Stop & Shop Scanners

Last month, Stop and Shop introduced scanners in 100 of its stores, including the one in our very own New Paltz. I was surprised to find how easy they are to operate. I'm no slouch when it comes to electronics, but I still defer to Shirra when it comes to hooking up the DVD player or getting the computer to interface with our external hard-drive. So if I can get a scanner to work, anyone can.

Scanners save you time because you don't have to wait in line for a cashier. You simply scan an item and put in in your bag. Oh yeah -- make sure to have some shopping bags with you, or else you're just a doofus who likes to waste time and plastic.

Anyway, once you've finished shopping, you simply scan a barcode reader at the self-check-out lane and pay. Voila! You're done. And so far, I've had almost no trouble with the scanners, and everyone I've spoken with has praised them to the sky.

Some people have a complaint about them, however: the cashiers. I spoke last week with one of the more experienced associates, and she told me that she's afraid that scanners are going to take jobs away. She lamented the fate of high school seniors, moms with empty nests, and other people who need an entry-level job. It might only pay a smidge over the minimum wage, but a job at S&S still gives a person health benefits, work experience, and a few bucks towards the rent.

Some shoppers refuse to use the scanners out of a sense of loyalty to their fellow workers. I'm hoping that the company finds an alternate use for its employees. Maybe they could use workers to increase the paltry number of floor walkers, resulting in a better shopping experience that would enrich S&S over its cross-street rival, Shoprite.

53rd Biggest Loser on the Planet

As of this afternoon, I am now the 53rd biggest loser alive. I owe it all to online Boggle for the iPhone.

My brother's great friend Dave showed me a fun app on his iTouch called Wurdle, but after a few weeks, I got tired of it. The funny thing is, it's a much better application than the one I play these days. Wurdle's interface is huge, it uses the up-to-date Scrabble dictionary that I'm familiar with, and it has other niceties that make the game more fun, including better sound effects. Most of all, it doesn't always give you great sets of letters, so sometimes you have to struggle to score a few points.

Shake & Spell, on the other hand, has a tiny interface (I try to come up for air now and then so that I don't damage my surgically enhanced eyes). It uses the most-recent-but-one dictionary, so there are plenty of 'words' that I know from the new Scrabble update, like ZAS, that aren't allowed. But worst of all, it constantly creates blocks of the same common letters: E A T. This means that in about 8 games out of 10, you have to type the same tiny, annoying words. How many times have made these words? ETA EAT TAE TEA ATE ....


The only thing in S&S's favor, really, is that it hooks you up with other live players. Games generally take place with people playing the same board a few minutes apart (if not a few hours or days apart). If you keep enough games going at once, you can almost always turn on your machine to see a few games waiting for you. And with the most recent update, you can add friends and request games with a small group of people that you've come to trust.

Cheating abounds. Until they fix a few things, the game makes it easy for people to generate high scores using online Boggle solvers. But it's easy to recognize the cheaters and to avoid them.

When I first joined S&S, I noticed that there are thousands of players. You immediately get a ranking based on the points you score, and you mainly score by accruing points gained over opponents. If you win 200-199, you get a point. So after a few days, I found that I was ranked about 2500th overall. A few weeks later, I broke into the top 1000. I began to wonder about those people with really high scores. Do they have a life? Since most games are 3 rounds, if they have a win-loss total of 600-400, their winning percentage isn't too high (60%), but they've played 1000 games averaging about 3 minutes; they've spent 50 hours playing Boggle! That's over two full days!

At some point, you cross a line. It's one thing to play a few games now and then. It's another to play really well. But it's entirely different if you play all the time. And it's not like you can do a lot of other things while playing Boggle on a two inch interface. I think I'd rather see a drunk driver than encounter someone driving under the influence of Boggle. You can't brush your teeth while boggling. You can't read. You can't chat on the phone. You can't really do anything except ignore your favorite TV shows.

When I broke into the top 100, I started paying close attention to the time I'd spent on the game. It's getting out of control. And now I'm rated number 53 and gaining fast. My winning percentage is 82.4%. And I'm the 53rd biggest loser on the planet.

