Critter-Cages sent e.mail to me last night, announcing that the Habitrail Mini and accessories that I had ordered from them on 20 October have shipped. UPS reports that the package was given to them earlier in the evening. Given that it's coming from the Los Angeles area, I would expect to receive it to-day.

I am very glad that I'm apparently going to be able to include Habitrail parts in the home that I will give my mouse, mostly because of the Mini Loft — I remember how Bob and Ray used to sleep in their loft (which was hamster-sized, because Hagen wasn't making mouse-sized Habitrail things back then), which was apparently where they felt most secure. It may prove that the Crittertrail is where the new mouse will want to spend its time sleeping, but I wanted it to have the option of the loft.

Up-Date: The package indeed arrived this after-noon, and seems to be quite in order.

Oog.

A man and woman who live in the same apartment complex as do I have a little table that they keep just outside the entrance to their unit.

Last year, as Hallowe'en approached, they decorated the area in front of their apartment, and began leaving a bowl of candy in front of it, unattended, night-and-day. I bought a bag of small Butterfinger bars, and one night surreptitiously added them to the bowl. This act apparently disturbed someone, as the bowl was thereäfter taken-in at night, and returned sometime in the daylight, until Hallowe'en had passed.

In December, they placed a small Christmas tree on the table. Early one morning, I slipped a gift-wrapped large Butterfinger bar under it.

This season, they again put out the Hallowe'en decorations, and the bowl, but they take it in when they retire. I have been carrying-around another bag of small Butterfinger bars, hoping for a chance to add them undetected. But, repeatedly, when I have gone by their unit, the fellow has been sitting near the window, such that he might turn and look at an unfortunate moment.

However, last night, the bowl was out and there seemed no one at the window. I grabbed three or four small bars — more bars would have taken more time — and added them to the bowl. Then I walked on towards the mailboxes. Seconds later, the man came round the corner, returning with their dog from a walk. I greeted the dog by name (I don't know the name of the man), but kept walking.

Perhaps I am now a person of interest in their investigations. In any case, the bowl was not out when I returned late last night.

As European politicians and pundits tut-tut over the ostensible relative deficiencies of American economic policy, pay attention to what is happening to exchange rates.

By itself, the absolute level of exchange rates isn't particularly meaningful — that's really just a matter of scaling. but movements of exchange rates are significant. When the value of one currency is dropping relative to that of another, it means that people are trying to shift holdings in the former to holdings in the latter.

These days, the dollar is generally strengthening with respect to the pound and with respect to the euro, which means that people are trying to increase their share of currency that buys stuff in America relative to their share of currency that buys stuff in Europe.

That doesn't mean that economic conditions in America aren't bad, but it strongly argues that conditions in Europe are worse.

I learned yester-day that PetSmart, at least in this area, does not sell mice of both sexes at any of its stores. The store on Murphy Canyon Road sells only female mice; that in La Jolla sells only male mice; and so forth.

I guess that this practice is to avoid any accidental pregnancies. Certainly, some customers would be very unhappy to find Minnie producing an unexpected litter.

When they notice that I have shut-down my computer and am packing to leave, people intending to be helpful sometimes unplug my computer. Unfortunately, they often or always do so by pulling on the cord itself, rather than the plug. Largely as a result, I have had yet another cord begin to fail recently. I have some replacements on-order, but I also plan to repair the three failing cords that I have at-hand.

A failure is almost invariably where the plug joins the cord, such that replacing the plug will restore the unit. Further, I could get a plug with some sort of sleeve, so that people would be grabbing that, rather than the cord.

To-day I have looked for replacement plugs at CVS, at Fry's Electrionics, at Radio Shack, and at Target, unsuccessfully at each place. (I could have bought a whole power cord at Fry's Electronics, but I need a cord with a special sort of plug at its other end, to join it to a power adapter.) I was fairly certain that I could find some at Ace Hardware (to which I would have gone to-day had they been open while I was running errands); but my search of their website yielded surprised disappointment.

It used to be that replacement plugs were readily found at the sorts of places to which I went. There world has changed in a small-but-telling way. People are far less inclined to repair electrical devices than once they were; they more often simply discard them. A large part of that shift is almost surely economically efficient — repairs can consume more resources than replacements — but it's also part of a larger trend of people becoming ever less able to do things for themselves, and that saddens me.

Up-Date (2008:10/27): ForensicEye (by way of the Woman of Interest) informs me that he gets replacement plugs at Home Depot

Up-Date (2008:10/30): I noticed that the website for Home Depot did not list any replacement plugs, in spite of the assurance from ForensicEye that plugs can be found in their stores. So I called to check whether a similar situation obtains with respect to Ace Hardware, and was told that they carry them in their stores despite the lack of listing on their website. So the plugs are more difficult to find than once they were, but we're not reached the point where Ace Hardware doesn't have them.

Oog.

For many years, I've been curious about Just Imagine, a 1930 science-fiction film ostensibly depicting the world of 1980, when airplanes have replaced cars, pills have replaced food and drink, and designators such as LN-18 have replaced names as we know them.

I finally got a copy a few days ago, and this morning I finished watching it. It's a remarkably bad film — bad science, bad plot, bad acting (even Maureen O'Sullivan is hard to take), bad jokes, bad songs, bad choreography. And bad mathematics, as someone who was a little boy in 1930 has become someone in his seventies or older.

The state has intruded into people's lives in various ways, but these ways are more inane than ominous, without having much satiric value. For example, the elimination of old-fashioned names isn't accompanied by any discernible attempt to rob people of individual identity. LN-18 is called LN (pronounced /ɛlˈɛn/), which might as well be Ellén, and J-21 is called J (/djeː/), which might as well be Jay. The romantic conflict exists because the state must decide which of two men shall marry LN-18, but only because she approved an application from each. And, rather than making a better case that she should have been able to withdraw such permission, the movie concludes with the state ultimately choosing the man for her whom she loves.

(For an evaluation very different from mine, see the review from the New York Times, 22 November 1930.)

I got a note the other day referring to 12:00p.m when its author plainly meant noon.

Okay, now, folks, p.m. stands for post meridiem — after noon. Noon isn't after itself. There is a 12:01 p.m., a 12:00:01 p.m., a 12:00:00.0…01 p.m.. But if there is any 12:00 p.m., then it would be mid-night; which, awkwardly, is also the only candidate for 12:00 a.m., since noon also isn't before noon (ante meridiem) either.

Calling noon 12:00 m. would just confuse people, as they'd take the m. as standing for midnight, but 12:00 n. is nicely unambiguous.

Yester-day, a sort of rough-and-ready fix was applied to the balcony supports. Perhaps by the land-lord; perhaps by a desperate tenant; perhaps by an architectural vigilante.