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Lofted Grand Piano
Many people would love to have a grand piano but don't have the floor space for it. Sometimes people get uprights instead, which make a lot of sense, but there are two main issues: It's hard to get an...
View ArticleMore considerations on buying a house
Eight years ago I wrote about deciding whether to buy a house, and someone recently asked me what my thoughts are now. Since writing that we've lived in a few different setups: The studio apartment...
View ArticlePossible one-syllable words
How many distinct one-syllable words are possible in English? How many of these are used? A syllable is going to have some optional series of consonants (onset), then a vowel (nucleus, which in...
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Google Losing its Memory?
I just read Tim Bray's post, Google Memory Loss: I think Google has stopped indexing the older parts of the Web. I think I can prove it. Google's competition is doing better. ... They searched for...
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Market Basket vs Peapod
Two years ago I wrote comparing Market Basket and Costco prices, Market Basket being the cheapest local grocery store, trying to figure out whether we would save money with a Costco membership. I...
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What if we got that alert?
Saturday morning people in Hawaii got: It turned out to be a false alarm, but it got me thinking about what I would do if I received this alarm now. Something like: Bring my kids down to the basement....
View ArticleDividing Tasks
One of the ways marriage [1] can make things easier is by allowing you to divide jobs, freeing each other up for other things. For example, here are some things each of us are responsible for: Jeff:...
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Contra Dance Admission Survey
I looked over all the dances I have listed on trycontra.com to see what the range of prices dances are charging is. [1] I got prices for 287 dances: Average was $9.06. 221 dances (77%) offered some...
View Article2017 Donations
Each year Julia and I need to decide where we're giving. Here's what we've been thinking about this year: We want to continue dividing our donations 50-50 between things that directly do good and more...
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December 2017 Time Tracking
Julia and I track our time every so often (June 2017, 2015, 2011) in order to figure out whether we're dividing things fairly and whether we're spending our time the way we want to. This time we did...
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BIDA Attendance
In late 2016 several organizers noticed that attendance at their dances had been down, and I ran the numbers for BIDA. At the time I didn't see much. Rerunning the numbers now, however, it does look...
View ArticleEverything is Barter
If you drive me to the airport and I give you money, that's taxable. Or if we agree that I'll babysit your kids in exchange for the ride, that's taxable as well, being barter. [1] On the other hand,...
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Insulation and Snow
When we bought our house it was entirely uninsulated. We insulated it in two phases: When we put the dormers in, the parts of the house that were taken back to the studs got foam insulation. This...
View ArticleA calming strategy
When Lily (3.5y) is very upset about something fixable, here's something I've found helpful: L: Papa I don't want this cup! This cup is blue! I don't like this blue cup! My first impulse is just to...
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Open-Hand Catan
The rules of Settlers of Catan say "each player keeps their resource cards hidden" but in my experience the game is much more fun if resource cards are visible: Much less time spent proposing trades....
View ArticleWhat should "counterfactual donation" mean?
Sometimes people will describe a donation as "counterfactually valid" or just "counterfactual". For example, you might offer to donate a counterfactual dollar for every push-up your team does. [1] The...
View ArticleStartup Equity
The standard way to compensate startup employees is to pay a below market salary, and then make up for it with stock options. If the company succeeds the employee can exercise the options, turning...
View ArticleForked Brass
I was playing around with some PVC with my kids, and made something I can't figure out the physics of: This is playing something like 120Hz (open), 90Hz (ii), 103Hz (iii), and 77Hz (i). The...
View Article"Hashrate" is Currency-Specific
Sometimes people will compare Bitcoin and Ethereum by saying things like: BTC uses 11 exahash/second, while ETH uses just a millionth of that at 10 terahash/second. In cryptocurrency "hashrate" means...
View ArticleAvoiding "From" in Email
When I write emails I avoid starting lines with "From ". This is a habit I got into when it was common for mail clients to use the "mboxo" format. Those programs store their emails in a big text file...
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