Gas prices, stamp prices, dirty glasses...

I want to talk about buying stuff today.

Gas

Every time the price of gas goes up, I kick myself (figuratively) for not filling up the tank the day before. =P It's a never-ending cycle though. Apparently, the only way to avoid the self-kicking sensation is to live in South Carolina, where a gallon of gas is about $2.26. Without leaving the state of California, I could get gas for $2.95 in Whittier (44 minutes from here). If I wanted to save a penny, the cheapest gas today is $2.94 in Folsom (in the Sacramento area), a mere 5 hour and 55 minute drive from here.

I, on the other hand, paid $3.13 today for gas because I had an eighth of a tank left, that was the only station in the area not totally out of my way, and I had to go drop off a spare key for the other car to my husband. (His key broke!) There was one station cheaper that I passed on the way home, but all the other stations were even more expensive.

Postage Stamps

When we got married in October of 2005, my husband bought 100 stamps in a roll (or maybe there were two rolls, I don't recall) for our wedding announcements that were mailed within the US. After that, there were some left over that I've been using for what little we mail.

All was well, we don't mail much so they were in a manila folder in my file cabinet for when we needed them. Then, the price of stamps went up! For the few stamps that were left, I decided that I'd rather put two stamps on each letter I mail (once a month for rent and some odd random letters/forms) than drive to the post office.

Instead of a 37 cent stamp and a 2 cent stamp, I put on two 37 cent stamps. Yup, I waste 35 cents every single month! You know why? Not only was it not worth my time to drive down there to save 35 cents per month, not only was it not worth my tiny fraction of my $3.13 gallon of gas to get there, and not only does the post office in fact charge for parking in the amount of 25 cents (remember, I'd be saving 35, before gas and time)... No no, it wasn't that. The price of stamps is going up again! (3 cents if the USPS gets their way, 2 cents if the Postal Regulatory Commission gets their way.)

I haven't even used the whole roll, and there will have been two rate increases. In a year and a half!

I would rather the rate go up 10 cents and stay there for 3 years than go up by 2 cents, then 3, then 2, then 3... I don't like 2 cent stamps, never will. And what about those people who bought 2 cent stamps the last time rates went up and now they'll need 2 cent stamps AND 3 cent stamps! Or 5 cent stamps, or 2s and 1s... WHY???

Speaking of which, they're coming out with a "Forever Stamp." It'll be sold at whatever the going rate is, and be good even if the rate goes up. If the rate goes up, the purchase price of the Forever Stamp will go up, but it'll be the same physical stamp, and still valid for the next increase.

I, for one, am going to stock up on Forever Stamps the minute they come out. There will be no 2/3/5/1 cent stamps in our home!

/rant

Eyeglass cleaning solution

Finally, I would just like to point out that there has not been any eyeglass cleaning solution since I've purchased my glasses at any of the following places: Ralphs in NoHo, my pharmacy in NoHo, Target in Burbank, Target in Baldwin Park, Target optical in Burbank, Walmart in Duarte... The lady at the pharmacy told me that they were having a hard time finding it to stock it. I think it's just a conspiracy to get us all to wear contacts, there's plenty of contact lens solution everywhere. Luckily, I had some eyeglass cleaning stuff from a long time ago, but I'm out now, and my glasses are dirty, and it irritates me.


But my new mp3 player, and the fact that we paid off both of our credit cards this month, make me feel a little better.

Ancestry.com

Things have been slow moving in my genealogy lately. My husband was gracious enough to let me purchase a one year Ancestry.com membership, which is really cool. There's not much on my family though. =P

I've found quite a bit of stuff for my family on FamilySearch, and would have expected at least confirmation of the same information on Ancestry.com, but found nothing at all. I would love to see the day when Ancestry.com starts offering more records from non-anglo countries. Mexico has kept very good birth, death, and marriage records since 1859, and there has been much genealogical work done on the founding families of Mexico beginning in the 1500s.

I like the Ancestry.com "family site" for the most part. It's cool being able to link records straight into it, although some records that I've found have not had an "add to someone" button. This mostly happens with things like phone book records.

The downside is that there are no reporting features. Of course, the easy way to overcome this is to download the Gedcom and open it in Gramps, my normal genealogy program. Or so I thought. When I opened it, I found that everyone and every event was there, but there were no relationships between anyone. Defeats the purpose of the thing, doesn't it?

It turns out that the Gedcoms generated by Ancestry.com lack a tag that ties people to families, as per the Gedcom standards. Another Gramps user has already contacted Ancestry.com and was told essentially that they have no intention of fixing it. This is the genealogy equivalent of DRM (Digital Rights Management, the stuff that makes you not able to burn your mp3s to cds and makes your video fuzzy). "We will not follow the standards that the whole industry uses so that your data is portable, so your data which you've worked hard to find, source, and compile will be worthless outside of our website (and maybe the programs that we tell you to buy)." Lovely, huh?

The exact response states:

Dear ______,

We appreciate your message.
We are sorry for the trouble with the file. The GEDCOM file is read differently by the different programs. You may need to edit the file after it is entered into the new software.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know. 1-800-262-3787

Jennifer
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com

Translation: The file is fine, all you have to do is add parents and children and spouses to every single person (all 1,000+ of them) after you import it! Nothing wrong at all!

