Time Machine Fail = Nicke Screwed

It's been around 30 days since the last time I backed up my Mac. If I was an outside reader of this post I'd be saying aloud "Why the hell would you not back up your Mac!? It's so simple in Leopard! All you have to do is plug in your external drive and voila!, Time Machine takes care of the rest!"

Well you know what, Time Machine has its priorities screwed up. I have a 160 gb HDD which actually has around 148 gb of storage on it. My Time Machine partition on my external actually has 160 gb.

Let's do the math: 160 gb > 148 gb => (Time Machine Storage) > (Anything I will ever store on my HDD. EVER.)

Yet for some reason every time I backup Time Machine tells me that it needs 20 more gb of space to back up my disk. How can this be!? Don't I have more than enough space to hold all of my data?

Apparently not, as Time Machine likes to keep older versions on my files, which takes up extra space.

Now Apple, let's think about this, shouldn't Time Machine delete my old files to make room for my new ones? Me thinks yes.

I'll probably have to force Time Machine to completely redo my backup now. And last time TM had a hiccup in backing up my Macbook my HDD died. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.

Digs

Bryan:
are you still living in that house or something?
or did you have to find new digs
that's right
i said digs
i dare you to look it up in the dictionary
i used it right

Wow, look it up. It's actually in the dictionary!

Fun Math Problem

It's kinda neat, semi-applicable to the real world, partially common sense, and very do-able:

"Twenty five boys and twenty five girls sit around a table. Prove that it is always possible to find a person both of whose neighbors are girls."

From the Penn Mathematics Society (that's the warm up problem).

They Should Make Trading Cards...

[While talking about how nice Columbia was when I visited]:

Shahzad:
penn is hotter
dont get corrupted by the city
upenn has a much nicer campus

Me:
yo they gotz jeff sachs and sudhir venkatesh
fucking jeff sachs!
the man writes on how to end motha fuckin poverty!
...

Shahzad:
sachs aint a real economist

Me:
lol
nor is levitt!

Shahzad:
sudhir is a sociologist ....LOL

Me:
We've got Diiulio!

Shahzad:
levitt at least sells books!


---
How cool is it that we can talk about our schools like we do about teams in the NBA!?

I wish I had a "Before" picture too...

Remember when I said I was swamped for a bit? Well I still kind of am, but not as bad as before. As a testament to my triumph, I'd like to present to you my Inbox, which currently only has 6 messages in it!


That's down from over 60 this evening! Too bad one of them is this:


oops.

P.S. I plan to have a comeback of the intellectual posts soon. I just haven't gotten around to them.

Oy, this is what I get for using an Electric Razor

I wish my electric razor had a battery indicator. See, then I wouldn't have a half-shaven face right now.

And it's like not even like one half's shaved and the other half isn't ala Two-Face or something. I just have awful patches all around.

I Love Logitech

I love Logitech. Today I called their customer support, and they're definitely one of the best customer supports I've ever dealt with (plus their products are great), and that's saying something coming from me. But for the story let's rewind:

So my wrist in my right hand has been starting to hurt, and sometimes the pain goes up to my elbow, and I suspect the culprit has been excessive laptop usage. Particularly, trackpad usage. I don't ever use a mouse, and now my wrist hurts whenever I start using my trackpad for more than like 5 minutes. It's not good. But I've always had a mouse! I've had a nice, comfortable, bluetooth, optical, Logitech v270 ($60) since I bought my computer, but I stopped using it a while back because my left click button was getting screwy.

Fastforward to today when I'm fed up with having to use a not-so-responsive-clicking mouse, and I'm searching the internets to find out how I can crack the thing open and fix it. I find out that the mouse has a 3 year warranty with almost no questions asked or documentation required. Needless to say, I call up Logitech.

They tell me my mouse is still covered under warranty, I don't have to send it in, they'll just send me a new one, AND they'll even upgrade my mouse to a newer model! Now I'll be getting a v470. Bluetooth and LASER. And the whole call took like 5 minutes, a record for any warranty replacement stuff.

I love you Logitech. You're awesome.

P.S. Logitech ties with iRiver for best customer support. I once needed to replace my $200 MP3 player, and they graciously sent me an upgraded player lickity-split. Too bad iRiver's kaputz now.

