Two-Dollar Bills

Posted on by
1

First sobriety checkpoints, now something else I’ve wondered about for a while and finally got around to researching: Why are there so few $2 bills?

The Wikipedia article is particularly informative, but the short version is that there was a lull in production decades ago, but they now produce the $2 actively. They’re not at all scarce: they minted 61 million in 2005, for example. There are a few reasons they’re not in wide circulation:

  • Everyone thinks they’re rare, so when they come across one, they save it.
  • Not everyone seems to think that $2 bills are even legal tender
  • A big catch 22, but cash drawers don’t have a slot for $2’s, so stores don’t use them in any great volume.
  • Also a big catch 22, but banks, although they usually carry $2’s, don’t usually hand them out unless you ask.

So basically, there are hundreds of millions of two-dollar bills in circulation, but no one’s actually circulating them. They’re not at all rare, they’re just in everyone’s sock drawers.

Sobriety Checkpoints

Posted on by
4

This answers something I’ve wondered for a long time: how are sobriety checkpoints not a violation of the Constitution?

The Constitution says that “The right of the people to be secure… against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… but upon probable cause.” It seems pretty clear to me that the police pulling people over, even if it’s random, to check if they’re sober constitutes a search without probable cause.

It turns out that the SCOTUS has already decided this. In essence, Chief Justice Rehnquist admitted that the stops do constitute a search, but that the public good outweighs the need for probable cause. Therefore, they are legal despite being very clearly prohibited under the US Constitution.

There’s some hope, though, indicated towards the end of the linked article. The case originated in Michigan, which had ruled that they were unconstitutional. The ruling, obviously, was overturned by the SCOTUS. But Michigan’s Supreme Court ruling also said that they violated Michigan’s Constitution. Ergo, they’re still illegal in Michigan even though the US Constitution “doesn’t” prohibit them. (I never thought I’d use quotes in that way…)

Windows

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been running Linux pretty exclusively lately. I copied Windows over to a partition on the new disk, but it doesn’t boot. (Apparently Windows doesn’t like booting if it’s not near the front of the disk?) So when I want to run Windows, I’ve just swapping hard drives. Tonight I had a hankering to play some Counter-Strike, so I put in the Windows drive.

Some observations:

  • It takes a lot longer to boot. (This isn’t necessarily a function of Windows itself.)
  • After starting Steam (the engine CS uses), I walked away for a minute. When I came back, my computer was showing me the school’s AUP for their network. I’d been using the network for a few days under Linux.
  • About 20 minutes into the game, I got disconnected. I noticed that my disk activity light was on solid, so I just closed the game to see what was going on. (I should note that heavy disk activity shouldn’t have been game-related: between having 2GB of RAM with nothing but CS running, having been on a small, simple map, and having been in the map for a while, there was really no reason to go to the disk.) When I closed it, I saw that the Windows firewall had decided to block “hl2.” I’m not even joking: like 20 minutes into the game, Windows decided to block it from accessing the network. At least it was kind enough to not steal focus from the game. (Others could learn from this!)
  • I still have no idea why it was going to disk.
  • Shift+Backspace doesn’t crash anything.
  • I’m getting barraged with updates to things. My wireless drivers updated themselves. Steam updated three games plus its core components. Konfabulator wants to upgrade, too. Photoshop updated itself the other day… Ubuntu and MacOS X both have a centralized ‘Software Update’ checker, which keeps everything in one place…
  • I miss iTunes. (Apple, are you listening? Wine developers, are you listening?) Linux has a lot of nice media players, such as Amarok and XMMS, but really, nothing beats iTunes. Especially when you own lots of iTunes music…

The Dangerous Book for Boys

Posted on by
4

Imagine my excitement when I moved back into school yesterday and saw that Kyle had a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys! I’d posted (I think?) the other day about how I’d heard it mentioned enough that I wanted to pick a copy up.

