This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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So today we were starting to move all the stuff in from outside and generally get ready for Wilma, whatever Wilma will turn out to be here in Palm Bay. We were testing the generator, when all of a sudden we realized out two 5 gallon cans of gas were gone. We kept them outside since when we put them inside they stink. But someone had taken them sometime in the past few days since I last filled them up. Grrr! There was nothing to be done for it, but Brandy filed a police report, just on the principle of the thing. The person who took their report says this happens all the time right before storms. Grrrr…
 Anyway, speaking of Wilma, it is supposed to hit Florida in just about 12 hours. Maybe slightly more, maybe slightly less. It’ll get us on the opposite coast a few hours later. Well… that’s when the eye will hit. We should start getting effects much sooner than that, and in fact we are already starting to get some outer band rain and wind. The center of the path is now a decent bit south of us, but we’re still in the bubble. Right near the top edge of it, but still in it.
 Things have been moving around and the odds have been going up and down with each update. The early morning update had us at much higher risk, then later updates moved the path further south and dropped our risk. Right now, as of the 21 UTC update, in terms of tropical storm force winds, we are right in the middle of the darker orange band, which puts us at about a 55% chance of sustained tropical storm force winds. And even on the 45% chance of not having tropical storm force winds, it is still going to be a bad storm with lots of wind and some gusts which would be TS level.
 Hmm. The weather radio just went off. We’re now under a tornado warning in Brevard county as well as the hurricane warning we were already under. So I guess we are starting to get some effects already. Fun, fun. Anyway, on the odds for hurricane force winds, we are in the middle of the middle green stripe, which puts us at about a 15% chance of hurricane force winds. But even if that happens, it should only be a Cat 1 by the time it gets here. We shall see though.
Anyway, guess it is about time we hunker down and start watching some DVDs or whatever. We’re as ready as we are going to be this time. We even got some wood. Although we weren’t really able to put it up properly this time. Should all be fine though. This one ain’t like the ones last year. At least that’s not what is expected right now. We shall see.
Brandy is still very mad someone stole our gas. We got new gas though, so we’ll be able to run the generator if we have to. :-)
So, 18 hours since the update when we went into the 3 day bubble. The forecast has changed a bit. Wilma not spending quite as much time over the Yucatan, and speeding up a tad. Etc. The predicted path is a bit further south, but our odds of trouble have never the less increased. Here is where we are as of the 15 UTC update today:
Chances of tropical storm force winds: 45%
Chances of hurricane force winds: 8%
Probably Monday morning rather than Monday evening.
By contrast where my friend Ivan lives, it looks like this:
Chances of tropical storm force winds: 55%
Chances of hurricane force winds: 15%
Those are approximate of course.
We’ll keep watching. But we have no plans to evacuate or anything at this time. Probably not even board up, although we are thinking about it.
Finally, days after initially expected, as of the 21 UTC update from the National Hurricane Center, we are in the three day bubble for Hurricane Wilma:
We’ve been in the five day bubble for what seems like forever, but this is the first we’ve been in the 3 day. We’ve been thinking “surely we’ll be in the three day by the next update” since Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
Not that we like being in the bubble or anything, but it has been “coming” for like a week now. Of course, one of the reasons it is late coming here is it is absolutely pummeling the Yucatan, which looks like it will be horrible for folks living there. They are predicting for Wilma to basically sit on top of Cancun ALL WEEKEND. And it already has been having major effects most of the day Friday. That will not be good.
Anyway, I’ve found two new charts at the NHC that I like a lot better and tell more I think. They were there for the last few hurricanes too I think, I just didn’t pay any attention. These reflect the actual odds of given places getting certain amounts of winds.
So for instance, in this one covering from now until 18 UTC on Wednesday you can see what the chances are of hurricane force winds in that time frame at different places:
So looking at our approximate location, and doing a little eyeball interpolation, the chances of us getting hurricane force winds here in Palm Bay are about 5%. So not zero, but not all that high either.
For tropical storm force winds, our odds are a bit higher:
For our location I guestimate about a 35% chance of tropical storm force winds.
Of course, the way odds go, as the time of the event approaches, it either moves to 0% or moves to 100% since quantum effects aside, it will either happen or not.
But the long and short of it is that we will probably (65% chance) get absolutely nothing of note. But there is a decent chance of getting some tropical storm force winds. And even the 1 out of 20 chance of hurricane force winds is nothing to sneeze at. It could happen.
