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The I95 project near the mixing bowl in Springfield is moving along great. Previously Southbound 395 dumped into the left hand lane of 95S. 495-outer-loop dumped into the right hand lane of 95S and 495-inner-loop dumped into the center. These three form I95 south.

On this Memorial Day weekend (which I recall as wasting about two hours of my time last summer) things are much better. 495-inner-loop (the primary 95 south road) dumps about a mile down from the other two, and on the left hand side. Most 95 south drivers want to get into the HOV lanes and that is a left-exit as well.

I got home in 30 minutes — that’s the same as any other day.. and I even left in more rush hour (5:30 instead of 6:30 like normal). I am a happy p0ny.

This Citibank card (found here) seems to have a great deal.

• 5% cash back at grocery, gas, and drugstores.
• 1% cash back everywhere else
• 1% cash back on cash withdrawls

A few restrctions apply to this card, as all. The max you can earn per year is $300. And, they only send checks in $100 increments. But still, it is nice to see a Master Card with cash back rewards as lucrative as this, especially since American Express and Discover Card aren’t accepted everywhere.

This past weekend was a cousin-in-law’s (congratulations) wedding at Kiawah Island near Charleston, SC. It was a nice reception and a fairly decent location, but the island itself left a lot to be desired.

Rooms at Kiawah are fairly expensive. Though I can’t vouch for the quality of the rooms, I can vouch for the quality of two ‘villas.’ The villas at Kiawah Island are privately owned and rented through the Kiawah Island Resort company, or something along those lines. The quality of the room left a lot to be desired. It wasn’t as if it was horrible accomodations, but do not believe any of the hype surrounding the price. I’ve been to hundreds of luxury and budget hotels and the villas at Kiawah were as pricey as a luxury hotel with quality sub-par to what you’d expect from Motel 6 (no offense, dave).

The island itself is fairly private, and is definately remote from downtown Charleston, expect a 20-45 minute drive, depending upon traffic. The scenery which they claim makes it one of the best 10 beaches just doesn’t come close. I must admit, the sand was powder-white, but I’m still deeply disappointed in the quality of the island itself. If you are a golfer, you’re probably in heaven, if you’re not, go somewhere else, save money — or better yet, eat at an expensive restaurant with the money you’ve saved.

Housing falls along the same lines. The architecture in the private two-thirds of the island left a lot to be desired. Most houses were situated on marshland without beachfront access or even ocean views. Prices? Outrageous. Living in Washington, DC metro area, I tend to understand the “location, location, location” mantra, but not here (we’ll pretend you can afford to have someone go to the grocery store for you as it’s a 20 minute drive, minimum). I entertained the possibility of investing in a private residence to be used as rental property for many people are drawn to the luxury and privacy of the island, but I couldn’t see dropping the premium price demanded for this island. I’d say they are 30-50% over-valued in so many ways.

If you’ve got money to blow, go for it, it will probably to continue to appreciate, but if you like to invest in things you believe in (or can use) I highly recommend looking elsewhere. Isle of Palms, Topsail Island, and many, many, many, many, many, other islands are likely more up your alley. I won’t be going back to this island as a pure vacation spot, it’d take another wedding to bring me there. But please, save your money!

I had the unfortunate experience of lodging a piece of metal into my right eye this past Saturday. I was hanging a light-fixture using pre-drilled holes and a piece apparantly fell off. Somehow it got around the glasses I was wearing and managed to lodge itself in the upper portion of my eye.

I went to the doctor today and he removed it, gave me some eye drops, and requested I return on Tuesday for an exam. I am taking droplet antibiotics and hopefully no infection will occur. The eye is painful at the moment but the metal doesn’t appear to have permanantly damaged anything.

Some people might chastise me for not wearing protective wear, but this was as simple a task as screwing in a light-switch cover, just elevated. It is amazing how things such as vision are taken for granted until something like this occurs. I know I will be more careful from now on.

Last week I ordered two 160gb 7200RPM 8MB cache drives from Mwave.com — roughly $100 each. I also ordered the Tivo upgrade kit from www.weakness.com. I replaced the original 30gb drive with the two 160gb drives and now have 240 hours of quality tivo recordings. This is excellent. Since Tivo has two recorders, it can record all kinds of crap I will never watch.

I need to do some serious evaluations of the HD-Directivo. I may go ahead and buy one and sell my upgraded Directivo on Ebay. I am soo tempted to buy a 57″ TV… But we have a lot of things coming up. I’d like to get Lasik surgery, believer is entering grad school, and we still have walls to paint, a deck to furnish, and a few other areas to work on. Someday, we’ll win the lotto

Dreams are a world turned upside down,
gravity, logic, time, rendered meaningless,
the world of dreams is not our world
although in the dead of night,
it tempts and deceives us,
daring us to know the differences,
this is what make dreams so dangerous

I came across an interesting article which outlined potential future research and advances in computing power usage. If indeed the claims made in this article are true, this could drastically reshape battery life in many applications. Just don’t expect me to drive a car with this technology anytime soon.

Several other possibilities exist, which I’ll just list briefly:
- Use multiple chips to gain reasonable confidence of the answer (1 or 0)
- Use one of these power saving chips for most computations, and a normal chip for important decisions