Our web diary

An Outlet for Addicts

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon here in Charlotte, the remains of a winter storm melting in the sunshine, when my husband asked "What would you like to do today?". Well let's see hmm I know let's go to the outlet mall in Gaffney, SC. Sean had finally gotten around to going through his closet on one of our recent snow days and been persuaded to discard a few of his older (read dated) items of clothing, and I thought perhaps we could look for a couple of inexpensive replacements for him out there since his comparison pricing is always done against Wal-mart items. Ok, those of you who know the wife in this story also know she is thinking "and maybe I might look for a pair of shoes". I am an addict. I don't remember when I became an addict but somewhere along the line my predilection for red shoes, which began as early as I could point, became a desire for shoes of varying colours and styles. These days they don't need to be red per se but I still find myself strangely drawn to them.
We got Sean's shopping out of the way, I wandered breezily through many a shoe store just looking for a new pair of loafers and then just about ready to leave I said to Sean "oh just one last store, they may have some loafers here". After surveying the men's side of the store Sean found me where I started in Ladies shoes with one caramel and one charcoal loafer on either foot. "Whatcha doin'?", he asked. "Trying to decide which colour I like more," I answered. "Well they are buy one get 1/2 off the second pair so why don't you get both?," he asked. Well what he didn't realize of course is that I had already scoped out a pair of red shoes I wanted and was now trying to decide on the second pair. I decided on the creamy caramel loafers and the red mules and made my way to the register still yearning for the charcoal loafers I'd left behind. Of course the cashier tells me the red mules are not elligible for the half-price offer. When asked why she tells me it's because they are already discounted to 15.99. "What?!" I made her repeat that twice because I really couldn't believe what I heard. For 15.99 these ones were practically free already so that solved my other dilemma, I quickly retrieved the charcoal loafers and bought 3 pairs of shoes for 72 dollars. Yes the grin on my face lasted all the way home.
An outlet for addicts is what I call those malls, they are dangerous places for people like me, but you have to admit my new shoes sure are purdy.
Sean used them as a subject for some photography and here is a picture. Have I mentioned I love my husband? :)

Morning Drive

I went driving around Charlotte this morning doing my husbandly duty of picking up the Sunday paper. I am probably the only hubby in the world that turns this 10 minute task into a 1 and a half hour drive around town.

The roads were still not the best in Charlotte. There are quite a few patches where the melted snow from last night refroze this morning. I started off slipping on my porch and spilling my coffee. Not a good start to the Sunday drive. Here a few things that caught my eye.

Car stuck in the snow	Do they check to see if the keys fit the handcuffs?
Atkins self-storage?

Tsing Tao

Tsing Tao is a Chinese buffet located on Monroe road about 2 blocks north of NC 51/Pineville-Mathews Road. They offer a 50 item buffet for a reasonable price.

Overall we were not impressed. The inside is not the cleanest and the food was so so at best. You get what you pay for and we got it.

Greg's BBQ

Greg's BBQ is located on Monroe road about 1 mile north of the NC 51/Pineville Matthews Road. They have been in business for over 30 years and as the name suggests they serve BBQ. They are typical of North Carolina in that they do not serve ribs. They serve chopped or sliced plates and sandwiches. They have a bigger menu than the name suggests with daily specials. They also offer pita type sandwiches-Gyros, Chicken, etc.

30 years of history generates quite a few characters. The location is a in a strip center, but the ambiance inside is more country. The conversations from the staff were more reminiscent of a backwater Carolina venue. Not a distraction, more like free entertainment.

I had the chopped Big BBQ Sandwich with slaw and fries. Marlene had the chicken pita with fries. The sandwich came out in the typical wax paper. It looked really tiny until I opened it up. It was stuffed with BBQ! Like most NC BBQ, it needed some sauce and the one at the table provided suitable 'tang' to the meat. Marlene's chicken pita was better than she and I expected. Who expects Pita's in a BBQ joint. We both ended up being stuffed for the 12 dollars we spent between the meals and tea. The only complaint I had was that the fries were not the most spectacular. They looked like out of the bag frozen fries that you could pick up in a grocery store. They would do themselves well to get a better brand of fries.