So we’ll of course be watching carefully the next few days.
I’d like to point out that we are almost exactly on the centerline of the new official projected path. This is one of the reason I like the ones based on probability a lot better. It better reflects the total uncertainy about the path and what may happen. The fact that we are right on the center line is concerning, but really not of much more concern than if we were anywhere else in the bubble. There is enough of a chance of trouble to pay close attention, and make basic preparations, but not for panic.
Like they keep saying on TV, don’t just pay attention to the centerline. Look at the whole bubble.
We postponed Amy’s birthday party from this weekend to next weekend because a couple days ago when we had to make the call it was more like a 60% chance of TS winds and a 30% chance of hurricane winds, and right on Saturday to Sunday when the party/sleepover would be. We had to make the call in enough time to let all the invitees plan accordingly. But still… now Amy is all disappointed by the delay in her party and it will probably be a beautiful day tomorrow. Sigh!
But we did let her open her big present though. As I am writing this she has the new kareoke machine cranked up and is singing “Mony Mony”. So I guess that is all OK. :-)
Since this is me, I have of course accounted for the fact that a year is not an integer number of days, time zones, leap years, and all other relevant factors… well, aside from relativistic time dilation… I must admit I didn’t account for that… I also have assumed that the clock they used to record the time of the initial event was accurate, which is probably not a good assumption, but in any case…
At 15:43:40 UTC today Amy will be exactly ten years old.
That is 11:43:40 AM Eastern, 8:43:40 AM Pacific.
So, be sure to wish her a happy birthday and all that!
Happy Birthday Amy!!!!
I’ve been waiting to blog about Wilma, but I had determined that I wouldn’t do that until we were actually in the NHC’s three day cone. It looked like that would happen at the NHC’s 21 UTC update, but it didn’t. I thought surely it would happen at the NHC’s 03 UTC update. But once again it did not. So screw it, I’ll talk about something else. At least until the 09 UTC update. Maybe we’ll be in the three day bubble by then. Anyway… other topic…
I blame Erica. A couple weeks ago she emails about her Tivo suddenly not starting up. It was a dead hard drive. So what happens this weekend? The exact same thing happens to my Tivo. It was probably sympathy, since the Tivo we used here was once a brother and housemate to the Tivo of Erica’s which died. It sensed the departure of its long lost friend, and decided it had to go with it.
So anyway, we discussed if we should replace it with a stock DirecTivo, or an upgraded one. The deciding factor ended up not being cost or anything else like that, but the fact that to get a pre-upgraded one we’d have to order online and get it shipped to us. And it was Saturday night by the time we were making decisions, so even with overnight shipping that meant we wouldn’t have it until Tuesday. Which meant that it probably would not be fully set up and recording until Wednesday.
Now, we knew we could hijack Amy’s Tivo and use it to record some of our shows in the meantime (and we indeed did that over the weekend). But Brandy decided she absolutely could not wait. So Sunday we went to Circuit City and walked out with a new DirecTivo. It has less hours than the one that died, but we’ll manage. We’ll probably end up getting a third one in a couple of months so each of us can have our own Tivo and not have to share. :-)
In any case, the new Tivo was all hooked up Sunday evening, and had collected and indexed all its initial guide data and so was fully up and running by mid day Monday.
And all was once again right in the world.
Except for the fact that we lost about 100 hours of programs on the old Tivo that we hadn’t gotten around to watching yet. That made me very sad. :-(
But aside from that, all was good!
I have so many things that pop to mind that I want to blog about, but I no longer have any time. So it just tends to not happen. Even now, at home in the evening after dinner and approaching bedtime, I really should be working on a document for work that needs to be done in the morning. But I am tired. I would go to bed, but Amy is in my bed doing her homework while Brandy talks on the phone with someone. So I am in the living room on the couch getting droopy, but figure maybe I’ll post. So, just a few short blurbs about a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to talk about but haven’t.
* State of the Tivo: What with the macrovision bruhaha and with DirecTV dropping them before long, I have doubts about where they will be a year from now. I want to believe! They are still the best thing out there… barely… at this very instant. But it seems very unlikely for that situation to still be the case a year from now. We shall see.
