The weather is cooler, almost cold, today and very misty.

Dominica was doing some oil production research today for her environmental research class and it got me wondering about which countries consume the most oil per capita. The United States is always noted in any headline about how much fuel we consume and how demanding we are on the global petroleum production system. In the list of the largest oil consuming nations per capita, I found, the United States ranks fifteenth. Not number one as people so often lead us to believe. In fact the U.S. is well in line with similar nations around the world. We come in two spots below our Canadian neighbours who have a very similar space and income profile to us.

When looking at oil consumption numbers it is tempting to see the United States as a largely disproportionate consumer by forgetting that the U.S. is a country of over 300 million citizens (with a large unknown “illegal immigrant” population as well) while it is compared principally against relatively tiny countries like Canada, the United Kingdom or France. Additionally the U.S. suffers from the worst “open space” issues of any country with its major cities lying heavily dispersed over a huge longitudinal and latitudinal space.

Canada, the only other nation with an even comparable metropolitan separation, has all of its major cities lie along a single line near the U.S. border and it has only one truly major city, Vancouver, on its Pacific coast leaving the majority of its traffic to occur over a relatively small, confined space giving it much of the profile of a European nation rather than being like the United States. International shipping from American neighbour contries also involves most shipping distance to be covered inside of U.S. borders with almost all significant Canadian destination or origination cities being right on the U.S. border. (A truck shipping product from Montreal to Atlanta, for example, will travel less than fifty miles in Canada but well over a thousand in the U.S.)

The United States also has a disproportionately high military consumption of petroleum products.  This large governmental usage of oil, which most of the population would rather not expend, comes out of our “per capita” statistics and makes the average American appear to expend far more petroleum than we really do.  Taking all this into account the U.S. appear to use disproportionately low levels of petroleum per capita when compared to nations of similar wealth and logistical concerns.

I went into Tribeca for a meeting this afternoon but as soon as I arrived there my BlackBerry service went down and I lost communications with the outside world.  It is amazing how quickly we become completely dependent on having complete communications at all times and have made no plans on how to communicate without it.  We didn’t manage to connect for the meeting so I just grabbed a sandwich in Tribeca and then decided to take advantage of the location and grab the early train home and do my late evening, which went till eight, from home rather than Wall Street.

Today is in the middle of the Tribeca Film Festival which is a pretty big deal and the office in Tribeca is right in the middle of all of the action.  I had to walk through the big “street fair” and got to see many of the festival stands and activities.  Greenwich Street was alive with activity starting all the way south at the World Trade Center site at Barclay.  There was a lot of interesting food available out there and it smelled very good.

Dominica came home and made herself dinner.  I skipped dinner as my lunch was so late.  She spent the evening, right up until midnight, working on her homework and assignments for her class at Empire State.  The class officially ends tonight.  She has already requested an extension but the professor is allowing submissions throughout the weekend.  So her goal, which she accomplished, was to complete all assignments except the final project tonight and have nothing to do over the weekend except for the final project itself.

I spent quite a bit of the evening reading.  I was pretty exhausted this evening and so I finished reading “Herding Cats” and read quite a chunk of “Agile Java Development.”  At midnight Dominica came to bed and we watched two episodes of the seventh season of The Cosby Show.  And then it was time for bed.  I have to be up before eight tomorrow morning as there is work to be done at the office that is scheduled for that time.

I am really going to miss the constant presence of Manhattan being just outside the window when we move away from here. Even if we don’t get to spend all that much time actually in the city it is just so amazing having it sitting right there. I love all of the twinkling lights and the passing cars on the bridges leading in and out of the city. I have always liked cities at night. So many people yet so quiet and still. I need to get some pictures of Manhattan at night from our view here before we leave. It is rather unlikely that I will ever have a view quite like this again. This is very much a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity, I’m sure. Nevertheless, we have had it for a year and a half and it will be over two years when we actually leave and I have worked from home a lot during that time and my work area has always had this view so very few people anywhere have had the chance to take advantage of such a view as much as I have.

We turned down our lease renewal. The apartment building offered a deal to those who would renew in March. Personally I think that it was a foolish move asking us to renew so far in advance. We didn’t have enough time to really think about or make any plans to stay or go. So, since we couldn’t guarantee that we needed to stay we effectively guaranteed that we weren’t. Had they extended the offer to a point where we were really able to make a commitment then we might easily have decided that staying in Newark for one more year was going to make sense. But, now we know that the financials just aren’t going to make sense for us next year and this apartment isn’t really an option. The handy thing for us is that now we have seven months to make plans for moving knowing exactly when we are moving. I have never had so much warning on a move before. Our last day in Newark, or at least at Eleven80, is October 31st. Now we just need to figure out exactly to where we are moving come November.

Oreo was very, very happy to be home today. He was so exhausted. Dominica tells me that he played a lot more than usual at daycare yesterday because Lana, the little puppy that he loves to play with, was in playing with another dog and Oreo just couldn’t resist and he played all day. He was all worked up and being crazy last night when he got home. Today he is making up for it. Just sleeping and sleeping. Even on his walk when he saw other dogs he could do no more than take a quick sniff to acknowledge their existence and drag himself along until he was able to do his business and then get back home to go to bed.