The back of the book calls it “The perfect book for every boy from eight to eighty.” And it’s even better than I’d been lead to believe it was! I’m not necessarily interested in the (unusually long?) sections devoted to historical battles, but several parts seem extraordinarily interesting:

  • Knots. I can tie my shoes, but that’s about it.
  • The rules of soccer. Not being a soccer fan, I never really learned anything other than the extreme basics. Here it is in two pages.
  • Nautical (Naval) flags (semaphores?): not useful to me, but neat
  • How to juggle! They say it takes about an hour of practice until you’re able to do it.
  • Types of clouds. Just the other day I was regretting having forgotten this!
  • Coin tricks. I haven’t yet tried these.
  • Latin phrases! Most of them I’m familiar with, but maybe that’s because I’m 21 and went to Catholic high school. Still a neat read, and really, a good refresher for those who know most of them. (I object to the pronunciation of “Veni, vidi, vici,” despite it being correct.)
  • How to play poker! This is what I need!
  • Chess! Once again, it was just recently that I was lementing having forgotten this skill.

It also just has a lot of neat stuff that anyone (at least in the U.S.) should read, including:

  • The Declaration of Independence. Not the first few lines, but the whole thing.
  • Selections from Shakespeare.
  • Seven poems (Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost, et al*.)
  • The Ten Commandments, taken from the King James Bible.
  • Et alia, surprisingly, is not in the book’s list of Latin phrases.

Sadly, I think everyone I know is either too old or too young for me to give this book and have it appreciated for the truly awesome gift it would be, but I think it’s definitely worth picking up a copy for yourself. (Most of this book would be just as enjoyable by girls, although I should note that there’s apparently another book, The Daring Book for Girls.)

Today’s Crazy Idea

Posted on by
4

I’m constantly coming up with ideas. Much moreso than I suspect is normal. (At any given time I have about half a dozen ideas for new businesses floating around in my head.)

A lot of the times after a few minutes in my mind I’ll reject an idea for one reason or another. Other times I realize that it’s a really good idea and act on it. But today’s idea I’m not so sure about.

I think it’s very important that have a good retirement account. The money you earn is basically time times interest rate, and, while I can shop around for a good interest rate, you just can’t beat 40 years time when it comes to interest earned. ($2,500 today, with no money ever added, earning 10% annual interest, left alone for 40 years, would be a $113,000 retirement fund.)

I also noticed that I had a pretty ‘good’ schedule that I constructed back when I was on my ‘late’ sleep cycle: go to bed late and wake up late. I’m currently not on that sleep cycle, which means I’ll have lots of free time during the days. Mostly joking, I proposed that I should get a job to fill the time during the days.

And then these two random thoughts collided. The obvious result: why not get a ‘light’ part-time job during the days and earmark 100% of the earnings for contribution to an IRA?

Realistically, I doubt I’ll carry through. But I wanted to share the idea, because I really like it.

phototool

Posted on by
Reply

If I had more time right now, and was more familiar with how to parse EXIF data in shell scripts, I’d write a script that could parse a directory (or set of directories) and:

  • Weed out duplicates. (MD5 hashes would be fine.)
  • Adjust (based on manually-inputted corrections) timestamps on photos for a given camera. Mine was a day off. Someone else had the right date but set the year as 2008. This is just what a shell script is for, no?
  • Optionally, sort photos by:
    • Date (imagine 4,820 photos from about five people, being sorted into 14 folders, one for each day.)
    • Camera (indirectly, person)
  • Resize photos

Imagine if one command could transform these 4,820 photos into a set of 14 folders, one for each day, and resize them all to 1600×1200.

I come across needs like this often enough that I might just have to look into writing this…

Storage Challenge

Posted on by
Reply

I think I mentioned that everyone in Ghana ended up copying their photos to my computer. Initially I said I’d post them online for everyone.  Then I said I’d just send out a CD, realizing how many there were. Over time I changed the offer to 2 CDs. And then a DVD.

Overall, I have a total of 4,820 photos. They take up 6.3 GB of disk space.

