Fortress Update

Well, my highly unreliable contractor (Ruben Ponce) has done it again.

Earlier this week, through my own personal inspection and the help of a very experienced friend (Dick F.), I determined that the work done on the form and reinforcing steel for the roof was unacceptable. There were many problems. My contractor came out to my site, reviewed the list of discrepancies with me, and agreed to fix them – before the inspection scheduled for Wednesday.

Naturally, he never showed up on Monday afternoon, Tuesday, or Wednesday. But he did call me on Thursday morning to tell me that he had rescheduled the inspection for that same day (which was yesterday), and he was convinced that the work would pass inspection without any additional changes. He then said he'd still make the changes I'd requested, but I suspect that once the inspection was passed, he'd put all his efforts into convincing me to pour the roof as is.

Well, the inspector showed up yesterday, as scheduled. He did not approve the job. He found six specific discrepancies (five of which corresponded to one of the eight that I found, and one of which was a new one) that will have to be fixed before he will approve it. He also made quite a few additional criticisms of the job; things he said he'd still approve anyway, as they didn't violate any building code or regulation – but things that he would never allow on any job he was in charge of.

Sigh. So now I know that my own intuitions, and the judgment of my experienced friend, were closer to the mark than my contractor. And I still haven't been able to get my contractor out here.

Rope.
Tree.
Contractor.
Some assembly required…

If Your Wallet is Stolen…

One of my loyal readers (Chrys) passes along this email she received. I can't personally vouch for the contents (other than the phone numbers given, which do check out), but it all seems quite sensible to me:

A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.

1. The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name put on them. If someone takes your checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your bank will know how you sign your checks.

2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put "PHOTO ID REQUIRED."

3. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check-processing channels will not have access to it.

4. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone.
If you have a PO Box, use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks, (DUH!). You can add it if it is necessary. However, if you have it printed, anyone can get it.

5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. Also carry a photocopy of your passport when traveling either here or abroad. We have all heard horror stories about fraud that is committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit cards.

6. When you check out of a hotel that uses cards for keys (and they all seem to do that now), do not turn the "keys" in. Take them with you and destroy them. Those little cards have on them all of the information you gave the hotel, including address and credit card numbers and expiration dates. Someone with a card reader, or employee of the hotel, can access all that information with no problem whatsoever.

Unfortunately, as an attorney, I have first hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, ha d a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer and received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online.

Here is some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know :

1. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. The key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.

2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). However, here is what is perhaps most important of all (I never even thought to do this.)

3. Call the three national credit reporting organizations
immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet and contents being stolen:

1. Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
2. Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
3. TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289
4. Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271

Vote for Hillary!

From Simi L., our morning political humor:

One day, the seven dwarfs left to go work in the mine. Snow White stayed home to prepare lunch. When she arrived at the mine with the lunch, she saw that there had been a terrible cave in. Tearfully, and fearing the worst, Snow White began calling out, hoping against hope that some of the dwarves had survived. "Hello, hello," she called. "Can anyone hear me? Hello!" For quite a while, there was no answer. Losing hope, Snow White called again, "Hello. Is anyone down there?"

Just as she was about to give up all hope, there came a faint voice from deep in the mine. The voice said, "Vote for Hillary. Vote for Hillary."

Snow White, somewhat relieved screamed out, "Oh, thank God. Dopey is still alive."

The 2008 Presidential elections are absolutely rife with opportunities for humor. Perhaps this will help offset the generally pathetic field of candidates…

The Rock

My mom sent me an email full of photos of a rock in Iowa, covered with patriotic art. The email had this message:

I'm told that there is a huge rock near a gravel pit on Hwy.25 in rural Iowa. For generations, kids have painted slogans, names, and obscenities on this rock, changing its character many times.. A few months back, the rock received its latest paint job, and since then it has been left completely undisturbed. It's quite an impressive sight. Be sure to scroll down and check out the multiple photos (all angles) of the rock. I thought the flag was draped over the rock, but it's not. It's actually painted on the rock too.

Of course with emails like this, you always have to wonder if it's for real. So I went to Snopes, and they have certified it as a true story – and, as is their wont, they've collected a lot more information about it:

We can't recall an occasion since the brief lifetime of the infamous Malibu Canyon "Pink Lady" nearly four decades ago that a painted rock drew as much attention as the one pictured nearby.

The object captured in the images displayed above is a 12-foot-high, 56-ton rock which stands alongside Highway 25 in Iowa, about a mile south of the town of Greenfield exit from Interstate 80. For years it featured nothing but graffiti scrawled upon its face by a host of itinerant youngsters — until 1999, when a young man who had grown up in Greenfield was inspired by the film Saving Private Ryan to make better use of the natural canvas.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen II, now a Des Moines resident who works as an ad/web designer, was a 19-year-old Iowa State University student who had seen the Greenfield rock many times before when, around Memorial Day in 1999, he decided to begin what has become an ongoing artistic tribute to America's veterans:

It was right around Memorial Day, and I was driving by that rock and wondered what it would be like if I actually took the time to go out there and paint it. And so I painted it with the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. I got such a huge response that I kept painting it. I've been painting it for the last five years with tributes to veterans on Memorial Day.

