THE WEISS CHRONICLES

Another Stuffed Animal Leaves the House

G went back to school yesterday and brought my stuffed Rafael (one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles) back with him. His cohorts seem to like Rafael partly because they grew up with him, partly because Rafael was from NYC (which is where G is going to school).

Beth has my Wily Coyote and Road Runner stuffed animals in Israel.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:52 PM

Sunday, January 23, 2005

More Snow and A Dream

Well we got more snow and more cold. Only about 2-3 inches around here but up to about 3' around Boston.

I had a dream last night. I dreamt it was a warm sunny day and the four Weisses were at a picnic with Beth and George being about 8 and 4. In my dream I knew it was a dream and I think I also knew that if I woke up I would have to go out and shovel the snow. Well I did wake up and did shovel.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:57 AM

Friday, January 21, 2005

G's Report on Free Entertainment on the MTA

George said, upon his visit this weekend, that when you ride the subway in NYC you get free entertainment. I said, "you mean like the bar in Las Isley in Star Wars - A New Hope".

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:29 PM

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Snow - Off Early

Well we got off early from work today and it did snow but the two weren't related. Tomorrow is the inauguration. A few weeks ago they told us we, alternate hours workers (I typically work a 9 hour day, 8 days and an 8 hour day 1 day every two weeks) would have to take an hour of annual leave because the two federal holidays (Jan 17, MLK day and Jan 20 Inauguration day) were in the same pay period. Then they told us we didn't have to, then they said we could leave two hours early on the 19th, then they said we could go at 100pm, then they said we had to go at 100pm.

posted by Martin Weiss # 4:58 PM

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Wow. The County has an innovative service.

I was delivering groceries today to someone (mother of a friend). She told me about a service the county has. The library mails large print books to people with a self addressed return process.

posted by Martin Weiss # 4:33 PM

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Above Freezing Spell Comes to an End and a G story

This am we were below freezing at all three regional airport weather stations. This ends a streak of 14 days in which the Jan temp did not dip below freezing. Some days were quite warm - 60s. However, during this period, we had several days with frost on my cars in the am so the temp obviously got close to freezing.

Now for the G story.

G was supposed to come home this weekend. Unfortunately he had some paperwork trouble. The trouble was at first caused by him missing too many morning lectures but then while he was fixing this problem he missed a meeting with one of the department heads so he had more problems to fix.

posted by Martin Weiss # 6:59 PM

Thursday, January 13, 2005

M acts friendly - it may pay off

This week we have research meetings. A few years ago, I was able to leverage $10k in agency funds into a $125k conference. Its time for another conference so I was meeting people being friendly (which is not natural for me as I prefer to be sarcastic) hoping to get a few people to maybe chip in a few thousand here, a few thousand there. As fate had it, I met a fellow from the U of Arkansas, affiliated with the State DOT, who said he has a multiyear grant from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis to do pretty much exactly what I need to have done and he wants our help in arranging the conference schedule, etc.

This almost sounds too good to be true. I emailed him and asked some questions, including whether his deal with the Fed is a grant or a contract (it makes a big difference because the rules are different - if it is a contract it is much less flexible). He told me he would tell me next week (how could he not know???).

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:04 AM

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Another New BasketBall Record

On Jan 6, Richard Hamilton (Detroit) scored 14 points to lead his team's scoring vs. Memphis (Memphis won the game 101-79 in Detroit). Coming into the game, Detroit had the better record. The remarkable thing was that Hamilton scored all 14 points on free throws (he was 14 for 14 in free throws and 0 for 10 from the field. This was the first time in NBA history that someone had led his team in scoring without making field goal. Memphis had 32 assists in the game, which is amazing ball control but not a record. PS - Hamilton once played for Washington.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:29 PM

Thursday, January 06, 2005

A Rebounding Record

Last night, GW (aka, The George Washington University) beat LaSalle 71-42 at home. More impressively, they outrebounded LaSalle 60-26. In fact GW had as many offensive rebounds as LaSalle had total rebounds. I don't remember the previous time this had happened in div 1 Men's NCAA (it probably happens more often in division 2 and in the woman's NCAA. One of GW's starters sat out the game (suspended due to an unspecified infraction).

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:17 PM

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Record Warmth for Jan 1 --- saw a hawk on the 2nd

All three local area airports had a record maximum on Jan 1 - all three in the upper 60sF. I spent about a half hour outside enjoying it and reading and noticed that some of the summer insects seemed to be buzzing about in our azaleas. I think these were the non biting mosquitos.

The next day (in the 40sF) we saw an extremely well fed hawk in the backyard of Allan and Carolyn Chase. At first we thought it was an owl. They also had deer moving around their cul de sac.

posted by Martin Weiss # 6:48 PM

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Ahead of the Electronic Curve

On Dec 31 we changed from Internet Explorer to Firefox Modzilla for our browser. The Washington Posts Ins and Out published in the Jan 2 edition of the Style Section (which we got Jan 1) says that Out - Explorer; In - Firefox

Here's a downside - firefox doesn't bring up the site that has the daily schedule for the plot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns so I still have to use Iternet Explorer for some stuff.

posted by Martin Weiss # 6:41 PM