Guess I didn’t really need that cup of coffee …
Nope. The time is now 3:30 am … and I’m seven flavors of WIRED. And not the magazine, mind you.
I should just get up and do something productive. I’ve exhausted the internet. But it’s so warm in my bed…
Actually, today’s XKCD is rather apropro.
asdlfkja;lsfdkj
Good heavens. Microsoft Excel is profoundly worthless for trying to do any sort of statistical analysis other than the most painfully rudimentary.
And, for that matter, Excel is really profoundly worthless for most of its intended functions. As a basic spreadsheet cruncher, it’s semi-functional, but it produces painfully ugly graphs which, at least as of Excel 2003, are painfully cumbersome on manipulate in to graphs that don’t look downright awful.
So… for any sort of professional use, Excel really fails. Fails.
I guess its time to learn how to use a more sophisticated statistical analysis program, like Stata. Ug… though. Really? Why can’t there be a simple but full-featured spreadsheet application that not only can do simple spreadsheet tasks but also has a full-featured function set that can be used for slightly more sophisticated tasks?
For example: I have a list of ~5000 songs. In one column, I have the length of the song. In the next, I have the number of times each song has been played. I would like to be able to create a bar graph of weighted average, in 30 second intervals, each song has been played. But … I haven’t been able to figure it out, short of writing a bunch (40+) of functions by hand… ar!
Ah! So, here I am, working on another blog post (coming soon?), lying on my stomach in the living room, as I do, (sipping on bottle of Santa Rita 120 Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 – fruity, full body, but with a flat bouquet and a harsh, gritty finish. Good, but doesn’t seem to deserve the W&S score of 89.) … and all of the sudden I see something out of the corner of my eye…
“My God!” I say, “it’s a mouse!”
Sure enough, some audacious, furry creature just ran across the living room toward the kitchen.
Frankly, I’m for it! Huzzah! A pet! As long as he (or she!) doesn’t start eating my Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese, stored in my pantry. Then, it’s war. WAR, you hear!
Last night was the third and final presidential debate. From the Huffington Post:
The results over at CBS show Obama to have scored the biggest victory to date: “Fifty-three percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed identified Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the winner of tonight’s debate. Twenty-two percent said Republican rival John McCain won. Twenty-four percent saw the debate as a draw.”
It is, the site writes, “a clean sweep” for the Illinois Democrat.
Over at CNN, a separate poll of several hundred debate watchers again favored the Democrat by large margins: 58 percent for Obama to McCain’s 31 percent. Perhaps more importantly, McCain’s favorable rating dropped 51 to 49 while his unfavorable rating increased from 45 percent to 49 percent. Obama ended up with 66 percent favorable rating.
Digging into the details the news is even worse for the Arizona Republican.
Asked who “expressed his views more clearly” 66 percent said Obama, 25 percent said McCain.
“Who spent their time attacking his opponent:” 80 percent said McCain, seven percent said Obama. “Who seemed to be the stronger leader:” 56 percent for Obama, 39 percent for McCain. And who was “more likeable:” 70 percent for Obama to McCain’s 22 percent.
Clean sweep, for Obama. McCain was out of control … clearly nervous … grasping for anything that he could “beat” Obama at. Obama was at his best: clear, articulate, and above the muck and mire of John McCain’s petty attacks. It was inspiring to watch Senator Obama consistently take the high road during last night’s debate, even when clearly presented with the opportunity not to (especially when asked if he thought Sarah Palin was ready to be President, to which he responded, “we’ll let the American people decide that.”)
Obama FTW.
As I write, it’s 34 degrees F outside, and snowing. Snowing!
In any case, it’s COLD outside.
My rental unit came with a natural gas fireplace. When we rented the unit, I asked the landlord if the fireplace worked, since many rental units simply have their fireplaces disabled. She thought it did, and I was excited!
Well, move in day came and went … and I got (darn you, Mrs. Brabson!) around to trying the fireplace.
Perhaps not surprisingly–given the condition of the unit as a whole–it didn’t work.
I talked to the rental company about it, and they suggested that I talk to NorthWestern Energy about it.
Well, wait. Back up.
First, I talked to the rental company, and when the repair guy finally came out, he fidgeted around with the fireplace, asked me for a paperclip, made a few phone calls, and finally told me that he didn’t know.
Well, then I talked to the rental company again and they referred me.
The NorthWestern guy came out (actually, he stopped by on his own … to see why we hadn’t used any gas in the last three months) and got the pilot light going. Then, he looked at the electrical components inside the fireplace, started to ask me a question, and then stopped, saying, “no. I better not. We legally can’t jump this.” He suggested that I contact the rental company back.
So, I did. This time, my landlady remembered that the fireplace had broken a while back, and the owner had decided that he didn’t want to pay to have the fireplace fixed. “So,” she told me, “if you want it fixed, it’s on your own dime.”
Well, fair enough.
Well … tonight it’s cold outside! Today’s high was something like 38 degrees F!
And so, being through with my homework, I decided to mess around with the fireplace. I’m a mechanically inclined guy, ya know?
So I put two and two together. I fiddled around with the wires, to no avail, and then I thought to myself:
“We’re not legally allowed to jump it. “
Hmm. So that means, “If I could I would just this fireplace.”
Probably to check to see if one of the thermostats had stopped working. Hmm!
Fiddling around with my paperclip, suddenly I heard “Tick. … Fhoop! … Fhoop!” as the fireplace “fired” up, back row, then front row.
A little more meddling, and I figured out that there was a wire that I could connect a black wire to another screw, and then, “Tick! Fhoop! Fhoop!”
And so, now, I’m sitting by a warm, roaring fire, writing this post.
Now, for a little economics:
1) I’m aware that there’s probably a reason why there’s a thermostat. There’s probably some sort of safety feature that I’m circumventing by “jumping” my fireplace.
2) The batteries in my fire-alarm are fresh.
3) The owner’s attitude is, “I don’t care. Extract as much money from the house as possible. I’m not going to pay to keep it up.” (This attitude has come up in other areas, like fixing the broken shades on the windows.)
An economist might say, by refusing the keep up the house, the owner has failed to create the proper incentives for its renters to keep up the place. S/he doesn’t care, why should we?
Here we have a classic example of moral hazard (see: the federal financial bail-out plan). The owner has failed to create the proper incentives for me, a renter, to avoid risky behavior.
And so: when we want to run the fireplace, we jump it. To turn it off, we simply pull out the wire. And oh, it’s warm and cozy!