Each year around Memorial Day, Ray uses white paint to cover over his previous year's work, then spends one to three weeks creating new scenes on his blank canvas. The photographs shown above capture the 2003-04 version of the famous Iowa rock, which featured scenes depicting Washington's crossing of the Delaware, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and America's response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, interspersed with quotes from presidents Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush, all capped by renderings of draped American and POW/MIA flags.

Only once in the six years he has been painting the rock has his work been defaced, Ray told an American Forces Press Service reporter: his 60th anniversary tribute to veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack painted in 2001 was vandalized a few weeks after it was completed, but the perpetrator "got a punch in the face from a Vietnam War veteran for his trouble," and his work has remained undisturbed ever since.

It turns out that Bubba – who is now a web site designer – has a nice web site of his own, showing off the paintings on the rock for each of the past eight years. Check it out!

Lyons Peak Cameras

I've mentioned in past posts that Lyons Peak (just east of the town of Jamul) has four web cameras on it. These cameras update every two minutes, and they look to the four compass cardinal points (north, east, south, and west).

While these cameras are very useful exactly as they were, I thought of some ways to make them better still. So I built a web page (link is at right as well) to implement these features: overlays pointing out prominent local features, automatic sizing of the image to your screen's size, and automatic refreshing on an interval that you can select. Enjoy!

Fortress Update

The news this morning is not so good. Together with a friend (Dick F.) who is very experienced in concrete construction, I went over the roof form and rebar very carefully, “pre-inspecting” it myself. We found eight problems, some of which are likely to cause a problem with the inspection. The rest might pass inspection, but they are problems for me – for example, the slope of the roof is lower than the plan, which will likely cause pooling.

So this morning I have a meeting with my contractor, whom I hope will be able to address my list of complaints. We'll see…

Update: met with my contractor, and I have secured his agreement to fix every item on my list. Now if he'll just do the uncharacteristic thing, and actually follow through with his promise…

Update II and bump: Well, my contractor is behaving exactly as usual – incommunicado for most of yesterday and today, promises to show up here to do the work before the inspection (which was rescheduled for tomorrow morning (Thursday), and … nothing. Nada. Zip. No contractor. No masons. No phone calls. No returned phone calls.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, Paul J. had me in stitches with this email:

Sounds like an opportunity...

You contract David directly, Dick F. oversees for one of those packs of beer that you hate, but America being America you have to consider the insurance......... . Ah- sue Contractor's insurance for the cost :-)

Better still, pay David in education credits for his kids and get a tax break? Get a TV channel to sponsor the Fortress as a reality show.......

This is getting silly, need to turn in now.

It will work out, even if you have to ask the blog readers to turn up en-masse and fix it up for the price of a BBQ. You can profile the volunteers based on their answers to your science-related weekly quizzes.

How about it, dear readers? Are you up for a BBQ?

Ponder These...

…and simultaneously ponder the future of mankind.

This Week's Puzzler

Update and bump:

Simon M. writes with a question about exactly what “thread count” actually means. There are two ways one could interpret that phrase: that in one square inch there are 200 threads (counting the threads going in both directions, so 100 in each direction), or that there are 200 threads per inch going one way (so 400 going both ways). I'm not sure what the correct use of that terminology is, but … for the purposes of my puzzler, I mean the second definition (200 going each way in a square inch, for 400 threads all together).

Original post:

Suppose you have a bed sheet that is exactly 6 feet wide and 8 feet long, with 200 thread count. If all the threads that comprise the sheet were laid end-to-end, how long would the resulting thread be (in miles)?

Cast your vote at right…

Last Week's Puzzler

To be fair, there is some legitimate debate about which tyrant was the worst of the lot. Specifically, there are some reputable historians who believe Josef Stalin was the worst of the lot, and others who believe (mainly on the basis of recently revealed evidence) that Mao Tse Tung was the one. On the basis of what I have personally read, I'd say the preponderance of the evidence would give Mao the nod.

George W. Bush (I knew someone would vote for him!) doesn't even place in the top 100 on this scale.

I expected many more people to vote for Adolf Hitler, based on his notoriety – my readers are apparently better informed than most Americans…

Fortress Update

Ready for the final inspection! The inspector is scheduled to visit on Monday morning, and with any luck at all, we'll pass the inspection and pour concrete on Monday. Woo hoo!

The photo at right was the last one I took today, after spending most of the day working with the crew. I accidentally caught a piece of wood in mid-air – someone below launched the wood up just as I snapped this. What I was really trying to capture was the two “mats” of rebar up on the roof. There's an amazing amount of structural steel up there, waiting to be covered in concrete.

Today, for some reason I never did figure out, David decided to bring most of his family along: his wife, his daughter Alicia, and three of his five boys: David Jr., Eduardo, and Alfredo. Except for Alicia, all of them worked at least part of the day, even if it was just being a gopher. They all work together very well, with the kind of teasing and ribbing you'd expect from a team very comfortable working with each other. Everybody was always willing and ready to pitch in, and everybody seems to know how to do a great many things…

Yesterday they finished putting the extra shoring on the interior part of the form. It looks very sturdy now!

A neighbor and friend, Dick F. (who has lots of concrete experience) came over to show David and the rest of the crew a better way to lift the two rebar mats up to the correct height above the bottom of the form. There was a little friction at first – I think David was probably a little put out by the idea of someone telling him what to do – but he seemed to realize quickly that he might be able to learn something useful from Dick. In the end, they supported the rebar in exactly the way Dick recommended, and it looks very good to me. There's one small area where I think the top mat is a little too close to the bottom mat, but that's easily fixed if the inspector believes its a problem.

