Pat's Place

I'm soliciting quotes to have a chimney repair done. Of the four places I called, two came over promptly. One hasn't called back yet (though to be fair it's only been a few hours). And one called back promptly, but...he wants to charge me $85 to produce a quote.

Another tradition falls victim to environmental regulations.

Every year, Cornell's freshman architect students build a giant dragon and parade it around main campus. The festivities culminate in the burning of the dragon on the Arts Quad.

Because dragons generally contain varying amounts of paints, glues, and other materials that emit toxins when burned, the event would have run afoul of new environmental regulations in New York banning the intentional burning of substances that are neither wood nor agricultural products. This year's dragon was spared, and a symbolic dragon's nest was burned instead.

The students are rightfully disappointed that regulations quashed part of a cherished campus tradition. It's unfortunate that the regulations don't recognize a difference between habitual or repeat offenses, and very occasional events such as Dragon Day.

I hold out little hope for a regulatory change or loophole, but knowing the ingenuity of Cornell students, I am certain that it is only a matter of time before we see dragons that can be burned in compliance with the regulations.

My sister, who works at the Library of Congress, published an article about her lessons learned helping build the Library's online "American Memory" collection. Congrats Liz!

Unit: Sony Hi-Fi SYSTEM for iPod (MHC-EC78Pi)
Purchased: 11/28/08 (Black Friday!)
Retailer: Best Buy (Dorchester, MA)
Price: $157.99 on sale, normally $169.99
Reviewer: Patrick Madden

Getting Started

This 380 Watt bookshelf stereo system sounded decent at the store, even when competing against the background noise of frenzied shoppers on the busiest shopping day of the year. It couldn't compete with the thumpa-thumpa music coming from some of the humongous boom boxes and larger stereos in the same class, but I wasn't looking to blast my ears out in my home office. I brought the unit home and set it up on top of a bookcase across the room, then set it through its paces. I found it to be a generally nice unit, but in the end I decided to return it for refund because of a design deficiency in the FM tuner.

With the markets and major players collapsing all around us, it's no surprise that surveys have shown declining consumer confidence. Of course, this means that we consumers would rather tighten our belts to make sure we've got extra resources for lean times, rather than continue to spend at or beyond our means, perhaps even recklessly.

Happy Halloween!

This was one of my better Halloweens in recent memory. Rather than be a mere candy dispenser and onlooker, I donned a costume and an alter-ego and participated this year.

Meet Werewolf Pat. He answered the doorbell and spoke with a growl and a gruff voice, taking care to look out the window first to make sure there was nobody under 3 feet tall who might be easily frightened.

Today I witnessed a troubling event on my cell phone. I saw the front display light up out of the corner of my eye, so I picked it up to see what was going on. The phone told me it had just received 49 Megabytes of data. I don't subscribe to any services that transfer data, and I wasn't even using the phone at the time, and this creeped me out a bit.

My stargazer lily, one of the things I most look forward to seeing in my garden, picked up a mosaic virus. I haven't finished reading about this, but I suspect I'll have to rip the whole plant out :-(

I wish I had some nice pictures of it, all I've got are the ones I just took.

Cleaning out one of my mailboxes, I noticed a notification from US Airways informing me that, due to the cost of fuel, they have implemented a $25 charge for a second piece of checked baggage.

Since it's weight that causes more fuel to be used, they ought to be charging passengers by pounds of baggage times number of miles traveled rather than by the piece. Clearly they're just trying to extract more money from passengers, using fuel as the scapegoat.

US Airways, the contempt you hold your customers in is one of the reasons I avoid flying you anywhere.