Archive for January, 2009

I’ve been barricaded in my home office most of the day, trying to get as much work done on the Brunanburh book as I can, but I know that the Corps has returned to campus.

How?

Well, I heard the gentle notes of a bugle a few minutes ago, sounding “Lights Out.”

The cordless drill that I’d received as a wedding present years ago — about the only thing among the towels and plates and what-not that I was able to claim as definitively manly and therefore mine — unceremoniously croaked about two months ago.

Immediately, eight things around the house needed drilling or screwing.

So for the Holidays this year, I sent out a call to Santa for something to help me put the pictures up, fix the hobbit’s things, and just generally raise my self-esteem as a man.

Santa — via my parents — delivered unto me a Ridgid Lithium Ion 12V Cordless Drill/Driver. The thing is absolutely fantastic. It’s smaller than any cordless I’ve seen — when I first opened it up I thought it might be an air tool attachment — but it packs a punch. Plus, it comes with a nifty built-in light, which very nicely enhances the ray-gun feel of the little beauty.

I’ve been using the heck out of the thing in the past couple of weeks, and it’s still on the initial charge that it came with (not to mention the charge in the extra battery pack, so far unused). Not that it matters, since it recharges at a remarkable clip.

All in all, I’ll give it two very happy thumbs up.

I have a speaker-dock in the office for my trusty iPod Touch, but more often than not I find myself listening to streaming music via Pandora instead. Why? Well, mostly because it continues to find me great music I’d otherwise never hear.

My main Pandora “radio station” is built around Mark Knopfler, and it does, indeed, play a lot of his excellent stuff. But it also will randomly pull up something like, say, Peter Mulvey’s song “Charlie” (free .mp3 available at his website). I’ve never heard of Peter Mulvey, and I’d certainly never heard “Charlie,” but I liked the song right away and it now (irony!) has an oft-played spot on the aforementioned iPod.

Here’s Mulvey performing a stripped-down, not-much-like-the-recorded-track version of “Charlie” at some festival or something:

In October I decided to invest a little bit of money in the stock market. Not a lot of money, mind you, but some. I did so with full willingness to lose every dime, which seems to me to be the only reasonable approach to gambling. And buying stocks, if nothing else, is gambling.

I have no special inside knowledge of businesses (to say the least). I don’t subscribe to any magazines or anything. I’ve certainly had no formal training in the matter. (A P/E ratio? What’s that?) I just approached it all as an intellectual problem and had fun.

As of a few minutes ago my holdings are up 4.3% overall — it’s more than that on paper, but when you take out the trading fees and such, that brings it down — which is a good investment at any time but especially pleasant right now. My biggest single holding is up about 50%, in fact.

On the downside, I do think I jumped in too early. I highlighted four stocks I was interested in buying last week, contemplating selling out of one of my current stocks to pick at least one of them up (investing more money isn’t quite an option right now). All four are up since then. Three of them have the following gains so far today: 19.89%, 15.79% and 13.81%. And, of course, I didn’t buy ‘em. Drat.

All of which is to serve as a fair warning to the world that the stock market will plunge momentarily. My bad.

January is “Be a Tourist in Your Own Town” month here in Charleston, which means we’re getting into all the tourist things really cheap.

Today we visited the museum/conservatory where the Confederate submersible H. L. Hunley lies suspended in a really big tank of water. (If you’re unfamiliar with the remarkable story of this once-lost vessel — the first submarine to sink an enemy warship — check out Wikipedia.)

While I generally love museums — no doubt because I can’t get enough of learning — I really wasn’t expecting much at the Hunley. I mean, it’s an iron vessel in a tank of water. What’s the big deal?

Well, I’m pleased to say I enjoyed it immensely. Yes, I learned quite a bit. But beyond that I was impressed on an emotional level with what those eight crewmen went through here in the waters of Charleston on the night of 17 February 1864. It was, dare I say it, moving.

It was also, from a technical side, quite cool to see how they’re preserving the vessel and its associated artifacts. It’s a really big tank.