I'll be emailing them soon, when I have the energy to address them in a way worthy of their already-stated non-compliance.

Ancestry.com Membership

Things have been slow moving in my genealogy lately. My husband was gracious enough to let me purchase a one year Ancestry.com membership, which is really cool. I've found a lot for his family, but nothing for mine. =P

I've found quite a bit of stuff for my family on FamilySearch, and would have expected at least confirmation of the same information on Ancestry.com, but found nothing at all. I would love to see the day when Ancestry.com starts offering more records from non-anglo countries. Mexico has kept very good birth, death, and marriage records since 1859, and there has been much genealogical work done on the founding families of Mexico beginning in the 1500s.

I like the Ancestry.com "family site" for the most part. It's cool being able to link records straight into it, although some records that I've found have not had an "add to someone" button. This mostly happens with things like phone book records.

The downside is that there are no reporting features. Of course, the easy way to overcome this is to download the Gedcom and open it in Gramps, my normal genealogy program. Or so I thought. When I opened it, I found that everyone and every event was there, but there were no relationships between anyone. Defeats the purpose of the thing, doesn't it?

It turns out that the Gedcoms generated by Ancestry.com lack a tag that ties people to families, as per the Gedcom standards. Another Gramps user has already contacted Ancestry.com and was told essentially that they have no intention of fixing it. This is the genealogy equivalent of DRM (Digital Rights Management, the stuff that makes you not able to burn your mp3s to cds and makes your video fuzzy). "We will not follow the standards that the whole industry uses so that your data is portable, so your data which you've worked hard to find, source, and compile will be worthless outside of our website (and maybe the programs that we tell you to buy)." Lovely, huh?

The exact response states:

Dear ______,

We appreciate your message.
We are sorry for the trouble with the file. The GEDCOM file is read differently by the different programs. You may need to edit the file after it is entered into the new software.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know. 1-800-262-3787

Jennifer
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com

Translation: The file is fine, all you have to do is add parents and children and spouses to every single person (all 1,000+ of them) after you import it! Nothing wrong at all!

I'll be emailing them soon, when I have the energy to address them in a way worthy of their already-stated non-compliance.

I haven't gotten down to the Family History Center yet, too busy with school and such. I will certainly post when I do though. =)

Where technology comes from, part 2

Another interesting technology source I found in the news today:

The supply of water to the area is irregular, so the school has an innovative system that recycles rainwater and uses seesaws and merry-go-rounds to pump water. It also uses solar power and has landscaped gardens that supply vegetables for school meals.

If we harnessed all children's playgrounds around the world to pump water and/or generate electricity... I think we just stumbled onto something good! It's like one of those renewable energy sources you hear about on the news!

Interesting where technology comes from

My husband, one of our friends, and myself went to Disneyland yesterday (Sunday). Lots of fun, I haven't uploaded the pictures yet but I will soon. I was reading the news this weekend and found the story of the kidnapped baby interesting. Especially interesting, this quote:

Susanne Moore, a former Covenant nurse who had a baby Friday at the same hospital, told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the hospital placed an electronic band on her newborn girl's ankle. She said she was told that if the baby were taken too close to a door or elevator, a sensor would cause the door to lock or the elevator to shut down.
Moore said she also was told that if the band were cut off before it was deactivated, the hospital would be locked down.

A couple of comments here...

1. What has the world come to that we need to do this because we seemingly EXPECT babies to be stolen from hospitals...?
2. Cool idea. I imagine it's RFID technology, but how do you get it to detect when the band has been broken? Does this mean it's a non-re-sizable band that's completely made of electronic components/cables? Is it just a single cable that goes the whole circumference, and if so how do you prevent someone from cutting the rest of the band and slipping that part off? Hmmm.
3. This proximity-based door and elevator control is pretty clever, we were talking about something similar on the way home from Disneyland.
4. I can see other hospital applications here, particularly for hospitals that have this proximity based control already... why doesn't the ER/OR double doors swing open when a gurney approaches? (So you have to tag all the EMT's gurneys, but that's okay!) Why doesn't the elevator door automatically stay open when a gurney's approaching unless you press the close button (if you're full, you know).

