged for maximum hilarity.

My friend’s roommate’s car battery died last week. Since she rarely drives the car, it was easier (and quicker) to remove it from the car and hook it up to a charger, rather than jump start the car and have her drive it around.
My little Battery Tender Jr. has been charging it for a few days, but it’s only able to output about 750-900 milliamps (( The specs say 750 mA, but it seems to deliver about 900 mA in bulk charging mode. Odd. )), so charging a car battery takes several days.
I also happened to have another “smart” charger that can put out about 1.5 amps, so I brought it over to their house tonight and had my friend connect it. During the process, he managed to accidentally short the negative connector on the quick-disconnect end of the alligator clips (looks like this, but unfused) to the positive battery terminal. Lots of sparks ensued.
Fortunately, he disconnected the alligator clip quickly, so no damage was done, but it was rather fun for a second or two.
After being connected properly, things seem to be working quite well and the battery (should) be ready to go tomorrow afternoon.
Moral of the story: Don’t short car batteries. They can output a massive amount of current.

My birthday’s on Friday. I turn 28.
The years seem to fly by.

The brain is evidently really good at identifying things that it likes or dislikes when it’s presently sensing them.
However, my brain in particular seems to be really bad at recognizing things that it’s missing. I get a vague feeling of “Hmm, I miss something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…”
After some thought, I think I’ve figured it out. I miss winter and the smell of pine trees. Living in the desert, I don’t really have many pine trees around, and I miss that.