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THE WEISS CHRONICLES

Chronological Account of the Weiss family with contextual remarks, some weather, sports and other news. You can write to me at: mhw20854@yahoo.com The people in the Weiss family are: Martin, Ann, Beth and George. I also sometimes write about other people or our pet.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Family of Deer- Uh oh

Saw a bunch of deer only a few houses away from us. Bad sign. Very bad. These creatures can go thoughflowers and shrubs at night and leave nothing but stumps.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:45 AM

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Family of Deer

Well our computer has been returned from being fixed. The hard drive had broken -- the phone based service people said it was the software but they were wrong -- On the way to dropping off a fellow who was helping us set up a back up hard drive, I saw a whole family of deer. Uggg. Horrible creatures-- they eat flowers and newly planted shrubs.

posted by Martin Weiss # 10:45 PM

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Confusing Telephone Conferences

Last Friday (3/25) Beth was on the phone in Israel. While we were talking, Beth got 3phone calls; including one from George while we got 4 calls, three related to a function at Beth Sholom. Ann ended up having to do kosher supervision from 1130 am to about 1130 pm or so. We did get a free meal out of it -- an a very good one. Both chicken and roast beef and a spinich suffle made with onions, mushrooms and artichoke. Great soup also. Great rolls, great salad.

posted by Martin Weiss # 1:09 AM

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Windows corrupts during Tax Work

Came homefrom work. Water was in the basement because the plug on the sump pump had come out of the wall. Actually I had taken it out because the charger which works with the backup marine battery makes a hideous beeping noise.

Then I went upstairs to work on my taxes. I had almost finished yesterday. Unfortunately, the operating system took that day to corrupt itself. Arrgg. I patched together a bunch of printout from drafts so I can get through this. I'm forced to do this on Ann's laptop.what a pain!

posted by Martin Weiss # 8:01 PM

Sunday, March 20, 2005

First day of Spring; First Thunderstorm

We had thunder and coucous sized hail today about 300pm. Spring began about 800am.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:35 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Scroll of Saragossa

We read the scroll of Saragossa (in present day Sicily) today at Synagogue (one of our members likes to discover such things). Its a short work with the literary form of the scroll of Ester and many sentences that are similar to it (and also a few from other places, e.g. Jonah). It tells the story of the 12 synagogues of Saragossa who had 3 Torahs each. They made ornamental boxes for them to carry out to honor the king. They decided one day to leave the Torah scrolls out of the boxes since the king was non Jewish. An informer told the king who vowed that if the boxes were empty the next day, all the Jews would be killed. That night Elijah the prophet appeared to each of the 12 synagogues shamas (caretaker) and told them to put the Torahs in the boxes. The king came through town and stopped at the Jewish section of town and demanded to see what was in one of the boxes. The rabbi of that synagogue, who evidently hadn't had a vision or Elijah, nor had been informed by his shamos, was in terror. However, that box had a Torah as did the other 35. The king order the informer killed and (the Wall Street Journal would love this) gave the Jews three years of reduced taxes.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:54 PM

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The 50 cent gambit

No. Not the entertainer.

the entertainer 50 cents is described at:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:QeA4ERxb6c4J:www.chartattack.com/damn/2005/03/1010.cfm+50+cents&hl=en

At work we have to trick our spreadsheets into coming up with the right numbers in the '1's column (even though we are dealing with many millions of dollars here). We have a number of formulae that we have to use and a rounding convention we have to use and a final number we have to come up with. So, in order to get the final number we sometimes have to add something to the end of the required formula. In one case we had a final answer that was too low by $1. We tried adding $1 to the end of the formula for one project (out of 85) but that raised the answer by $2. So I came up with the idea of adding 50 cents.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:29 AM

Monday, March 14, 2005

Bright LEDs. Not so bright staff.

Today when I got to the bus stop at the white flint metrorail station for my pm journey home, there was someone with a camera taking pictures. He asked if he could take a picture of me looking at the electonic kiosk. I said yes and he took the picture.

Then he asked, "how do you like the improvement?"

"What improvement?" I responded.

"The kiosk is brighter." he said (the old yellowish white light emitting diodes, LEDs, had been replaced with red LEDs).

"That's nice" I said, "but the ETA (estimated time of arrival)column isn't accurate".

"What do you mean?" he asked, "isn't it brighter?"

"Yes." I responded. "However, it doesn't matter because the numbers don't mean anything."

"What do you mean?" He asked. "Don't all the rows have numbers?"

"Yes, but the numbers are all the same as the scheduled times. Its like that every day but the buses rarely come on schedule. Very occasionally they are early. Once in a while on time. Mostly late."

"But they all have numbers and you can see them, right?"

This went on for a while. Several other passengers tried to enlighten the camera man (who claimed to be a Montgomery County Parks employee). It didn't seem to work. He was just happy the numbers were bright even if he wasn't.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:50 PM

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Badgers At the Buzzer

The U of Wisc came from behind to beat the #1 ranked U of Iowa today in the big ten tournament. Alando Tucker got a 3-point shot (fade away banked no less) with no time remaining.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:08 PM

Friday, March 11, 2005

U of Md's Ignominious Season vs. Clemson

Clemson Univ is noted for football, not for basketball. This year, however, Clemson did have a few good players (one of them, Shawan Robinson, hit six 3-point shots out of eight attempts; another, Sharrod Ford who had 49 points in the first two games this year vs. Md was held to 6). Clemson, which hadn't won a conference tournament game since 2001, beat the U of Md for the 3rd time this season yesterday.

