Back in 2006, I reflected here about a trip to WalMart and its lack of efficiency. This week, I had cause to think about my trip to WalMart to pick up some groceries.

Now granted, it wasn't out of the way, especially since I needed some significantly-less-expensive Sams Club gas next door. I had 5 items -- about a pound of bananas, a package of American cheese, Lemonade, a dozen eggs, and some labels as an experiment to run through the printer for box labels. Not a lot of stuff.

I hit the 20 items or less express lane to find a traffic jam at the line. Realize this is 8:30am when there aren't many registers open, but there's *never* a line either. What gives? Short story version -- lady in front was buying 20 items using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters -- in that order. $21 of groceries, a penny at a time, from a ziploc bag. When my turn came after waiting for 5 minutes, I complimented the cashier for her patience to *count* that much change.

That said, it made me think -- how often is it *not* worth it to go to WalMart to buy groceries even if it's a great price? Probably more often than I realize. Even if I only charged $20/hour for my time (and my time is worth more than that), it only takes 3 wasted minutes to cost $1. Given the groceries I was getting, I probably lost money.

Of course, this has additional extensions -- is it worth the time it takes to make a left turn to get to the gas station that has gas 1 cent cheaper than the one I could turn into on the right and not have to wait for a light cycle? 1 cent, 20 gallons, 20 cents. Um, probably not.

This is not a new and original thought I'm sure.

The point is this whole experience led me realize that I probably spend too much time thinking about over-optimizing a process. To the point that thinking about the over-optimizing itself is probably costing me time and money. Oh no! It's a vicious cycle!

I give up. Make like Nike. Just Do It. Within reason.

The last few weeks have had me shuttling back and forth between our current home (in Maryland) and our soon-to-be-home (in Connecticut) several times to take care of various house purchase related things. For the most part, I've chosen to travel by car since it takes just about as long to travel by car as it does by air or train, and traveling by car gives me more schedule flexibility.

On my last trip up, I drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge into New York, then up the Saw Mill River Parkway and then over into Connecticut. The vehicle of choice was the Mini Cooper. Driving through New York kind of brought back memories of childhood living in New York. And, me being me, the inevitable comparison list between then and now started forming. Here's what I remember about this list I made as I hurtled up the road to Connecticut.

Car:
Then: Little Green Volkswagen
Now: Little Green Mini

Gas:
Then: $.36/gallon
Now: $3.00/gallon

Turnpike Rest Stop Food:
Then: Lousy mystery cafeteria food
Now: Lousy fast food

Toll Booths:
Then: Get a ticket, pay cash
Now: One word: EZPass

Guidance:
Then: Paper Maps and good sense of direction
Now: GPS and good sense of direction

Speed Limit:
Then: 65 or 70
Now: 55 or 65

Road Conditions:
Then: Bumpy
Now: Bumpy

Another thing I reflected on was the stretch of New Jersey Route 17 through Paramus that I typically take to get to the Tappan Zee. I remember this route well from childhood too. It's changed a lot, but my favorite diner (the Suburban Diner) is still there as is that funky Holiday Inn across the street from the big mall (though it's a smarter Holiday Inn Express now and the lousy Chinese restaurant it used to have is now gone). The other random thought was memories of my favorite burger place, The Country Burger. Unfortunately, a great little restaurant that first had the misfortune of having a McDonalds get installed next to it, and then being burnt to the ground in a fire.

But in the end, the thought of me driving (and not my parents) to a house my wife and I (not my parents) will own, where once again I'm going to have to deal with a well, septic tank, propane tank, fuel oil, and (more) snow, as well as two kids and a dog made me wonder where all the time has gone....31 years since I left that part of the country, I will soon be returning.

Tags: Travel

As much as I love Apple's products, I rarely become a first generation Apple technology adopter. Waiting for a generation for Apple to put the "polish" on the product and get the little issues out of the products usually seems prudent. I've made two exceptions to this rule - first generation iPhone and most recently, the iPad.

Now even with the iPhone, I waited 3 months before getting one. I lasted about a week before breaking down and getting a 64GB iPad WiFi (no 3G). After 3 weeks, I've really gotten quite used to the iPad and really appreciate what it can do.

So first, my iPad is *not* going to replace my MacBook Pro. I still can't do database queries, write presentations, or a whole myriad of other things on the iPad. That said, surfing the web, reading, watching a movie, email, Facebook no longer requires me to sit with a warm computer in my lap. I can do it from my iPad.

What I had originally wanted from my iPad was a book and newspaper reader which could also do movies and music. This it does exceedingly well. I've got both Kindle reader and iBook on my iPad for reading books. iBook is nicer, but Amazon still has more competitive prices on books and more selection. I think it's fair to have competition in this area now. I bet Apple's library and pricing get more aggressive eventually. Movies and music are also excellent. Star Trek is more fun to watch on the bigger screen. Newspaper - I've given up the print edition of the WSJ and now read it electronically on the excellent WSJ iPad app. It allows me to download the paper for offline reading (so I can read on a plane). It's also about 1/3 the cost of the print edition, and, it arrives on time and never gets wet when it rains.

There's a few things that my iPad is now doing that I hadn't originally intended for it to do. The biggest thing is that it's replacing my paper engineering notebook. An excellent app called NotesToStore allows me to take notes and allows me to type, draw, and annotate pictures. I also love looking at maps and the weather on the iPad. The bigger display and faster graphics are just cool and useful.

