Just ran across this commencement address...

Just ran across this commencement address...  It's by Tim Minchin, an Australian musician and comedian whom I'd never heard of before.  It's quite good advice, cleverly and amusingly presented.  It's well worth 10 minutes or so of your time...

Progress report...

Progress report...  Well, at least it wasn't hot yesterday :)  A sort of standing joke between Debbie and I is that we always move in the hottest, most miserable part of the year.  Not this time!  We're more likely to suffer frostbite this time than we are to sweat.  Even here in Jamul it's quite cool – 48°F as I write.

Yesterday was the first day of the “not so much fun” part of our move.  We're going through long-stored stuff, some of it dating back to the '70s.  Much of it has been stored in our long-forbearing friend's barn for the past 15 years, and the local rodent population has built the equivalent of Mexico City amongst it.  So, as you might imagine, a significant fraction of that long-stored trove is going straight into a dumpster.  A significant fraction will be given away, and a remarkably small amount (I'm guessing about 20 cubic feet) will go with us to Utah.  Makes us feel pretty stupid about storing all that stuff, but then again, I don't know how we could ever have predicted where our life would take us.

We got about halfway through our stuff at our friend's barn yesterday, which is faster than I expected that effort to go.  We'll be finished up there either late today or tomorrow sometime, and then we start on our house.  There's less stuff for us to worry about at the house, as much of what's there that we're not taking with us has already been given away, promised to someone, or the new owners are going to take it.  So I think we're actually going to be ready to start packing up the moving truck we're renting by Wednesday or Thursday this week, well ahead of my notional schedule...

Progress report...

Progress report...  We had a nice, relaxed day yesterday, accomplishing exactly nothing.  We watched a movie at home, then drove up to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to watch wildlife, and finished it all off with a delicious dinner at Descanso Junction restaurant.

Early yesterday afternoon I did something that was a lot of fun: I drove Dionecia B. – our friend, house-sitter, and longtime house cleaner – down to Rancho Jamul Auto Care to pick up the RV we've given her.  It's been there for months getting a myriad of little problems fixed.  At the same time, I signed over ownership to her.  Her radiant visage when she picked up the pink slip was something I'll not soon forget.  I drove behind her as she drove the RV back to her home, to make sure she made it ok – she did just fine.

Today I begin the “moving out” process: going through everything we own, deciding whether we're going to keep it, toss it away (I have a big dumpster positioned to take the junk), give it away to friends, or set it curbside for anyone who might want it to take.  It's amazing how much crap one accumulates after 15 years of living in one place!

Thanksgiving dinner...

Thanksgiving dinner ... was a wonderful thing!  Jim and Michelle had us, Michelle's sister and her husband, and a family friend join them for dinner.  They cooked a mostly traditional meal: brined roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, dinner rolls, green beans, sweet potatoes with cinnamon and nuts, cranberry sauce with pomegranate, and pumpkin or cherry pie for dessert.  We took some leftovers home with us, and we'll enjoy them a little later today.  The food was all great, and there was plenty of it.  The wine flowed freely as well :).  There was much good cheer, friendly conversation, and story telling.  A most pleasant evening, with a group of most pleasant companions...

One of the many things I am thankful for this year...

One of the many things I am thankful for this year ... is Megan McArdle.  Her posts entertain and inform me on an almost daily basis.  Here's the conclusion of her post from yesterday:

There is only one way to do Thanksgiving "wrong," and that is to fail to be grateful for the people you are eating it with, and the many other good people of this great nation who are sitting down at other tables. The rest is a sideshow. And don't be afraid to have another helping of that sideshow, with extra gravy on top.

You betcha I'm going for that extra gravy, Megan.  

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Woke up with my wife and my dogs (and one of our cats :) this morning.  It's already a great Thanksgiving Day for me!  This afternoon, we have dinner with our good friends – even better.

Here's hoping that your Thanksgiving Day is as wonderful as mine...

I'm safely back in Jamul...

I'm safely back in Jamul...  My wife remembered me, as did the dogs.  The cats?  Not so much :)

I'm a little tired for some reason...

All the whipped creamz are mine!

All the whipped creamz are mine!

I have no desire to travel to the South Pole...

I have no desire to travel to the South Pole ... on a tractor or otherwise.  My mom will no doubt be happy to hear that.  But this Dutch woman does want to go to the South Pole, on a tractor.  She is my kind of slightly loony!

Blogging alert!

Blogging alert!  Blogging will be light-to-nonexistent for the next few days.  I'm about to climb into my truck for the drive from Paradise, Utah to Jamul, California.  That will take 14 to 15 hours, assuming I don't run into any traffic disasters, at which point I get to see my lovely bride and my dogs.  Some of the cats might even tolerate my presence :)

Scale model of the U.S. government...

Scale model of the U.S. government...  Watch the whole thing; there are lots of interesting details.  Love the audio effects!