The rest of these photos show scenes from yesterday's and today's work.

Fortress Update

This is almost getting to be routine – one day after another of great progress!

As of this morning, we are getting dangerously close to being ready for the final concrete pour. The forms are completely finished (although they're going to do some extra bracing on the interior section this morning), the bottom web of rebar is complete, and the top web of rebar is well underway. We need a few more pieces of rebar, and my contractor is supposed to bring them this morning before 11 am. Of course, he's been saying he'd bring them every single day this week, sometimes promising them on multiple occasions in a single day – but they haven't shown up yet.

In an earlier fortress update, I promised I'd share my load calculations. The interior portion of the forms (the only worrisome part) has to hold up a chunk of concrete that is 16' by 16' by 11.25" (average). This works out to 39,120 pounds – 20 tons. A total of 45 4x4s will be holding that weight up, evenly distributed between them. The loading on each 4x4 is therefore 869 lbs, and that is well within their strength limits – depending on the variety and quality of the wood, a 4x4 should be able to easily handle 4 to 10 times that loading. So no worries on that score…

It's been interesting to watch how David approaches the construction of the rebar. Basically he's building the two webs directly on top of the form, and will worry about securing them at the proper level as the very last step. By doing this, he makes it much easier to put the bars into place and secure them with twisted wire – he's free to walk all over them without having to worry about falling through. He's described how the two webs will be lifted into the proper position – that process sounds quite interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing it happen – hopefully, later today!

If that so-and-so contractor of mine actually makes it here with the rebar…

Change for a Penny...

From Jackie B.:

These are actual quotes taken from Federal Government employee performance evaluations. Sadly, probably 98% of them are still in their jobs:

1. "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock bottom and has started to dig."
   
   
2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."
   
   
3. "This employee is really not so much of a 'has-been', but more of a definite 'won't be.'"
   
   
4. "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."
   
   
5. "When he opens his mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."
   
   
6. "This young lady had delusions of adequacy."
   
   
7. "He sets low personal standards and the consistently fails to achieve them."
   
   
8. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
   
   
9. "This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts the better."
   
   
10. "Got a full six pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together."
    
    
11. "A gross ignoramus. 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."
    
    
12. "He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a distributor."
    
    
13. "I would like to go hunting with him sometime."
    
    
14. "He's been working with glue too much."
    
    
15. "He would argue with a signpost."
    
    
16. "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."
    
    
17. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."
    
    
18. "If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."
    
    
19. "A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."
    
    
20. "A prime candidate for natural de-selection."
    
    
21. "Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."
    
    
22. "Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn’t coming."
    
    
23. "He's got two brain cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."
    
    
24. "If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."
    
    
25. "If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."
    
    
26. "If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."
    
    
27. "It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."
    
    
28. "One neuron short of a synapse."
    
    
29. "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."
    
    
30. "Takes him two hours to watch '60 Minutes.'"
    
    
31. "The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.

What's your favorite? Let us know in the comments. I had a hard time choosing just one, but I think my favorite is #12…

Misty Morning...

We took our usual walk “up the hill” this morning, but the view was anything but ordinary. It was crisp – cool and humid – as the sun peeked over our local mountains, and the fresh sun lit up a layer of low clouds below us. The photos here were all taken looking roughly north, toward Cajon Mountain, Viejas Mountain, and Cuyamaca Mountain. The layer of fog visible is mainly in Lawson Valley (where we live), in its reaches that are lower in altitude than our home.

Below are three more views from our walk. The left-hand photo is a panorama stitched together from three separate photos; it really needs to be enlarged (click on it) to appreciate it.

Fortress Update

Ah, another day of great progress on our safe house! The bottom part of the form for the roof overhang has been completed, and the bottom web of rebar on the roof is a little over half done. We needed some more lumber, and my contractor delivered it this afternoon – about eight hours after it was promised, but it is here. That means that David (the mason) and his son can continue working today!

A friend and neighbor (Dick F.) visited yesterday afternoon. He happens to be a retired concrete contractor, with something like 1,000 years of experience in the trade (Dick is older than dirt). He used to run big crews who built large commercial buildings, rides at Magic Mountain, bridges, and the like. Suffice it to say that he knows his stuff when it comes to concrete. Well, he went out and inspected my safe house – and was largely satisfied with what he found. He gave me some very useful tips to help ensure the quality of the job, which I will certainly follow. But his approval of the workmanship to date is very comforting…

I learned something yesterday that completely removes the concern I expressed a couple of days ago, about the blocks on the west side being higher than the blocks on the east side. It turns out that I misunderstood David in a profound way – the blocks really are level after all. It's the form that's not level, and it is sloped in order to put a slope on the roof (to let rain water run off) while keeping the roof slab a constant thickness. That part is great, and makes perfect sense. What didn't make sense was the amount of slope: 2 inches in an (approximately) 18 foot run. This slope is actually called out on the plans as a minimum of 1/4 inch per foot of run, which works out to about 4 1/2 inches in the 18 foot run. When I pointed this out to David, there was a bit of consternation – but then he figured out that he'd simply make the slab thicker on the uphill side (by 2 1/2 inches) to adjust the slope. He believes this will cause no problem at all with the inspection.