* Our Roof: A few weeks back the roofers FINALLY came to fix the roof over the lanai which had been leaking during big storms ever since we moved in. It was under warentee, it just took them forever. But finally they sent a crew and redid that whole part of the roof… and then it leaked again the next big storm. Bleh. After that they sent someone out again and supposidly it is all good now. But… I’m still reserving judgement.
* The Screen: We finally got to the top of the list for the screen, but then they got out here and said they couldn’t attach it, cause some of the wood on the edge of the roof… where it had been leaking… was rotted. Sow e had to have that replaced… not under warentee. we’ve been very tight on cash lately, but my mom very generously decided that would be her birthday present to me. So when they fixed the rest of the roof, they fixed that too. So we told the screeners we were ready to go. But of course we had slipped on their list. So we are once again waiting for the screen. Supposidly it would just be a couple more weeks, but it has already been that long and nothing yet. This is another where I will believe it when I see it.
* Speaking of house things, saw a report in the paper last week that the average increase in home value in this county over the last 12 months has ben 48%. FOURTY EIGHT PERCENT. That is just absolutlely insane. This bubble is going to have to pop soon. I just don’t see how it can’t. But hopefully it will have gone up enough, so even when it goes down, it will still stay above where we bought.
* We’re also looking at refinancing. Doesn’t look like a super huge amount, but it does seem that we would be able to save a bit on the monthly payments. If we get some cash out and pay off all the plastic too, it will be even more dramatic. So we will probably do that. But we’ll stay away from the newer non-traditional plans. It could get payments even lower, but with interest rates where they are, just too risky…
* Princely had surgery a couple weeks ago to remove a small growth on his front right foot. I think we were suppposed to get a followup call from the vet by now to confirm that it was a benign tumor and not something more serious. But I don’t think we have heard yet. Princely is a good dog. He is curled up at my feet right now. He really didn’t like hgaving the humungo cone thing on his head for a week to keep him from rip[ping out his stitches. He got a couple of them anyway.
* I left the book I was reading in a hotel in Delaware while I was on business travel a couple weeks ago. I kept calling to see if it had turned up, but it never had. Guess one of the staff was really into Civil War autobiographies. I finally gave in and ordered a replacement. Just found where I had left off and started reading again today. I’ll post about the book when I finish it, but so far I am really enjoying it.
* I have now fathered dozens of frogs. I think the original batch of tadpoles has now long been froggifed or eaten by their siblings, but there are still many dozens of tadpoles in the tank. The process may never end. A few hours ago, I decided to do some work on the lanai. I picked up a cup which was ont he table out there and yup, there was a frog inside.
* Oh, Brandy got a new job! Did I ever mention that on the blog? She started almost two weeks ago now. First check from it should be direct deposited about 2.5 hours from now. That will be nice. She is working for a local utility doing something or other while sitting in a cube. Sounds like a blast. (Seriously though, she is liking it a lot more than the last place.) It is a one year contract gig. At the end of the year it will end. But that gives plenty of time to find something else.
* Amy had some issues with her teachers a couple weeks back, and so did we. But we had a big old teacher parent conference. A lot of tension initially, but all issues are resolved now. We think. In any case, things seem to be positive right now.
* I am thinking of volunteering to be the coach for her school’s chess club. They have a bunch of students interested in a chess club, but there is no chess club right now, because they don’t have a coach. Now, as much as I enjoy chess, I am not that good at it. But I am good enough to help a handful of 4th and 5th graders play a few games together. It would be one morning a week I would have to come into work 90 minutes late or so. If I feel I can get away with that, I’ll do it. (Amy is one of the kids who is interested… she has been on a chess kick lately… Fritz and Chesster 2 came for my birthday, and she pounced.)
* The Treo is fully healed! At first after it’s swim and drying off for a week, everything seemed to work EXCEPT using it without a headset or speakerphone. If you wanted to use it the normal way… out of luck. But I accidentally tried it again a few days ago… and surprise! It worked! Guess the speaker just needed a little more time to dry out.
* Have I mentioned I really wish weekends were longer? I am so swamped all week long. And always tired. Then I sleep just a tad more on the weekend, but never get even half of what I want to get done done, and then I’m still just as tired by the end of the weekend. I really don’t function well with less than 8 hours of sleep a night, and really feel I need at least 9, maybe even 10 sometimes. And I’ll certainly take 12 if I can get it. But I mostly get 6 or so these days. I’ll get the 8 on weekends maybe. And it just leaves me constantly dragging and tired.
