voluntaryXchange

Growth Grade for 2007 IV

The economy is doing lousy - it grades out at a "D" or "C" depending on your curve.

The 0.6% annualized growth of real GDP in the 4th quarter of 2007 scores out as a "D" on my standard scale.

Believe it or not, this is the quality of work that passes for a "C" in America's colleges - since that's the grade for this rate of anemic growth using an actual student grade scale.

* Hmmm. I wrote a post on this towards the end of January ... but it appears to have gotten lost in the ether. Thus, the late news.

The AP Says the Sky Is Falling ... Worser ... Or Somethingorother

Here's the headline: "Economy Skids to Near Halt".

Well ... sort of ...

Yes, the economy was at a near halt in the 4th quarter.

But, this is news this week because ... data was released that was sharper than earlier data that showed that growth was really slow and the new data showed no change.*

So, let's put the metaphors in perspective:

• The economy slowed drastically.
• People heard and saw the skid and reported on it a while back.
• Now the good ol' boys are looking at the pavement saying "Yep, that's a skid alrighty".

* I apologize for the wooden phrasing - it's a trope I'm using to draw your attention to the wooden thinking at the AP.

Create Your Own Characters for Office

Here's an interesting tip - you can create your own characters to be used in Office documents.

This is a potentially useful idea if you've ever had to include a GIF or JPEG of a character into a document to get it to look right. Lots of folks do just this to include their signature. If you were really ambitious, you could even create your own font this way. The nerds I hang with might also see that this is a way to add mathematical characters to your documents that are too obscure for Microsoft to have included.

Anyway, it's pretty easy: there is already a little program in Windows to do this. It's called Private Character Editor. It's not on your Start menu. But, you can add it there, or click "Run" from the start menu and then type "eudcedit". Then you just use Character Map to access the character.

It took me under a minute from reading the directions to having a workable signature available for use in Office.

Ghost Story

There are two parts - read both.

1) My wife was at work last week, and I was having dinner around the kitchen table with the kids. The vXboy asked "Where's Mom?" I said something sensitive like "Duh ... she's at work". He replied with "But I just saw her in the laundry room.". After further questioning he revealed that he didn't actually see his mother. Instead, he saw her coat - her white down vest - moving across the room.

Normally, I wouldn't think too much about something like this. Except:

2) I saw something in that laundry room about 3 years ago. I got a good 2 second look.

I'm not a crank, nor a great believer in the paranormal. Most people wouldn't even call me open-minded to this sort of thing. Our house is not old - 14 years, and 2 owners. To my knowledge it is not built over an old Indian burial ground.

But, the similarities and dissimilarities are intriguing.

• We both saw something white.
• We both saw something moving right to left.
• We both saw it in our (unscary, and heavily trafficked) laundry room.
• We both saw something about the same time of the evening - 7 PM.

But:

• He saw his at night. I saw mine in the broad daylight of an early summer evening.
• The windows and doors were closed the other day. They were open in my case.
• He was with 2 people. I'd left people just outside.
• We were at different angles and distances. He was 20 feet away with a straight line of sight. I was 15 feet closer, but at an angle.
• He saw something that was squatly rectangular, and torso sized. I saw something more like a small table runner - I'd swear it ... undulated.

Weird.

Pink Floyd and Headphones

From William J. Polley:

I am reminded of an episode of "Classic Albums" on VH1Classic in which one of the members of Pink Floyd (probably David Gilmour, but I don't recall for sure) waxed philosophical about what it must have been like for someone to bring home Dark Side of the Moon, turn out the lights, put on the headphones, and listen to it for the first time--and that since he was so involved with brining [sic] it into being he never had that experience for himself.

Pity.

I did have almost this exact experience, but the album was Wish You Were Here. It was so intense I remember feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience during the first half of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

Finally - A Woman That Said No!

My wife always reminds me never to put her on the spot - and she's right. No one deserves this sort of pressure.

Hey a**hole: she never would've put you in that position. She also wouldn't be thinking about picking up her huge beer as soon as she left the court.

Via Megan McArdle.

5-Year-Olds These Days

The vXgirl asked me how to spell "dot com" the other day.

3-Year Old Explains Star Wars

Much more fun than having a teenager doing it:

Via Geekdad

Having YouTube Trouble Today?

YouTube disappeared in the U.S. for an hour Sunday, and I've noticed a slowness problem or two today.

This may sound like something worthy of South Park ... but ... blame Pakistan!

The truth is, Pakistan wants YouTube banned because it shows naughty stuff, an ISP addressed this directive in a clumsy manner, and bye-bye- YouTube for everyone.

The method used is brazen and totalitarian: Pakistan Telecom sent out messages to autonomous systems worldwide claiming to be able to serve all of YouTube's traffic - then they dumped it somewhere of their choice. This is called IP hijacking, and it is a practice used by organized crime for identity theft.

The root problem here has not been solved. The band-aid solution has been to remove the entire country of Pakistan from the internet for the day.

Free market and civil liberties types should note that Pakistan has been taken off the internet shortly after their president - who no one seems to like - has lost an election and refused to take the hint from the U.S. that it might be time to go quietly. Funny that ...

Hardware Recommendation

Need RAM?  Check out Crucial.com.

My story is hard to believe. The last thing I did before shutting down our home PC before vacation was to order RAM. This was about 6 in the evening. The next day around lunch, UPS was at the door with our RAM - before we left for the airport. Less than 20 hours - and I did not pay for anything other than standard ground shipping.

FWIW: they also have a cool RAM tester on their website. It can figure out what you have, what you can use, and mash it up with what they have available, and present it to you as an online store. Very cool.