Overall it was a good place for heavy lunch or a light dinner.

News

Now this is one way to get rise out of your membership

Snow

We had a bit of snow in Charlotte, NC today. This is the view out of our front door.

More images can be found here

Happy Birthday

This weblog started out on this date last year with an entry about spaghetti salad

We started this blog with an installation of Greymatter 2.1 originally written by Noah Grey. The blog started out very hesitantly, posting only once every few weeks. We really started taking off when we added a RSS feed in October.. The feed seemed to get the ball rolling for more frequent posts. It seemed to be a good idea to post something for people to read on your feed.

The quest to improve the RSS feed prompted the move to Movable Type In January 2004. We am really enjoying the MT setup and are posting almost everday because of the easy to use interface.

We are now up to our 86th post. Site traffic has increased from 7 per day to almost 120 hits per day. February looks like it will close out with over 2500 hits from 1400 unique URLS. I am looking forward to see what happens with Our Diary over the next year. Until then,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Nature's Best

The local camera club is having us submit images for a contest for Nature's Best You can see my entries here.

Planning

I caught this at the Colonel's website.

I work in the tranportation industry. Everyday I go through what he is talking about. People not planning and making it my "Hot load" My company delivers domestic and international intermodal containers to points in the Southeast. The international containers are usually coming from Asia with a 30 day transit time. You would think that someone would have had ample time to figure out how to deliver those 50 cent widgets to Walmart on time But NO!. We usually get the call 1-4 hours before they want delivery. Their poor planning is now my extra work. It is amazing how much appears to be like the Colonel's IT industry.

Web Busking

I caught this term from Photodude's site. You learn something new everyday. I had never heard of the term "web-busking" before reading his blog. Always good to learn new things while surfing the web.

I have learned, and am learning, a lot by reading Photodude's blog.Or course, that is not his real name. His real name is Reid Scott, but I came from the type of upbringing that means I will call him Photodude until he tells me otherwise. It was quite amusing that he is looking to get the same lens that I hope to get by the end of this year. I really have no REAL use for the 'L' lens, but since when I have ever bought things I need vs. want? He also is using an Epson 2200 printer which is another item I would like to have in the house. He can print his photos and send them direct whereas I have to use an external service to get my enlargements done for my photography site.

Anyway, I am just babbling. Thanks dude for the new word. Keep up the good work.

Macro

I have taken a few more macro shots which have been posted here and here. These are part of a set of business objects pictures I am working on for my stock photography site.

Weekend Trip

Marlene and I decided to celebrate Valentine's day by going out for dinner a week later. I decided that we would go up to the Virginia Beach area. This way she could see some of the places where I used to live. The pictures of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and Portsmouth can be found here I have broken them down into various categories for easier viewing. More will be added tomorrow.

Yahoo RSS Beta

I was doing my morning search with Google to see how rivinus.com ranked in the listings. I have been quite happily noticing that google is indexing me everday day vs. once a week. I ranked first on Google. Now Yahoo is somewhat powered by Google so I checked Yahoo and was ranked 7th. There is nothing unusual in the difference because Yahoo is working on it's own internal search engine. I also noticed that it shows: RSS: View as XML - Add to My Yahoo!

Wow! Yahoo has added an RSS reeder to the MyYahoo page. It even shows up if you are not a MyYahoo user. The reader is configurable to give you just the headline or a short summary of the article. I'm a big MyYahoo user so this is a big plus to me.

PETA Protest

PETA? People for Eating Tasty Animals staged a rally today in downtown Charlotte. I was heading to get some subs from Harris Teeter. You saw a picture of one yesterday in my photoblog. The local radio station had a thing on saying Peta had a woman that was going to be protesting Nude at Trade and Tryon streets in downtown Charlotte. I happened to have my camera with me today and what better photo op can you get than a nude woman in the middle of downtown. So I grabbed a parking space and took a picture.

More pictures can be found on my Peta page at in the Photoalbums section

U.S. Foodmakers Blame Wal-Mart for Stunted Prices

From an AP article on Yahoo.

