Was sent this picture today:



I need to get one of these....

Tags: Humor

An interesting news story I heard on the radio the other day underscored something that I’ve long known since taking my PoliSci 300 class in Michigan with Professor Greg Markus. How you write a survey question can greatly influence the answers you get (and what your polls show as a result).

In addition to the normal examples that they gave, they gave an example of how not to write a survey question that I hadn’t heard before. Survey question: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If you answer “Yes”, the assumption is you were beating your wife previously. If you answer “No”, then the assumption is that you are still beating your wife. The smart ones are the ones who I guess have no opinions on that survey. It seems like that would be the only “correct” answer....

So when listening to polls on *anything* for the upcoming election, find out how the question was asked. Or, if you’re like me, ignore the polls and vote the way you would anyways! It’s *your* vote. You don’t get paid for voting with the winning side.

And as a side note, not that I think anyone would ever *find* this entry looking for recommendations on PS300 at the University of Michigan, but that class was one of the best classes I took while being an undergrad at Michigan. Not only was it interesting and insightful, but the fact that grading was on a 100 point straight scale (meaning, 90+ was an A, 80+ was a B, etc.) and that you only had a chance to get 100 points in a 15 week semester really made the phrase “Making sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s” really relevant.

Another sign of real economic issues - with the price of oil plunging, I just filled the Freestyle with gas at Costco for $2.37 per gallon. 10.5 gallons was around $25. That would have been almost $15 more a few months back.

That paid for pizza today for me and the boys.

I’ve gotten lots of questions about, “How was Disney”? In short - wonderful. I really admire how a company can get all their employees to be so consistently happy all the time. The only time they were close to not being happy was when Declan decided he didn’t like the kiddie coaster and jumped out of his seat while we were still out of the station to dive into Zandra’s arms. Sigh....

The weather was warm (maybe actually a little too warm the first 3 days) and we did come back sick to some degree. Still, a great trip.

We also got to go see some old family friends of mine - these are the folks responsible for my preference for Italian food. I’ll get pictures posted eventually (I did the first step which is get them off my camera...)

Some other thoughts:

- You’d never think that the favorite family ride would be the PeopleMover/Tomorrowland Transportation Authority (TTA) ride that takes you around Tomorrowland. Declan and Andrew love it. I wish Mr. Tom Morrow would ring his party from Saturn some day though. They’ve arrived after all.

- We got to see the inside of Space Mountain. One of our rides on the TTA, Space Mountain was in a “set up” condition. When the ride is down, the lights go up, and you can see the entire inside of the Mountain. It’s quite impressive. Especially for an ex-roller coaster operator like me.

- Declan doesn’t like roller coasters at present. Not even the Goofy Barnstormer coaster. And I wonder why they call the coaster an flex-octoplane. It only has 6 wings....

- All the fireworks are spectacular.

- The WDW Swan and Dolphin hotel were very nice, but I think the consensus is that next time, we will try to pay extra and get a villa again. The ability to have a fridge/kitchen and maybe eat in a few nights is really invaluable with young kids.

- 4 days is probably the right amount of time for a trip for us. I think after 4 days, we were ready to come home. Even if we had all been healthy.

- I am proud to say, I never checked work email once, and we never set up the laptop in the hotel.

So we’re back from our 4 day adventure at Disney World. It was great fun! The kids had a good time (we think) and the two parents enjoyed no work for 4 days. I even deleted the work account from my iPhone to make sure I didn’t check email.

Of course, no vacation is perfect and we’re all back with some varying degree of coughing. Zandra and Andrew are the worst off.

But to prove at least the kids were there, here’s a picture of the kids with Pluto at breakfast.



More pictures later!

Tags: Andrew, Declan

While it doesn’t make up for the losses in the stock market, the fact that the side effect has meant lower oil prices became evident to me this weekend. Filled up the Freestyle at $2.89 per gallon at Costco. Wow. Big change from a few months ago when it was almost $1 more per gallon.

Also, taking some lessons from driving Zandra’s hybrid has meant that I’m also getting better mileage on the Ford Freestyle at the moment - the current tank is averaging a little over 25 mpg.

Question now for me is will silly Americans go back to buying gas guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks now that gas has dropped $1/gallon. Maybe not this time, because Americans don’t seem to be buying much of anything right now....