The wisdom of doctors...

The wisdom of doctors...  Via my lovely bride:

So I asked my Doctor, "Doctor, what are we going to do about this dangerous virus from Africa?"

He said, "I don't know, he has two more years in office.

No Obama fan, she :)

Oh, the stupid...

Oh, the stupid ... it burns!

Oh, happy days!

Oh, happy days!  We got enough done today that I can safely go back to Jamul on Wednesday.  I've got a bit of slightly less essential tractor work I'm going to do tomorrow – but no matter what happens tomorrow, I'll be hitting the road for California bright and early Wednesday morning.  I get to see my wife and our animals on Thanksgiving, have Thanksgiving dinner with friends, and then pack our household to actually move up here for real.  Yippee!!!

I took the photo at right this morning, from a field near Wellsville.  I had an appointment with our health insurance agent, whose home office is just a couple hundred yards from where I stood to snap this.  We had beautiful weather today, as you can see...

Rocket Man...

Rocket Man ... bluegrass style!

Kill Bill...

Kill Bill...  An opening skit from Saturday Night Live skewers Obama's executive order Constitutional runaround.  The “Do Not Mock Obama” rules on mainstream media seem to be relaxing a bit.  Via friend, reader, and former colleague Tim B., who watches a bit more TV than I do :)

97% of climate scientists think mankind is causing global warming?

97% of climate scientists think mankind is causing global warming?  Uh, not so much!  50% is closer to the mark.  Doesn't so sound much like “settled science”, does it?  Reader, friend, and former colleague Simon M. passes along this study.  The broadly-quoted 97% meme has been soundly debunked on several previous occasions, too, but it never hurts to pound a few more nails into its coffin...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This quote from Thomas Jefferson has come to mind often these past few years:

...yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny...

He wrote this in 1778, in a document called Preamble to a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.  Considerably more diffusion is needed!

Titan flyover...

Titan flyover...  This is a video constructed from radar data collected by the Cassini robotic explorer on several close flybys of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

That new car smell?

That new car smell?  Obama said yesterday that Americans want “that new car smell” in their next president, and that Hillary Clinton would make a great president – implying that she's got that desirable smell.

He really does think that American voters are stupid chumps.

My neighbor's dog just left a steaming pile on my lawn; it's a perfect metaphor for that speech.

If there's any justice in this world, Obama's comments on Hillary's odorosity along with his endorsement should guarantee that she loses...

How were trig tables made before computers or calculators?

How were trig tables made before computers or calculators?  I've read before about how early mathematicians made logarithm tables.  The methods are heavy on tedium, low on cleverness.  I've also read how some mechanical devices were contrived to estimate trig functions (sine, cosine, and tangent), but the precision of these devices was quite low: a couple of digits, three at the very most.  But I knew that mathematicians were using much higher precision trig functions hundreds of years ago.  How did they do it?

Here's an explanation of how they got tables at one degree intervals.  That's enough for many kinds of work, but I know there were tables at much smaller intervals (down to 10s of arc-seconds, I believe) that filled entire books.  I don't fully understand the math being described here, but I'm guessing that method for getting to one degree intervals can be extended to smaller intervals.  What jumps out at me about the method is that it involves some clever hoop-jumping, along with an awe-inspiring amount of tedium as well...

“His word is a ping-pong ball in flight.”

“His word is a ping-pong ball in flight.”  That's Rex Murphy describing the value of Obama's word, in his piece on the recent carbon dioxide reduction agreement between the U.S. and China.  Here's his conclusion:

So this great historic deal is really nothing more than yet another trot out of verbal commitments, a last gasp for Mr. Obama, a placation to the always fierce warming constituency, and for the Chinese, a little chuckle or two at how easy it is to charm the eagerly gullible.

You owe it to yourself to read the whole thing – and anything else you can find that Mr. Murphy has written.  His speeches are just as good.

Progress report...

Progress report...  Working in the snow and just barely freezing temperatures turns out to be not too bad at all.  I got a lot done today, and I'm back on track to make the trip back to Jamul in time for Thanksgiving.  Hooray!

The first thing I did today was to fill the trench over the water pipe to a depth of 2 feet.  That took from 7:30 am to 3:00 pm.  It wasn't physically difficult, as the tractor did nearly all the work – there was about 6 feet of trench I had to do by hand, but the other 250' was all with the backhoe.  I had to jump on-and-off the tractor a few hundred times, to switch back and forth from driving to using the backhoe.  That turned out to be just enough activity to keep me warm.  I got wet later in the day, and that chilled me pretty thoroughly – but a 15 minute break in the nice, warm house cured that.

At 3:00 pm I went to work laying the two network cables in the trench.  I had to shove them through the hole Jim J. drilled in my basement wall on Friday, then unspool the rather tight coils for 220' along the trench.  I left plenty of slack so the dirt under the cables could settle and move the cables without breaking them.  That whole job only took 45 minutes.