At one point late this morning our silly dog was sitting on the loveseat in the living room and was itching the middle of his back with his head turned all the way around. He was in the sunlight and apparently quite comfortable as he just fell asleep right in the middle of itching himself. It was the craziest thing to see. I look over and there he is all passed out in what appeared to be the most uncomfortable position imaginable. He was so sleepy that I was able to take several pictures of him and walk about without him stirring at all.

Dominica came home and we watched the final two episodes of the 2006 season of Doctor Who.  These were some seriously good but sad episodes.  We are definitely looking forward to the next season as well as to checking out Torchwood the Doctor Who spinoff series.  (For those in the know, “Torchwood” used to be a code name for “Doctor Who” used at the study.  You will notice that the letters from Doctor Who can be used to form the word Torchwood.)

After dinner and the show it was time for bed.  We “popped in” some What I Like About You that we watched while we cleaned in the bedroom.  Dominica assembled her new shoe rack and got it put into the closet which cleared up a ton of space and now the closet doors can close.  It also freed up some plastic bins that I need to organize other stuff around the house that has been sitting around waiting for a box into which to go.

I stayed up for a while after Dominica went to bed and did some web site work and Handbrake conversions.  Nothing heavy just some light stuff that needed my attention and that I wanted to get out of the way.  By a quarter after eleven, Oreo was getting quite insistent that I come to bed.  He doesn’t like it when one of us goes to bed early and one stays up.  It makes him nervous or something.

Dad is finally doing a rebuild of his Windows XP workstation today.  It has been been rebuilt in many years – even possibly never although that seems to be a stretch.  I generally recommend complete rebuilds every six to eighteen months with once a year being a pretty happy medium.  I rebuild my Linux box every six months but that is because I want to use the very latest OpenSUSE release.  My Windows machine probably sees a fresh install every nine months or so.  Being in the habit of constantly rebuilding means that you are always keeping things cleaned and you are always prepared to start fresh at any moment.

This coming weekend is going to be busy with homework.  Dominica is almost caught up in her class but still has a little bit that she needs to do plus the steady stream of new work.  This is one of my busy homework weekends just in general.  I am not behind at all but that doesn’t make it any easier.

I go in late on Fridays because I always have to stay late and normally no one needs me in the morning. But my BlackBerry was dead today so I decided to log in and check out my mail before heading in just to be on the safe side. I ended up working for two hours before heading out to catch the train.

Josh didn’t leave the apartment until eleven or so so that gave us a chance to hang out while I did some work. It was before ten when I left and he just dropped off my keys with the front desk. It was a short visit but more than most anyone else does. So far, other than our parents and siblings, only Josh and the Ralstons has come down from back home to visit us here. We have been here for two years now!

I grabbed breakfast from Airlie and got onto the PATH. I learned today that the PATH system is actually older than the New York City Subway and is the oldest underground train system in the New York City Metro area. Josh was planning to hit Food for Life for breakfast before heading off to Jersey City to work.

Work was quite busy. I was going crazy all day and was stuck working until rather late. But nothing that I wasn’t expecting so it was okay.

Before leaving the office, Kevin called to see if Dominica and I wanted to do dinner in Jersey City. He and Pam had run into Dominica on her way home so they had already talked to her. It was about twenty minutes before I got to leave the office so we planned to meet at the Newport/Pavona PATH station in Jersey City. That trip is really easy as it is a direct connection from World Trade Center where I get onto the train.

We all had dinner at Raaz, an Indian restaurant right across the street from the train station. Jersey City is so easy to deal with via the PATH. The PATH is almost a dedicated subway system for Jersey City and Hoboken with commuter connections to Newark and Manhattan.

Dinner was really good. Having lived in Newark for so long (Newark isn’t really a part of New Jersey) we have forgotten about the “New Jersey restaurant bill” problem where every restaurant in the state is happy to bring you food but then never brings you the bill and just forgets that you are there. Since we moved to New Jersey it has been completely consistent that no restaurant will ever bring you a bill no matter how much you try to get one. They just refuse to let you leave and yet they completely stop serving you so they don’t make any more money. In fact, it lowers their tips. And worse than that, in cases like tonight, the restaurant was completely full without any seats available and people were turning around at the door and deciding not to eat there even though there were multiple tables waiting half an hour or more to pay and leave after they were done and bored. It is one of the most bizarre business traditions I have ever seen. In New York the bill comes with dinner and if you want coffee and dessert they take the bill back and add that to it. They never take a risk of you taking up valuable real estate if you don’t want to. They don’t kick you out but they sure don’t do anything to make you stay against your will – and I appreciate that.

After dinner we came home and took care of Oreo. Then it was off to bed. I have a lot of work to do this weekend so I am going to be quite busy. No D&D tomorrow, unfortunately.