Under the Button

I really like our school newspaper's blog Under the Button. At times, it can actually have more news in it than our actual paper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, since many times the DP recaps what has already happened in terms of speaker events. Regardless, my fondness of Under the Button increased with this post, which included an xkcd comic, a mention of TechCrunch, and a bunch of other pretty nerdy things to do on V-day. Lonely for Valentines Day? Check the post out.

http://underthebutton.com/2009/02/valentines-survival-guide/

Kinda like a Prius, but for Electricity!

Google's testing a new thing that's pretty neat: monitoring home electricity usage. Now, let me explain before you think it's uber creepy. The service is called PowerMeter which, if you sign up, can monitory how much energy you use for you to view online.

So, I draw comparisons to a Prius because my friend has a Prius, and on the Prius it tells what your instantaneous fuel mileage is. When you accelerate you use a lot of gas to power the engine to get your car rolling. When my friend starting seeing just exactly how much fuel he was using every time he put the pedal to the floor, he started accelerating more gently, increasing his fuel economy. There are other benefits to accelerating gently as well, such as increasing the life of your engine (and for those of you who hit the brakes hard over a short distance when you have to stop, breaking gently is good for your car as well and prolongs the life of your brake pads and rotors!).

Anyway, so as one google engineer said, "It changes the way you think about electricty." This is from the same guy who realized his baseline energy consumption doubled whenever he turned on his kitchen lights.

I'd love to have this available for my home. I think it could drastically decrease the amount of electricity a family consumes each day.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/googling-your-home-electricity-usage/

Super Bowl Ads

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago (you know, when the Super Bowl was still relevant), but oh well.

The NYTimes breaks down the makeup of Super Bowl ads from 1984 to 2009. Ads containing humor are up, and ads featuring "beverages" (aka beer/man juice) are at an all-time high.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/business/media/20090202-business-superbowlads.html

Also, there were no credit card ads this year? I guess that's kinda surprising, but not really.

A Few Things I Learned Today

1) There are actually 3 Median Voter Theorems, but since the subject of Political Economy's so new, people call them all different things.

2) My milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard, and damn right, they're better than yours.

3) If the space of voting alternatives is unidimensional and ordered, and if the preferences of all voters are singled peaked, then the winner of a vote is the median of the distribution of peaks.

I thought number 3 was neat.

Fucking Awesome

http://www.fmylife.com/

My personal favorite:

Today, my boyfriend handcuffed me to the bed, naked. Someone pulled the fire alarm, and my boyfriend couldn't find the key. So he left me, and the Resident Advisor found me. The fireman had to cut the chain. FML

I'm definitely going there if I'm having a bad day. And to think the worst thing I'd write would be "I had class at DRL from 6:30 - 8:30 today. FML"

Wait, no, that's pretty bad.

A Conversation from a While Back

Nick: "Did you just Wikipedia that?"
Jenn: "No. I just know. I'm smart."
Nick: "Jennifer the Savant Bui."
Jenn: "What does 'savant' mean?"
Nick: " Know-it-all. Ironic, isn't it?"

Sheesh

Goooolly. I've been swamped for the past few days/week.

Commitments

"Punctuality is the expression of commitment"

That's the fortune I just got from a fortune cookie.

...Which brings me to my next post: my New Years Resolutions.

I know I know, its like almost mid-February, but better late than never, right? Well I guess not if you're abiding by that fortune. Oh well, here goes:

1) Be on time
2) Stay organized
3) Branch out

That's all. Please notice that "Don't skip classes" or "Don't procrastinate" isn't on that list. Because well, let's face it, I want to accomplish these things.

Bloomberg

My friend wants to work for Bloomberg's reelection campaign. Here's a good reason why:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06perks.html?pagewanted=1&hp

I'm confused

From a Po-Town Journal Article talking about the clients in the Madoff scheme who lost money to ol' Bernie:

"One client is Ira Sorkin, the attorney who’s defending Madoff against charges he perpetrated the biggest financial fraud in history."

What!? Madoff screwed him and he's gonna defend him!? (pronoun confusion, I know). Uh, I'm not putting my money on a good defense.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20090205/BUSINESS/90205014&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

I can't tell if this is serious

"The relief you are experiencing is made possible by a gift from Mike Zinman"

That's what it says when you look up at eye level while at the urinal in the undergraduate study center of Van Pelt (our main library at Penn). I can't tell if I'm supposed to take that seriously or just laugh. Either way, I laughed.

It looks like Tax Rebates do work!