Bad Smells

Even I knew that living in the country meant living with a septic tank. Ours is buried in the ground several hundred feet from the house, creating a plateau that might one day allow for a small ice skating rink.

What I didn't know is that having a septic tank involves taking care of a septic tank. In the same way that elementary-schoolers think that hamburgers come from, uh, the supermarket, I sort of assumed that septic tanks took care of themselves and didn't involve participation on my part. Luckily, having a water-treatment facility in the country is a lot easier than having to slaughter your own food, but there is some work involved. OK, it only involves flushing some powder down your toilet twice a year, but still... What I now know and will never forget is the smell of that powder.



It comes in a happy box that seems to radiate health and the great outdoors. Shirra remembered last night that we'd missed our moment to take care of the tank back in January. It was that time of year again. It's easy to remember, since we only have to take care of it on July 1 and then on the first of the year. It's just that we'd never stayed home afterwards.

The directions on the box are pretty simple:

1. Pour contents into toilet.
2. Flush.




There should be two other steps:

3. Hold nose.
4. Stay out of house for 4 hours.

So last night we went to bed with the entire house smelling like a latrine. Happy New Year.

Crunching Sane Hash: Church Shenanigans

How could a person resist?

Before .................................................................................................. After

Juggling Three Cars

Our first car was the Pontiac Aztek. We saw it advertised on "Survivor" and decided it looked cool and had features we liked, such as the tent you can add onto the hatch. We bought that tent, and it's still in its box 8 years and $190 later.



Shortly after we moved to Brooklyn, we needed a bigger car. The Aztek seats 5, but we often found ourselves taking friends with us, and after Maeve was born, we didn't have room in the car for even one passenger. We bought a 2004 Honda Odyssey, and two years later we traded up to the 2006 model. Those cars helped us in the move to New Paltz -- they both had fold-down (or removable) seats and could handle at least 30 small boxes each! And when I started driving to Manhattan at the beginning of this school year, the Aztek served my purposes pretty well. I'd had to repair various things over the years, and the repairs were getting pricey, but I thought I was going to run that car into the ground before getting a new one.

Then I saw my first Smart, back in late April of 2008. Suddenly I realized that I had an answer to a problem I hadn't even realized I had. The Smart is less than 9 feet long, just over half the size of the average car. I bought an 'orphan' (a car someone had ordered but had then forsaken) a week later at a time when the economy seemed strong and the wait for Smarts was over 18 months. Looking for parking in Manhattan would never be the same. I used to park the Aztek in the first available spot I saw, then unicycle from wherever that happened to be. Often, that was a mile away. Another time I was late for an important meeting because I spent over 40 minutes parking and ended up on my old block (114th Street) -- nearly two miles from my office.

Third World Problem: I now use the Aztek so seldom that its battery is constantly dying. This started happening when we lived in Brookyln. There, I'd unicycle everywhere, and the 'Tek often languished in the garage for weeks. I killed that battery so bad, I even needed to have it replaced. And since buying the Smart, I've had to charge the Aztek almost once a week, which is about as often as I use it.



Rather than calling Triple-A or having to put two cars together with jumper cables, I wised up years ago and bought a small portable car charger. It's the same kind that AAA uses when they arrive on the scene to give you a boost, and it's only about $100 for the unit, which lasts a long time. But since it's only good for one or two charges at best before recharging, it's a good idea to have a 2nd unit. I now have one charger in the basement at all times, plugged in and ready to go, while the other is in the Smart in case I run into a problem ... or in case I decide to help out some stranded motorist. I've done that three times so far.

Selling the Aztek might have been a decent idea a few years ago, when we discovered that its trade-in value was about $7,000, but at this point, it's probably worth under a grand, so we might as well get out of it as much as we possibly can. I do have to take it into the shop soon, however. I need to update its registration, and it needs a new brake light and a few other minor repairs. One of these days we'll have to break out that tent -- maybe when the weather gets warm. That's what we say every spring.

