Football Epilogue

Just some chicken breasts, dried rosemary, salt, garlic, a little oil and vinegar, some French-cut green beans and basil.  I'm making this while my daughter and her friend make playdough.

I'm working on a talk for a symposium in April. The topic is "Sensors for Transportation". Along the way I visited the Department of  Energy " Alternative Fuels Data Center " website. They have a host of accessible data showing everything from types of electric vehicles to average consumption prices of various fuels. Being that I'm a data enthusiast I thought I'd generate a silly plot of hybrid electric vehicle sales versus average US fuel prices.  (left axis) U.S. Hybrid Electric Vehicle Sales compared to (right axis) Average U.S. Fuel (gasoline) cost per gallon. Data is from http://www.afdc.energy.gov/ The overlay suggests, as is probably obvious to many, that increased fuel costs result in more people buying fuel efficient vehicles. One might also make some other hypotheses from this plot: Fuel prices play a majority incentive in the masses buying more efficient vehicles. Thus, policy makers should maybe look to steeply increase gasoline ta...

...and it feels like something is watching me. 😈

Interesting graph at The Economist .

I'm a big guy. I always have been. I always will be. In fact, the last time I got small (in the 230s) friends said I looked unwell. There were some other circumstances, but it was an unnatural look for me for sure. I've gained a few pounds coming off the holidays and a year of focusing on kids and work. I work hard on taking this as a fact of life. I'll find some motivation and slim down a bit again. One thing that drives me nuts on account of my Buddha belly and a long torso is not having a shirt, or at least an undershirt that stays tucked in. My current collection was totally thread-bare and unacceptable as clothing. I had to do some shopping and Most of the mainstream stores, I believe, are doing themselves a great dis-service by not stocking more tall undershirts.  Here are some findings for XXLT white v-neck tee shirts: Target:  NOT AVAILABLE IN MY AREA (WTF) Duluth Trading Company : $25/shirt, uber comfortable, but a little spendy. At stores Wal-Mart: NO...

Chicken breast, pre-cooked wild rice, 1 cup water, poultry seasoning, parsley, minced onion, garlic salt, white and black pepper and some corn on the cobb. Delicious.

I'm liking this new crock pot. Tonight's dastardly concoction: an ad hoc Sun-dried tomato pesto chicken. Crock and shred 2 lbs boneless/skinless chicken breast Add 1/3 cup balsamic vinaigrette dressing/marinade 1/4 cup sun-dried tomato basil pesto  (I'll figure out with actual homemade tomatoes and pesto later) 6 to 10 fresh basil leaves 1 tbsp oregano mix it in, let it simmer, part it out, feed a nibble of chicken to your begging cat and voila! I think I'll have mine over veggies or cold on a salad, but would go well over pasta. Delicious.

2016 was a doozy of a year. Lots of household names passed away, the election defied arrogant polling and I'm still not wealthy nor famous; although I must admit to some putting sticks in hornet's nests on Facebook in uncanny oldest sibling fashion. I rang in the new year with the kids. We had ample junk food, played board games and watched movies on the DVD player my son bought from Goodwill for $5 earlier in the day. He was hoping it would be a small soldering project, but it turned out to work sans repairs. Finally, we toasted midnight with sparkling grape juice. Around 11 pm I had the kids sit down to do a little 2016 reflecting and 2017 goal writing. My son got right on it. He was grateful in 2016 for the new puppy at their mom's house, learning how to ski and seeing the new Star Wars movies.  My daughter was a little more bashful and I actually wasn't able to get much from her aside from going skiing and getting her pet turtle. I had a few things: ex...