Americans may have noticed that their grocery bills have remained fairly stable, but it may surprise supermarket shoppers to learn that they have retail giant Wal-Mart to thank for keeping a lid on prices.

Stable prices are supposed to be bad?

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart is the world's largest company by revenue and a dominant player in the U.S grocery business. The massive buying-power of the company's Supercenters, a retail format more than twice as large as its regular discount stores, means Wal-Mart can often buy and sell goods more cheaply than competitors.

Which means that I, Joe consumer, can buy them more cheaply.

Fruit and vegetable producer Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., for instance, signs contracts with Wal-Mart and others before it knows how crop harvests for the year will turn out.

This year, the Coral Gables, Florida, company has enjoyed wider profit margins on tomatoes as production recovered.

Note Del Monte isn't talking about reducing prices when things are going their way.

Fresh Del Monte is not the only U.S. food company that has been forced to swallow rising costs.

Find a way to become more efficient so your pricing matches your costs structure.

Walmart is like any other business in this country. They try to get the cheapest prices on products from their suppliers. They do this with the hope of being able to resell those products at a profit. Does this mean that Walmart should be punished for having a good business model? Another way to put it; should we blame Walmart that we can't gouge customers with higher prices? I don't think so.

New Beetle Headlights

. I really enjoy my 2002 Beetle GLS. I do not love the way VW has handled the headlight replacements. The headlight on most cars is a Halogen 9001 which can easily replaced. Not so on the beetle. First you have to remove the entire headlight assembly. I found a good link on the web describing the process from New Beetle.org It took about 45 minutes. 30 of which was figuring how to get the thing realigned to go back into the bug. Oh well it's done.

The Mirror Project

We have our submission approved for The Mirror Project

Macro Photography

I found this site through Daily Dose of Imagery. The author had done some "Super Macro" photography of some insects. He is using a method where two camera lenses are mounted together front to front. He found out about doing this from this site.

I think some of my pictures are good, but they are nothing compared to these shots.
Plonsky Photography - Biography

Milestones

I can't decide if I should leave this website's monologues to Sean since the website has always sort of been his thing and remains so. No point in mentioning the first version since who can really remember it anyways, but in essence it has always been a place to post pictures and the occasional Rivinus update. If you understood the last entry aboout the aggregator blog RSS feed etc etc you are one of those who belong to the same class as Sean, otherwise you, like me, could be reading japanese and it would be about as clear. In my world technical talk involves how to time a souffle perfectly so you can eat it right after dinner and before it deflates.
We spent our first Valentine's day together this year, another milestone in our life together, marked by my first attempt at chocolate souffle. Ok, they fell but they were still absolutely yummy. Not bad for breakfast either, I might add. In Sean's search for interesting photoblogs he came across one where people contribute pictures of their airline meals. Perhaps as a sideline I'll add 365 days of "what's for dinner", unfortunately today's highlight is leftovers. Ok so that's enough from me, back to the blogs.....

RSS 2.0 Feed for MT

I started my photography blog here last week. MT has the ability to automatically generate an RSS feed. My friend Jason mentioned that the feed only sent the title and description, but not the images.

Here is a cheat to let you send images from a Photoblog in an RSS feed. It is not RSS valid, but it works. My particular Photoblog feed is a hack intself of MT. Detailed information on how the blog was done can be found at Quixotic Pixels-QP

QP has you take the URL and concatenate it from the Entry Body frame and put it into the Extended Entry frame. ie. img src="http://www.rivinus.com/test.jpg" would be shortened to just http://www.rivinus.com/test. The HTML main entry archive adds the ".jpg" when it forms the pages. Your entry body is actually used as the description of the photograph.

To get the images to show up in an RSS feed, you simply take the original URL and put it in the Except frame. In the above example you would place img src='http://www.rivinus.com/test.jpg" in the Excerpt frame. You need to add < before IMG and > after the last parentheses " I took them out because MT was converting them to links

Now go to your TEMPLATES page. You want to edit the RSS 2.0 Feed . You should have something that looks like this:

description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$> /description

Replace this with this:

source> <$MTEntryExcerpt encode_xml="1"$>/source

description><$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$>/description

Note: Again I had to remove the forward and ending bracks <> for MT to be able to do this article

Source will display in your RSS feed at an image hyperlink and the desciption will display above the image

You can download the text file I used at the RSS file here Right click and "save as" to your computer.