* Amy was sick yesterday and today. Sore throat. Apperantly a viral thing, but not strep. I worked from home the last couple of days since I can and Brandy can’t. She mostly stayed quiet and did the sick thing and I was able to do work. In fact, I think I have been more productive at home than I often am at work. But new work keeps getting added to the pile faster than work is getting done. It is a busier time right now for me work wise than it has been in ages. Which I guess is good. Oh, and Amy seems to be doing better. She is all back to her 9 year old argumentative self.
* I am thirsty. I think I will get some water.
Bye for now.
So, over the last few months, I once again started tracking a “stock scheme” that I have played with once every couple of years all the way back to college. This time I did it for a longer time period than any of the other times. The above is how it did. This covers 60 trading days, although there are a couple gaps when I was out of town or whatever and didn’t track it. I just assumed that I didn’t apply the scheme those days.
It started out really well, but then langished, and in the last few days lost all the gains it had made. Kinda dissapointing. The first chart is how $100,000 invested in this scheme would have done over time, using a $7 per trade fee structure. As you can see, in the first few days I would have gotten lucky and made about 25%. Then it just bounced up and down (mostly down) from then on. At the end of the 60 days, I still was up from the starting point, but trailed where I would have been just buying an S&P index (that’s the other line… SPY). Of course, given the way this particular thing works, with actual fees, it would indeed take pretty much $100K to still be above water. Oh well.
The second chart shows a histogram of each days performance (with no fees). As I started, the histogram had a bulge on the negative side, but a longer tail on the positive, thus making the overall average just positive enough to make money. But as more and more data got collected, it looked more and more like a standard bell curve centered on zero.
Oh well.
I’d like to play with more of these models, but automation is in order. I did this by trying to remember every afternoon in the hour before the market closed to check the prices of a set of stocks under consideration. (The link goes to a sample.) The based on those prices and the changes from the previous day, I pick one for the next day. Of course, in real life, I check at slightly different times each day and as mentioned, there were a few gaps where I did not check at all.
Anybody got a good tool or could script one that at a specific time of day would go to the page I linked to, grab all the stock symbols and associated prices and dump them to a common file format that I could go back and analyse after having just let the thing run and collect data for a few months. Try different scheme variations on it and such.
Not that I really expect to find something that will make real cash if used (although if I did that would be cool). But just cause I like playing with this sort of stuff and like making graphs and stuff.
I apperantly have a new nickname: Cupcake.
Sydney Convicts Rugby Club
Name: Sam Minter
Nickname: Cupcake
Birthday: 6 December
Birthplace: Sydney
Profession: I.T.
Position: Flanker
Position I would never play: Winger
Joined Convicts: October ’03
Other teams: Woollahra Colleagues
Tours: Bingham Cup ’04, Purchas Cup ’04, ’05
Favourite saying: “Hit first, hit hard”
Favourite rugby team: Wallabies (Don’t ask why)
Favourite board game: Scrabble
Favourite drink: Elephant Beer
Favourite pastime: Beating up on punching bags
Favourite “Camp Classic” Song: I don’t do camp.
Most important thing I’ve learnt in Rugby: Whoever said “The bigger they are, the harder they fall” never tried to tackle a prop running at speed.
The dumbest thing I’ve ever done in public: In alphabetical, or chronological order?
Easiest way to get into your pants: If you’re me? Through the big opening in the top. If you’re not me, try the zipper at the front.
One thing you’d like to say to our opponents for Bingham Cup 2006: Good luck
I was actually asleep when it happened (I think) but about 10 hours ago at 02:36:03 UTC it was exactly 34 years (at 365.242199 days each) since I was born. Woo! Go me. I am tired.
I’m at work right now, and am trying to be all 100% focused at work and not do things like post while I am here, so I’ll keep it to that. Short post. Want to go home and back to bed.
But instead, I’ll drink my coffee and get to work. There is a lot to do.
Hmm, just for fun, I’ll set this post to be published exactly 10 hours after the moment, rather than approximately. Woo!
Over the last week or so (maybe a bit more) I’ve kept a list on a piece of paper of things I wanted to blog about. Of course, I haven’t really had the time. Especially with me doing the blocking the web at work thing. And then when I get home there are almost aways other things going on. Either that, or I am sleepy and crash.