Zaca Fire

The Zaca fire is huge, over a month old, and it's a long way (over 150 miles, up north of Santa Barbara) from our home – and yet the smoke from it was all over San Diego today. Every time we stepped outside, the smoke stung our eyes and offended our noses. This photo, taken from nearby Lyons Peak this evening at 7:12, shows how thick the smoke is here.

It's hard to imagine what it must be like just downwind from the fire…

Fortress Update

After still more trials and tribulations – all involving misdeeds or failures to act by my contractor – work on our safe-house is underway again. David (our mason) was out here with yet another of his sons (this time his oldest, also David). They worked hard all day, as always. Today they started on the “forms” – the wooden structures that will hold the liquid concrete in place when they pour the roof. Today they largely completed the part of the form that will shape the interior ceiling. Tomorrow they will put a few more supports for this in place, then construct the forms that will shape the overhang of the roof, and its edges.

The weight of the concrete roof (which I've calculated will be about 23 tons) means that the supports for the form have to be very, very strong. At the same time, though, the form is a temporary structure, and it must be easy to take apart. Those constraints make the form-work an interesting engineering challenge. One simple device David used will make the disassembly much easier – he's using special nails with two “heads” on them. One head is where it usually is, on the end of the nail opposite the pointy end. The other head is about a quarter inch from the first head, down the nail's shaft. When the nail is hammered in, it stops at this extra head – and the usual head is then exposed (with a bit of the nail's shaft), ready for easy removal with a hammer claw. A simple, but very effective, invention.

When David has finished this interior form tomorrow, I'm going to do some rough calculations just to make sure the loading on those 4x4 posts is acceptable. David seems very sure of himself, but to my eye this just doesn't look strong enough to hold up such a ginormous block of concrete. I expect my calculations will prove David right, but I will feel better if I can prove it to myself… Can you imagine the mess it would make if that form collapsed, letting 23 tons of liquid concrete slosh out? Ach, I don't even want to think about it! And even worse – what if someone was up on the roof when this happened? No, it's better in this case to be paranoid, and to triple-check every step of it...

There was one big surprise for me when I first saw the form this afternoon: the form is even with the tops of the cement blocks on the east side (at the right in both this photo and the one at the top of this post), about about 2 inches below the blocks on the west side (at the left in the photo at the top of the post). David explained that it was important for the form to be perfectly level, so that the top of the roof is also level (except for the slight drainage slope that will be built in) and the roof is of the correct thickness. Well, that makes sense. But…something else was bugging me. I knew darned well that the slab was level to within a fraction of an inch – I watched them do this, and double-check it. So why were the blocks slightly higher on one side than the other?

David was unable to explain this to me, largely, I think, because of the language barrier (his English isn't up to a sophisticated discussion, and my Spanish is non-existent if you're not talking about food). My current theory is that there was some kind of systematic error in the way David placed the string that formed his level reference as he was laying the block. I expressed some concern about how this might affect us passing the inspection (this inspection will occur just before we pour the roof). David understood that concern well, and assured me that such small errors are a commonplace occurrence in block wall construction. I sure hope he's right…

Morning Chuckle...

From my reader Jim M., an eloquent bit of political humor:

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."

She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it's my fault!!

Now doesn't that resonate with you?

New Gig for Lyin' Leon...

The community of Jamul Casino opponents focused for years on the man they nicknamed “Lyin' Leon”: Leon Acebedo, the chairman of the Jamul Indian tribe. Whatever you thought of Leon, he was an effective front man for the casino project – whether he was as effective for the tribe in general is something I know nothing about. However, I learned from this morning's news that Mr. Acebedo was recently voted out of office by the Jamul Indians:

Acebedo recently lost a re-election bid to continue leading his 53-member tribe and its controversial push to build a high-rise casino on a small, six-acre reservation in Jamul. It's doubtful that his new job with an organization that represents the diverse, conflicting interests of 65 gaming and nongaming tribes, will be any less stressful.

Well, that's darned interesting. I wonder why he lost the election? Perhaps he was ineffective in his other duties, or perhaps the Jamul Indian tribe in general is unhappy with the casino efforts. Do any of my readers have more information on this?

But Mr. Acebedo apparently had little trouble finding new work. From the CNIGA press release on his new appointment:

The California Nations Indian Gaming Association announced today that the membership has selected Leon Acebedo as the organization's new executive director.

"After an exhaustive search, we concluded that Mr. Acebedo was the best candidate for the position. We look forward to putting Mr. Acebedo's extensive experience and professionalism to work as CNIGA continues its mission of protecting the right of tribal governments to conduct gaming on federally-recognized Indian lands," said Anthony Miranda, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association.

As executive director, Mr. Acebedo will be responsible for the overall management and implementation of the policies and programs established by the CNIGA membership and executive committee.

In this same press release, I also learned that Mr. Acebedo is a psychologist. Somehow I am unsurprised by this; I'm sure this training and experience helped him as he constructed the slippery and deceptive language for which he is notorious.

