ONCE UPON A TIME, perhaps fifty years ago, it was cheaper to get scissors sharpened rather than to buy new scissors. At Ferguson’s Hardware in Raleigh around 2000, it cost $10 to get scissors sharpened.
Nowadays, due to all the Amazing Things that capitalism has brought us, it’s cheaper to buy new scissors. They cost like $5.
I think one of the big measurements of an economy is whether it’s cheaper to reuse or to buy replacements.
I’ve thought in the past that the bus can be a symbol of independence, because it can free you from your car. I mean, a car can cost you several years’ pay (after taxes)… just so you can get to work!
However, taking the bus last week, I decided that the bus is instead a symbol of dependence. Someone decides when you can ride the bus: when it comes, and how often. If people wanted to find you (for example because they saw you leave work early one day on the bus), they’d just have to wait a few more days and watch for you riding. The government could easily find you too just by alerting all bus drivers.
disk_use.py will help you figure out what’s taking up so much space on your hard drive. Useful for Python programmers only, because you have to edit the code to scan your disk vs. report on what you found.
Some crazy person has been emailing the postmasters for over 40 universities (postmaster@wfu.edu, for example) with a really elaborate story in many parts. One section read, for example:
I have no special powers like jesus
But then, jesus was a religious man
And I am not
It was probably 100 lines in each of 20 emails. One of the postmasters actually replied to all talking about how the last emails are kind of a let-down.
So, I’ve been getting into the Getting Things Done (GTD) time-management system. Part of the system is keeping track of everything that you need to do.
What I’ve found out is that I get new things to do faster than I do things. I think the only way I used to get work done was by forgetting things I was supposed to do.
I saw Wake Forest pull up all its plants last week to get ready for its president’s inauguration this Thursday. They must have been pulling up thousands of dollars of fancy plants.
I’m a little interested in the history of the phrase “go back to the well.” We use it at work to mean “go ask for more money/capital.” Apparently ClicheSite says it means “to return to specific resource or source of information.”
Right now I’m thinking it’s Biblical in origin, but the OED hasn’t helped.
I watched High Plains Drifter yesterday. It’s a weird one. It reminds me of Dogville. Really, a two-hour extra-cruel version of the last ten minutes of Dogville.
Ray Flynn’s Christian’s Alternative to Halloween, at Winston-Salem’s Lawerence Joel Veteran’s Memorial (LJVM) Coliseum, looks like it should be a blast.
Ray also has a handy Plan For Salvation on his web site, if you’re feeling inspired.
I went to The Sports Authority and bought some bowling shoes yesterday. The white shoes cost $30, the black shoes cost $40, and a bowling ball costs $40 with “free drilling.”
It costs $4.55 to rent bowling shoes, and I’ve just started going bowling and my feet aren’t going to change size any time soon, so the $30 for white shoes made sense to me.
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