The day before Thanksgiving I passed a slow-moving car on a two lane road in a passing zone and was given a ticket by a Dekalb County policeman. He wasn’t real interested in hearing my side of the story and wound up giving me a ticket for driving on the wrong side of the road. He set a court date in January and told me I could explain things to the judge. In January I went to court. Not only was my case not entered, forcing me to come back, but this first court appearance was just an arraignment where you pled guilty or not guilty and then would come back for a trial.
The Price of Water
I got my water bill today from Dekalb County. They announced that, effective January 1, the price of water was going up to $5.41 per 1,000 gallons. Of course they don’t tell you what the old price was, so I figured it out and got $4.30. That’s an increase of 26%.
Then I wondered when the last time they went up was. I keep a spreadsheet of past utility costs and discovered that prior to January 1, 2003 the price was only $3.50 per 1,000 gallons. That means water has increased in price 54% in only two years!
Grant’s Picture
There’s a picture of Grant that shows up on the main blog page every now and then where he is smoking a cigar on the porch down in Bradenton. That’s one of the funniest pictures I’ve ever seen.
The iPod Has Arrived
Today I realized that the iPod has really become a mass marketed device. I was standing in line at the register at Walgreen’s buying $2 t-shirts and among the impulse-buy items like batteries, lighters, and tic tacs, they had iPod accessories: a case, a belt clip, and ear buds.
Powerbook 5300c
As I mentioned in my ice storm entry, my Powerbook 520c died and I figured out the problem with the Powerbook 5300c adapter. I went to Radio Shack and bought a pack of butt connectors (despite what it sounds like they are plastic-coated metal tubes that you crimp on to wires) and was able to connect the wires to a standard power adapter tip that came with my Recoton Universal Car Adapter power supply. It is surprising that Apple would settle for a standard power adapter tip for one of their pieces of hardware. I got the adapter crimped on, tested the polarity twice, and hooked it up. The laptop, which probably hasn’t started in five years or more, made some awful beeping noises, and started right up. And the clock was only a little over a year off, stating that it was 1/1/04.