New Highs in Hypermiling: 50 mpg!

I'm now driving slower than ever. Remember that I travel at a time of day when fewer cars and trucks are on the road -- I couldn't drive 50-60 mph during rush hour, but at 1 in the afternoon or 8 at night, it's not a big deal. I just have to keep an eye out for trucks bearing down on me, and when I see them, I speed up a bit and let them pass without having to slow down.

So over the past month, I've worked at maintaining an average speed of 55 mph. Using the pulse & glide technique (where I speed up to 60 and then coast back to 50, repeating ad nauseam), I've been able to achieve incredible success in stretching my gas pennies further than usual. Over the first 100 fill-ups, I averaged about 44 mpg. But over the last four tankfuls, I've managed almost 50 mpg! I keep track of my mileage at fuelly.com



This means that my average trip takes a few minutes longer each day, but that gives me a few extra minutes to listen to my audio books or to play some music. My P&G'ing keeps me more awake than when I'd drive using cruise control, and I love the car and arrive at my destination in a great mood.

Church Anagrams

I couldn't resist. As an inveterate wordsmith and someone who's played Scrabble in tournaments for the past 15 years, I couldn't resist the chance to put a twist on the huge sign outside the mega-church.

Each week, the church changes its sign, always proclaiming something uplifting in 2-foot-tall letters. But two weeks ago, the church came up with something that I instantly anagrammed to something hilarious, and I just had to make the change.





But then, being the nice guy that I am, I put the letters back.

The Weirdest Playlist in the World

When I arrived home last night, I realized I'd just played what might have been the weirdest playlist in the history of humanity.

Many linguists have noted that it doesn't take a lot of words for a person to put together a sentence that has never been uttered before. Here's one: Rational cows wrangle parking boogers.

My tunes started out fairly normal. I listened to a few songs from Erran Baron Cohen's "Songs in the Key of Hanukkah." My favorite is the opening track, but I couldn't find a link to it, so here is a link to the 2nd song, "Dreidel." It's a combination of holiday klezmer and rap, with some other styles thrown in, and it's so boppy that it's definitely not just for Hanukkah.

Next I went to some microtonal music by Easley Blackwood, Jr. The scale we're all used to playing has 12 tones, but he has written music with many more notes per octave. The result is music that sounds like it came from another planet, but some of his pieces are hauntingly beautiful, and I find myself drawn to them. My favorite is Opus 28 #3 (Suite in Four Movements).

Then it was on to some solid rap music: "Lookin' Fly," by Murs (featuring will.i.am). My other favorite of Murs is "The Science," an impressive song about the history and struggles of African Americans.

Now, there are probably a lot of people who have listened back-to-back to some Murs and then some Notorious B.I.G, and I'm one of them. I put on a few songs including "Gimme the Loot." Notorious B.I.G.'s murder remains unsolved, but it's safe to say that he came on strong and went out just as fiercely.

It's possible that this playlist wasn't weird enough, so just for fun, I ended with a show tune: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HeasqkO1Ko&feature=related," from Showboat. The version I've linked to features Helen Morgan, but I much prefer the most recent Broadway production's version by Lonette McKee. The song was written by P.G. Wodehouse (who wrote the famous series of "Jeeves and Wooster" books).

Challenge: Can you put together an even weirder playlist in under 6 songs?

How Many New Paltzers Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

Actually, the question should be: How Many Steps Does It Take...

Our house came with sconces outside of each door. We rarely use them. The front door sconce is easy to open, so when the bulbs blew last summer, it was a matter of minutes before they were replaced. The side door sconce is another story. In fact, it might as well be on another story, because changing the bulbs required a ladder. Strangely, it also required a vacuum cleaner.

I had been meaning to change these bulbs for some time, but last week I realized that it was going to be an involved process and that the process would involve daylight. I would have preferred a warm, sunny day, but I settled for 21 degrees and clouds.

