[ Link from IrishEyes ] Maybe one of these years I’ll experience it for myself. Also, report in from Minnesota CyberBug (AKA my sister June) – it was a mere minus-36 in Bemidji, and school wasn’t even cancelled. At minus-13 she takes off the jacket outside, and when they hit the plus side of zero she digs out the bikini. And this is a woman who grew up in sunny Kihei, Maui.
Minus 54 in Minn?
I have a sister in northern Minnesota, Bemidji to be exact. I’m waiting for a weather report from her.
FrequentFlyer does bring up another good point about miles.
When airlines go into bankruptcy, the value of your miles is in doubt. While no previous airline bankruptcies have led to loss of miles, and the miles of their FFM programs were accepted by other airlines, there is no guarantee that this will happen in the future, and no insurance programs to guarantee that you will be able to use them. Something to think about. As low as the dollar does go, at least it’ll be worth something.
I agree with Scott’s rants on the iPod – call it iPod envy.
Then why am I still sans-iPod? As great as I agree they are, and while the manufacturing costs probably justify the price, I just can’t see myself laying out the kind of money that they are asking for the hard drive-based units. Changing priorities as I get older, I guess. My personal priorities, those outside of family and work, are health and Ph.d. Most discretionary funds are being reserved for the possibility of #2 abroad. I’ll probably get our daughter an iPod shuffle for her birthday in April (and hope that she never sees this post), and may eventually get…
The state legislature is gearing up for the 2005 legislative session.
Senator Kalani English mentioned a bill that would strengthen the use of Hawaiian language in government documents. I helped him put together a bill that was introduced last year; unfortunately it went nowhere due to the very high-visibility legislation that had to be dealt with. I hope he can get some movement on it this year.
The new currency?
Scott points to an article on the Guardian website that talks about the value of frequent flier miles in these days of the weak dollar. I’ve been reading a lot on this topic and trying to bump up my miles in United’s program. FrequentFlier.com is a pretty good site for information on maximizing your miles. A few months ago I found another site that I cannot relocate at this point. It allowed you to explore the many conversion options to move miles from one program to another. I had about 11,000 miles in Continental’s program that would have expired in…
I’m doing my own variation on Scoble’s tsunami donation scheme.
He’s donating $5 for every time he uses the word ‘blog’ on his blog. I’m teaching a Polynesian Music class at UH-Hilo this semester. I mentioned to the class that I have this thing about Hawai’i island being referred to as ‘The Big Island.’ As my friend and colleague Kekuhi Kanahele has said, ‘Please don’t call it the Big Island; it has a name.’ Following up on that, I told the students that I’d donate $5 for every time I used ‘Big Island’ in class. I couldn’t even get through that class period without using it. $5 more owed. My…
I can’t help but wonder how much of my monthly wireless bill goes to paying for advertising costs.
It seems as though every fourth or fifth television add I see is for a wireless company. My initial two year contract is nearly up, and I’m seriously considering either cancelling it, or perhaps changing to a plan that allows me to buy blocks of minutes and pay as I go. I simply don’t use the phone enough to justify the $50 a month plan that I have.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to feel sorry for this guy.
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask of the Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess with Apple’s legal dept. I don’t see this being about freedom of the press, but about money. The guy has a website that advertises, and he’s trying to drive traffic to it. He posts information that was obtained by someone who was violating a legal agreement that they signed, and he doesn’t think that he should have to reveal who it was? The fact that the EFF is not jumping in and offering to help…
Success of bilingual education in Ireland.
“An Irish-speaking school has reportedly joined the list of the top-10 feeder schools for Trinity College Dublin ahead of some of Ireland’s best-known fee-paying institutions.” This is similar to our experience. Nearly every 12th grade student that has graduated from our laboratory immersions school, Ke Kula ‘O Nawahiokalani’opu’u has been concurrently enrolled in university classes during their senior year in high school, and a very high percentage (in the 90% range) has continued into college. We heard critics for years telling us that our children would not be able to function in college if they received their elementary and secondary…