The iPad has no problems hooking up to any available WiFi network. When WiFI isn't available, I chose not to wait for (and pay extra for) the 3G version. Instead, I got a Verizon MiFi unit which is like a cellular data card, except self contained (no USB required) and capable of being a portable WiFi base station. I decided this solution was better (albeit a little more expensive per month) than the AT&T 3G enabled iPad because it allowed me to use it with both my iPad and my laptop. And I didn't have to worry about AT&T's oversubscribed 3G network. The MiFi unit is about the size of a credit card, and about twice the thickness of a credit card. Easy to carry around.

Of course, there are some things that have bugged me about the iPad. First is the case. I have a wonderful case from Apple which also can double as a stand. It bugs me that it took 3 weeks for Apple to get me one. Come on - you can build enough iPads, but not enough cases? Something is wrong with someone's supply management chain here....

Fingerprints. The iPad collects fingerprints. And they don't even give you a wipe cloth with the iPad. Don't care what they say about the coating, this things still collects fingerprints. Annoying!

Charger - the iPad uses a special 10W charger. Which looks just like an old iPod charger. I have to label it specially so I know which one it is. Yes, you can use any iPod charger on this thing, but doing so makes the charging take a very long time....

WiFi stability - I've noticed that the WiFi can sometimes go offline and then back online very quickly. Wonder what's up with that?

In summary though, I'm quite happy with my iPad and can't wait until Apple works out the first generation issues. If the unit does so well with the current issues, I can't wait to see it get better, and when there are even more iPad specific apps available.

Anyone coming to visit my house or my mother's house before that may have, at one time, seen the big wooden crate in the garage/basement/somewhere which contained a mysterious, unknown painting of some sort. It came with our stuff from New York back in the late 1970's, and has been dutifully moved from place to place (to place to place to place) but never, ever opened.

In preparation for our recent basement remodel (alas, something else I need to blog about), we decided we would open up everything that was ours. We did and the last item on the list was this large wooden crate containing this mysterious picture.

To give a little perspective on how long this has been in this crate, this crate was made out of solid wood. Think large pallet, but constructed around the picture (which is about 72" by 42"). And a pallet built by someone who made furniture. The crate proved quite difficult to get open. About 30 minutes with a hammer, pry bar, and pliers. But amazingly, after all those years of indifferent storage, the picture finally made it out. And completely intact. Properly mounted and framed (which probably cost 10x what the picture is worth), here's the result on the wall in our dining room - it's quite pretty and was definitely worth the effort to haul around all these years.



Of course, this framing wasn't without a little adventure. After getting it back from our framing store, the picture sat on the wall for about 36 hours. Then unceremoniously fell off the wall - the framers having made a small mistake and attached the hanging wire too close to the edge of the frame. However, that mistake corrected the picture now adorns the wall in our dining room - and will do so for the next few months until we sell our house.

Zandra and I spent the end of last week in Connecticut (our soon-to-be-new-home) looking for a new home. I've forgotten how much I hate searching for a new home, and am now realizing how absolutely blessed we were to be able to actually build our current home. Alas, building a new home is not in the budget, nor in the timing for us this time, so it's house searching for something that suits our needs with flaws we think we can correct.

This week's search was primarily an area recon, so we saw lots of houses in lots of areas. After about 18 or so houses, I realized that in addition to rating the houses on suitability space/layout/location, I was beginning to classify houses by smell. Much like people get classified by Myers-Briggs personality types, I started dropping the houses into smell types. Here's what I came up with:

• "New House" Smell - The smell of new construction. Dust, dryness, wood, paint, new carpet, and probably a bunch of chemicals used in cleaning or construction.
• "I just replaced the carpet" Smell - The smell of someone who just replaced the carpet to make the house look nicer for sale. Smell of new carpet, chemical odor from gluing seams and manufacturing.
• "A cat owns this house" Smell - The smell where a cat owns the residence. Kitty litter (and, um, litter box contents), cat food and mustiness
• "A dog lives in the house" Smell - The smell where a dog lives in the residence. Amplified on days when it's raining, it's the smell of a happy dog who enjoys rolling around in the grass.
• "I've got something to hide" Smell - Probably what Martha Stewart's house smells like, except on steroids. Scented candles burning everywhere. Air fresheners galore. What smell are they trying to hide? Maybe the "cat owns this house" smell.
• "I don't clean well" Smell - Smell of cooking, trash, mustiness, and maybe dirty laundry. The smell of someone who only cleaned the house because someone was coming to see it.
• "Basement w/o a dehumidifier" Smell - The smell of a damp, but not wet basement. Usually holds true only to the basement of houses - normally when a basement is used for storage.
• "This house is making me hungry" Smell - Reserved for one house where the owner was home preparing for a dinner party he was catering. Owner was a professional chef. The smells were unbelievably good. I felt like penance should have been for us to stay until he was done cooking so we could sample. The kitchen of that house was fantastic. Too bad the bedrooms of the house were not.
• "I left the windows open to ventilate" Smell - The smell of the outdoors. People who like to leave their windows open. Very nice.
• "There's something weird but I can't put my nose on it" Smell - Reserved for one house where I think I spent more brain cycles trying to determine the smell than on the house itself. I think I eventually came to the conclusion that it was a mix of "A cat owns this house" and "A dog lives in the house" and "I don't clean well" smell....
• "There's no smell in this house whatsoever" Smell - The smell of, well, nothing distinctive. I think this means a clean, well-kept house that was fairly new.

I wish we were done house hunting. I don't know how my friends in the military do it every few years. It would drive me up a wall. I think I'm doing this classification thing because I'm trying to keep my sanity intact.

The fact that we also can't seriously put an offer down on a new house until we sell the old one doesn't help the job either....