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Monty Python’s A Life With Brian ending. It’ll just make ya smile. (-:
And if that’s not good enough for a gut chuckler. Then here’s another with a touch more geek factor involved.
I’m currently looking at two jobs. One back in Monterey, CA. The other just outside Knoxville, TN. Here is a great example of the differences in living costs.
$2350 / 2br – 2BR/2BA Immaculate Restored “victorian” Home in Pacific Grove
2 Bed 2 Bath Home in Pacific Grove, CA
Immaculate 2BR/2BA restored “Victorian” home in Pacific Grove. Sun room and den. Some frunishings and washer and dryer. Beautifully remodeled and landscaped. Includes gardener. Located about 6 blocks from down town and a few more to the ocean.
–Versus–
$2100 / 5br – 5 BR. Executive home for lease in Oak Ridge
5 Bed 5 Bath Home in Oak Ridge, TN
Executive home for rent in Oak Ridge. Less than 3 years old. Home has 5 bedrooms and 4.5 baths. Pristine condition. It has over 5200 sq. ft. of living space as well as a full size walk up attic for extra storage. The walkout basement has recently been finished and offers a workout/media room, plus a large rec room, full bath and workshop. The home has multiple fireplaces, 10 ft. ceilings on 1st.,3 car garage and upgrades galore. Serene setting. Available immediately for lease or lease/purchase.
Just a wee bit of difference.
I haven’t been up dating the website much lately. We haven’t been out to do much and yet life has once again become twisted and turned.
We’re currently in the process of making our way back to the states. We don’t know where we will land yet. A couple of options are in the works. We should know more in the next week or so. We will most likely spend Thanksgiving somewhere back in the states. Sadly, the Scottish adventure is shutting down early.
We gave it a try.
A short background. Megan has been attending the school over in Dalkeith since we moved here. This school is about 7-8 miles away or so. The reason she attends Dalkeith High is that it wasn’t till after we had moved into our house that we discovered the local school Newbattle High is actually a Prison Prep school. It isn’t a place you want your child to go to if you can avoid it. In fact, we’ve had a family meeting and Megan will go back to the states to live with family before she goes there.
So, we worked out that Megan would go to the next town over and attend school there. The high school there isn’t the top of the line, but it’s a decent school. The school campus actually has 3 schools on it. Dalkeith High, St. Davids Catholic school, and a special needs school. Since we are outside of the catchment area we had to find our own way to get Megan there and home. Well, one of the options was that she could ride the St. Davids bus as long as there was room. So we signed her up, she got her bus pass and for the last 7 months things have been fine.
On Wednesday as I was getting ready to run the twins to school, (I was running late), Megan called and said the bus driver wouldn’t let her on the bus and that she was up in downtown Newtongrange and what should she do? The bus driver just left her there.
Told her to walk home and I’d give her a ride and straighten it out. Well, typical fashion here in the UK. Bureacracy strikes. Since she is going to Dalkeith not St. Davids she has to get another new bus pass, called a grace pass, to ride the St. Davids bus. Oh, and those won’t be given out until the middle to end of October. Surprise! So, the kids have to figure out how to make their own ways to school until then.
For Megan this means a 15 minute walk to the public bus stop, catch the 86 bus to Dalkeith, 20 minutes or so, and then another 30 minute or so walk to the school. Coming home the same. Other option is a 15 minute walk to the bus stop. Catch 3 different public buses and then a 10 minute walk to school.
Any way we look at it she now has an hour + commute to and from school. I can drop her off in the mornings, only 45 minutes early, but she has to take the commuter home. Today’s her first day. Needless to say she’s not too happy about it. Then again neither are we.
A very good friend of mine just went through Hurricane Ike. This was the man who jumped on an airplane as Katrina hit the coast, flew from San Diego to Texas. Rented a truck, drove it to Costco, filled it with supplies and then drove into the heart of hell to help us out. Now he’s in the thick of it himself. I just was forwarded this email message. Wish I could be there to help you this time.
All, thanks for the offers of help and concern.
My family and I safely made it through Ike, without any significant damage to home. We don’t have power, (went out about 6pm Friday afternoon), and are now up on a generator (thanks boss for pushing the correct buttons!) and won’t have it from anywhere from one to several weeks. If you’ve seen the news, the area is short on fuel, but as power is restored, the availability increases, same with grocery stores. I had stocked up on ice, supplies, food, etc, after learning a few lessons from Katrina and Rita.
Cell phones still don’t work, but for some reason text messaging does. However, I’m text’ing impaired and its a slow process to text anything more than a short message. The good news is, the wireless broadband network came back today. There are multiple utility lines laying on the ground in my back yard, I’ve thought about tapping into them, but having second thoughts (however, wife has encouraged me to go for it.. right after she asked me to up my policy payout).
Also, the weather has cooled off, making it bearable to live without air conditioning.. (Kirt, A/C is that thing that makes the air colder inside the house, which I know is a strange concept )
Steve and Jay, a sincere thanks for the offer for relief, I think I’ll make it, unless you’re driving a tanker truck loaded with fuel. In that case, don’t stop, because it’ll get emptied enroute as you reach the hurricane zone. Its great to know you have folks looking out for you! Boss, thanks again for making the magic happen that put the lights back on, through IBM’s emergency assistance for employees, my family and I appreciate the relief it brings.
I made it through unscathed, but as the news reports, there are so many who can’t say the same. At this time, there are still 1.5M+ folks that are without power. Others without water, food, other basic essentials, inhabitable homes, or basic shelter. I feel blessed to have been spared injury and property damage, and humbled to see how my neighbors handle the losses with steadfast determination.
Again, to all who were checking up on me, Thank you so much,
Gary
It’s good to hear you’re safe.