Personally, I'm delighted to see Mr. Acebedo in a role that should keep him far away from Jamul, and uninvolved with the Jamul Casino project. I'm curious to see how his successor compares…

Open Source

Steve K. sent me an email yesterday, containing this response to something positive I'd said about open source software:

From your mentioning of open source, I’m kind of gathering that you’re a fan of it. I’m not sure I am. It seems like often when I’m looking for a solution, the open source world wants me to download the latest source code, plus the source to 3 other open source projects that this one depends on, and then compile the whole mess to get it going. I usually don’t want to mess with all that. I know there are exceptions to this.

I've seen this general kind of perception from quite a few people before, and I vaguely remember when I first started using some open source software I had a similar reaction. It's just so darned different than the commercial software world, where all the software comes neatly packaged (usually in a box!), with manuals that follow a general convention, and so on.

But different isn't always bad, and I've come to truly appreciate the differences in open source software – to me, the pros far outweigh the cons. And with experience and practice, it turns out that many of my initial perceptions – like the ones that Steve K. still has – weren't true at all.

For example, the issue about needing to build open source software from the source code. By definition, this is possible to do with all open source software. However, I use many packages on a daily basis where I have never even downloaded the source code, much less built it. For example: Tomcat, MySQL, Hibernate, Apache Web Server, MantaRay, JFreeChart, OpenLDAP, Ubuntu, Ethereal, OpenPERL, and many, many more. These include both complete, stand-alone applications and software components. The last time I can remember actually building an open source package from source code was JSON.org's Java implementation, which I extended slightly.

Ok, so maybe I didn't have to actually build these things. So what? Why would I want to use these open source things instead of commercial products?

That's an easy one: because they're better. Just plain better. I don't mean that all open source packages are better than all commercial packages – but the actively worked on open source packages are consistently better.

There's a good reason for this, and it's not magic: visibility. Every line of the source code for an open source package is available for scrutiny by the best software engineers in the world (all of them!). There are no secrets. Open source software cannot hide its dirty laundry behind a corporate firewall or PR machine; it's all there, for everyone to examine. The culture of every active open source project I've ever run into is all about quality – whereas the culture of every commercial project I've ever been involved with (and that's many of them!) is all about time-to-market.

This is a profound difference, and it shows up in another way as well.

Every programmer who's been around more than a few weeks can tell you horror stories about this or that bug they've run into with an operating system or an application. I have personally run into dozens of bugs in Windows, Microsoft SQL, Visual Basic, Norton Utilities, and a long list of other commercial applications. These are very frustrating situations to deal with, sometimes raising challenging or even impossible obstacles to getting your commercial software finished on time and within budget. The vendors tend to not be cooperative in the first place, and even when you can convince them that they've got a bug, you won't have a fixed release in your hands for months or even years.

This problem simply doesn't exist with an actively developed open source project. First of all, there's no mystery about whether there is a bug – you can even go prove it yourself if necessary, by examining the source code. However, I have only had to go that far just one time in many bug submissions to open source projects. By far the most common response from the open source communities has been along these lines:
“Gee, thanks for finding that bug! You're our hero for the day!” Then, a few hours to a few days later, I'll get an email that says “On that bug you submitted – we have a fix, and it's available in this build. Would you test it for us?”

How refreshing is that? My favorite experience like this occurred with MySQL. A couple of years ago, I discovered a bug with CBlobs in their Java SQL driver implementation. I reported it with a code example. Two hours later, I got an email with the binary of a new build attached – and my bug was fixed! The next day that driver revision was posted on the MySQL site. That example is my favorite mainly for its contrast with Microsoft SQL. About five years ago, after a big battle with their support people, I finally got Microsoft to acknowledge a bug in one of the SQL functions. That was the last I ever heard about it, after repeated inquiries over the next couple of years. I've stopped caring about this stupid bug, but the point is that the bug is still there, five years later.

Open source is better. That's why I like it and advocate it. The bumps in the road on open source are real (though getting better all the time) – but they are a small price to pay for the overwhelmingly better quality of the open source products…

Louderback on Linux?

Jim Louderback is a very well-known figure in the world of technology journalism. He's just resigned as editor-in-chief of the venerable PC Magazine to become CEO of Revision3 (a “new media” company focused on Internet video). In the same column where he announced his departure, he had this to say:

Maybe it was something in the water? I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.

…

I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won't bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.

If you're not familiar with Jim Louderback, this is along the same lines as a priest or minister announcing one day that everything he's been telling you is wrong, and there really is no God. At least not one named Bill Gates.

I've already seen commentary elsewhere lauding this column as a significant defection of one of the loyal Microsoft fans. Having dealt with PC Magazine many years ago (when I was working for Stac, and we were getting Stacker tested by the magazine's test labs), I have an entirely different take on this. I suspect Louderback hasn't changed his real position at all – he's felt like this about Vista (and Microsoft) right from the beginning. What has changed is this: Jim Louderback is moving to a job where he no longer needs Microsoft as a customer, so he's now free to speak his mind. PC Magazine gets lots of advertising dollars from Microsoft, and believe me: no matter how much the magazine proclaims their independence, they are not independent of their biggest advertisers. Of course they're not, as those advertisers are what feeds everybody who works at the magazine…

Let a Scientist Do It!

One of my more geeky readers passed this along:

How To Catch a Lion in the Sahara Desert

Theoretical Physics Methods

The Dirac method: We assert that wild lions can ipso facto not be observed in the Sahara desert. Therefore, if there are any lions at all in the desert, they are tame. We leave catching a tame lion as an exercise to the reader.