Then I spent an hour shoveling, filling the hole next to our house's basement back up.  I don't want it to freeze there, because our water supply enters the house right next to where we dug the hole.  I got about 3' of dirt in there, roughly a cubic yard of wet, mucky, heavy stuff.  By the time I was finished, I was drenched in sweat and very hot.  That was a big change from just a few minutes before :)

I called my builder (Jim J.) tonight to verify that we were in sync.  He's planning to be here in the morning to lay down the gas pipe.  With any luck at all, that means I can completely fill in the trench tomorrow afternoon.  Then on Tuesday all I need to get done is to place the transformer foundation – and I'll be finished with everything that must be finished before I leave for Jamul.

When I looked out the window this morning, I wasn't at all sure I'd be able to get anything useful done.  I was far too pessimistic – it turned out to be rather a good day to work!

Welcome home, soldier!

Welcome home, soldier!  I've posted quite a few videos of dogs welcoming their soldiers home.  Here's one showing cats.  Not quite the same vibe, eh?  We have both dogs and cats in our household, and my homecomings are definitely dog-centric: I'll be mobbed at the door by the pooches, while most of the cats either just ignore me, or head for the hills.

On the other hand, we've had some cats who behaved more like the one in the video at left.  One of our current cats – little Maka Lea – will come running over to me, trying without much success to push his way through the mob of dogs to greet me...

We aren't what we eat!

We aren't what we eat!  That's the conclusion of this study, the most recent of a bunch of recent studies that are overturning what decades of nutritionists have been telling us is health eating.  A diet heavy in fat – even saturated fat – is not what drives up fat levels in the bloodstream.  It's carbohydrates that do that.  Dr. Robert Atkins and Gary Taubes were right all along – perhaps not on the mechanism (the jury's still out on that), but at least on the “carbohydrates bad, fat good” thinking.

If you're interested in the story of how the nutritionists got things so badly wrong, I recommend The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, by Nina Teicholz.  Not only is the direct story interesting, it's a terrific and detailed examination of how science in general can fail.  I saw many parallels between the ways that nutrition science went horribly wrong, and the way climate science has done so.  When I finished reading this, I had an urge to go make some egg salad (eggs, mayonnaise) with bacon – but not in a sandwich (bread is heavy with carbohydrates), just in a bowl.  But then I remembered how poor a record nutritionists have in general.  I think I'll stick with my own personal diet: anything I want, but all in moderation...

Airborne Beer...

Airborne Beer...  This WWII soldier who fought in the Battle of Bastogne inspired the brewer of Airborne Beer, 65 years later. 
Here the soldier (Vincent Speranza) tells the story.  It's 11 minutes long, and worth every bit of it.  The beer and mug he describes are shown at left.

You'd think the climate scientists would be embarrassed...

You'd think the climate scientists would be embarrassed ... when someone outside their field finds them making the sorts of mistakes you might expect in an elementary school science fair project.  But they don't seem to be embarrassed at all – they just go on their methods are sound and their results unquestionable.  Steve McIntyre takes them to the woodshed again...

New Jersey potatoes...

New Jersey potatoes...  My father's uncle Edward Dilatush (my great-uncle) grew potatoes near Robbinsville, New Jersey.  The farm has long since succumbed to suburban development, and nobody grows potatoes there any more.  As best I've been able to tell, Edward's potato company operated from around 1910 through the early 1950s.  He was part of a group of New Jersey potato growers that cooperatively marketed their potatoes under the “Garden State” brand.  Those of you who don't hail from New Jersey, besides being fortunate, you may not be aware that New Jersey calls itself “The Garden State”, and for much of its history that was an appropriate moniker.  These days, something like “smelly, polluted, Mafioso suburb” would be more on point.

But I digress.  At right you can see a photo of a burlap 100 lb potato sack bearing Edward Dilatush's name.  The Garden State branding dates from 1933, so it's no older than that.  The nice two-color silk screening was probably not done during WWII (everyone had better things to do then).  So most likely this sack dates from either '33 to '41, or from '47 to the early '50s...

Update: my mom tells me that Edward was my grandfather's uncle, or possibly his cousin – not his brother as I had believed.  Oh, well, at least I got the family right!

It's been raining all day...

It's been raining all day ... and I haven't been able to work outside at all.  A half hour ago the rain turned into a quite intense snowstorm.  The temperature is still over 40°F, so maybe this snow will all melt.  On the other hand, evening is nigh and the temperature will certainly fall below freezing.  The forecast was recently updated to show a high probability of snow all day Sunday and Monday.  I'm suddenly feeling much less optimistic about leaving here (for Jamul) on Wednesday.  Dang it!!!

Dang it!