There is a street/graffiti/genius artist in the UK that goes by the name Banksy. This person does some pretty interesting work. Very thought provoking and humorous items. He spent years as an anonymous artist, outed by a newspaper eventually, with some of his works going for very large sums of money. I was poking around his web page and ran across this picture and it really struck me. So I thought I would share it. This isn’t his usual style, but I liked it.
Banksy Art CCTV
You know your friends are nerdier than you when you get a response to an email from a buddy like I did. I was lamenting the troubles I had gone through to figure out a inner/outer loop performance bug. Pretty tame stuff really. And this was part of his reply.
…i’ve been porting a 3rd order finite difference equation w/ a 2D time decomposition to the Nvidia CUDA platform… talk about making your head spin. Not to mention that I’m porting *from* F90 to *to* C!!!
Yes, it’s true, I have friends that nerdy! Makes all my shenanigans look tame in comparison. And now for the really scary part. He’s doing this on the side and, wait for it, yep “for fun!”
As you can guess, he’s not a
Then again, ya never know. I do know that I’m going to be owing him a few beers at SC08 after posting this. (-;
A very scary precident has been set in the UK courts. A group of 6 Global Warming Activists damaged a power plant in protest to a new coal powered plant that was in the works. They have just been aqcuited under the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Which basically states that if a crime or damage is done to prevent greater damage then it’s not a criminal act.
What future greater damage? Why global warming of course. Remember, according to Dr. Hansen and the Green Alarmists we’re all going to die soon because the earth is warming out of control. (Ignore the temps over the last 7 years please.)
So, what this could mean in an extreme is that those eco-fools that set fire to SUV dealerships could try to get away with their crimes by using the “Saving the planet from future damage” excuse.
This is not a good precident. This is very very scary.
Some links discussing this.
Here in scotland the National Health System has decided to vaccinate young girls using the new Gardasil Vaccine by Merck and Co. As the father of three daughters this effects me and my family. My initial reaction was, No, it’s too new, but I decided to do some research before taking such a stand. So, what’s my decision now that I’ve done some research? Now it’s not just NO! but HELL NO!
Wonder why (if you’re in the the US) you keep seeing commercials showing young girls playing on swings and the like with the ominous music and “Protect you child from CANCER!!!” story line? Why Merck has spent so much money lobbying the government to force, yes force, parents into making their child take the vaccine? Texas has already made the vaccine a requirement. $360 per child. Money, that’s what it comes down to. This is one of the most expensive vaccines ever, more expensive than the polio vaccine, go figure. Merck needed a big money maker to offset the 11,500+ lawsuits their last money maker Vioxx caused, by killing a bunch of people.
Some basic infomation that I’ve found so far
- The drug was tested for 5 years only and has now been on the market for 2 more
- Fast tracked through the FDA
- It protects against only 4 out of a possible 20 different variations of the HPV
- women test positive for HPV for an average of 10-12 years before cancer forms
- length of increased immunity is unknown. Might be 10 years, might not.
- has NOT been proven to lower risk of cancer. Yes you read that right.
Now for some very frightening facts.
Merck was the company that brought you Vioxx, also approved by the FDA. Too bad that one killed an estimated 28,000 people between 1999 and 2003. Yep, 28,000 people dead from that one, oops. It’s also the company that brought you another FDA approved vaccine called RotaShield and then RotaTeq, both of which caused a type of bowel obstruction in vaccinated infants. Oops again.
Gardasil was approved through the FDA based on an extrapolation from conditions known only to be associated with an increased risk of cervical cancer. There has been NO long term study done on this vaccine and no proof it actually lowers the risk of cervical cancer significantly.
Now for the REALLY juicy bit. If Merck succeeds in it’s lobbying, and so far so good, in getting Gardasil put on the list of required vaccines then it becomes free from any liability if Gardasil turns out to be harmful in the future. Yep, Billions made with no liability if they have another Oops. Even if it turns out to cause a generation of children to have spinal bifida or some other horrible genetic illness, well, that won’t be their problem. This was (I believe) brought into effect during the days of the polio vaccine. The government knew there would be a small, very small, percentage of people vaccinated that would get polio. The also knew that they needed to get the vast majority of the population vaccinated. As such they severed liability from the maker of the polio vaccine from those that would get polio. It makes a sad sense, unfortunately Merck plans to use this to their advantage to make money.
They’d never let that happen right? Might want to research Vioxx again. Total testing on Gardasil was with 20,000 women, about half of whom got the actual vaccine, so 10,000 roughly. Fewer than 1200 of those were girls under 16. Less than 100 were under the age of 10. Those girls were only followed for 18 months, no long term monitoring was done on the youngest. Then they waited a few years and saw the incidents of cancer were low. Well, since HPV caused cancer can take up to 10 years or more, well, big surprise, they found a low cancer rate.
In the BBC today there is an article about putting a cap on foreigners being able to stay in the UK beyond 4 years. Thus making it impossible for them to become residents.
The group says it also wants to “break the link” between those who come to the UK to work and those who settle in Britain, by putting a strict time limit – 4 years – on the length of time foreign workers from outside the EU are allowed to stay.
Not that we don’t already pay 40% in Government taxes, local council taxes, 17.5% VAT on everything but food. Oh and we have to watch crap commercials saying how bad foreign workers are and how a company will need to jump a lot more hurdles to hire someone from outside the EU.
This on top of the “Points Based” policy will make a foreigner wanting to work in the UK almost impossible. There is a very good chance that I would not be able to get a job in the UK because I don’t have a Higher degree. I build supercomputers for a living and I probably couldn’t get a job here under the new scheme. Go figure.
Very frustrating being treated like your not wanted!
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