The Schrödinger method: At every instant there is a non-zero probability of the lion being in the cage. Sit and wait.

The Quantum Measurement Method: We assume that the sex of the lion is ab initio indeterminate. The wave function for the lion is hence a superposition of the gender eigenstate for a lion and that for a lioness. We lay these eigenstates out flat on the ground and orthogonal to each other. Since the (male) lion has a distinctive mane, the measurement of sex can safely be made from a distance, using binoculars. The lion then collapses into one of the eigenstates, which is rolled up and placed inside the cage.

The nuclear physics method: Insert a tame lion into the cage and apply a Majorana exchange operator on it and a wild lion. As a variant let us assume that we would like to catch (for argument's sake) a male lion. We insert a tame female lion into the cage and apply the Heisenberg exchange operator, exchanging spins.

The Newton method: Cage and lion attract each other with the gravitation force. We neglect the friction. This way the lion will arrive sooner or later in the cage.

The Special relativistic method: One moves over the desert with light velocity. The relativistic length contraction makes the lion flat as paper. One takes it, rolls it up and puts a rubber band around the lion.

The general relativistic method: All over the desert we distribute lion bait containing large amounts of the companion star of Sirius. After enough of the bait has been eaten we send a beam of light through the desert. This will curl around the lion so it gets all confused and can be approached without danger.

The Heisenberg method: Position and velocity from a moving lion can not be measure at the same time. As moving lions have no physical meaningfull position in the desert, one can not catch them. The lion hunt can therefore be limited to resting lions. The catching of a resting, not moving lion is left as an exercise for the reader.

Experimental Physics Methods

The thermodynamics method: We construct a semi-permeable membrane which lets everything but lions pass through. This we drag across the desert. The atomic fission method We irradiate the desert with slow neutrons. The lion becomes radioactive and starts to disintegrate. Once the disintegration process is progressed far enough the lion will be unable to resist.

The magneto-optical method: We plant a large, lens-shaped field with cat mint (nepeta cataria) such that its axis is parallel to the direction of the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field. We put the cage in one of the field's foci . Throughout the desert we distribute large amounts of magnetized spinach (spinacia oleracea) which has, as everybody knows, a high iron content. The spinach is eaten by vegetarian desert inhabitants which in turn are eaten by the lions. Afterwards the lions are oriented parallel to the earth's magnetic field and the resulting lion beam is focussed on the cage by the cat mint lens.

This Week's Puzzler

We're going to do something a little different this week – this time our puzzler is about history, not science or technology. Post your answer at right…

Last Week's Puzzler

Three (out of five) people who answered got this right: what you see is the skydiver accelerating both downward and backwards.

I've met quite a few people who believe that a skydiver is in danger of hitting the elevator (the small, horizontal rear wing on a conventional airplane). They think the wind blast will blow the jumper back – nearly straight back. In fact, many skydivers have tried to touch the elevator and have failed – even when carrying a broomstick or other implement to extend their reach.

The physics here are actually pretty straightforward…

The downward acceleration is from gravity, of course – the jumper accelerates until the drag from his speed reaches equilibrium with the force of gravity. For most people, falling in the natural “frog” position, this occurs between 115 and 135 miles per hour. If the jumper falls head-down (a surprisingly difficult feat), this “terminal velocity” can be as high as 400 miles per hour!

The backwards acceleration (from the perspective of the observer in the airplane) is actually a deceleration – the jumper initially is traveling horizontally at the same speed as the airplane, but the drag of the wind decelerates him to zero horizontal speed, while the airplane is still moving forward at the same speed. Thus, from the observer's perch it appears that the jumper is moving ever faster, backwards.

Twenty-Six Years

In some ways it seems like forever; in other ways it seems like only yesterday…

Today is the twenty-sixth anniversary of the day that Debbie and I were married. I really can just barely remember my life before I met her, and yet my memories of even our earliest times together are fresh and vivid.

Happy day!

Pedestrian Killed in Jamul

Update and bump (again):

Here's a tiny bit more information now, courtesy of NBC San Diego:

A pedestrian was killed Monday morning following a chain-reaction crash in Jamul, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The fatal accident happened along state Route 94 west of Lyons Valley Road around 5:45 a.m.

According to the CHP, Aleta Gaskins, 47 of Dulzura, was heading westbound on state Route 94 when she noticed a group of pedestrians who had crossed the road. As she slowed her Ford Escort to an estimated 45 to 50 mph, another person tried to cross in front of her, officials said. The man paused, then continued directly in front of the Escort. Gaskins immediately braked, but struck the man, who landed on her windshield, the CHP said.

At that moment, Gaskins was struck from behind by a sport utility vehicle, driven by a 17-year-old from Jamul, according to officials. The force of the second impact forced the man to be thrown from the windshield onto the pavement.

The victim, a 21-year-old unidentified man, from Mira Mesa, was taken via air ambulance to Sharp Memorial Hospital, where he died.

Update and bump:

There a bit more information now, courtesy of the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A 21-year-old man crossing an East County highway died Monday morning after he was hit by a Ford Escort station wagon, authorities said.

The pedestrian was on state Route 94 just west of Lyons Valley Road about 5:45 a.m. when he was hit by a car driven by a 47-year-old woman from Dulzura who was heading west, California Highway Patrol Officer Brian Pennings said.