Dang it!  I had just an hour to work outside before the storm hit us.  It's raining fairly hard right now, but worse there's a 15 mph wind (with higher gusts) that blows it sideways.  I was hoping I could work under my tractor's roof, but with the rain blowing sideways that didn't work out so well.  So I'm stuck doing inside work now, things that don't absolutely have to get done before I leave for Jamul.  Dang it!!

The storm is forecast to be just like this all day today.  We're supposed to get 2/3 inch of rain, and the wind isn't supposed to let up.  That should melt all the snow and ice in the yard, but we'll see.  Tomorrow we've got a 50% chance of snow forecast, with temperatures never going above freezing.  It's possible I can work in that, if the snow isn't too intense...

The approaching storm...

The approaching storm...  The view to the north of our home, just a few minutes ago.  Note the war zone in the back yard :)

What is that?

What is that?  It's the tiny Phillips-head screw in the hinge of my eyeglasses.  I noticed the white color and put it under the microscope to see what that came from.  I think it's soap – I wash my glasses daily when I take a shower, using ordinary soap and water.  I suspect it doesn't all rinse out of that tiny little screw head, especially with the (very) soft water we have in our Utah home.

This photo was taken at 60x with oblique lighting.  It certainly doesn't look here like it looks to my naked eye!

Comet 67P...

Comet 67P...  This is from a few days ago, taken by Rosetta.  You can easily see the outgassing taking place at the “neck” connecting the two large ends.  I've read that the leading theory for how Comet 67P come to have this bizarre shape is that two (nearly) round comets gently collided and fused together...

Solar flare...

Solar flare...  This image of the recent sunspot AR2192 was made from many images collected at various wavelengths by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (a robotic satellite).  The detail in this image is stunning.  I remember as a kid in the '60s looking at photos from the Kitt Peak solar telescope (in Arizona).  Those would show a sunspot like AR2192 as a fuzzy, indistinct black dot on a mostly featureless background.  Via APOD, of course...

Nuclear waste...

Nuclear waste...  A sober look at the problem and the failed solutions, and why we have failed solutions.

This is a great example of the class of problems that advocates of centrally managed government (i.e., technocracy, dictatorship, Communism, etc.) point to and say “See?  This is what I mean!”  I've got no other answers, but I don't think centrally managed government is an answer, either...

Scale...

Scale...  Here's a fascinating (and not particularly technical) article about the scale of Amazon Web Services (AWS).  The whole thing is interesting, but a couple of points in particular jumped out at me:

• An educated guess places the total number of AWS servers at between 2.8 and 5.6 million servers.  If each of those was a standard 1U rack server, these would fill a standard equipment rack between 929 miles and 1,858 miles tall!  Each of those servers has many millions of transistors on its chips, so the total number of transistors in AWS is in the range of tens to hundreds of trillions.  That scale is just mind-boggling!
• Amazon designed their own networking gear, mainly to save costs.  To their own surprise, the network availability went up when they did this.  This is a surprise because by default you'd expect the Ciscos of the world to have better quality product than you could make yourself.  The Amazon engineers figured out why, though: it's because their equipment was much simpler, with only the features they actually needed.  Typical commercial network gear is larded up with an enormous variety of features, many of which interact with each other in complex and often poorly documented or understood ways.  I have quite a few personal experiences with that complexity that backs this up.  Still, I was surprised myself to read that Amazon boosted their availability with home-brew switches and routers.  You couldn't do this, though, unless you had a scale similar to AWS.  Most companies couldn't even imagine dedicating engineering teams for years to build that sort of gear.

Progress report...

Progress report...  Yesterday was a very busy – and long – day for me.

In the early morning I hauled junk out of the house and into a couple of dumpsters I'd ordered up.  This junk was comprised primarily of two things: old house components (Venetian blinds, broken lights, etc.) and packing material left over from online (mostly Amazon) deliveries.  The latter was the biggest part of it – it's been accumulating since we started the remodeling in April, and over that period we've purchased a lot of house parts, both big and small.  For the most part they ship in big, bulky protective boxes with lots of padding, and that adds up fast.  For example, just a couple weeks ago I ordered and received 10 steel wire shelving units.  Each of these came in a thick box with lots of interior padding and supports.  All by themselves, those boxes made a big pile!

Then around 9 am it warmed up enough that I could stand working on the tractor, and I started the remaining trenching.  Shortly after I began, my friend and neighbor Tim D. – a serious glutton for punishment – showed up to help, with a big smile unaccountably plastered all over his face.  We worked steadily from then through 4 pm to finish (hooray!) the deep (4') water supply trench between the house and the barn.  Along the way we discovered an unmarked gas main (yikes!), an expected gas main, and an expected irrigation pipe – and we miraculously failed to break any of them.  Tim worked this entire time down in the trench, and refused to swap places with me.  He's crazy, but in a good way :)

At around 4 pm Jim J., my builder, showed up with a roll of plastic 1" water pipe, drills for getting through my house's foundation, and a bunch of tools and parts.  Over the next two hours, Tim, Jim, and I laid the water pipe all the way from the house to the barn, with a tee over to where our greenhouse will (we hope!) live one day.  We couldn't quite finish that job, as we were short a coupler and an end cap.  Jim is hoping to have them this morning, and then that pipe will be completely finished.

