Just my random thoughts of the day, often something techie or geeky, but sometimes not! Linux, Open source computing, Internet technology, personal finances (taxes, investing, housing), on-line calculators, online specials, Christian music, St. Louis sports and transportation news. I can ramble about anything...
Wash U Commuter Zip Code Statistics for Number Geeks!
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This morning I received my regular Washington University propaganda e-mail spam which had an interesting article about a cool competition at the Olin Business School. The Olin Sustainability Case Competition has students thinking of ways to solve the parking problem we have here on campus and possibly win a $5,000 prize.While checking their site I found a PDF file which contains some interesting survey data about from where all the Wash U students, faculty and staff commute. The data there is hopefully from a representative sampling, since there are many more than 300 faculty members and much more than 900 staff members (I know I do not believe I took that survey). I compiled the survey data and wrote up my own little PHP statistics page which I put on my web site. This includes the top 30 zip codes (by total number of commuters) and I let the user sort by any column and I allow display the percentages of the totals. From the page you can see the ZIP codes where commuting students prefer compared to the ones faculty and staff prefer. Some trends are obvious, with 63130 (U-City) being the top pick for all categories, but the differences are what makes this interesting. Whereas three ZIP codes cover more than half of the faculty (63130, 63105-Clayton and 63108-CWE), the Skinker-DeBaliviere area (63112) comes in second for students, probably due to all the Quadrangle apartments there where graduate students live. In fact adding 63112 to the top three amongst the faculty (63130, 63105, 63108) totals over two thirds of the commuting students. The staff members are much more spread out throughout the area as expected with 63130 being the only ZIP code with more than 10% of the FT staff. I was surprised that some pretty far out ZIP codes like 63129 and 63021 have more than 30 full-time staff members. The FT staff members in the city tend to prefer the more laid back, family oriented areas in 63109 and 63139 as opposed to the student heavy CWE or DeBaliviere areas. In the county they tend to live in the areas with good schools, even if they are a bit further from campus (Webster, Kirkwood, etc). I love looking at numbers!
On a somewhat related note, the Citizens for Modern Transit also e-mailed me the YouTube link to see the advertisement where Chancellor Wrighton promotes Proposition A. He only has a few seconds, but he is standing on the corner of Big Bend and Forest Park Parkway facing Lopata House with Zelema Harris from St. Louis Community College. I think is it cool that they timed the shoot to include a Metrobus as it went by on its daily route. That must have been a planned appearance.
We had been seeing the ads for the restaurant at L'Ecole Culinaire and since we live so close by we thought we would try it out. We had always enjoyed dining out at cooking or hotel schools like the CHIC in Chicago and the Statler at Cornell where we went to college. Since we still love to go out and eat here in St. Louis , we ventured over to their restaurant on the first day they were open for lunch. The first thing we noticed is that they do not have much parking! They really need to let patrons know where they are supposed to park. The restaurant itself is small but very well attended. There was one fellow who kept straightening all the centerpieces and place settings on the tables, and we always saw one or two student workers milling about. The lunch menu was small and the choices did not appear overly "gourmet". The special of the day was a bison burger stuffed with cheese, and other choices picked by my group included a club sandwich, a "margherita" pi...
My wife has been researching type 2 diabetes and recently checked a book out of the library which included a body mass index (BMI) chart much like the one pictured here. Whereas it is fairly easy to follow, I, of course, think it must be converted to an online calculator! However, when I checked the Internet, there were already a billion of them so I had to make one that was different. So my lovely BMI BMR calculator accepts either inches or centimeters for your height and pounds or kilograms for your weight and calculates not only your BMI, but also your BMR (basal metabolic rate) which determines how many calories you should consume! So I made a spiffy "all in one" healthy body indicator calculator which not only determines how underweight or overweight you are, but also tells you how many calories you should consume to maintain or improve your ideal weight.
We live in an older home with a lot of issues and one of them concerns our back door to our patio from our sunroom. The door has double paned glass on it, but unfortunately the seal has broken so you can see moisture collect inside of it. We decided the easiest way to "remedy" the problem was to cover the window with some "frosted" film so we did not have to see the moisture condensing between the panes. But the question was, what film? There are a bunch of them available so we had to select something to try on the door. The first place we tried was our nearby Lowe's store which had a bunch of Gila brand film. We selected what seemed like the typical adhesive based door sized film that cost about $25 after tax. We thought it could not be that hard to put up and look nice on our door. So one day my wife ran out and purchased it at Lowe's and we commenced to install it on our door window. We made our own soapy water solution and followed the directions...
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