I know this is cheating and the source should be a URL. This is the best I could figure out how to make this work. I'll take other suggestions.

You can subscribe to my Photoblog feed here

Google

I was indexed 5 times by google last week. Google surprised me this week by moving my commercial photography site to the top of the search results for 'Rivinus'. That site is pretty static so I was surprised when it moved up from 8th to first. This weblog moved down into the 8th spot.

I have also noticed that google is not following the links to other stuff on the site since I made MT the main entry page. So here are two links that google has yet to pick up that I am adding in hopes it snares then next time. The first is a link to some pictures of Pineville, NC The second link is to someting about McMullen Creek Greenway.

Not sure if any of this will help, but it was worth a shot.

On a different note. I loaning another photographer from Toronto some space on this website to host some pictures. I get 5 gigs with Canaca so it seemed a charitable thing to do to let her borrow a 100 meg for her project of posting 1 picture a day for a year.

Firefox

This link is a prime example of how Firefox does not render some pages correctly.

Happy Valentines Day

Time

I found these from Photomemes Photomeme's is dedicated to photography with a theme. The best one I found was humanclock.com

Pictures for every minute of the day. Congrats on someone taking so much time and energy for a photo composition.

Fixes

I have notices that I have gotten quite a few errors on my website. One is for the Favicon Icon. This is the little image that appears in the address bar if you have bookedmarked our website. That is not fixed. You should see a maroon "R" if you have us marked as a favorite. This came from a free icon editor form favicon.co.uk

The second fix was to add Robots.txt so search engines will know what to look for in the website. It also denies them access to some directory. You can find a tutorial on this here.

I registered my Photoblog at Photoblogs and have seen a dramitic increase in site traffic. I had 63 unique URLs before 9am this morning. Not too shabby.

Stamps and BTU

We were on our way to Wal-Mart tonight for our semi-monthly run for necessities. Yes, we are part of the group of sheep that have been sucked into Wal-Mart’s cheap prices. We happen to really enjoy the Eight O’Clock coffee brand of coffee. We drink the regular whole bean in the morning mixed with a pre-ground Brazilian Arabica coffee from Wal-Mart. During the evening we drink the whole bean decaf. Wal-Mart sells 5 pound bags of the regular for a ridiculously low price of $6.37 per bag. We usually go through 4 bags a month. So we were off to Wal-Mart to re-stock on coffee and some other essentials.

On the way, Marlene spotted a sign for a “Senior Stamp Show.” My first thought was, “Are these Senior Citizens or Senior Stamps.” That turned the conversation downhill. Wonderful remarks from me such as, “How old does a stamp have to be to qualify as a senior stamp?” I mean they have to be members of AARS? I’m sure you have heard of it – American Association of Retired Stamps (AARS). I mean how else is a retired stamp going to get a discount on a nice post office box in Florida for vacation. You do know how stamps go on vacation- AIR MAIL.. Ba da bump.

To finish off the night I had the great comment about a LARGE can of baked beans we had acquired. “I wonder if they should have a BTU rating on Baked Beans” I will let you guys figure out what to turn BTU into.

VOIP

I read the following article on the Colonel's page.

My first experience with broadband was a cable modem from Cox Cable in Memphis, TN January of 2000. I was extremly impressed. I think I was the only person in the building that had one so my download speeds did not suffer the backlog some other cable users had described.

I was looking for a different apartment at the end of 2000. Memphis was going through a warehouse renevating boom and I found a nice studio loft in an old factory that would have been available in the first part of 2001. The neat thing about it was Cox was using the buliding as a testing site for their "Telephony" services. The building was wired for broadband cable, which was going to deliver Voice of IP and movies on demand. I was transferred to Denmark so never ended up trying the services.