The man, who was a resident of Mira Mesa, was not immediately identified.

The motorist told authorities that she saw a group of people cross the road in front of her and then she saw another man crossing behind them, Pennings said.

When the last pedestrian saw her, he stopped on the double-yellow line and then he crossed right in front of her, Pennings said.

The woman was unable to avoid hitting him and he was thrown onto the hood of the car.

As the woman braked, she was hit from behind by a GMC Sonoma being driven by a 17-year-old girl from Jamul. The impact threw the man from the car onto the pavement, Pennings said.

Medics treated him and he was flown to a hospital, where he died a short while later, Pennings said.

The woman driving the Escort complained of pain. The girl in the GMC truck was not injured.

Both the east and westbound lanes of the highway were shut down briefly while authorities investigated .

The CHP said the man was not an illegal immigrant and that the Border Patrol was not involved.

Original Post:

I know almost nothing about this, just what I saw in the news this morning:

Two vehicles struck and fatally injured a pedestrian on a stretch of highway in East County, 10News reported. The accident occurred on westbound State Route 94, west of Lyons Valley Road, shortly after 5:45 a.m., according to the California Highway Patrol.It was not immediately clear what caused the accident or why the pedestrian was on the highway lanes.

If you have any further information, please leave it in the comments…

Jamul/Lawson Valley Weather

I've had an automated weather station running in my back yard for the past couple of years, but I just now got it “hooked up” to provide nearly live weather information on the web. If you look just below the Day-By-Day cartoon on the sidebar, you'll see the Lawson Valley Weather link, along with a strip chart of temperature and humidity information for the past week. Clicking on either the link or the chart will take you to a page with 16 meters and strip charts with all sorts of information about the current Lawson Valley weather situation. Right now the weather page is functional and ugly; I'll pretty it up over the next few weeks. The information is automatically updated every 10 minutes.

Wildfire Information...

It's that time of year again for Jamulians – with the low relative humidity and high temperature, our risk of wildfire is greatly increased. Add some Santa Ana winds to the mix, along with illegal aliens making campfires anywhere and anytime, and we've got a very volatile situation.

When a wildfire is actually underway, everybody in the area hungers for information – good, solid, reliable, up-to-date information. Unfortunately, this information can be amazingly difficult to come by. The usual sources that you might expect to deliver such information are actually rather bad at it. During the Viejas, Pines, Cedar, and Horse fires, we discovered firsthand (by our own on-the-spot surveys and investigations) that much of the information being put out by the media – newspapers, radio, and television – was either flat-out wrong or very badly out-of-date. Wildfires driven by Santa Ana winds evolve very quickly, and the media news cycles just can't seem to keep up.

So where do you go for information? Here is a list of the best resources that I've accumulated over the years, both from my own research and from local residents where were kind enough to share. If you know of other resources, please leave them in the comments. I'll round 'em all up and revise the post. I've made a permanent link at right to point to this list…

619/590-3160 and 619/590-5100: These fire information hotlines are manned by volunteers during an incident. We've had mostly good information from these folks, though the quality has not be consistent. One thing we particularly appreciate is that you can ask specific questions about the risks to your area, and you will usually get an informed answer. We were particularly impressed with this service during the Horse Fire (which burned quite close to our home).

Lyons Peak Cameras (North, East, South, and West): These cameras are a fantastic resource for Jamulians – a 360° view from Lyons Peak, updated every two minutes. I snagged the photo at right from the north camera (which looks toward our home) this morning – no smoke! A local fellow told me about these cameras around the time of the Horse Fire, and I used them to keep track of the fire's progress in nearly real time. The smoke plumes, smoke direction, and weather were all clearly visible on the screen – we knew when the wind shifted to a direction dangerous to us, and when things looked relatively safe. These cameras are part of the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN), and the same group maintains several other such cameras.

Fire Planning and Mapping Tools: When I first stumbled across this web site a few years ago, I could scarcely believe what I had found – it is so chock-full of good information that it just didn't seem likely. It takes a bit of work to learn how to use this site, but that is time well invested. The image at right is one that I captured this morning. It shows our area; Jamul is roughly in the center of the screen. The shaded red areas show the boundaries of fires that occurred between 2000 and 2007 – you can see pieces of the Cedar, Viejas, Horse, and Otay fires. With this tool you can easily zoom into any part of California and Nevada, and you can turn “layers” on and off (the red-shaded fire boundaries are one example of such a layer). The real power of this tool lies in the rich set of layers that are available: current fuel loads, current incident boundaries, historical fire boundaries, fuel treatment history, risk assessments, and even satellite data from thermal imaging satellites.

In my own experience, the historical information on this site is far more useful than the information on current incidents. You might think the satellite information, in particular, would be highly useful – but it's got several problems that I've observed. First, it's not all that timely – there may be only two or three satellite passes per day; this is useless and even misleading on a fast-moving wildfire. Second, the resolution is low (about 1 kilometer), so it is not possible to accurately pinpoint the active front. Third, the data can be quite misleading – sometimes active fire fronts don't show up at all, and sometimes inactive places (for example, with lots of embers) do show up. On the Horse Fire we were able to directly compare personal observations, Lyons Peak camera observations, and the satellite data – and the satellite data was always wrong.

