Better'n a lottery!

The end client in Albuquerque suggested a certain hotel in the vicinity of the office, and when I called, I was quoted a price of $60 per night (plus about 15% tax), and that was based on a discounted government rate (having a NASA badge does have its perks).

Just now, I decided to go the Priceline.com route and after an initial turndown for what was probably a ridiculously low price, I bumped the price up to $36 a night (following the site's suggestion, which sounded like it pretty much guaranteed a match) and found lodging at... as it turns out... the same hotel!

The nightly rate, including tax, through Priceline.com is $42 a night, versus $69.

Do the math.

I called the client before clicking the mouse, to make sure no problems had sprouted in the interim since my last conversation with them earlier this week. And the hotel sounded like a nice place when I spoke with them, so it looks like I'm fairly well set there.

I wasn't so lucky when it came to getting a quote for a rental car. Enterprise, which is the only game in town, was quite reasonable back when our cars were in the shop, but is beyond my reach for this trip. It looks like I'll be driving down in the Civic.

Cheers...

A sad day...

Yesterday, the politicians representing both parties in the House of Representatives demonstrated that "smaller government" is merely an idea that gets trotted out every once in a while as a rhetorical device, a sop to those unfortunates who believe that government shouldn't run every aspect of our lives. In the name of Homeland Security, and as part of an emergency spending bill, the RealID Act was passed and will, I'm sure, be signed into law.

So, according to the story on c|net:

Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.

Of course, the list of things you may need a "federally approved ID" to do may expand.

Imagine, for example, having to provide that ID to buy a pack of cigarettes, especially if that package has an embedded RFID chip. Not a bad idea, you say? We'll know exactly who's smoking, and how much. In addition, if we expand the current reasoning that allows insurance companies to lump one-cigar-a-year smokers into the same group with three-pack-a-day gaspers for purposes of charging premiums and allow those companies to classify anyone who buys even a single cigarette as a smoker, we can make those nicotine fiends pay, and pay, and pay, and help satisfy a seemingly ingrained human urge on the part of some to screw over some group or other in a socially acceptable manner just for the pleasure of doing so.

Or how about this one: require the ID be scanned whenever you buy gas for your car. It'd be a great way to monitor (and even control) movement of persons in cars inside the country, and could be very helpful should government ever feel it necessary, say, to ration gasoline.

And why stop there? Do you believe there is a correlation between playing computer games such as Grand Theft Auto and crime? RealID offers a great way to do a little social research. Make swiping your ID a requirement for buying such a game, keep track of the results, and then prove your point using whatever method works. (If the data doesn't support your pre-determined conclusion, let me whisper one phrase in your ear: "second-hand smoke.")

You say this could never happen, as RealID is being introduced as a way to fight the War on Terror? Well, it's not an easy read, but check out RICO: The crime of being a criminal, 87 Colum. L. Rev. 661 to see how laws enacted with the best of intentions seem to take on a life of their own.

Getting the thing is going to be interesting. From the article,

...you'll need to bring a "photo identity document," document your birth date and address, and show that your Social Security number is what you had claimed it to be. U.S. citizens will have to prove that status, and foreigners will have to show a valid visa.

State DMVs will have to verify that these identity documents are legitimate, digitize them and store them permanently. In addition, Social Security numbers must be verified with the Social Security Administration.

In the end, will this "Real ID" make us any safer? I'm not taking any bets.

Cheers...

Observations...

The weather went back to being lousy today, with thunderstorms wandering about the landscape, grumbling as they left a trail of wet behind them. Instead of walking, I got my exercise going through boxes of stuff looking for a package of closing papers. What's crazy is that I think I'm going to find the thing any second.

I was fascinated by the eating habits of a blue jay as he visited our feeder this morning. He apparently favors only a certain kind of seed, which is the only way I can explain him using his beak to "rake" the contents of the feeder out of the feeding platform, causing the seed mix in the feeder to come out that much faster and fill the void.

If I weren't going down to Albuquerque on Tuesday, I'd have a lot of work on hand. I lucked out in terms of the order in which offers came in: one of my better clients offered me 7500 source words about an hour before a similar volume was offered at a lower rate, which I had to turn down (how I dislike doing that!). So my "plate" currently comprises 10,500 source words, which must be delivered by departure on Tuesday, in addition to everything else that has been piling up.

A long time ago, I used to use a program called InfoSelect to organize my stuff. Among the things I used it for was to track outgoing and incoming calls, to-dos, and terminology. A major use was to correlate numbered file folders with their contents, removing the need to constantly keep things alphabetized in the filing cabinet (searching on "alloy" reveals two hits; the one I want is the handbook, which is in folder 27). When I reinstalled an old directory recently, I was surprised to see how much detail had been preserved with relatively little effort.

The program is currently in version 8, but I deliberately went back and am using version 1.0 that, in my considered opinion, represents the pinnacle of the product's development. The application lets you create free-form units of information, represented as windows within the parent window, and among other features has a blazingly fast search algorithm that lets you find what you need without delay.

Perhaps, if later versions of the program, which introduced a lot of features I had no use for, would have supported Cyrillic, I'd be a contented user and repeat upgrader. As it turns out, as long as I use a non-Unicode Cyrillic font, I can type in the program in Russian, but at this point - having discovered EverNote - the ability to use Cyrillic in InfoSelect is moot. What is particularly cool about InfoSelect 1.0 is that it is small enough (and old enough) not to require an install that copies necessary DLLs to the Windows system directories or modifies the Windows Registry, which makes it ideal to run from a thumb drive, which is where it is installed right now.

Time to wind down. Tomorrow is going to be a fairly hectic day.

Cheers...