I agree that the first company to get it all done for 85-100 per month will be a huge winner. I currently pay 90 for my cable/internet, 60 for two cells, 25 for phone, and about 60 a month in long distances. Vonage is a close option and will be looking into them now that they offer Canada in their service

Photography Blog

I am working on a Photography Blog. Comments are welcome

Mozilla Firebird/Firefox

I should probably preface this by saying that I am not a tecky. I am somewhere in that group between total idiot and 10 year old genius at Harvard. I can usually figure out what someone has coded or get the jist of what they were trying to get done with the code. The “jist” is fine with me. I don’t need to know what underlying “do-dat” makes something work. When I use a piece of software, hardware, camera, etc I expect it to work. The best way to qualify me would be to say, “I am on the low-end of tecky and the high end of neophyte” when it comes to technology and computers.

Ok, with the above of the way I am going to shock some people by saying that the Mozilla stuff is not the hottest stuff on the planet. Phoenix, Firebird, and now Firefox offer some interesting toys to play with for some people. They are not the browsers for the bulk of the computer users in the world today. They are an interesting alternative for those willing to take the time to get them customized for their own little quirks.

I first download Phoenix last year. I had never heard of a tabbed browser until Jason mentioned it one day. Jason and I have been friends for years. I don’t understand everything he says or blogs, but I at least look at most of it. So I grabbed Phoenix, I loved the tab browsing. I didn’t invest too much time in customizing it. I am from the genre that still thinks software should be complete for release to the public. I later heard that Firebird was a much better experience than Phoenix, so January 29th I ended up downloading it an installing it on both my home and work computers. I also had to download all of the little tricks and plug-ins to make it work like IE does now.

Today I learned that I have to download it again to get the newest version. I understand the reasoning behind the change, but it means I spent another 2 hours customizing another browser to work like the one that has already worked like a champ for me for 7 years.

I am not sure, and I am sure someone will tell me, but I think it is because it does not read HTML the same way IE 5 does. One example is frame pages. I use online banking for my bill payments. The Mozilla browsers consistently render the pages with the frames over-enlarged or spaced in an inconvenient way. Another example is that it takes FOREVER for Firebird/Fox to load graphics on a page. I have a cable modem at home that downloaded the new Firefox build in 12 seconds. I should not have to wait 10 seconds for Firebird/Fox to load a 4k gif files. I could see if it was on the first reading of a page to cache the images, but not after the 4th time the same day. I use movable type as my blog software. I cannot use Firebird/Fox because they do not recognize the text editing buttons in the New Entry Panel. Lastly, make an icon that is the same size as the other icons on the Windows Quick Launch bar.

However, I do love tabbed pages. This means I will continue to use Firefox to surf the web and IE to fall back to when web pages do not display correctly. However, I doubt many of the everyday computer users will take the time to learn the quirks. I could be wrong. I never thought Jason would own a Powerbook.

Southend Brewery

Southend Brewery and Smokehouse opened in Charlotte, NC's South End on April 22, 1995. Stainless steel vats are visible amidst exposed brick, wood, rafters, and pipes inside this renovated mill. The atmosphere is very low-key and everyone will feel at home.

Marlene and I started out with an order of onion rings served with BBQ and Blue Cheese sauces. This whet our appetite for the main course of BBQ'ed Baby Back ribs. The ribs were served Southern Style. Which means slow cooked with sauce vs. Memphis style which is a dry rub. The ribs were accompanied by French fries and cole-slaw. The ribs were excellent with a just enough bite in the sauce to leave a tang. We also had a couple of beers with dinner.

They have a very good deal on beer as well. They craft brew eight varieties of beer from Southern Blond to Oatmeal Stout. They have a beer-club where you can buy a full 24OZ glass of beer with your name engraved on it for $25.00. It's refillable everyday for a year for the 16oz price. That is 8 free ounces of beer for those of you that cannot add. They also allow you to take home and refill 64oz Growlers.

Overall it was a good experience. It is definitely not the fanciest place in the world, but had good service, food, and atmosphere

Maps

I found this while surfing for information about adding a photo gallery into movable type. I found a link to generate this map here

This is a map of all of the countries (in red) I have visited on my travels. I wish I could have had this when seanindenmark.com was up.