CDF Current Incidents Page: The California Department of Forestry (CDF) is the lead firefighting organization in our area. This page (and the links on it) have some information about all the incidents they are currently working. Our own experience with this site is mixed, mainly because of one weakness (from our selfish perspective): the information on it always seems to be at least 24 hours old, and sometimes more. This delay was very evident to us during the Horse Fire, when our our own observations were clearly a day or so ahead of this web site. On the plus side: they publish information that is hard to obtain elsewhere, especially incident maps and photos. The image at right demonstrates both the good and the bad: it's the most current incident map of the still-burning Zaca Fire (in Santa Barbara County) – over two weeks old!

Fire Imagery – Remote Sensing Center: This is a national web site, with many organizations participating. It has many different kinds of information available, and it's well worth exploring. The most useful looking to me are the thermally-enhanced satellite imagery (example of today in southern California at right), and a map of the whole country similar to the California and Nevada Fire Mapping and Planning Tools discussed above, but with fewer layers. The thermally-enhanced satellite imagery shows both the active fire fronts and the smoke plumes – wonderful information to have during an incident.

National Interagency Fire Center: This site has a lot of useful safety and planning information, and links to lots of other information (including on current incidents, such as the sites above). The image at right shows a simple overall wildfire risk assessment for this year; there's a lot of information like this that you can snag on this site.

Wildland Fire Assessment: This site is run by the National Forest Service (NFS), and has several areas with good information on a national scale. For example, they publish a daily map of 10, 100, and 1000-hour fuel moisture like the one at right. These maps are useful guides to the overall risk in your area. The same site has many other “products” that you can view or download as well, from weather forecasts to direct sensor observations to the output of forecasting models especially created to help predict wildfire behavior. The NFS uses this information to help them decide where to deploy and pre-position their fire-fighting assets.

Another example is shown at right – a map of “observed fire potential”. This product is still experimental, which means (I believe) that the NFS is not yet ready to rely on its results. Our area looks surprisingly low risk until you look very closely and discover that Jamul is in a relatively small area of high risk completely surrounded by lower risk areas.

Those are the resources that I rely on the most (along with my own eyeballs, of course. Do you know of others? If so, please leave comments to share them with your fellow Jamulians!

Fuel Moisture

One of the key factors determining how fast a wildfire moves and spreads in the chaparral is fuel moisture – the amount of water that has been absorbed by the fuel. Here we're talking about “dead moisture” – the moisture that is in dead wood, brush, and grass. “Live moisture” is the moisture present in living plants, and this is largely independent of atmospheric conditions. The notion that high fuel moisture retards fire makes instant sense to everybody – if the fuel is wet or damp, it isn't going to catch fire as quickly as perfectly dry fuel, nor will it burn as intensely. But dig down into the notion of fuel moisture a little more, and there are some complexities that are well worth knowing…

Fuel moisture is determined in the end by atmospheric humidity and precipitation. However, there is a lag time between a change in atmospheric conditions and a change in the moisture of any particular fuel. Light, small fuels (such as dead grass) will very quickly respond to changes in the atmospheric conditions; heavy fuel (such as large downed logs) will change very slowly. This lag time is critical for firefighters, as it is a major determinant of whether fire will spread quickly or slowly through a particular area at a particular time. Here's how they classify fuel moisture lag time:

Fuels are classified into four categories by which they respond to changes in moisture. This response time is referred to as time lag. The four categories are:

• 1-hour fuels: up to 1/4 inch in diameter.
• 10-hour fuels: 1/4 inch to 1 inch in diameter.
• 100-hour fuels: 1 inch to 3 inches in diameter.
• 1000-hour fuels: 3 inches to 8 inches in diameter.

Examples of one-hour fuels are grass, leaves, mulch and litter. Fuel moisture in these fuels can change within one hour according to factors such as temperature, rain, humidity and shade. Conversely, larger diameter fuels such as deadfalls, brush piles, etc., take up to 1,000 hours to respond to changes in environmental factors.

Fuel moisture can be determined by clipping and immediately weighing the sample before oven drying it to a constant weight. Then the following formula can be used to determine percent fuel moisture: [(Wet Weight – Dry Weight)/Dry Weight] x 100.

When I first saw fuels classified as “1 hour” or “10 hour” fuels, I thought that meant how long the fuel would burn. But that's not it at all – the time is instead a reference to the lag time between a change in relative humidity and the consequent change in fuel moisture.

In a desert climate such as ours, there is a daily cycle of relative humidity: we are typically very dry during daylight hours, and very variable during nighttime (but averaging about 80% RH). That means that fuels with lag times below about 15 hours will dry out every day, and at some point during the day they will become “flashy”, meaning prone to quick ignition, quick fire growth, and will burn intensely. Since we rarely have more than a week of very dry nights, fuels with lag times of more than about a week (roughly 200 hours) will never completely dry out, and those fuels are much less flashy (and therefore much less dangerous).

Firefighters constantly use fuel moisture information when assessing the risks of any particular area during an incident. For example, the morning after a humid night, a field full of tall, dead grass (about 1 hour fuel) may be perfectly safe – but a couple of hours after sunrise, when the air has been dry for an hour, that same place may be very dangerous.

Homeowners can use fuel moisture information as well, when deciding what has to be cleared from near their homes (or other structures). Plants with plenty of live moisture are best of all; plants (or plant materials, such as leaves, needles, and wood chips) with short lag times are the worst.