I meant to mention this the day it was posted, but the New York Times has a touching letter from Steve Martin to Johnny Carson in its op/ed pages for January 25.

My generation either barely knew Johnny Carson or didn’t know him at all. I’ve seen at least one of his Tonight Show appearances (somewhere…), and it’s obvious to me that we’ve lost a great comedian and an honorable man.

Play to the stars, Johnny.

Since I’m a Puget Sound Energy customer, I get access to a very nice little utility which they call EnergyTracker. This interface allows me to track my energy usage through a number of views, and I thought I’d share some screenshots.

The daily view shows me the energy usage for the last 8 days — this is quite useful if you know exactly what’s been turned on and turned off for each day. For instance, the sudden dip in the graph above reflects the heat being lowered or turned off due to higher outside temperatures in Olympia.

Average Day is fairly self-explanatory.

This Billing Cycle reflects usage throughout this month.

The abrupt dip at the end of the Last Month’s Usage view is the Christmas break.

This one’s particularly interesting (at least to me), since it shows a number of dates when I wasn’t actually in the apartment. It’s pretty clear that the apartment was empty in July and August. Anything past that is my usage — seems like, overall, we’re using less energy than the previous tenant.

I really like this little utility and check it fairly often. It’s a nice way to see how different actions affect the billing.

I wanted to update my initial review of Netflix with more information, and will likely continue to do so for a few months.

Partly due to class and partly due to the fact that Amanda and me are both still watching stuff we got for Christmas, our usage of Netflix’s service is relatively low this month, but delivery continues to be quite expedient.

I discovered, by way of Netflix Customer Support, that we are charged $19.50 instead of the promised $17.99 due to in-state sales tax. Netflix doesn’t make any mention of the application of sales tax anywhere in their web site (that I have so far been able to discover), but it does make sense — it’s just irksome that it’s not disclosed.

The difference between this month and last month is that Amanda now has her own queue through Netflix’s profile services (which just recently launched) — thus, her movies are marked here as “Amanda”.

The service has seemed a little skittiish lately (at least in terms of their web site) — the Recommendations features seem to go down randomly, as does the new Friends feature.

Overall, with four DVDs rented, we have a cost of $4.87 per DVD rented. This is comparable to Blockbuster in-store rentals.

Sean and me seem to be in the same situation girlfriend-wise, except I’m living with mine and not paying enough attention to her. Arguably worse.

Perhaps Amanda would disagree with me on that point. I don’t know for sure what she thinks of that.

Happy New Year from the Pacific time zone!

I’m hoping this year is a much better year than 2004, though, of course, that remains to be seen. A few resolutions:

• Be a better boyfriend to Amanda and a better friend to others.
• Try to be more social and participate in more diverse activities.
• Create a comfortable home.
• Get a job involving web design or writing for the summer.
• Cut down on the amount of stuff that I own in order to promote happiness.

Hopefully, I can keep some of these. We’ll see.

Hello, and welcome to the j’lly y’ar end rawndawp. I’m your host.

So, I suppose the biggest news of the last few days is my score at Ms. Pac-Man. Yes, I’m aware of the pitiful nature of this, but I managed to set a high score (after something like 10 tries) on a Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine at Little Caesar’s in south Bellingham (across from Fred Meyer). The previous high score was about 31,000, and I trumped it with a high score of 41,240. Yay.

Yes, it is pitiful that that’s all that’s really interesting in my life thus far.

I keep doing further research on M.F.A. programs in Creative Writing, though I have yet to really start doing this research seriously. I’m 85% sure that this is what I’d like to do after college, but I’ve got a little time left to make that decision before I have to go full-bore into an admissions process. My planning is sort of vague at the moment, but I do know that I’m remaining at Evergreen until the end of Spring 2006. By then, I’ll definitely be graduating. I’ll apply for (but may not get) the Assistant to the Director position that the Writing Center hires for yearly. We’ll see, but that’s where I’m headed.