You can make your own at World66.com

Camera

I have been reading from Reid’s blog and he and Jordan are discussing point and shoot vs. digital cameras.

I got into photography in April of 2001 when I was transferred overseas. That job took me to 26 countries over the course of 18 months. Most of my friends and family would never be able to see as much of the world as I was seeing. This led me to getting a digital camera and creating a webpage.

My first camera was a 1.3 mega-pixel (MP) Olympus D-460Z. It was a great camera for the amateur shooter. This camera was used on 10 trips throughout the world. The pictures were for the most part outstanding. Usually any problems were with the photographer. Since the D-460, I have owned 5 other cameras; Olympus 2.1 MP C2100UZ, Canon 2.1 MP Digital Elph, C-40 (US D-40) 4M, Canon SD100 3.3mp, and now the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel.).

I bought the 2100 to replace the 460. I wanted a bigger through the lens (TTL) viewfinder camera. I also wanted the extra lens length afforded by the optically stabilized 10x zoom lens. This camera took great pictures, but was HUGE compared the 460. Some of the countries I visited were not the best place to be lugging a 500 dollar camera. I remember in Russia hiding the camera under my overcoat. So in March I moved into a smaller camera-my first Canon Digital Elph.

The Digital Elph took good pictures. I think the Olympus point and shoots have slightly better pictures quality. The elph is a great tiny camera about the size of a pack of smokes. This allows you to sneak it into places the 2100 could not go. I took the Elph to three countries. I ended up selling it as a package deal to a friend of mine along with my laptop. I had wanted to upgrade my current laptop and the combination made a good deal for my friend.

I was back to the 2100. It did not take long to realize that I did not like lugging it around. So I picked up a small 4MP Olympus C-40 in Malaysia.

I have since sold the Olympus and purchased two new cameras. The first was another Elph for taking to parties and such. The second was the Rebel. I wanted something that I could continually expand. The ability to change the lenses should allow me to upgrade as needed. Images from each camera can be found here.

I think the Reid at Photodude and Jordan make good points. Sometimes you want the better image enlargement capabilities of a DSLR and the portability of a point and shoot is great for cameo pictures. I am lucky in that I have both.

Happy Birthday

Today is Jason's birthday. I orignally met Jason when we were both in school at Old Dominion University in the Spring of 1992. We had been in a Pascal programming class the previous fall. I noticed that we were both in the same C programming class that spring and said Hi.

A lot has changed since using the Sun Sparc stations in the labs to locate "non youth images" and hanging out at the local Orion BBS functions. We have both moved from our hometowns. We have both grown up and been successful in our careers. We have both gotten married-He was the best man at my wedding. Jason now has a wife, two kids, and something like 15 computers. Would you believe that at one point he owned a Micro-vax?

His favorite new toy is his powerbook. Well at least I think it is his favorite. I have been ragging on him about his powerbook (powerbrick) for a few months now. For his birthday, I am actually going to post a picture of his Apple dream unit.

Computer:
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
1GHz frontside bus/processor
512K L2 cache/processor
512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM
Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
160GB Serial ATA
SuperDrive
Three PCI-X Slots
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal mode

Display
23" diagonal viewable image size
1920 x 1200 optimal resolution
16.7 million colors
19.2 x 24.2 x7.3-11.1 inches
25.3 pounds
Two USB ports
Apple Display Connect

Happy Birthday Jason. I hope someone got you this toy this year.

Charlotte Sunrise

It's not the greatest image, but I thought the colors for this morning's sunrise were outstanding.

Disclaimer

Ok, I'll admit it. I often go through Sean's entries and edit them for misspellings, grammatical issues, incomplete sentences and punctuation. As you may have noticed our website has been changed and it's taken me a while to get used to the new software for the diary page -- sorry "blogs". After editing Sean's latest TP entry I thought it prudent to post a disclaimer on the website.
Therefore please note the following:

The opinions expressed by individual authors on the Rivinus website are the opinions and views of the author and not necessarily shared by other members of the Rivinus family (aka the wife).