Anyway, rather than full posts on any of these, here are some quick notes on several topics:
In early July we went cash flow positive for the first time since buying the house and moving. (With the exception of a spike when I liquidated some stuff to pay taxes in April.) Now, the total net worth trend has been up since the taxes were paid. But a lot of that is in forms that aren’t easily usable (like retirement funds), and some of it will eventually go away (like withheld taxes). Here I’m talking JUST checking accounts (mine and Brandy’s). The month over month delta numbers on our combined checking balances finally moved into the green around the first week of July. I was very happy about that. Of course, for a variety of reasons, I expect we will dip slightly back into the red shortly, but hopefully that won’t be for long and we’ll soon be green for good… {If this had been a full post, I would have added graphs and stuff…}
At one point last week there were NINE baby frogs sitting on the egde of the tadpole tanks waiting to hop away. And we’ve seen bunches of new medium size frogs hopping around that probably came from our tanks. Yea! Bunch more tadpoles still in the tanks.
DirecTV slowly but surely pulling away from Tivo pisses me off. I’ll reserve full judgement until they release their HDTivo replacement thing later this year. If it blows the socks off the HD Tivo, well then… OK. I’ll reluctantly say goodbye to Tivo and go on to the new best thing. But… I love my Tivo damn it!
In the new Battlestar Galactica, a spaceship named the “Gideon” was the site of a massacre a couple of episodes ago. I congradulate this Gideon on his obviously mounting influence.
Speaking of BSG, I was shocked to see there were a bunch of online discussions a few weeks back on who was right, Adama or the President, when Adama jailed the President after they had a dispute, Adama would not do what the President wanted, and the President went around him to get it done anyway. Obviously this was a military coup and the President was in the right. Or at least I thought it was obvious. Lots of people seem to disagree though.
The people who are going to put the screen back on our pool will be here “any day now”. It was supposed to be mid week last week. Now it is maybe tomorrow, maybe early next week. We (well, mostly Brandy) spent a bunch of time and effort trimming back the bushes and plants around where they need to work, so they can do what they need to do. Time for them to show up.
I’d been delaying taking my car in to service for awhile (other things to spend cash on). A couple weeks ago it started making noises that made me think the wheel was about to come off. Actually, it didn’t start suddenly, but slowly built up, but only recently did it get so bad I was afraid for my life. So I took it in. Needed a new bearing and hub on one wheel, and new front breaks. About $600. Bleh. Done now. Car is much better.
I’ve been playing more games on ICC lately. I play maybe once a week. I was really excited a few days ago when I won my fourth game in a row. (I always play people within 10% on either side of my own rating.) But then I lost the fifth game. Oh well. Maybe I should post my games here? I am also in the middle of a game with Amy. She has improved a lot. She is holding her own with me in this game at the moment. (I think I’m like a pawn up, but I’m not crushing her.) I am very impressed.
In the last few weeks, I have gotten emails from people who live in both Lac Megantic, Canada and Orotukan, Russia. They both found my webpages about those locations and wanted to comment. The person from Lac Megantic said that I hadn’t visited long enough, and I should come back for a longer visit and I should be sure to visit a specific restaurant he recommended. The person from Orotukan mentioned that in my list of links about the place, I neglected the site that he manages… orotukan.ru Which is of course in Russian, and I can’t read a single word.
Brandy’s dad has been in the hospital and has had a couple of surgerys to address some serious problems in his leg. He is doing much better now, and is in better spirits than he has been. But he is still in the hospital right now, and once released he will be in a rehabilitation program for quite a while probably. Here’s hoping for as quick a recovery as possible, and no more complications…
A few months ago they opened a Whataburger near where I work. I had never of heard of them before, or eaten there. To be honest, I was kind of scared. Earlier this week I went there at lunch and got take out. It wasn’t bad. I went again yesterday. I may add it to my rotation of Wendy’s and Burger King that I go through when I forget to bring lunch from home.
Kelly emailed me a little bit ago to let me know that my former employer in New Jersey now blocks this website as inappropriate for work viewing. “Clubs and Discussion Groups” category. Woo! I have been banned by a major financial institution! (Or, more likely, whatever blacklist provider they use.)
OK, all that is more than enough for now. I have held back a couple of things which I still intend to make full posts on. Perhaps I will post about those things this weekend. Maybe.
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