Tolerable Monday

[altivo]

Probably as good as it gets. Car service took only an hour and cost $20. They found no surprise problems. Conveniently, at lunchtime a coworker who lives in that direction was driving right past the dealership, so she gave me a ride and I got the car back before rush hour.

Straightened out (I hope) a confusion about five new desktop machines I ordered last week when I got the confirmation message and saw sales tax on it. The library is exempt of course, as a local government agency. Had to fax the seller (another) copy of our exemption letter.

Cataloged some odds and ends, retuned some security on the firewall, spot checked bandwidth consumption. Put together small order for computer supplies we need. In spite of threatening sky and forecast, it did not rain all day, or at all for that matter.

In ten free minutes before going home, I found the problem that was keeping Hercules from running on my desktop machine and fixed it. Not that I have any great need of an imitation mainframe at work, but it's good for "gosh golly" effect.

Using Simpson's rule for the algorithm, I got another decimal place of PI on the Alpha. That brings me to 16 decimals. Considerable improvement in time, as well. Using my own algorithm, it took 30 hours of CPU time to reach 15 decimal places. Simpson's converged at 16 decimals in 24.5 hours. My algorithm would have required 300 hours (approximately) to get the same result. ;p

I'm curious to try Romberg's method which is supposed to converge even faster, but I need time to code and test it and that hasn't appeared yet.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

That's a bit cheap isn't it? Suspiciously cheap o.O

[altivo]

No, $20 to $25 is about normal for an oil and filter change here. I think their base charge is $19.95 plus tax or something like that. I don't do these myself any more, because it's too big a hassle to get the used oil recycled and such. The new oil costs $12 and the filter at least $3 if I buy them and do it. Far easier to just let the dealer take care of it. Then it's on their record too in case a warranty issue ever comes up, and they can't say I didn't maintain the engine properly.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Gad O.O, I buy a synthetic oil of my own choosing which costs $60/5L and use genuine Toyota filters at around $15 each. A general oil change tends to cost about $50-$80 depending on car and where you get it serviced.

[altivo]

Well, oil prices in the US are still artificially low to start with. I'm not specifying synthetic but letting them use whatever they normally provide to meet the warranty requirements. And competition in the "oil change" market is fierce over here. There are quick change places in every small town, and the going rate for a basic oil and filter change is $25 or less, varying depending on the current price of oil.