It was an interesting morning. I walked past the data room at work and heard a rather loud noise.

Turned out to be the server. We entered the room and it was HOT. The air conditioning had turned off overnight it seems. Didn’t see any issues after it was turned back on (by the IT department) at least. But still…poor server.

We’re in the beginning stages of another summer thunderstorm. There have been many lately thanks to the hot temperatures. Today’s high was 90f (32c), feeling like 97f (36c). The latest thunderstorm just began in the last minute or two, though it has been windy for the last hour or so. They told us to expect winds up to 60mph (96km/h).

That reminds me of a storm that we had a few days ago – we had emergency alerts taking over our TVs for most of the day (including 3 in 5 minutes! It was insane), though nothing ended up happening in my neighborhood. In America, the National Weather Service can decide to send out an alert, which takes over the programming and changes the screen to black with information and some loud beeps to get your attention. They then tell you about the situation, including where it is and what to expect. At least we don’t get too many tornadoes in New York!

Speaking of alerts, the security department at work told us to expect some alerts through our “beacon system” this afternoon. I wish they had mentioned that that would mean that their alert system would be taking over the public computers without warning:

Just imagine the red ALERT! flashing every second or so for maximum scary effect.

Of course I found it amusing that this alert only appeared on the public computers, not the staff computers. Maybe they don’t want to warn us about our impending doom…

One of the more random things that I have seen since moving here is a few rare occurrences of dollar bills tracked through Where’s George?, a website which allows you to track where your dollar bills (and other American currency) have been.

So far I have found 6 registered dollar bills. None of them have had any further hits after I registered that I found the bill.

Serial number removed for George’s protection 🙂 Around the seal, it reads “Track this bill wheresgeorge.com”. The two arrows point to the serial number (top) and series number (bottom). On the right side it says “This is registered bill”. There are different stamps out there. This one is pretty elaborate.

In case you are wondering, the top user has entered over 2 million bills and had hits on 371,000 of them. (He actually stamps new bills and sends them on their way, which obviously raises the counts a lot. Most people just find already stamped bills and mark that they were found again.)

Here’s a snippet from his website mentioned above:

“I am catching a lot of the local people looking at me out of the corner of their eyes and several of the local elderly have been giving me the Anti-Evil-Eye sign behind my back.

Lately, the bank in Wattsburg always seems to be closed when I pull up in my car (even at noon) and Bill Spenser at the Keystone station is getting tired of selling me gasoline 6 or 8 Georges at a time.”

Since it is technically illegal to deface American currency, the Where’s George website does have its own rules section to try and prevent liability on their end. You can also read more at the Wikipedia page,  which states that bills which are entered into the system but not marked are called “stealths” and that most people mark the bills to increase the hit rate. So the consensus on the Where’s George? website’s end is that people are only marking the bills to get more hits – they themselves do not encourage it.

It’s odd that I didn’t see many of these marked bills in Chicago, only when I moved here. It’s an interesting tactic, and apparently Canadians have a similar site called Where’s Willy?

I randomly took the day off today. At least, I took it off from work — not errands. I walked downtown to do a load of laundry, went to the bank, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom and kitchen, and went to the library. A few days ago I had received an email from the local library that both of the Dutch books arrived (mentioned here). As they are closed Sat-Sun-Mon for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday, today was the last chance to nab them.

After I picked up my holds I took them to the seating area to read the first part of My ‘Dam Life. What I read before I left the library seemed pretty interesting, so hopefully I will be able to spend some time reading more over the weekend.

Have you ever seen a melted laundry basket?

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Today (zondag/Sunday) is my college’s graduation. Since I am an administrator, I am expected to go. Not only go, but walk, and wear a cap and gown, and. . .

Anyway, I thought you would enjoy a picture of (some of) it, though keep in mind I generally don’t pull it out of its bag to get the wrinkles out. It doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference to me.

The cap and gown I will wear, with the rules for properly showing off the academic hood (the part that hangs behind you).

The red is for Rutgers University, where I got my Masters. The yellow is for the type of Masters I received (Library science). I don’t have a PhD or doctorate, so I do not have the fancy robes you might see.

Also today was the soap box derby trials, where you race little cars down a big hill. Over and over and over. They block off the main road every year for this. I took a few pictures:

The hill they ride down. You can barely see it, but where the guy is standing is where the finish line is. The rest of the space is just for you to slow down (though the cars should have brakes).

A view of the soap box derby cars themselves, with a new race about to begin.

I don’t have any experience or knowledge of these. My brother raced mini cars in the pine wood derby when he was in Boy Scouts, though.