Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

scottkursk

Regulars
  • Posts

    685
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by scottkursk

  1. You may not be getting restfull sleep. I had the same thing where I always felt tired and it took years of taking numerous medicines etc. Finally, I go refered to a sleep clinic to find out I have a bad case of sleep apnea. Sure, I would get sometimes 10 hours of sleep but almost none of it (unbeknownst to me) was truly restful. Still, assuming you don't have sleep apnea, always eating a healthy breakfast will help your energy levels through the day. The same goes for drinking water or juice. Plus, one thing I learned to do was to not sleep overly late on the weekends. I noticed that it only takes two days to mess up my body clock. So, it would end up taking about 3 or 4 days to get comfortable again to with a sleep routine. Then it would start over again. Ugh. So I double checked my sleep schedule and became more consistant.
  2. My downtime/money point really had to do with monitor breakage as opposed to card burnout. Either through burnout or physical damage (hey, this is the brokerage industry and people throw things), monitors die. You can hot swap a new monitor in without losing any time. The racks we've got them on at work take up almost no space. They are either wall mounted or on a central partition between desks that face each other. Plus, they are all really thin Dell flat panels. The montior rack is also a cpu holder since we use really small footprint desktops. Obviously, we don't need to know didly about pantone calibration. Plus, you want your monitor to display the image as perfectly as possible. I don't have to worry about that since I'm data dependant. Though one thing I've found that is fun having multiple monitors was playing games like Harpoon. The multiple monitors really recreate the whole CIC feeling. Still, my need as you pointed out is data display, not visual display.
  3. Actually, I have to vote for multiple monitors. We've used multi-head pc's for years at work. One of the reasons that people used giant monitors is that Windows boxes used to be really hard to get set up as multi-heads compared to Mac's etc. Another advantage of using mutliple monitors is cost. You buy a couple of 15" monitors for just about nothing. Having a big monitor with as much screen space would be expensive. One other thing we worry about is downtime. IA multi-head setup allows redundancy. If one goes out, you still have others to view your data. Mind you, I can see if you are working on a program that does image manipulation or page creation, a big monitor would provide a seamless work environment. I remember seeing full page sized monitors on macs that were purpose built so that they would display a document page all at once so that the designers could have a wholistic view of the page. Some of the trading stations we've got have four or eight heads. That would require a ridiculously expensive wide screen to compensate. Plus, we can't afford any downtime. Usually, each monitor is dedicated to a specific application. One runs charts, one runs totalview, etc. Still, for my home use my main computer has two monitors. I will use both on occasion since i'll run a full window of StampManage (my stamp software) and my laptop monitor runs my scanner software and web browser. It saves me from having to toggle between windows but is overkill for sure. Plus, multi-heads look cool.
  4. You got it right. For any bath they'd take on an exchange rate basis they gain so very much more marketing wise. Plus they garner some of the us vs them viva la raza sentiment. There was one near my old house when I lived in the heart of Houston. It wasn't bad pizza. Especially good was the pepperoni and jalapeno. It grows on you.
  5. It's The Atlantic after all. Of course Friedman is absent. That would be like Mother Jones coming out with a list of the most influential industrialists of the 20th century.
  6. Yes, it does have a remote start. Which has come in handy these cold mornings. I double click the start button on the remote from inside my apartment and it starts. Amazing considering my covered parking is a good 100 feet away. The CF Moto's, especially the ECharm has a reputation of being the "Lexus" of the scooter set. My clients and coworkers from China recognize the bike straight away since CF is a big producer of bikes in China. And yes, you are supposed to have an MC endorsement for anything over 50 cc's. 50 and under you can get a "moped" endorsement which requires you to just ask for it. The Burgman's are really nice bikes with a TON of acceleration compared to my little 150. If I had need to go on the freeway more I'd have gone with something like that. But for my needs it does the job. For my money, if I had to ride a full blown motorcycle, the older R1000's are some of the most beautiful bikes. They can go anywhere.
  7. Well, I have a new ride. I've been riding my Gary Fisher Utopia to and from work and for small errands. However, a month ago I purchased a new ride. It's a CF Moto ECharm 150. Ok, so it's not a Harley that can do 150 and intimidate you with the idle. However, it does get around 90 mpg and it will go up to 70. Though above 50 or so I get a wee bit on the nervous side. Still, it's a blast around town and has enough frills like a remote start, alarm, and it's water cooled.