So the question is what to do… I have a few ideas, but I don’t really like any of them:

  • Resize the photos. Nautilus (the Ubuntu file manager) makes it as easy as right-clicking to resize photos. Dropping everything to 1600×1200 might be enough. This would be very CPU-intensive, though. One photo is quick, but 200 takes several minutes. I don’t want to know how long 4,820 would take.
  • Send two DVDs. The DVDs are on the school anyway, so this is kind of a good idea. It just seems absurd to send out two DVDs for 14 days of picture-taking. (Assuming, erroneously, that 6.3 GB is 6,300 MB, that’s an average of 344 photos and 450 MB a day.)
  • Weed out the junk photos. I know I have a lot. I’d just copy everything from the card to my computer, format the card in the camera, and go on shooting the next day. The problem is that this would be somewhat labor-intensive, and that I don’t think it’s my place to decide which of other peoples’ photos are junk.

The other reason I’m averse to burning 2 DVDs is that I want to try using Picasa’s “Gift CD” option so it’s not just a huge mess of folders with photos.

Combo

Posted on by
Reply

Since we’re living somewhere else now, I think I can finally say what I’ve wanted to say for a long time:

The combination to our apartment last year was 12345.

We didn’t pick it. And it wasn’t quite 12345, you had to press two of the numbers at the same time. It was awfully unimaginative on the part of whoever set the combination, though.

My roommates looked at me like I was an idiot when I complained on the first day that there was no way I’d remember the combination. That was before I realized that it was 12345.

Suffice it to say, our combination next year is not 12345.

Morning

Posted on by
Reply

So a month ago I was working until 1am or so. I’d wake up around noon.

Then I traveled to Ghana, which is 4 hours ahead. And we had to get up by 8 every day, sometimes earlier. There’s nothing to do at night, so we’d usually be in bed by 10:30 or so.

So you can imagine how messed up my sleep cycle was when I came back. I’d be exhausted by 9. Not like a little sleepy, but so tired that I felt like I might be sick. It was a struggle to sleep past 6 in the morning. I’ve now had enough time that I can stay up until almost midnight and get up around 8. This is probably what people would call a “normal” sleep cycle.

Two big realizations about this “normal” sleep cycle:

  • The day seems much longer. When I wake up I haven’t missed half the day. And being up at 3 a.m. really isn’t worthwhile, since there’s nothing to do at that hour.
  • Mornings, though, are dull. When I’d get up at noon, people would have already replied to the e-mails I sent at 3 a.m. Now I’m sending e-mails at 8 p.m. and checking at 8 a.m., and people haven’t gotten to work yet to reply. My e-mail to Res Life still is unanswered and they’ve had 27 minutes!

The other problem, though, is my schedule next semester. Tuesdays and Thursdays my first class is at 2:10. That’s the earliest.  I have Fridays off. (The sign of a good schedule.) I apparently also have Wednesday off. I don’t remember planning that. Mondays I don’t have class until 6:30 at night. I suspect I’ll fall into a later sleep cycle. But boy will I have free time during the day if I don’t!

Stupid, Stupid!

Posted on by
3

Web forms should be designed to minimize data loss. Let me explain two scenarios in the past 24 hours:

  • I spent a while getting the wording just right on my Craigslist post. I found one minor thing to fix, so I clicked back. But stupid, stupid Craigslist dynamically generates the names of the forms (probably to combat spam), which meant that none of the data showed up when I clicked back, since, as far as Firefox was concerned, it was a brand new form. So I had to rewrite it from scratch. Grrr! This is a really bad design idea.
  • I spent even longer crafting a reply to an e-mail in OWA. I finally got it just right and clicked “Send.” And got the login screen. It seems that, even though I was actively working on the e-mail, I timed out due to inactivity. Of course, the e-mail I wrote wasn’t sent, and wasn’t even saved as a draft. It’s just gone. To me, this is a major bug.

I can’t do much about Craigslist, but it’s a “Fool me once…” thing with OWA. I think this was the third time I’ve lost an e-mail I spent a long time working on due to the inactivity bug. So I think I’m just going to start forwarding my school mail to GMail.