Matsu’s World: The One Less Traveled

Like A River

It runs deep, the calm surface concealing what lies beneath.
Big and broad and visible to all but no one is able see.

There is no escape, caught in its grip, fighting the effect of retreat.
A child, impatient and persistent, intractably invading my sleep.

Ignore it I cannot, confront it I dare not, for fear it will consume me.
Pain is that river, a pain endlessly fed by all that I cannot speak.

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Yes, today for the first time in my life I paid $4 (US) for a gallon of gasoline. It was actually $4.05 per gallon.

Those of you who live in the same area that I do will wonder why I paid that much since most gas stations are selling regular unleaded gas for only $3.85 or $3.90 (at most). Well, I drive a Mistubishi Galant and the model I own has a V6 engine, which requires the high octane super unleaded gasoline. And, for now, the cheapest price I could find today was just over $4 per gallon. That is the most I have ever paid for a gallon of gasoline.

I guess I’d better get used to it. Or, more accurately, I’d better get used to paying a lot more than $4 per gallon as the price is expected to continue to rise throughout the summer. In fact, we may even see $5 per gallon of gas by August. Ugh! That will be almost twice the price I paid for a gallon of gas a year ago.

My friend Bert insists that the price of oil is being driven up by the weak United States dollar. He argues that if the value of the U.S. dollar were to go higher against the other currencies in the world, then the price per barrel of crude oil could drop as low as $80 (it is at an all-time high of $124 per barrel right now). I don’t know if I really understand that or believe that he’s right, but I would sure like to see it happen just the same. I won’t argue or complain if it does.

This is an interesting sign. Can you guess which year this sign will appear?

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I spent most of this evening at a hotel where my son’s school was hosting a fund raiser. At one point I received a phone call and stepped out of the ballroom so I could hear the person calling and so I could talk more loudly without disturbing everyone else enjoying their dinner. The nearest exit took me to the hotel service area. What I witnessed just amazed me. The hotel employees were breaking up large bundles of new phone books and taking them out of their large plastic wrappers before tossing them into recycle bins. They must have had about a dozen large recycle bins completely full of new phone books.

This photograph shows just a sample of what I saw. When I asked one of the workers what they would be doing with the rest of the phone books that wouldn’t fit into the recycle bins he said that they had to wait until the blue bins were empty and then they would repeat the process and fill them up with new phone books again.

They would repeat that until all of the new phone books were disposed of. That is an awful waist of resources. Why print and deliver so many phonebooks to hotels only to have them throw away thousands of new phone books. There is something very wrong with that picture.

What time is it? Donut time!

Today is donut (doughnut?) day where I work. Well, every Friday is donut day where I work. We always start our day with a demartmental meeting where the main food group is donut — of course we are very inclusive — we eat all types of donuts.

Well, this article in Wired was e-mailed to me yesterday and it really amused me since donuts are such a standard part of the life of I.T. people in my department. How can you argue with free donuts? My answer… you can’t!

This week I watched this ABC Primetime report about the life of Dr. Randy Pausch, a Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

At 46 years old Dr. Pausch received news that he had terminal cancer and was given only 3 to 6 months to live. About one month later, he gave his last lecture about his life, dreams, and information on how the audience should live. Since then, a new book has been written about how he has spent his last days living life to the fullest and being an inspiration to many people on how to live and demonstrates how one might deal with a terminal illness.

Below is a Wall Street Journal video interview of the author of the book and is a good starting point to get the background information about the life and expected death of Dr. Pausch.

If this has piqued your interest and you want to see for yourself what everyone has been talking about, you can see the recording of the Last Lecture below.

You might want to visit Dr. Pausch’s website for additional information and videos. Once you are there, you will also find updated informaiton about his current health condition. As of the this week, he is still alive.