Today Tim is coming over to help again.  We've got a short stretch of 2' deep trench (for a gas line) to dig, and then we're going to fill in 2' of dirt on top of the water pipe.  We may get stopped by a snowstorm at any point, as the forecast calls for it to start momentarily and there are threatening looking clouds in the sky.  With luck we'll get that done, and then we'll be ready for the gas line and for two direct-burial network cables.  Both of these will go on top of the water pipe, at a depth of 2'.  The gas pipe will go in on Monday, weather permitting.  My hope is to be completely ready for that by Monday morning.

If we get the gas line in on Monday, then late on Monday or early on Tuesday, I'll be filling in the trenches completely.  One final thing remains then before I can head down to Jamul: I have to place the electrical transformer foundation.  That's probably only a couple hours of work – but I can't start it until all this other stuff is done.  I'm working towards having all this finished by Tuesday evening so I can head down to Jamul on Wednesday, and make it there for Thanksgiving dinner with our good friends Jim and Michelle B...

“Blatherskite”

“Blatherskite”  Megan McArdle on Obama's speech last night.  Blatherskite defined.  Wonderful...

It's a beautiful morning in Paradise...

It's a beautiful morning in Paradise...  Right now (8:30 am) it's 28°F outside.  The forecast is calling for partly cloudy, no precipitation, and a high of 43°F today.  Tomorrow it says snow.  Lots of snow.  That could put a crimp in my trenching and pipe-laying...

In the photo (looking north from my house) you can see the trenches that are now making my back yard look like a WWI battleground.  Our back lawn is going to need some repair next spring...

The secret life of passwords...

The secret life of passwords...  This is a completely non-technical piece about how people choose passwords.  I found it absolutely fascinating, particularly the story of how Cantor Fitzgerald, with an assist from Microsoft, leveraged this knowledge to recover passwords lost when so many of their employees were killed on 9/11...

Obama's “amnesty”...

Obama's “amnesty”...  Several readers (including my brother Scott!) have already written me to see what I think about this.  I was rather busy yesterday (see earlier posts) and haven't had much time to digest this.  Nevertheless, here's a first take.

What did Obama actually announce? 

• More border security, details to be determined.
• Easier immigration for high-skilled immigrants, details to be determined.
• A promise not to deport (for three years) illegal immigrants who meet these requirements: have been here for five years, are not criminals, pay taxes, and pay a fee.

So far as I can discern, that's what he actually said he would do.

The reaction of most of the talking heads has been predictably filled with breathless partisan doom-and-gloom rhetoric, making it challenging to actually find any facts in the mess.  The only semi-sober analysis I saw was this one from Reason.

The way that Obama did this is of a piece with the growth of unilateral presidential power ever since 9/11.  I think this may be the single biggest success of the terrorists on that day.  It strikes at the very heart of what makes this country America, and I fear greatly its long term consequences.  Obama's assertion of presidential power here, if not rebuked in some effective way, is one more step along the path blazed by George W. Bush.  So far, it's been a one-way path, with continuous movement of the boundary outward from the presidency at the expense of Congress.  This is the most worrisome thing I see about Obama's action, at least so far.

Politically this is a long-expected move by the Democrats, even if the form isn't quite was most people thought it would be.  This is a step toward (but not there yet!) a flood of new Democratic voters and the Democratic goal of a permanent majority.  At least, that's what Democratic strategists seem to believe.  I'm not so sure they'd actually get the results they wanted, though, even if they succeeded on the face of it.

What Obama just did seems rather mild compared to the rhetoric on the right, though.  They seem to see this as an irreversible step down a slippery slope to doom.  I see this more as a stupidly implemented, easily reversible step that should be a part of a much broader reform of our immigration policies.  I'm all for an actual amnesty (which this is not), one that applied to anyone who wasn't a felon, was actually working towards assimilation with American culture, and wasn't agitating for the overthrow of the U.S. government.  I'd also like to see our current immigration restrictions completely removed, as they were before the 1860s, back when that motto on the Statue of Liberty actually meant something:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Emma Lazarus wrote that, and for about the first half of this country's history it was the literal truth.  Today's immigration controls have turned that motto from truth into a cruel, viscous joke – but nobody's laughing except the lawyers who take hopeful immigrant's hard-earned money knowing that there's little chance of success for them.

