Casa Jonsson

Nils & Araceli’s home on the web, est. 2003

Curiouser and curiouser

L. Scott Johnson just submitted a few new autonyms (‘written’, ‘writable’ and ‘abbr.’) and a contranym (‘highfalutin’). His ideas inspired me to think of a new pair of strange attractors: ‘left-to-right’ and ‘right-to-left’, which become strange when you try translating them into a Semitic language such as Arabic. 

Go jump in a Lake

Successful traders manage risk. And you can’t manage what you can’t measure. There are widely used metrics designed to help quantify risk-adjusted reward, but they have their limitations. One number that investors like to look at when evaluating the track records of commodities trading advisors is the Sharpe Ratio. This number does measure reward-to-risk, but […]

It works for me

My team at work is pretty international. The other day Roberto, whose office is next to mine, wrote It works for me on his whiteboard. Someone had reported a bug to him but he couldn’t reproduce it. (What he meant by “It works for me” was, “It works on my machine.”) Later he wrote the […]

Happy happy rainbow man

I just took yet another personality profile. I found the link because someone else took it and was dubbed “The Black Knight.” That sounds almost as cool as Christopher Nolan’s new Batman movie coming out next summer. I thought, Maybe I’m a black knight, too! “None shall pass!”
But no-o-o-o-o. I get to be …

our distinct personality, […]

Cateclysm!

Our church has been encouraging parents to teach their children from the children’s catechisms. A catechism is a tool for learning truths about God and his Word by rote, something most young children can excel at. But sometimes big words are still a bit of a stretch!
The other night at dinner our middle child started […]

The coalition of the blogging

Sarah’s having trouble with comment spam. She’s retreating in the face of these assaults.
A while ago I was just as desperate because my efforts at defeating spam weren’t working. I should give an update, though, because (knock on Formica®) I’m winning all my battles against spammers these days.
From:    Nils Jonsson
Sent:    Wednesday, September 15, 2004, 11:28 AM
To:      […]

Pinch me

I just got a chance to take a look at this month’s issue of our favorite magazine that arrived in the mail today. I did a victory dance around the room when I saw my name in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly. Twice!

This is the closest to a classy byline as I get, best-selling […]

Uh-oh, here we go

Our oldest, who just started kindergarten, received  a phone call last night from a young lady in his class. Sounds to me like Valentina wants a valentino. 

The home team

Tribe. Tribe, Tribe! TRIBE!!
Having grown up outside Cleveland, I’m feeling pretty smug about the spanking that the Indians gave the Yankees on Tuesday. It was the worst shutout in over a hundred years of the game’s history. 

Demo track

Last night I made  a demo track (Windows Media Player required) of “Meditation (Psalm 19)”. It really doesn’t sound too bad considering I recorded this in my livingroom with a computer headset mic I bought for $15 at Walmart.
Maybe I’ll start moonlighting as a competitor to Lance’s slick little operation. I’ll call my new business […]

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