  8. Now if someone could invent a cooling unit that is practical that would be encased in leather for a motorcycle trip when it's 110 degrees and 100% humidity here on the gulf coast. Mountain biking in the summer is a killer but at least when I'm on my bicycle I can wear thin and air wicking clothes and still be safe. Riding a motorcycle at speed in the summer is nice but it's way to hot to be wearing leathers. At least this time of the year I'm nice and warm in leather....
  9. For those to lazy to follow the link.
  10. Actually, there are block heaters that replace one of your water jackets that have a very tiny heater built in. You just run an extension cord to it and it keeps your block not warm but not cold. So, less damage when you start and it heats up faster." That in my experience is what libraries are used for.
  11. Check out my response in this very thread. As I pointed out before, I save up zingers, whiticisms, etc. It wasn't a moment of Objectivist triumph or some such nonsense for me, it was just a moment of happiness in that I got to use one of my saved zingers. The topper was it was used on a person who was a real second hander that would appreciate the joke. Neither he nor I took it as a dramatic recreation of the Fountainhead, we both took it as a joke. Exactly as it was intended. Actually, he and his wife are friends of my wife so I do see them quite often. And yes, I generally totally ignore his long screeds becuase I don't care about him. So I actually do the proper thing and ignore him. His wife is nice so I don't mind going over there. If he really got under my skin, I'd either not go with my wife to his bbq's, or I'd snipe at his pretty silly screeds. I heard a great joke about Rex having a diminutive Lex in the mid 80's. It wasn't until recently that I got to use it when hearing an oral argument. It's a law school/lawyer joke about government being subordinate to the law. But it's still pretty funny. As I also mentioned, I've got a great CMO joke if only people dealt in them. I doubt I'll ever be able to pull it up in a conversation but I still find it funny.
  12. ARI falls under some people's definition of a charity but then there have been other threads about it being "non-profit." If you consider that a charity, then yes I contribute to it. Also, I volunteer and contribute money to a local rabbit rescue organization. But, I don't consider it an act of sacrifice. My wife and I really like rabbits and have them as pets. So, we foster rabbits that are abandoned or literally thrown away and turn them into loving social pets. It's not because we have a sense of duty. Quite the contrary, we both gain a great deal of value turning domestic but somewhat feral rabbits into gentle house pets. Plus they are fun to watch. Plus, there are other threads about the value of pets. So yes, I do contribute time and money to a charity, but it's far from a personal sacrifice. If we didn't enjoy doing the job, we wouldn't do it. Sure, my wife says she derives her pleasure is helping bunnies. It's just her Catholic way of saying she gains a great deal of satisfaction helping rabbits the same as I do. Now if she decided to run a wild boar rescue and domestication thing, then that would qualify as a sacrifice. But then again, she'd never do it because boars bring no pleasure.
  13. Congratulations on your first victory. May you have many more.
  14. I used to work for an internet trading company whose office was literally down the street from the state school for the blind in Austin. A lot of customers were blind. They had web browsers that either greatly magnified parts of the screen or text browsers that read out the pages. It worked really well until we converted over to a very forms intensive site which the text reading browsers had trouble figuring out. We did get some complaints and honestly I'm surprised we didn't get sued for an ADA violation at the time. I guess they chose Target since they are the weak gazelles in the herd. Kind of like the Linux suits against AutoZone and Chrysler. Luckily, they didn't turn out to well for the company filing the bs suit.
  15. Funny, I was just looking at those before I came over here. Those are some beautiful pictures. I somehow managed to miss Royal Gorge the times I've been as far as I can remember. I've been to Ouray, Durango, and Silverton but don't remember seeing Maroon Bells. Man, did I miss something. My wife wanted to point out the girl is pretty gorgeous. Good going David!
  16. Ouch, don't go encouraging them Megan. How about we say Alaska if we promise not to send up any more presidents? ok? In all seriousness, the vast majority of the earth is empty. There is more than enough room for everyone. The problem is that in most places, thanks to goverment intervention in the processes of life, it's very much underutilized. People complain about the rain forests being cut down (the reality of which is another argument) to make way for farms. In a way, yes that is true. However, and this is a big however, those farms aren't the big corporate farms like you see here in the USA or other developed countries. So, the farmers aren't as big or nearly as efficient as other places. So if the Brazilian government would give up the BS dream of being anti-competition in the farming arena then large companies could utilize and produce more with less ground. If anyone has read Mahan and the Influence of Seapower, he pointed out what I am. Basically, the Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe and it was the only superfertile ground not reachable by naval guns. That was until the USA came along. Both countries had more than enough ground to feed everyone. Heck, the Ukraine and the heartland of the USA could probably feed the world if they did it right. Furthermore, if China and India could get their acts together then the sky is the limit. The real hunger in the world is almost always directly traceable to government interference. That goes for the potato famine in Ireland to the starvation in Africa today.