However, even someone as pro-open-immigration as I will not support actions like Obama's taken in isolation.  Those actions only make sense to me if they are part of a much broader set of reforms that include not only open immigration, but active deportation of felons and agitators, requirements for assimilation (including English and meaningful citizenship achievement), and more.  I don't see anything but bad consequences to piecemeal implementation over the course of years; this is something that really needs to be dropped into place quickly.  I've never thought this was politically feasible (and it certainly isn't now), so my default position is to oppose any significant change until real reform does become politically feasible.

There is one good thing I can think of that will come from Obama's amnesty: Congressional gridlock.  I think Obama just dropped a nuclear weapon on any possibility of cooperative Republicans.  It will be outright political war for the rest of his term in office.  Nothing will get done.  Yay!

“We will need writers who can remember freedom.”

“We will need writers who can remember freedom.”  That's a line from Ursula K. Le Guin's short speech upon acceptance of her Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards a few nights ago.  The speech was pretty good, and it's worth a couple minutes of your time to read it and ponder.  Ms. Le Guin's work had a big impact on me in my youth, when I greedily devoured everything she wrote.  Earlier this year I've started reading some of her more recent works, and re-reading some of my favorites from the past.

I have just one quibble with that line from her speech.  We will need citizens who can remember freedom, not just writers.  But the writers might help those citizens remember...

Progress report: good, with a twist.

Progress report: good, with a twist.  With the able assistance of Tim D., my friend and neighbor, we made lots of trenching progress yesterday.  We were going so fast that we thought we'd actually finish yesterday.  Right about the time we had that thought, the twist: we struck a water pipe, about 2' in front of Tim in the photo at right, and quite close to our house.

Now the weird thing about this is that we were, at that point, being extremely careful about where we were digging.  The main water line into the house is directly behind Tim, about 4' below ground level.  The obvious course for it to take is straight out from the house, then left toward our pump house.  Just to the right of that, on the house wall, you can see where our electrical service enters the house.  For it, too, the logical route for it to take would be straight out from the house, then left toward the pump house, where our meter is.  Furthermore, when Trent J. hand dug here, he found that the power kept on going down after 4'.

So we dug with the backhoe to the right of all that, right next to the concrete wall for the entrance to our basement, just to the right (in the photo) of Tim's left foot.  In the area where we were most concerned, this all worked very well.

Then, most unexpectedly, as I started to lift out a chunk of dirt low in the trench, water started bubbling out.  Fast.  Very fast.  I got the backhoe's bucket out, gently, then ran to the pump house (about 200') and shut off our pump.  When I got back, Tim was out of the trench.  Fortunately, he was wearing overshoes, so his feet didn't get wet.  The trench had a couple feet of water in it.  And the house had no water.  It was 2 pm.

I already had a sump pump, purchased a few weeks ago for my last adventure in repairing our home's water supply.  We rigged that, and a few minutes later we had just a puddle left.  Tim insisted on jumping back into the trench and digging with a shovel in the muck (and I couldn't help feeling very guilty about that) while I operated the backhoe to remove what he'd dug out.  We soon discovered that at the bottom of the trench was a capped end of a galvanized steel pipe, and the water was coming in from the side of the trench.  Evidently the backhoe had moved that pipe, and broken it somewhere further into the dirt.  We had no idea how far into the dirt the break was.  I was dismayed to find the pipe was steel, as nothing is harder to repair. 

So the two of us, shovel and backhoe, dug out a big hole to the side of our actual trench.  That went surprisingly quickly, though if I had been working on this alone it certainly wouldn't have.  The combination of Tim on the shovel and me on the backhoe worked well for this work, just as it does on the usual trenching. 

Just a few inches from where we first spotted the leak was a valve – and it was turned off.  The valve, in turn, was broken off from the pipe beyond it.  We'd found the leak.  Tim dug a bit around it, removed the broken off valve and capped pipe, and we soon discovered the remaining pipe end was a 1" copper pipe.  Celebrate!  Celebrate!  Dance to the broken pipe!  Why?  Because copper pipe is a breeze to fix – all I'd need to do is to solder on a cap.  Woo hoo!

Tim, knowing I'd object, ordered me (I'm still laughing about this!) to run down to Ridley's (our local sort of large general store, four miles away in Hyrum) to buy the parts I'd need to fix it.  I also had to buy a propane torch, as mine is down in Jamul at the moment.  Ridley's had everything I needed, and just before 4 pm I had it fixed.  I cut a clean end (with a tubing cutter), cleaned it (wire brush and emery cloth), slathered it with flux paste, put the cap on, heated it up nicely, then soldered it.  The repair held without a drip on the first try.  It had been less than two hours from first break to repaired pipe.

It would have taken much longer without Tim's help, and almost certainly I'd have spent a night without water.  I'm beginning to wonder whether he's quite alright in the head, though – because even after today's experience, he's planning to come back and help me again today...

Kito...

Kito...  Your morning cute.  You're welcome.  There's a “Making of” video, too.  Via my lovely bride...

Dog agility (?) contest fail, but dog win...