Edited: 2/5/09
I've always been kind of skeptical about tax rebates. Take the rebate that you got in 2008, for example. I think the rebate was for like $500 or so, which is a good sum of money, yes, but I always felt like it wasn't good enough. After all, what can you get with $500? I guess you could buy a cheap desktop computer (the kind the average consumer would buy), maybe a dishwasher, clothes washer or dryer, etc. But I just always thought that $500 wasn't enough to make people go out there and buy things, and that people would just stick it into their savings account instead.

Well, I was wrong apparently as Bush's 2008 tax rebate did induce a spike in consumer spending and kept it from plummeting (sooner).

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/do-tax-rebates-work/

Edit: Some more evidence: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/more-evidence-on-tax-rebates/

US Debt Pwnage

Lolz at you, US Debt. You think you're so high and mighty standing at $10.7 trillion. You know what can pwn you, though?

A Deathstar.

Yes, some crazy man has calculated how much it would cost to create a Deathstar with today's prices, and the result is that it would be 1.4 trillion times the US debt, or 15.6 septillion dollars.

And for those of you who found this post interesting, I invite you to take the GSAT, or Gizmodo's Geek Social Aptitude Test. Let me know what you got!

http://i.gizmodo.com/5146010/death-star-costs-156-septillion-14-trillion-times-the-us-debt

Valentine's Day

Me: "Have any cool Valentine's day plans!?!?!? Teeelll meeee!"

Anna: "Making out with you. Duh"

You wish, Anna Chute, you wish!

Hell Yeah Poughkeepsie!

This is a landmark occasion. A date to be remembered by all peoples far and wide. A date that should be marked on every calendar, even those that for whatever reason, revolve around the moon.

Most people reading this blog probably know that I'm from some town in upstate New York. Some scoff at the name, Hopewell Junction, but let me tell you now, we are a hometown to be reckoned with. Believe it or not, we were ranked as the 31st best place to live in America in 2005 by Money Magazine, as can be seen here. Not only that, but we are also a part of what urban economists call the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown Metropolitan Area.

So what, you say? Well, Poughkeepsie was mentioned in my Urban Studies class today!

Okay, so that was dumb. But it's kinda neat when you hear of such a random place you call home mentioned in class. Apparently, Poughkeepsie had the 16th greatest density gain in America from 1982-1997. And it gained a staggering ONE percent! Hell yeah to you, good ol' Po-Town!

And that, my friends, will end this terrible, terrible, blog post.

KATIE MCCABE

SMELLS BAD! (this is actually factually incorrect and only serves to test whether her statement regarding my blog "This is so cool! I'm gonna read this all the time!" is true).

Growing Warm

You know, I would've never thought that warm weather could cause so much population growth for a city. That's what Ed Glaeser says attributed to Phoenix's rise and Pittsburgh's fall in this Economix article. Particularly interesting in the article is his explanation of why populations shifted to warmer climates due to the creation of railroads, the highways system, and the Panama Canal. But why Arizona and not California? Because it was less regulated, allowing housing markets to grow. Oh, and the graph below is neat too.


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/revenge-of-the-rust-belt/

Know When You're Getting Ripped Off

I really dislike going to plumbers, mechanics, repairmen, etc. etc. for repairs and stuff (friends aside). The reason for that is because my dad always used to do those kinds of things himself. He would do his own oil changes, coolant replacements, brake fluid replacements, fix the boiler, repair the plumbing, you name it. And it's for that reason that I really distrust those repairmen (again, the exception is when they're actual friends of ours). I can't help but think that they're charging a shit-ton for labor and that we could do the same thing ourselves, provided we have the skill and know-how, for so much less. Not to mention sometimes they charge ridiculous amounts for parts and suggest fixes you don't actually need.

Anyway, enter RepairPal.com. It gives estimates for auto-repairs, and even adjusts them based on your location!

Right before I left to go back to school from winter break, a repair shop told us we needed to replace our 1999 Toyota Sienna's thermostat, thermostat gasket, upper radiator hose, and lower radiator hose, and quoted us $750 for it (and all we wanted to do was get our car inspected!). Repairpal's upper estimate for all four jobs is $583.

Now of course, I'm still all for doing it myself. I looked at our Sienna repair manual and replacing the four parts really didn't seem difficult at all. You don't even have to drain the coolant. That'll be a project for when I get home.

http://repairpal.com/

Random Things

It was a beautiful day outside today. Absolutely wonderful. It was like 50 degrees and sunny and people had sunglasses on and shorts and bright shirts and the horizon exuded happiness and everything!