Then you expand it out to office buildings, places where people can't carry their keys/badges all the time... aquatic centers come to mind! Hanging 2 big keys and like 9 small keys from the shoulder strap of my swimsuit on a whistle lanyard while I was teaching lessons may have worked, but it's not nearly as cool as the doors recognizing me automagically! Fun stuff. By the way, whoever was still sick at Charles's parents' house (I babysat on Saturday), I think I caught it from them. I've had a stuffy nose all day and feeling generally "blah." Still pretty productive though, I did the laundry that backed up due to our lack of drying capabilities since Friday. I also went to school today. I did better than I expected on the test we took last week, I got partial credit for admitting that something went over my head in the reading. =P The reading was about a girl who wanted to eat at the rectory of her Catholic school instead of walking home to eat. The question was something along the lines of "the author criticizes the role of the Catholic church, what criticisms does she have?" Totally over my head, I thought if there was anything criticized it may have been the Mother Superior, but not the "role" of the Church in daily life. Apparently the right answer had something to do with equality and preferential treatment. I guess I was too literal reading the question, because I still feel that's a stretch- inequality among students in that era is a socio-economic issue that may well be limited to that particular scenario that was described, and it's not the church's fault. Other than that, I only had a couple of minor errors, mostly accents and/or spelling in my short answer questions. Tomorrow, I have to go to parents' house. They're leaving to Mexico on Wednesday night, they'll be gone for two months. There's some talk about parents selling their rental property in about a year, supposedly mom thinks that she spends all of the rental income on upkeep. I think I need to talk her into sitting down and figuring out where her money goes when she gets back. Of course, there are those in our family who know where mom's money goes, that namely being to the thrift store, the other thrift store, the thrift store in the next town over once a month, the swap meet on Thursdays and Sears. She needs to figure it out for herself, though, to make it stick. Hopefully we can talk her out of selling, though, because that will leave both of my sisters without a place to live. Unless she doesn't really like them and that's her sneaky evil plan all along... Hmmm. Wow, that kind of jumped around... alot. I guess I haven't posted as often as I should. =P I'd break it up into subject-specific posts, but that ruins the free flow of information and such!

Meh. No hot water.

By the way, I want to mention that we have not had hot water in our apartment building since Friday afternoon. Apparently it's an issue with the gas, not just the water heater, because the dryers aren't working either. You never realize how important gas is until it's gone! I can't wash dishes (not well anyway), can't do laundry (unless I want it to sit around damp until Monday), and can't take a shower at home (unless I wanna freeze!). Glad we're YMCA members and I can shower there! Maintenace isn't going to come out until Monday. They don't consider it an emergency situation that we can't take showers. =P

Dictionary woes

I got marked down on my weekly vocab sheet last week due to using my English-Spanish dictionary rather than using a Spanish dictionary that gives definitions in Spanish. The professor wrote on my sheet that I should use the dictionary linked on the resources section of the class management system, which is the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary.

I like my other dictionary better.

• I looked up jalea for example, which said "f. Conserva transparente, hecha de zumo de algunas frutas." Conserva I took to be something saved or preserved, transparente is transparent, made of zumo of some fruits.
• So I look up zumo and it tells me "m. Líquido de las hierbas, flores, frutas u otras cosas semejantes, que se saca exprimiéndolas o majándolas." Liquid of the herbs, flowers, fruits, or other similar things, that are taken out by exprimir or majandar.
• I look up exprimir, which I determined in my vast knowledge of conjugation to be the root of the word exprimiéndolas. It says "Extraer el zumo o líquido de una cosa, apretándola o retorciéndola."  To extract the zumo or liquid of a thing, squeezing or twisting it. (Remember, zumo is defined as the thing that you exprimir, making a circular definition. A is made when you do B to fruits. B is what you do to fruits to make A.)
• I then look up majandar, which in my vast knowledge of conjugation (see above) I determine to be the probable root of the word majándolas. It doesn't exist, neither does majándolas or majando (las is a suffix meaning to a female them). I give up on that part of the definition. (I later discover, by browsing in my Spanish-English dictionary, that the root word is majar, which it defines as "to crush, to mash." I don't get "mash" out of any of the three definitions in Spanish!)
  

What does my Spanish-English dictionary say about jalea? "nf. (noun, feminine) jelly."

Lovely, huh?

The next word, which was found in the story we read for homework over the weekend, again doesn't exist at all in any form I can think of (again, in my vast knowledge of Spanish conjugation) until I browse the Spanish-English dictionary.

Here's another one:

• I found the word caló in the reading. The definition says "m. Lenguaje de los gitanos españoles." Masculine word, meaning the language of the Spanish gitanos.
• I think a gitano is some sort of native, but I decide to check. I copy and paste it, and "gitanos" isn't in the dictionary, only "gitano" is. This is the problem with dictionaries that you can't browse, only search. But one letter differences, such as plural to singular, should be correctable by the system.
  

Me using the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary is like a person who's never spoken English being given a link to Wikipedia as a dictionary.  You have to know the words to learn the words!

The next word I looked up was defined by three synonyms, only two of which I had any faint idea how to translate.

This is going to be a long homework assignment, and Charles is already asleep... *sigh* (Not that he was going to help me with my homework or anything, but I don't like waking him when I get into bed after he's been asleep a while.)

Disneyland, weeee!

So, instead of doing my homework like I probably should have, Charles and I went to Disneyland yesterday. It was a lot of fun, esspecially since it was free now that he's a Disney cast member. We had a lot of fun, we went to Adventureland and New Orleans Square. (I couldn't believe he'd never been to the Tiki room before, so we had to start on that side of the park!) Of course, we were analyzing everything we saw and figuring out how things worked. =P

Pictures are on my Yahoo pictures page, though it's a lot of pictures of things we saw and not that many of us. But you can look if you want, of course! It's here.

PS. We got a new bigger bed, and I love it