  17. Yes, it is the usual. I can only remember 1 movie where anyone kissed. The movies are really conservative compared to here in the US. There is almost always a love triangle, a gazillion song and dance numbers, a strikingly handsome guy and girl that really shouldn't be there, and more singing and dancing. A really good one to try out is Lagaan. It's a story on 3 levels: a love triangle (something you see in a lot of Bollywood films) a statement against racism (people from various castes, religions, and regions come together) and an anti-government anti-tax story. The last part made it popular amongst libertine types that would have normally never watched an Indian movie.
  18. I agree with everyone. It's a case of a good company with bad management. The lack of maintanance on their bread and butter pipeline is pretty indicative of how the rest of the company is run. From personal experience knowing people that have worked for them, they give lip service to things like maintanance of their employees and their equipment. Of course, it's catching up with them slowly. Their tuckus kissing commercials really rile me. If they'd only stick 1/2 of that money back into improving their human and natural resources, they'd be better off.
  19. The statements are really a way for BP to spin a problem with their business into a public image plus. Basically, they've got a lot of wear on their line and the small loss they experienced is a wee bit like a small crack in the pipes of your house. The problem isn't the crack and tiny amount of water per se, but the rotten pipes lining your house. The leak is just a symptom of a major problem. If you don't fix or replace the rusting rotting pipes in your walls, you are going to have to spend a great deal more money than you would have otherwise. BP is playing into the hands of the envrironmental movement by lying prostrate in front of a Gaia totem pole and begging forgvieness. That is ultimately self destructive and pretty pathetic in my eyes. They did admit that they are going to have to replace 70+% of the line. You don't do that unless there is a seriously ugly problem with it. No business in their right mind would do that. It's going to take months probably to fix the problem.
  20. Did you take the laptop version? Or was it offered?
  21. There's an article at the Herald-Sun and an article at Inside Higher Education about the college. Ironically, BB&T has had some trouble as I mentioned giving the money away. So it looks like Hull and Daniels are going to do it on their own-ish. Well, that is Objectivists for you. ha ha.
  22. Actually it is a BB&T sponsored venture. They shopped it around to a few colleges/communities and it was actually turned down at one college becuase BB&T wanted to say what the curriculum was.
  23. Really, my wife tried BarBri and the other major one I can't remember off the top of my head. She really didn't find their classes as helpful as you'd think they were considering the price. It seemed to me they literally dump as much as humanly possible on you hoping that some of it will stick. The service she found that really helped her, as well as her results was passyourbar.com. She did the semi-private classes that allowed her to work around her schedule and had a ton of 1 on 1 interaction with the main instructor Hugh as well as his assistants. He was able to pretty quickly find my wife's weak areas and worked to fix her problems and made sure she didn't spend to much time on unimportant things. That plus ways to game the Bar and what to really expect as opposed to doing practice bar after practice bar.
  24. Yup, that is one of the things I love about Houston. We are about as balanced racially as you can get. Giant east and central Asian populations, black, and unlike a lot of Texas cities, a varied origin to its Hispanic population. So, we have a really are lucky that way. I notice in just about anywhere I go, the lack of one group or another. I know what you mean. I've been fortunate to have moved around a great deal and Dallas is very mainstream. I always thought that it lacked something. It's kind of like a city that tries to hard to be a cool city. Not that Houston is exactly a shining cultural center, but it does have a real "organic" feel to the city compared to many. But then that may be related to the whole lack of city planning and zoning laws. Yes, we do get those. Still, I'd rather have 1 every handful of years than snow/ice in the winter or tornadoes that so much of the rest of Texas gets.
  25. To quote Homer J Simpson, D'oh! I'm so used to DFW being said in the same breath I think of it as a single entity. Still, DFW is such a tight knit metro area, it's pretty close to being a single city. Houston has an amazing amount of sprawl insasmuch as mayor Whitmire grabbed every piece of unincorporated land in the county that she could. So, I think it's a pretty honest comparison DFW Metro vs. Houston proper. Sure, there are some pretty heavy cultural differences between the Dallas and Fort Worth but the same can be said about The Wards in Houston and some of the overtaken areas that are still refered to as seperate entities by Houstonians.
×
×
  • Create New...