As much as it may concern me that Sean would spend part of his day researching how much TP an average person consumes over the course of the year, I can be grateful that we don't have a website covering this, and only this topic. I can fix the spelling mistakes but if he wants to write about toilet paper so be it.

Just another quick note the Pictures part of our website, since some of you have asked, can be found using the PHOTOALBUMS link on the left.

TP Equation

We have a person that comes in and cleans my office. The quote for the cleaning includes supplies such as toilet paper. During my afternoon sabbatical, I started to wonder, “How does one quote a contract for the supply of toilet paper (TP). “

I figured that finding the answer to this might make for an interesting afternoon google. I had visions of someone calculating DPD (Dumps per day) or PPD (Paper per dump) to figure out how many rolls of paper to supply an office. This whole story would make a humorous, if slightly tasteless, blog entry.

Google turned up several results that had combined paper usage. I found out that toilet paper seems to be quite the issue for the environmental lobby. However, the most interesting one I found was here. This guy came up with an equation that you can use to calculate enough TP to stockpile for life.

(number of days life expectrancy/71.48)= rolls to stockpile/person

I only need to calculate a year so I used 365 for the number of days. Based on this formula and the 20 people in my office, we should need 102.126 roles of TP for the year or about 51 dollars worth of TP.

I feel so much more relieved now that I have worked it out.

Dakotas

My wife and I recently decided to try Dakotas in the Arboretum shopping center. I had been hearing about the the restaurant from Al Gardner a member of Charlotte’s Morning News on my talk radio station WBT 1110 talking about this place.

I listen to these guys every morning on my drive into work. I thought Al seemed to love the place. Of course that was probably advertising. Marlene wanted to go to dinner, so I thought we would try it.

The interior is what you would expect. The soft lighting gave warm tones to the walls making the place nice and cozy. We were seated at a table for two up near the windows.

The table we were sitting at had a wobble. This was rather disappointing in any restaurant, but is by no means an uncommon occurrence. Normally the wait staff would stabilize the table with a matchbook or some other item. Our waitress was clueless. She spent 5 minutes trying to figure out which side was wobbling. This would have been ok if there had not been so many other empty tables about. We were finally reseated at another table 5 feet from this one.

Finally, we could open the menus. To my dismay, it was only two pages. This is a place with dishes in the 15-30 dollar range. I expected a little bit more variety than 6 appetizers, 6 salads, and 6 entrees. Ok maybe I am a spoiled heathen. Marlene ordered the potato encrusted Salmon. I ordered the meatloaf. I had recently had another meatloaf up the street at City Tavern (Sorry about the annoying music) and wanted to compare the two. The meatloaf at CT is GREAT.

The wine list was pretty good. Marlene had a gewürztraminer and I had a Shiraz. The food took a little longer than I had expected with the small crowd.

Marlene loved the salmon. It was very tasty and perfectly cooked. I was not impressed with my $17.00 meatloaf. It was bland and the fork tines were too big for the sides that came with the meal.

Our overall impression is that it has potential, but they need to improve their menu and their service. A place where dinner for two with a bottle of wine cost $100 should have been more spectacular This was our first time there and first impressions are important. Our first impression is that there are too many other good places in Charlotte that we will go to and recommend before Dakota’s

Pictures

I have added two pages to the website. These pages will have monthly portrait pictures of me and Marlene. Its a good way to document how we change over the years.

Usage Stats January

January was a good month for our website.  Here are some statistics for
those who are interested:

• 1258 hits
• 789 unique URLS
• Total Bandwidth usage was 1.8 gig

• quantaray 28-200
• sigma 28-80 review
• columbia zoo
• canon 75-300 review
• renassiance festival

We also had quite a few for our honeymoon and wedding
pictures. It seems there a number of folks interested in the Point no Point
resort. The funniest search string was for the
Kermit Cake topper used at our wedding

Updates

The webog is not the main entry point to rivinus.com I have added two new sets of pictures under January. There is a bit on focal points under the photography section.

There is now a border around the main body of the weblog. I think this make it stand out a little better.

I hope you enjoy the new website