It was only when I'd unscrewed the two screws atop the sconce that I noticed that there was bug detritus -- dead flies, eggs, wings -- all around the base of the bulbs. Simply replacing the bulbs might have led to a short circuit or other problems, so the situation called for a vacuum cleaner, meaning that I'd have to operate a vacuum from the top of a ladder that was resting on several inches of snow.

Normally, the changing of a lightbulb requires these steps:
1. Remove old bulb
2. Replace with new bulb

My operation was a bit more complex:

1. Acquire ladder from our nearby shed; place beside door
2. Grab screwdriver from kitchen shelf; place in pocket
3. Ascend ladder
4. Remove 2 screws from sconce

5. Place sconce on handrail of stairs
6. Remove bulbs
7. Descend ladder; discard old bulbs
8. Grab vacuum cleaner; reascend ladder
9. Remove doo-hickey around light fixture; vacuum. Repeat two more times

10. Descend ladder again; put down vacuum cleaner
11. Grab new bulbs; reascend ladder

12. Screw in new bulbs
13. Replace sconce top
14. Replace sconce screws
15. Replace ladder in shed
16. Replace vacuum cleaner in house.

Of course, because I couldn't even remember using this light, I had to check that it was working as soon as I'd replaced the first bulb, meaning that there were at least two more steps in this process. The above list is just a shorthand for my next bulb-changing.

This Post Cost $152 (or, How Not to Drive up My Hill)

Last night, I spent $152 to get my car from point A, about 300 yards from my house, to point B, my house. In fact, I really only needed to move the car about 3 yards; that is, from point A to point A-point-zero-zero-one.

The car got stuck on a slight uphill in the vicinity of my our neighbor as I drove home last night. Owing to slick conditions -- it was still raining, and there was slush and ice on our road -- I could not safely drive faster than about 10 mph as I went over our bridge. I walked home and explained that I was going to dry some traction sand (that's the two bucks) and also might try putting on one of our new Autosocks. Autosocks are tire covers made of Kevlar and other strong materials; they're designed to help you drive in slick conditions. The problem is that the company hadn't yet sent the small ones for my Smart Car, so I decided to try the larger size socks intended for our other cars. This is not advisable.

The socks worked great, but one of them got stuck inside the wheel near the axle. I could drive, but I couldn't drive fast or else I'd cause my own car fire. As a fireman, it would be even more embarrassing that usual if the fire department arrived to put out a car fire only to discover that I had started it. I took the car to our garage and paid Farooge $20 to remove the sock. As expected, the sock was torn, and since you can't just order one of them, I have to buy a new pair, costing $100. So far I'm out $122.

Shirra was hoping to go to her Pilates class this morning. In fact, she was counting on it. But owing to my confusing plans, she had to take the kids to school instead of relying on me. That brought the total to $152.

Follow-up:

When I arrived at Shirra's store an hour after writing the above post, there was a box waiting for me. It was the Autosocks for my Smart Car. They'd arrived yesterday but were given to the owner of a neighboring store. He normally brings things over right away, but Shirra's store was closed yesterday. Ah well.

Let's Take It to the Bridge

On Thursday afternoon, the rusted metal pipe that created a culvert under our bridge finally gave out. Its collapse created a large hole -- just about the size of my Smart Car (tho luckily I'm only guessing this and didn't find this out the hard way!). Shirra was lucky enough to get ahold of our road guy, Tim, and he was over in less than a half hour. Shortly thereafter, we had a bandaid in place of the real work to come, but at least it allowed us to cross the bridge again.

But then yesterday, while taking the kids to Woodstock, I noticed that a hole had reappeared. Since we don't have a culvert, the large stones that Tim put down are only going to wash away as they're buffeted by the gentle tide of the lake and the not-so-gentle pounding of heavy automobiles. I put a pylon into the hole as a warning to other drivers, but by the time we'd returned, the pylon had been almost completely swallowed up as the hole enlarged. At this point, I could probably get the Smart Car past it, but I'd rather not take the risk. Shirra and I are simply walking past the hole to where our cars await us on the other side.

