It's Here!

Wow, that was fast! Monday morning my iPod was in China and at 9:31 yesterday morning it was sitting on my front step awaiting my arrival home from work. I've played with it a little, but with Mel's and my wedding this Saturday, I don't think I'll have much time to try it out until next week. This also means there won't be much blogging from me for the next few days. I may write some more tonight or tomorrow morning, but that will probably be it until next week.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I Ordered It!

I ordered my iPod last night. I had been thinking about it for about a month and I finally decided to go ahead and do it. I ordered the black iPod nano and I am having it engraved with the nickname that my Advanced Computer Programming class gave me last year - Darth Eilers. It should ship within three days and then within another week, it should be here!

Dinner with Homercles

Mel had her bachelorette party yesterday afternoon and evening in Waterloo, so I spent much of my afternoon straightening up the garage. Later, Homercles stopped by and we went to dinner at a great Mexican restaurant in town, Fiesta del Sol. Despite the fact that we live less than half a mile apart from each other, we don’t get together too often. I guess it’s probably because we both live very busy lives. Perhaps we can get together again for lunch when he’s off from work for winter break. I’m taking a day of vacation that week and I would love to get together at our favorite Chinese buffet. So Homercles, if you’re reading this, try to keep December 30 free for lunch.

iPod

For about the past month I have been thinking about buying an iPod for myself. I got some money for my birthday last month and I am being told that I should spend it on something fun for myself. For many people, making a purchase like this would be no problem, but I have a real issue with spending a lot of money. I want to make sure that it is exactly what I want before spending the money on it. I think I have finally decided on the iPod nano. I kind of wanted one of iPods that also plays video, but I decided that the nano will better fit my anticipated uses. I plan on taking it with me as I go jogging and I am worried about the hard drive skipping. The nano doesn't have a hard drive, so that's not an issue. Now I just need to decide on a color and accessories such as a case. I have heard that these things are notorious for scratching easily, and I would like for it to continue to look nice.

The Leaf Fairy

I got a phone call from my mother about half an hour ago. She asked me if I had gone to her house this weekend to pick up leaves in her yard. I had picked up some on Friday when I was there, but she knew that. My mom had gone to visit my sister in the Twin Cities this weekend and when she got back yesterday, she discovered that the leaves in her yard had been picked up! It was windy this weekend, but she has a high privacy fence around the back yard, so the leaves couldn't have all blown out of the yard, besides it was way too clean. Perhaps some people from her church picked them up, or maybe it was my aunt and uncle who live in the area.

All I know is I sure didn't do it. I spent much of the weekend preparing to paint and painting the bathroom. I got it done last night. I finish cleaning the room and I need to put all of the towel bars back up tonight.

Wallpaper

This weekend I am finally getting around to painting the main bathroom in our house. It has a floral wallpaper that neither Mel or I really cared for. We bought the paint a couple months ago, but I haven't gotten around to getting the paining done. Before I could paint, I needed to remove the wallpaper. It has been a real pain in the ass getting it down! I've already made two trips to TrueValue to get supplies, and I am about to return again. At least it's just around the corner from my house.

Mel has said that she doesn't like wallpaper, and I am beginning to agree with her. I had planned on getting the wallpaper down early this morning, priming the wall, and then getting the first coat of paint on the wall by early afternoon. Hopefully I'll at least be able to get the priming done this afternoon. I'd like to finish the whole job today since we are going out of town tomorrow, but I don't see that happening.

The Website

Last night I began working on updating my personal website. My goal is to have it all updated by December 1. As I haven't changed it in a while, it may take that long. Besides, the updated website will not just be my personal website, but the website of my wife (as of November 26) and myself.

One of the problems I'm having with revising my website is deciding what I want it to look like. I spent a good hour last night thinking about fonts and colors. I also had to get a better paint program that I had on my computer. Fortunately I found a freeware one that seems to be doing the job. It's called Ultimate Paint. I haven't had any problems with it yet. Hopefully it does the job.

Once I figured out the general style for the website, I had to think about content. I think I may take the approach that "less is more." Previously I have included a lot of information on my website that probably wasn't much interest to anyone but myself. Ok, the whole site is probably like that, but who wants a list of websites I like. If they wanted to see them, they could find them their selves.

Well, if I want to get the site done, I better get back to work on it.

Math Lesson

Hi everyone! It's been nearly a month since I last posted, hopefully it won't be as long before I post again. Anyway, the reason I am writing today is to give a little math lesson. I just got done watching a story on a local news station about the upcoming city council election in Cedar Rapids and the way the person they were interviewing, the county auditor I believe, defines a majority really annoys me. She said that the winner of the election needs fifty percent of the votes, plus one. Well that would be correct if an even number of votes are cast, but what if an odd number of votes are cast? Let's say that 99 votes are cast. Fifty percent of 99 votes is 49.5 votes. Adding one to that means that the winner needs to receive 50.5 votes. Since a candidate can't receive half of a vote, that means that a candidate would need to receive 51 votes to win, but this is not correct. A majority is simply more than fifty percent! So the winner would only need to receive 50 votes if 99 votes were cast. That would give him or her a majority with fifty and five-ninths percent of the total number of votes. At least she didn't say that the winner needs to receive fifty-one percent of the votes to win.