Dog agility (?) contest fail, but dog win...  The video at right is labeled as being a Finnish dog agility contest, but if so, it's different than any other agility contest I've seen.  This is more like an obedience trial, wherein the dog is asked to ignore all sorts of treats and distractions to do what his handler asks.

Anyhow, in the video the golden retriever's handler is quite disappointed – but the dog is thinking “Best game evah!”

Hearing the Finnish language, and seeing the Finnish faces, brought back all sorts of good memories.  Finland is across the Baltic Sea from Estonia; the languages are closely related, as are the people...

Transistor radios...

Transistor radios...  The photo at right is from this article about the Regency TR-1, the original transistor radio.  It was introduced for Christmas 60 years.

I never had that particular model of transistor radio, but I did have two transistor radios when I was a kid.  The first one looked very much like the TR-1, except that its case was beige.  I can still remember the raised letters on its front proudly declaring that it was a “7 Transistor Radio!”.

Of course I took that radio apart to see what was inside, and it was very much like the image at left.  That radio was AM only, its audio was horribly bad, the battery didn't last very long, and I thought it was a technological marvel.  The only other “portable” radios available back then were based on vacuum tubes.  Those things were the size of a toolbox, and weighed 10 pounds or more.  They used gigantic batteries (“B batteries”) that also didn't last long, and cost a small fortune.  By comparison, the transistor radio was a technological marvel, though today we would think it was a piece of junk.

Later, when I was 15 or so, I bought myself a General Electric AM/FM transistor radio, quite possibly the model at right.  It was a major upgrade: a 16 transistor radio (modern radios have hundreds of thousands of transistors).  I took that thing nearly everywhere I went for several years, most especially to several jobs that I had.  Its audio quality was a bit better than the first radio I had, and the batteries lasted much longer – a couple weeks at a time.

These days I rarely listen to the radio unless I'm driving – and even then, I'm more likely to listen to the music stored on my phone.  Back in the '60s, though, the radio stations were my primary access to music.  I couldn't afford to buy many records, and there was no Internet to download music from.  There were no iPods (or even Walkmen).  If you wanted to listen to a diverse set of music, the radio was just about the only option open to most people.  So we listened.

As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Bob Dylan – from my computer, not my radio.  “Baby Blue” is on a playlist, and I can play it whenever I feel like it, not when the DJ gets the urge.  Even for someone like me, who lived through the '60s, it's hard to imagine listening to music the way we did then...

American composer is a hit in Estonia...

American composer is a hit in Estonia...  My mom knows that I love all things Estonian, so when she read this article about Susan Nelson, she sent it along to me.  Susan is a composer of music for hand-rung bells and guitar, like the piece Avalon in the video at right.  She's a resident of Hamilton, New Jersey, near the farm I grew up on.

Estonia comes into this story in an interesting way.  For it to make sense, you have to understand that music has a very special place in Estonian culture.  For its size (Estonia has just 1.5 million people), Estonia has an amazingly diverse and intense music scene, including several symphony orchestras, dozens of music schools, and more music venues than you can shake a stick at.  The 1991 peaceful revolution that earned Estonia its independence is called “The Singing Revolution” because of the central role that music and song played in unifying the Estonian people.  Estonians are as serious about their music as they are about their beer (with more breweries per capita than any other country on earth).

Estonian musicians noticed Susan's work, and started playing it.  Her pieces became quite popular there.  As that article relates, Susan didn't even know about this until an Estonian conductor wrote her on Facebook a few years ago.  Last year, the Estonians honored her with a concert of her own work (on YouTube) – an “Author’s Concert”.

What a great story!  And now at least two Americans from Hamilton Township, New Jersey have been to Estonia :)

“He spilled the beans on our entire deception.”

“He spilled the beans on our entire deception.”  Hitler finds out that Gruber revealed the ObamaCare deception.  I love the little hook at the end – you know there's another one of these coming :)

Catch a kitty!

Catch a kitty!  We must do this!

Oh, this is very hopeful!

Oh, this is very hopeful!  Scientists have discovered a potential mechanism for an entirely new class of antibiotics...

Toyota servicing...

Toyota servicing...  Yesterday I got my 2007 Tundra serviced for the first time in Utah.  In Jamul we've gone out of our way to avoid using the service from the dealer.  The prices at the dealer were outrageously high, and they were constantly trying to “upsell” us on things that weren't actually needed, but which of course generated lots of profit for them: filters, belts, etc.  For years we've been taking our vehicles to Dave at Jamul Auto Care, where we not only got reasonable prices, but also first-class work and honest evaluations and recommendations.  We love Dave!

So I had some trepidations about getting service up here in Utah.  There is no Dave here, so far as I've been able to determine.  There are independent mechanics – lots of them – but mainly for American vehicles and tractors.  The closest guy I could find who could handle my Tundra was 50 miles away.

