Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Quick Post from Kirby Stephen
We hiked in 14 miles today from Orton, the easiest 14 mile hike we've done so far. We used umbrellas for the second time on the trip --- this time as sunshades, as it's been very sunny, warm and hot. Not at all like the England we've been told to expect. It's pretty but shadeless around here, so it's a good thing we brought umbrellas instead of gore-tex jackets.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Quick post from Orton
Having left the Lakes district yesterday --- what a change in terrain! From killer views with killer climbs (yes, worse than the local Black Mountain), to gentle but desolate Moors, this walk definitely has provided me with views so splendid that I can barely believe that I'm walking across a completely developed first world country.
The weather has been nothing short of amazing. I hope our luck holds out. We even went sailing on Ullswater, hiring a dinghy sailboat for the lake for 2 hours and having a blast despite this being my first time in 5 years since I did any dinghy sailing.
One thing though --- this is definitely a challenging walk. When I set this up, my attitude was, this is England --- how high can the mountains be? They might not be super high, but the trails are strewn with rocks to prevent erosion and this makes the climbs super super tough, and the descent particularly tough on joints. Plus --- the Lakes district doesn't believe in having any signs anywhere, so the navigational challenge makes things super super tough.
But the people are nice (and they speak English!), and we've met more than our share of friendly friendly people who go out of their way to make visitors feel welcome. England is an expensive country, but so far has been well worth the visit. Now... back to our regular foot soaking...
(Still no wireless, so no picture posting for now...)
The weather has been nothing short of amazing. I hope our luck holds out. We even went sailing on Ullswater, hiring a dinghy sailboat for the lake for 2 hours and having a blast despite this being my first time in 5 years since I did any dinghy sailing.
One thing though --- this is definitely a challenging walk. When I set this up, my attitude was, this is England --- how high can the mountains be? They might not be super high, but the trails are strewn with rocks to prevent erosion and this makes the climbs super super tough, and the descent particularly tough on joints. Plus --- the Lakes district doesn't believe in having any signs anywhere, so the navigational challenge makes things super super tough.
But the people are nice (and they speak English!), and we've met more than our share of friendly friendly people who go out of their way to make visitors feel welcome. England is an expensive country, but so far has been well worth the visit. Now... back to our regular foot soaking...
(Still no wireless, so no picture posting for now...)
Monday, May 29, 2006
Scott Burns agrees with me on the new issue of I-bonds
My original analysis seems like it matches up with Burn's.
Day 1: Coast to Coast
Last evening was gorgeous, but we woke up to rainy weather. (Because of jet lag, we woke up at 5:30am, but had gotten about 8 hours of sleep, so it was good) We took off with a little bit of mist in the air, and then the rain started coming down, but our hiking umbrellas came through and were quite good.
Then the sun came out, and bathed the coast in all its glory. It was so beautiful that it took us nearly 4 hours to hike the first 5 miles, we were stopping to shoot so frequently!
Then we cut across pieces of the English country side that were quite beautiful, except a few boggy fields which slowed us down and dirtied our boots. Way finding was more than a little precarious, especially after I discovered that they'd been quite a bit of tree cutting on Dent Fell, and my coast to coast guidebook was just a couple of years out of date. But we did make it through by dead-reckoning and instinct (when in doubt, go up hill), and then were lucky enough to have locals around to ask directions of.
Dinner was at the Ennerdale View B&B, with its gorgeous views. We're quite footsore, however, and Lisa has already gone to bed. (A first for her, beating me to bed!)
Also, the Tomlin Guest House we stayed in the first night was also excellent --- a great value, and such friendly people! Everyone we've met so far has been very friendly, from the airport information person to the taxi driver who detoured out of an errand he was running for his family to take us to our guest house because otherwise we'd have to wait 20 minutes!
Aside from the footsoreness, the muddy spots and the occasional rain, I'm loving this trip so far.
Then the sun came out, and bathed the coast in all its glory. It was so beautiful that it took us nearly 4 hours to hike the first 5 miles, we were stopping to shoot so frequently!
