I was just looking back on some financial stuff for the last year. It seems I often forget to look at the big picture with this stuff, instead getting caught up in the details. One mutual fund that I have in my IRA has been a bit of a dud since the market went south in 2000/2001. I was gratified to see that it had gone up from about $25 to $35 over the course of the last year. Then, I zoomed back a bit more, and remembered that I bought it at around $40 back in the nineties, and that it had hit a high of about $100 before the crash. Oh well, maybe it’ll get back to $40 before I retire, so it won’t be a net loss.
movies
I’ve read a bunch of top 10 lists from various movie reviewers recently, ranking the best movies of the year. I tried coming up with my own list, but I could only think of 5 really good movies. Not that anyone cares, but here it is:
- Millennium Actress
- Triplets of Belleville
- Finding Nemo
- A Mighty Wind
- LoTR: Return of the King
Phish
livephish.com | 12/30/03 American Airlines Arena, Miami, FL — Phish + George Clinton = phunk?
Python
I had to learn Python this week for a little project at work. (OK, I guess I didn’t have to learn Python, but it seemed like the best tool for the job.) Just for reference, here are some key sites, if you’re going to try to pick up Python:
- Main Python site: http://www.python.org/
- wxPython – a GUI toolkit for Python: http://www.wxpython.org/
- py2exe – a tool to turn Python programs into Windows EXEs: http://py2exe.sourceforge.net/
I’ve also found that the Python 2.1 Bible is a decent book to get started with.
coffee
My coffee maker died this week, after about 15 years of daily use. Assuming Krups still makes good stuff, I suppose I can justify the cost of this thing. While I’m waiting for it to show up, I can still make espresso with the old machine, so I should be able to get myself out of bed and off to work without too much grief until then!
backups
I got tired of trying to back up my 80 GB hard drive to 15 GB tapes today, so I ran out and bough a 120GB Maxtor OneTouch. Much faster and easier.
good books
Evangelion
I just finished watching the last three episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Good golly, that was weird. I’m going to have to pick up the movies now, and see how they portray the end of the story.
LoTR
The Very Secret Diaries of various Lord of the Rings characters. Very funny.
sci-fi movies
THere’s a nice series of sci-fi movies coming up at the Walter Reade Theater. And, yep, I’ve got a cold. Hopefully, it’ll be gone by Christmas.