We're hoping to have a new culvert soon -- and we're running out of time! The forecast calls for snow this Thursday. This isn't the best timing. With any luck, we'll have a few estimates by tomorrow and will have the work done by Wednesday or Thursday. If not.... Well, life could get even more interesting.

Trapped in Manhattan

There was an ice storm warning, so I expected this might happen: It was too dangerous for me to drive home, so I had to sleep over at my mom's (which is also where I tutor).

I realized around midnight that my car was on the 'wrong' side for tomorrow and would have to be moved by 11 am, so I decided to take care of that just now rather than in the morning. Since it's the country's (world's?) smallest production car, I knew that it wouldn't be too hard to find a spot nearby, but this time I managed to wedge the car into the smallest space it's been squeezed into since the summer.
I have maybe three inches, total, of wiggle room.







Of course, as soon as I got out of the car, I noticed this cute little tomato just behind me:



It was only on my way home that I realized... I didn't have to move the car at all; I'm taking it to the dealer tomorrow morning to get snow tires. D'oh!

Smart Car after 20,000 Miles

Well, I made it to 20K before the snow hit; who knows what's going to happen with that car in the next few months. Will I be able to drive it up our path? The highway? Time will tell. Actually, I'm most afraid of Rte 32 -- that's the only place a nasty head-on collision could occur. Ironic that the highway is much safer than a two-lane road in a rural place.

I had some electrical hiccups with Cheewawa, as I've come to call my car, and I had to take the car in recently for its 20,000-mile check-up anyway, so I was hoping that they could take care of the routine maintenance and the minor repairs at the same time. At first they thought I had a problem with one of the electrical components called a SAM, but replacing the SAM didn't help. Then they blamed the alternator. But before they put the car up on the lift again, they tested the battery and discovered that it was faulty. A simple battery change was all I needed. Now the car runs like a dream.

I'm still getting excellent mileage, tho it definitely diminishes with the decreasing temperature. Normally I get about 47 miles to a gallon, but lately I've been hovering more around 42-44. Partly this is due to the wind -- it was ferocious yesterday and for part of today, and the car had to fight just to roll down the hill.

I've added a small armrest in the car (it doesn't reach out as far as I'd like, but it adds a bit of storage) and put in a 6-CD changer, which helps with those books-on-CD, but otherwise the car is basically unmodified. My next alteration, however, is for safety: snow tires. I'm putting them on this week! Gotta have a safe Cheewawa!

All Tucked in for Winter

My Smart Car is not the ideal car for winter driving. It might do ok on snow, but I'm not sure I want to be driving that little thing on highways with huge trucks passing me by, and in some ways I'm even more scared of driving on Rt 32, where head-on collisions are a rare but terrifying prospect. Even our road is going to be a hazard -- it's unpaved, and there are tricky patches and some hills. So I might have to keep the car under wraps for a few weeks now and then when the weather tells me to.

The previous owners of our house used to have a garage. For some reason that I still don't understand, they converted it to a shed. I noticed, however, that the Smart Car is just narrow enough to fit under the porch of the shed. By backing it in carefully, I can keep the car from getting covered in snow. I'm not sure if this is ever going to prove helpful, but it certainly has proved cute. I like how it looks like a guinea pig in a hutch.











Emmett's guinea pig, Snowball...

Smart Firemen

I was walking around Main Street when I spotted another Smart Car in New Paltz, and the driver was heading towards Shirra's store. I caught up with him and chatted for awhile. It turns out that he's also a fire fighter (as is his wife) -- I had noticed the little plate on the front of his car -- and that he lives in Woodstock.

A few days later I was shopping when I noticed his car in the parking lot. I didn't manage to spot the owner, but I got a cute shot of our cars side by side. I am jealous of his yellow -- that's an awesome color!

When Shirra and I first moved to New Paltz, I experienced a lot of coincidences, like how our next-door neighbor's son was born in the same hospital on the same day or how my long-lost best friend from childhood ended up moving to NP a few years ahead of us and has a son in our son's class. I'm glad the coincidences have continued -- it makes life more interesting.