Then we cut across pieces of the English country side that were quite beautiful, except a few boggy fields which slowed us down and dirtied our boots. Way finding was more than a little precarious, especially after I discovered that they'd been quite a bit of tree cutting on Dent Fell, and my coast to coast guidebook was just a couple of years out of date. But we did make it through by dead-reckoning and instinct (when in doubt, go up hill), and then were lucky enough to have locals around to ask directions of.
Dinner was at the Ennerdale View B&B, with its gorgeous views. We're quite footsore, however, and Lisa has already gone to bed. (A first for her, beating me to bed!)
Also, the Tomlin Guest House we stayed in the first night was also excellent --- a great value, and such friendly people! Everyone we've met so far has been very friendly, from the airport information person to the taxi driver who detoured out of an errand he was running for his family to take us to our guest house because otherwise we'd have to wait 20 minutes!
Aside from the footsoreness, the muddy spots and the occasional rain, I'm loving this trip so far.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Going on vacation...
We're finally embarking on our coast to coast walk! I might be on-line sporadically long enough to post pictures and reply to friends, but don't expect heavy posting.
Monday, May 22, 2006
More Mac Woes
My Mac Mini woes are not over. 3 days after receiving my replacement Mac Mini, Mac OS X has started hanging. It works for about 3 minutes after booting up, but after that hangs. Nothing works, so the only solution now is a reinstall of OS X.
This time, I know it's not hardware problem because when I boot into Windows XP, it's solid as a rock. (The Mac hardware test CD works too, and proclaims the hardware solid)
Ah well. If at any time there's a time to do a reinstall, it's 3 days after you get a new machine, before you've done too much to it. I have to say, at this point, I'm really thinking that all the hype about how solid Mac OS X is is simply hype. We'll see how this goes.
This time, I know it's not hardware problem because when I boot into Windows XP, it's solid as a rock. (The Mac hardware test CD works too, and proclaims the hardware solid)
Ah well. If at any time there's a time to do a reinstall, it's 3 days after you get a new machine, before you've done too much to it. I have to say, at this point, I'm really thinking that all the hype about how solid Mac OS X is is simply hype. We'll see how this goes.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Replacement Mac Mini
The replacement Mac Mini showed up, and it is just so slightly difference from the other machine:
- It's much quieter, it doesn't go into "full fan mode" as often as the one that died.
- For some reason, Mac OSX seems to be happy to use a little less memory on this guy.
- There's an annoying bug which refuses to turn off the Mac's internal speakers.
- Palm Desktop causes the whole thing to crash!
- It seems to hang intermittenly. (Don't blame this on Windows XP. Lisa's Acer works just fine, as does my office laptop) There's something wierd going on.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
Greg Mankiw agrees with me
From my previous post:
English and Journalism majors are simply too incompetent at complex issues to do a proper job of covering our world today.
Though maybe I should be scared that a Republican Economist agrees with me. Then again, he's agreeing with Brad DeLong as well...
English and Journalism majors are simply too incompetent at complex issues to do a proper job of covering our world today.
Though maybe I should be scared that a Republican Economist agrees with me. Then again, he's agreeing with Brad DeLong as well...
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Scott Burns is Disingenous again...
Compared to the General Fund Deficit, Social Security's impending deficit in 2040 is not a problem. [source] Medicare is in significant trouble, but before things get too bad, we'll simply be forced to have a rational, national healthcare system like all the other industrialized countries (and have better health outcomes to boot, what a tragedy), so that problem is a matter of political will, not an inevitable disaster.
The General Fund deficit, however, will persist as long as Republicans stay evil and as long as they keep winning the three branches of government. The fact that they're not currently popular doesn't mean that they won't resort to other methods of stealing the election.
The General Fund deficit, however, will persist as long as Republicans stay evil and as long as they keep winning the three branches of government. The fact that they're not currently popular doesn't mean that they won't resort to other methods of stealing the election.
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