U of Md had a very bad shooting night hitting only 35%, missing 10 free throws and having 23 turnovers. This happened in a home game (actually at the MCI Center). Yuck.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:49 AM

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Visitors for the Weekend

Karen and Dinah Adams visiting this weekend (actually Thurs - Saturday eve). Karen is the daughter of Sonya Bellek who is the mother of Katrina Bellek who used to live in our neighborhood and was a friend of ours and frequent visitor until she moved to Hawaii. Katrina, Karen and Dinah were here for Fri evening supper - most females we've had for a meal since Beth left for Israel). Karen and Dinah live in NJ. We do shopping for Sonya sometimes. All the female Belleks seem to have an artistic streak and also nice smiles. We made some contacts for Karen (who is a widow) to date. Our only successful matchmaking (at least that we know about) was in the early 80s. It was between a bridge engineer in the FHWA office that M worked with and a woman who rented from us. They were still married last time I checked.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:25 PM

Air Purifiers At Last

The price of air purifiers finally fell to where we decided to buy them. The premium kind advertised on TV and magazines ad naseum (Ionic Breeze by Shaper Image) costs at least about $400 (you can also get it at $500 or more depending on where you buy it). We bought two for $150 at Radio Shack. They are cleaned by vacuuming the surface of the filters.

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:21 PM

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Warm to Snow

Yesterday it was 70F. The cherry trees near the tidal basin just put some green in the branches. Today, it is snowing and snowing hard. The wind is over 30 mph in gusts.

posted by Martin Weiss # 10:42 AM

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Marion Barry's Birthday

Former mayor, current councilman, admitted adulterer and convicted drug possessor Marion Barry is 69 today.

Here is a letter someone wrote about this:

March 6, 1936 Marion Barry, Jr. former mayor
Dear former Mayor Barry, Jr.,
Happy 67th [should be 69th] birthday!
I hope it's all it's cracked up to be. I'm going to be 27 later this year and I know that my friends are going to crack open the bubbly when we celebrate. For you, I'll bet you just want to spend a nice evening at home with your wife, put on some records, listen to the logs crack in the fire and relax. And that's cool. When you get to be your age, you probably just want a crack at hitting 80, right? I'm sure you'll crack 70.
I'm trying to crack into politics myself, but that's probably just a pipe dream. Do you have any pointers for me? I sort of embarrassed myself at a rally the other day when my pants fell down and everyone saw the crack of my ass. They all cracked up, but I was just plain cracked.
What do you think of the Yankees this year? They are a crack team of savvy veterans. I think they have a chance to crack the top 10 teams of all time.
Crack.
Geoff Wolinetz

It was at the site: http://www.yankeepotroast.org/birthday/march.html

posted by Martin Weiss # 4:46 PM

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Roger Clemen to Nationals - In my dream

I dreamt that Roger Clemen was traded to the Nationals and that he moved into our neighborhood and that he attended our minyon at my synagogue.

posted by Martin Weiss # 3:49 PM

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Martha and a Guy at work

At work we have an employee who was to have retired on March 1 but because of Congressional testimony, we asked him to continue until April 1 and he agreed. I saw him in the hall and said,

"Well, it seems after all as if Martha Stewart will see freedom before you do."

This is a parody of a line from "The Great Escape". The commandant is being arrested by the Gestapo and says to one of the prisoners (a notorious escapee - played by Steve McQueen- who has said he plans to see Berlin from both the ground and the air before the war is over), "It seems after all that you will see Berlin before I do."
PS: Martha is to be released from prison tomorrow.

posted by Martin Weiss # 10:11 AM

Cousin Al looks like someone else

My cousin Al Deitch was in town today. He lives in NC and visits here sometimes when he is on a panel to evaluate grants. Ann and I went with Al to supper (they had a buffet) at a local restaurant.

Al looks, at least in some images, at lot like Ibrahim al-Jaafari who is the fellow who is the head of the United Iraqi Party and is thought to be the leading candidate for Prime Minister of Iraq. An image of al-Jaafari is at:
http://www.rantburg.com/default.asp?D=2/16/2005&C=Iraq-Jordan#56583.

Al became head of an agency of the NC State Govt thru a series of bizarre events. The Governor lined out the part of the budget that funded his agency which led to several key people in the agency retiring or taking new jobs which led to Al being assigned as acting director. The state legislature then overturned the Governor's action which led to Al's agency having their funding continued. The kerfuffle also made it harder to recruit someone to head the agency so Al was made permanent director.

posted by Martin Weiss # 1:46 AM

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Satan & One Part in 92 Million

At work, we had $140 million in Congressionally designated projects (85 separate projects). Because of various other legislative factors we could only allocate about 66% of the funds. We were told what formula to use and we were told to round the numbers to the nearest dollar. I asked whether we shouldn't to the nearest dollar in the down direction but they said no. Well subsequently, we got an advice of funds (aka a form 370) which was calculated (by our finance and budget office) according to the same formula. It came out to $1 less than the sum of the 85 projects. Even though its only a dollar, it would be a violation of the antideficiency act so somebody's project is gonna lose a dollar. The amount we had originally was $92,586,667. The amount that finance and budget had was $92,586,666. I was kidding one of the finance guys about his group insisting on the 666. He said, "Look, we're finance and budget, if you're trying to imply that we are minions of Satan, you have to realize that we don't actually consider that an insult."

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:46 PM

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