Then a bird pooped on my backpack. What.. thefuck.

Aaaand in other news the person sitting next to me in class had a monstrously squeaky chair and every time she moved it sounded like she was trying to fart a hole through the world.

Volunteerism Statistics

With service and volunteerism being a big part of my college career and all, and especially since President Obama's calling for an increased push for public service, it's probably a good idea to understand volunteer statistics throughout the US. Particularly how people get involved and why. Thank you BLS! (And thank you Economix for pointing me there).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/volun.pdf

Really guys, Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html?_r=1

Come on, not a single Republican vote? I'm not rooting for the Dems or the Repubs, but there's something terribly wrong here. If the Republicans are just holding out so they can shove it in the Democrats' faces if the stimulus plan fails, then that's just a bunch of political BS. But if every single Republican really does believe that this plan sucks (which I highly doubt. Okay, maybe I am taking a side here) then the Democrats really should open more dialogue to determine exactly how it could be better. C'mon now children, can't you just play nice for the huge 819 Billion dollar decisions? K thx.

+1 for Google

If you know me well enough, you probably know that I never go to www.gmail.com (that's why I'm never on Gchat). "But then how do you ever check your email!?" you say? Well I've been using Apple Mail, a program like Outlook which allows me to do all my emailing without having to use an internet browser. One thing I really like about Apple Mail is that it allows me to read my email while offline. An advantage that is no more, as Google is rolling out a new feature in Gmail that allows people to read their email while offline. Not only that, but you can do it in the comfort of the familiar Gmail interface. So if you guys have ever wanted that feature, be sure to check it out in the "labs" section as it becomes available over the next few days.

Now if they would just create an option to turn off that stupid conversation view, I might actually go to gmail.com...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/google-makes-gmail-available-offline/

To Tumble or to Blog?

Hmmmm, I wonder... I've been weighing the benefits of both as I start this thing.

Old Bookmarks

So I was going through some of my old Firefox bookmarks and I happened to find the following neat webpages:

1) How to Price Your iPhone App Out of Existence
Yes, it's about computer stuff, and yes, it's about Apple stuff, but that's not why I like this post. This blogger is for the most part writing about economics, and I like the analysis he gives of the pricing of iPhone applications in the iPhone app economy. The one problem I have is that he kind of ignores elasticity of demand, so when he suggests people should raise the price of their iPhone apps from $0.99 to $9.99 he forgets about the drop in demand from that. But nonetheless, it's a neat look at pricing iPhone apps.
http://www.losingfight.com/blog/2008/11/15/how-to-price-your-iphone-app-out-of-existence/

2) Is Google Making Us Stupid?
So this one is about how Google is affecting our lives and the way we think. In reading a summary of this article, I read that the author argues that the fast results-oriented nature of our current Google-ized culture is destroying our attention spans. One result of which is that we no longer read those long magazine articles and settle for the short newspaper and readers digest versions. Now the funny part is that I have to say that I know of his argument only through a summary that I've read because I haven't actually taken the time to read the whole article just yet (lolz.), but I do hope to... someday.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

First Post!

Of course, what kind of blog would this ever be if there wasn't that all important inaugural post!? The title of this blog is "Can I Turn That Frown Upside Down?" (as you guys can obviously all read), and hopefully posts on this blog will make you smile. Unfortunately though, that's not exactly its main purpose (it'd be awesome if it was, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm really not that funny on paper, although I do hear I'm slightly funny in real life). I really just created this blog to write random musings on, and to keep my friends who I don't have everyday contact with in the loop with the doings of my everyday life. With that said, please, comment on my posts, because I'd love to hear from you (constructively!).

The title comes from a period in my life when I once had this inspiration in life to really try to make people smile. We had just finished watching Patch Adams in health class, and it was a phase I went through shortly thereafter where I really thought laughter was the best medicine. I even wrote a college essay on laughter. The essay was most likely terrible as I didn't get into any schools I submitted it to, but that's not the point. The point is that in this new year of 2009 (I know, I started my blog in February, oy vey) where I'm aiming to turn over multiple new leaves, I'd like to remember several old ones, the period about laughter being one of them.

So then, with this first post I shall embark into the blogosphere. It will be a journey of epicness, randomness, awesomeness, triumphness, disasterness, but most likely complete dorkiness, and hopefully you'll be fine with all that. If not, then the baby's gonna getchu.