Photo: Smallpipes

I was practicing my smallpipes a couple of weeks ago, in prep for a St. Patrick's Day Ceilidh, and decided a good picture could be had.

Photo: Watson Staring

So we've started taking pictures with our new digital SLR camera. We're still learning, but the sheer quality of these photos compared to the point-and-shoot variety are great.

I'll be posting a subset of the pics I share on Flickr. Here's one of Watson, one of our cats, looking kind of miffed, perhaps because we're giving a treat to one of our other cats and not him?

Fidelity Magellan? No Thanks.

I just saw an advertisement in the New Yorker that Fidelity's Magellan stock fund is opening up to new investors again. Magellan is an old actively-managed stock fund that likes to tout it's above-average returns, and push an air of exclusivity due to it being closed to new investors for some time.

But is it truly an above-average fund? If you look at the return on your investment if you had invested in Magellan around seven years ago, it would be down about 27%. If you had taken the same money and put it in an index fund that tracked the S&P 500, you'd be up 15%.

No thanks, Fidelity. I'll stick to indexing.

In The World Of Vodka, Image Apparently Trumps Taste

There's a lot of vodkas out there. Some are cheap and come in plastic bottles. Others are fancy and have frosted glass and artwork peeking through the inside of the bottle. So which one's the best? And are expensive vodkas somehow better than moderately priced ones?

David Kiley wrote up an article in BusinessWeek recently, exploring that same question. He did an informal, unscientific taste test with loyal brand drinkers, and asked them to pick out their brand. The result? People couldn't tell which vodka was which, despite their loyalty to a given brand.

I buy that some vodkas burn and taste weird, and others are milder and taste purer. But after you get past the purity and mildness bar, does it matter what material is used to ferment and distill the vodka, or how pretty the bottle is, or what the story is behind the vodka? I'm thinking not so much. I don't have a super-sensitive palette, nor do I drink the stuff straight, so why bother with the premium?

Happy Pi Day

Yesterday was Pi Day. For the non-nerds, this is the day whose month and date correspond to the first few digits of Pi (3.14 -> 3/14).

Working in a somewhat nerdy environs, someone suggested we celebrate this day yesterday. Off this person went to get 3.14 pies. Arriving at a grocery store, this person inquires about pies. "Sorry, we're out, but we're baking some more that should be ready soon," the bakery people say. Apparently, lots of people had the same idea we did. Still, pies were eventually had.

Further proof as to the fact that we have a relatively high nerdy population at work, a population in which I count myself.

The $40 mark

Last week, I spent just over $40 to fill up about 11 gallons of gasoline in my car. $40 is very close to $36 or $38, but it caused a psychological reaction for me.

"Wow, $40? I remember when SUVs paid that, and I paid more like $15 or $20."

This will definitely make me take the bus more. But what's sad is:

• I can take the bus more. Not everyone has good (or even passable) public transit, and has to commute by car.
• Of those that have to commute by car, not everyone can really afford gas at these levels.

How do we support people who fall into the above description, while continuing to incent people like me to drive less and bus more?