If I don’t get that, then there may be a slight comic interlude between graduating college and going on to grad school. For that, I may be targeting schools not on the West Coast, but I don’t think I’ve even made that determination yet — I’m casting a wide net.

Amanda and me are both looking forward to going back to Olympia for Winter Quarter. Amanda’s in The Science of Fat with two faculty that I’ve had that are both top-notch: Sharon Anthony, from my first year program Trash, and Brian Walter, from last year’s program Data to Information. She should get a lot out of both faculty. I’m enrolled in The Novel: Life and Form with Thad Curtz, whom I’ve heard many positive things about. I’m not sure about the idea of reading 170 pages a day, but I’m sure I’ll cope.

Well, happy 2005, and I’ll see you then (maybe before, if I decide to keep typing)!

This entry is to pretend as if there’s actually something better to do than sit here.

Oh, and while I’m at it.. here’s my dream couch, only it’s in dark green.

Two interesting items in the Business pages of the Seattle Times today:

Foreign Exchange: Dollar Falls against Euro
The Associated Press reported that the U.S. dollar is now $1.3548 against the Euro ($1.35 = 1 Euro). Typically, since these used to be comparable currencies, the ratio was roughly 1 to 1, but now the gap is obviously increasing. Without being a professional economist, but with a pretty good background in basic economics, I’d say that this will spell trouble for the U.S. economy within the next year or so, especially if the U.S. dollar continues upward against the Euro. In broad strokes, this will affect foreign trade, and may force countries other than Cuba and Iraq to switch to a monetary standard that measures against the Euro. Both Cuba and Iraq have done this in the past — it will probably happen again.

Semi-related tangent: to my knowledge, any third world country that has switched to the Euro as a monetary standard has been targeted by the U.S. for terrorist actions.

Washington State Minimum Wage Rises
The Seattle Times reports that Washington State’s minimum wage goes up to $7.35 on January 1, making Washington the highest in the nation for minimum wages. Note: yes, that sentence is awkward, no, I don’t care.

This is important — though perhaps not positively important. The negative aspect is that companies will have to pay more to operate in this state, despite the clear positive benefit to Washington’s population. Ach, conundrums.

It’s much easier to be prolific in blog postings when you actually have time to be prolific.

Amanda and me left Olympia on the 18th after having breakfast at the historic Spar Café on 4th Avenue downtown. Sitting on Olympia’s heritage register, the Spar has a very eclectic old-town feel. The service was abysmally slow, but the food was good and the environment cozy. It’s an odd combination of a building, housing both an eatery and a tobacco merchant within the same space. We also stopped by Orca Books before getting on I-5 and coming home to Snohomish. I had a few packages waiting for me, most of them my class books. The only book I’m missing for next quarters class is one that my faculty hasn’t even decided on yet: I’m still waiting on the edition we’re using for James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Since we got back, I haven’t done much. Amanda went back up to Bellingham on Sunday, so I’ve mostly been relaxing with my cats and trying to get some stuff done. Not much progress in that arena, but it is a break, after all. I have been looking into graduate programs for an MFA in Creative Writing, and have requested some information from, of all places, the University of Iowa. We’ll see what they send. I had that information mailed to my apartment, so I won’t see it until we go back on January 2nd. Hopefully, my former roommate will be moved out by the time we get back. The University of Arizona has a very honest assessment of what people looking for an MFA in Creative Writing will go through in today’s job market.

I started using Netflix on November 21st, and thought it might be appropriate to provide a review. I’m using their three-out-at-a-time program ($19.50/month as of account activation, dropping to $17.99/month at the end of my current billing cycle). I figured this might be cheaper than trying to rent all these movies through the local Blockbuster. I’ve managed to rent quite a few movies this month:

Overall, with 11 movies rented during this time period, the cost comes to $1.77 per DVD rented, much cheaper than Blockbuster stores (which averages $3 to $4 per rental, if not more). Overall, the service is great, and due to the closeness of the nearest Netflix repository — which, for me, is in Tacoma, about 30 minutes north — I get my new DVDs the day after they ship. Great service, highly recommended.