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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, May 25, 2006

From one Dean's list to the other Dean's list

Here is an email from George:

From: George Weiss [mailto:gershonw@emailaccount.com]Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 10:58 AMTo: gershonw@emailaccount.comSubject: Fwd: 4.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
just got my last grade back for last semester and like the rest of them it was an A.
first college 4.0 of my life. [that's one dean's list]..so I'm feeling pretty good right now. (especially considering leaving YU becuase I hated it and was failing half my claseses [that's the other dean's list] there)

Here is my response back:

Great shot.

Hope that wasn't as difficult as a direct hit on the center of the vent shaft above the main power reactor.

this is an example of our version of Godwin's law. In our case, the average length of a conversation before a reference to Star Wars, Buffy t VP or the Blues Brothers or the Great Escape is about 5 minutes.

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:41 AM

Groundhog (aka woodchuck) family at White Flint - again

Disembarking from the Metrorail at the White Flint station, I was a huge groundhog on the hill on the west side of the tracks. In the wild, groundhogs usually are 10 pounds or less (according to the wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodchuck). However, this critter looked to be at least 15 pounds.

This is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Hope the critter enjoys it.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:56 AM

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Detroit vs. Cleveland - More and More defensive

This series ended yesterday with a 79-61 win by Detroit. Cleveland was only 20-65 from the field and only scored 23 points in the second half.

Interesting to me was the evolution of the total points in the 7 game series.

Game One 199 points scored
Game Two 188 points scored
Game Three 163 points scored
Game Four 146 points scored
Game five 170 points scored
game six 166 points scored
game seven 140 points scored

Contrast this with the Phoenix-LA Clipper series
Game one 253 points scored (really)
...
Game six 224 points scored
Game seven 234 points scored

posted by Martin Weiss # 3:57 AM

Monday, May 22, 2006

Oral Surgery Appointment Kurfuffle with a call back

G has an appt tomorrow for extraction of a wisdom tooth. A few earlier he had made the appointment at the direction of his mom. At dinner,

Ann - so what time is your appointment and where is it

G - I don't know.

Ann - You made the appointment. How could you not know?

G - You didn't tell me to keep the information.

This went on back and forth for about 20 minutes. The argument getting heated. Then G went upstairs and found the where and with whom information on a piece of paper with pictures of teeth. The conversation went on to Ann's getting sick last week and who else got sick and which meals/snacks they may have had in common. Ann noted that it might have been a virus that was going around.

M - You should have gotten the virus's name and number.

G - You didn't tell me to keep the information

M - That's called a 'call back' in comedy.

G later found the rest of the appointment information and remembered he hadn't given the information to his mom at any time.

posted by Martin Weiss # 2:13 AM

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Getting a date for a former member of parliment

I saw Harold Rhoad and asked him if he heard the news that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was coming to the US to work at the American Enterprise Institute. Harold said he had heard and in fact he was one of the people who helped work that deal.

"Oh." I said, "Well then is Ayaan hoping to meet any guys who are freethinkers, in their 30s with moslem ancestry and a decent job?" (this was just to tease Harold)

"Yes. " said Harold. "and as a matter of fact if any of them want to date her, I have to speak to them first." (because of her view of Islam as needing stringent change, Ayaan has been threatened with assasination).

Well I spoke with two people I know, both contractors who I thought fit the bill. Unfortunately, they seem to feel threatened by the fact that she was once famous (and may be again) and is known as a very bright woman.
a

posted by Martin Weiss # 11:38 PM

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Disturbing Dream

I dreamt that Beth had a job as a teacher and had won some sort of prize and Ann and I went to Israel for an award ceremony. It turned out the MC at the ceremony was the principal of the school. However, the principal was flagrantly gay and made out with a male friend during the ceremony. Yuk.

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:36 AM

Friday, May 12, 2006

Unexpected Refund

I computed G's tax liability to the State of Maryland as $270.34, wrote them a check and sent it in. Maryland recomputed and said G was due a refund of $53.01. So Md sent us a check for $323.35.

My mistake was, apparently, an erroneous reading of the tax tables. I can't tell for sure because I disposed of the instructions.

posted by Martin Weiss # 7:18 PM

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

I should work harder.

At work (may 5) we are trying to get a cooperative agreement executed. The most recent authorization language essentially requires us to do this and to have a specific organization as the funding recipient. The recipient-to-be submitted an application which did not identify the subcontractor. Our procurement office sent an email which said, in effect, "Make the recipient-to-be identify the subcontractor" and they cited the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs).

One of my staff was looking at this and said to me, "Well the FARs does say that the grantee should identify the subcontractor and supply a letter of commitment."

I responded, so what does the word "should" mean to you.

He answered, "they have to do it"

I replied, "No it doesn't. 'Should' is a flexible word and means we can ignore it if necessary. If its mandatory the word used would have been 'shall'."

He responded. "OK. I guess I should work harder."

posted by Martin Weiss # 12:55 AM

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

What if they find a broken Motivator?

The red 'engine' light in the Hyundai was coming on. I thought at least one cylinder was misfiring and I had G take it in to a trustworthy shop in College Park (in Jan). The shop said they thought it was in the transmission system and that only a dealer could fix it. Well we waited and then G had the accident. The car was fixed. The light was out for a while but then came on and stayed on.

G brought it to the dealer. They did say that there was a minor problem with the transmission system and that a cylindar was missing and that the brakes were slushy. Then they fixed the first two items and said that they couldn't get to the brakes without fixing a power coupling.

G relayed that story to me.

"I suppose they need to go into town for the power converters." M said. (Luke Skywalker wanted to go into town for power converters in SW: episode four 'A New Hope'.

G explained it again and got a kick when I called it power converters a second time.

What if they fix it and find a broken motivator. (Luke discovered the first cP0 that him and his Uncle were going to buy had a broken motivator also in the same movie).

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:23 PM

The IRS Agrees with me!!!

Back on Mar 15, Beth received a ding notice from the IRS saying she owed about $7000. Basically the IRS had misunderstood the redemption of a zero coupon municipal bond. I sent a bunch of stuff into the IRS via fax (actually I sent it twice to be sure) to prove that the bond really was a zero coupon and that it really was a municipal and that it really was a redemption (it took about 9 pages). There was another smaller issue (redeption of an Israel bond) also. Today we received a note from the IRS. I'll quote a section, "We are pleased to tell yuou that, with your help, we wer able to clear up the differences between your records and your payers records. If you sent us a payment based on our proposed changes, we will refund it to you..."

posted by Martin Weiss # 9:17 PM

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