MY First Experiment (in Econ)

This morning was the first time we ran a real session of my public goods experiment. It went off without a hitch. We only had 10 participants, but they gave us some good stuff. It was really sweet to watch 10 people playing the game from the control room (because I was always "playing" the game in the past, for troubleshooting purposes, and couldn't watch the live updating of everyone's decisions).

This has been a work in progress since the end of the summer. Although I revised the program a few times, if it weren't that Sean helped debug the program so well, I bet something would have gone wrong today. Fortunately, there weren't ANY problems during today's session. The participants made really good money, so I bet there will be a word-of-mouth promotion boosting our experiment's participation.

We're running another session in a week and Dr. Isaac is going to present some preliminary results at a conference over the winter break. Sweet.

Camelbak Cleaning Kit

I've wanted a Camelbak for a really long time. I finally decided to buy one before I left for Spain. Since getting it, I learned that it's a bear to clean, mostly because it's nearly impossible to dry. Camelbak makes a cleaning kit for their bladders and I bought one from Sunshine Cycles earlier this semester. It comes with a specially shaped bottle brush to clean the bladder, a cool cleaner snake thing that goes through the straw, some anti-bacterial tablets (for heavy cleanings), and a hanger/dryer. It makes cleaning the Camelbak about 50 times easier, which means that I'm more likely to do it. In fact, I give it at least a cursory cleaning and allow it to dry after every use.

If you have a Camelbak and find that it's not so fun to clean, I recommend dropping the money for the cleaning kit.

La Fea Más Bella en DVD

Hoy encontré (y compré) en amazon.com un pre-order del DVD de Televisa de La Fea Más Bella. Dice que hay 3 discos, 700 minutos. No es posible caber todos los capítulos en dicho espacio. Será interesante ver que hicieron para cortar el programa. Pues, no vi ni el principio ni el final de la telenovela cuando estaba en la pantalla por Univisión.

Está disponible el 27 de Noviembre. Cuesta unos $20. Es una inversión para mi. Espero que tenga tiempo para verlo. Tal vez sobre las vacaciones del invierno.

Pick #48

Baxter - "Leave" from Wine and Spirits

You can go to CD Baby via the above link and listen to a clip of this song. BTW, CD Baby is a great website to get a hold of music that's hard to snag anywhere else.

A Unifying Theme

I've seen many blogs that focus on a very specific subject matter. This sounds like a good idea, if you have enough material. It's kind of the beauty of those blogs. I know that mine is all disjointed. Turns out that it's kind of like the way my head works. I never can get deep enough into one topic without my train of thought getting derailed and switching to another. I like having my pick of the weeks, the occasional Spanish entry, pictures, random stories, things about econ, comparisons I may make between different events...it's all very Austin-like if I do say so myself. I think it's likely that if you spent a day with me, whatever we did/discussed would closely mirror the variety presented in this blog. I ramble. Online, there's nobody to cut me off and tell me to stop.

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

You might be amused by the blog on Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century.

I've been pretty lazy these past couple days, not much to think about or say.

Pollution Problem

This picture was taken while I was on family vacation in Virginia, summer 2006. We were at an overlook in Comers Rock. You're supposed to be able to see clearly the third row of mountains (click the picture for a full-size image, then look at the dim outline that represents the third row of mountains). The locals tell me that the reason you can't see so far some days is because of pollution. We had the same limited visibility problem on the Blue Ridge Parkway. What a shame.

While pollution might make for great sunsets in California, it's not helping the scenery in Appalachia.