|
 |
Wednesday, January 07, 2004 |
I was looking for a particular Dilbert I remembered, but couldn't find it, not on the www.Dilbert.com site, nor elsewhere on the web, although I remembered enough words from it that I could pretty reliably have searched out the right one, had the strips all been text-indexed. The best I could do was to find a random website that recounted, textually, the Dilbert I had in mind. This experience made me think of an idea for the Dilbert website. The text of each strip should be indexed and searchable. So, to the extent you accurately remembered the text of a Dilbert, you could be fairly confident you had found the right one, based on the text-only search results. Then, just like the archives for the New York Times and other on-line publications, you would have to pay to get the full content--in this case, the illustrated comic strip. Of course it would have to be cheap, $1 per strip at the most. (Ideally, the text might be augmented with keywords to aid in searching. For instance, perhaps there is a strip where Wally gets fired, but it doesn't actually contain the text "fired". If "fired" were added as a keyword, then a search for "Wally" + "fired" would stand a decent change of returning the strip in question.)
1:33:14 PM 
|
|
My arguments as to why Pete Rose's admission of gambling shouldn't earn him a full return to baseball, but he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
7:54:11 AM
|
|
We enjoyed sun for all but the last five miles of our drive back, from NYC, to Albany on Tuesday. Then, on the outskirts of Albany, the sky began to get very dark. A few minutes later, Beth remarked that she could see snow ahead. I was pretty sure it was "just" a snow squall, because of the suddenness, and because the forecast, when I checked the previous day, had called for PM snow showers. That little squall, however, was the worst I had ever been in. Fortunately, we were an hour ahead of our already conservative two-hours-advance schedule, and we were only about five miles away. It was a good thing we were on familiar territory, because visibility was, I don't know, very poor, maybe one car length. Signs were just about un-readable. Unfortunately, I had been planning to get gas at the very next opportunity, as we were pretty low. Plenty to get there if nothing went wrong, but I could easily envision an accident closing the highway for an hour or two, in which case we would have run out. However, we made it, and just as we turned off our exit and into a gas station, the squall abated.
7:54:10 AM
|
|
McDonald's prizes consistency. McDonald's customers prize that, and also particularly their french fries; unlike almost everything else served there, those are actually better than you could make at home. But the salting of fries, I have noticed, is perhaps the least consistent aspect of the McDonald's dining experience. More often than not, they are grossly over-salted. Other times, they are completely un-salted. Which leads me to the idea that they should add an automated salter to their french-fry makers, to solve this problem.
7:54:09 AM
|
|
I spent an afternoon as a hospital outpatient recently, when I had my ptosis surgery. As I suspect is nearly universal, I have always felt that hospitals, even good ones, were sterile, far-from-uplifting places. Our local Woodbury hospital, Woodwinds, proved a happy exception. It was pleasantly decorated, with huge windows overlooking fields and ponds. The waiting area was almost like a ski lodge, with a large bookcase, comfortable chairs, and a nice gas fire. It really made a difference-I felt very tranquil and unconcerned while waiting. Now my dear wife tells me that Woodwinds was quite specifically designed to achieve this affect. Of course, a low-key hospital in a prosperous suburb will have a much easier time creating such an environment than a busy city hospital. And I suppose those chairs, bookcases and fireplaces add a few more drops to the rising level in the healthcare costs bucket. But it sure did help make the whole procedure stress-free (admittedly, it was a pretty low-key procedure to begin with).
7:54:08 AM
|
|
Back in the northeast for a quick, 5-day vacation, and the weather is true to form: crummy. Some rain, a little wet snow, slush. And of course, the gloomy, grey sky, for 5 days running. We miss chilly-but-sunny Minnesota winter weather. The funny thing is that, even though we are in the snow belt of upstate NY (Glens Falls), people joke to us about how cold it must be where we live now. The fact is, the climates are quite comparable. Minnesota does have worse wind chill. But the sun makes it SO much less depressing. I really think the state is missing a marketing opportunity: Cheery Minnesota, where it is sometimes cold, but usually sunny.
7:54:06 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Erik Neu.
|
|
|