I decided to try the local Toyota dealer, Young's in Logan.  I made an appointment on their web site, and pulled in at the appointed time.  I'm up here by myself, so I had to wait for my truck to be done.  I had a routine service plus one minor recall item (the window switch in the driver's door).  Two hours after I pulled in, they let me know my truck was done.  They'd done the usual oil change, lube, tire rotation, and consumables check.  They'd also done the recall item.  I steeled myself for shock at the bill – in San Diego, it would have been between $250 and $400, depending on exactly what consumables they replaced (and there were always consumables to replace).  The fellow handed over the bill apologetically, cringing in preparation for my rant.  Not a good sign.  I looked at the bill, and the only number I could find was $51.25.  “Is that the price?” I asked.  “Yes” said the cringing clerk, hesitantly.  In subsequent conversation, I found out that they get a lot of push back from their customers at the high cost of routine service.  There's no way I could get just an oil change for that price in San Diego!  On drilling down a bit, I discovered that they had replace exactly zero consumables – telling me that they were all in fine shape as they were.  The possibility of that happening at the San Diego dealership is exactly zero.  Then to top it off, they had washed my truck!  It hasn't been this clean since the day I bought it.

I love Utah!

Progress report...

Progress report...  Well, it's more like a frustration report for the past couple of days.  Monday and Tuesday the siding crew was missing in action.  My builder tracked them down – in Idaho.  They decided to go work on another job instead of my barn.  Dang it!  That same crew was supposed to have installed some new flooring on my house's balcony by now – and the roofer working on my house's roof was depending on that being done.  Unless that balcony floor is installed today, the roofer is going to be held up.  Double dang it!  Job one for me today is to take a big, heavy pipe and beat on the siding guys until they get that balcony floor on.  This has the potential for holding me up from heading down to Jamul to pack up my wife, our animals, and our meager possessions to actually, like, move up here.  Not happy.

Then on Monday afternoon, as I was digging a trench for getting the water, gas, and network to the barn, one of the roofers came over and asked me if I realized that my tractor was spewing oil all over.  No, as a matter of fact, I didn't know.  After a little investigation it became clear that my tractor had sprung quite a leak of hydraulic fluid.  At $25 a gallon, that's like liquid gold squirting onto the yard.  I made a call for urgent repair to Agri-Service, the folks I bought the tractor from, and who handled the warranty repairs.  They promised to be out the next day (Tuesday).  They also asked me to investigate it a bit myself, to see if it was something simple like a loose fitting.  That's completely reasonable.

So yesterday (Tuesday) morning, I dismounted the backhoe from the tractor.  That operation requires hydraulic power, and that hydraulic fluid was spewing as I got the backhoe off.  I had just barely enough hydraulic fluid left to move the tractor away from the backhoe and park it.  At that point the reservoir was empty.  The leak had gone through $100 worth of hydraulic fluid.  Yikes!  Once the backhoe was off, I could see exactly where the leak was: in a hose on the tractor that connects hydraulic fluid to the backhoe.  It turns out that the hose had been pinched somehow (we haven't figured exactly how yet), and there was a small tear in it.  It doesn't take much to make a prodigious leak in a high-pressure hydraulic line.

I drove up to Agri-Service (about a 40 minute drive, as they're in Hyde Park) to buy some more hydraulic fluid – I knew I'd need it to refill the tractor once the bad hose had been fixed.  I walked up to the parts counter to order it, and the sales guy (Lawrence W.) who sold me the tractor walked out of his office to greet me.  When he found out that I was there to buy the hydraulic fluid, he told the parts guy that Agri-Service was covering that cost.  I didn't expect that – but given the cost of that stuff, it was certainly a welcome gesture.  Then he said he'd be down shortly to look at my tractor.  As I was driving home, a second guy (Kelly S., a mechanic) from Agri-Service called me and said he'd also be down shortly.  In no time at all, two Agri-Service guys were poring over my tractor.  They got the bad hose removed, and we made arrangements to get the hose replaced that night, and Kelly would come over in the morning to reattach it.  I followed Lawrence back toward Hyde Park so we could get a new hose made, and the idea was that I'd return home with it.

Well, we never got to Hyde Park – because Lawrence had a better idea on the way up.  He called me and we met at one of his competitors – a place called Ellis Implements – on the south side of Logan, much closer to my house.  He had them make up the replacement hose, which he paid for, to save me the extra driving up to Hyde Park and back.  Ten minutes after arriving there, I had a new hose.  Now this morning Kelly should show up with his special “crow’s foot” wrench (like the one at right, but with a longer shaft).

I'm starting to get used to the idea of service like this.  It's built into the culture here.  I love Utah!

As opposed to all the other frustrations, the roofers made good progress yesterday.  They've finished the northern half of the roof, and have started on the southern half.  They're very happy about that, as now they have much more sunlight to warm them up...

Crafty mom...

Crafty mom...  A few weeks ago I shipped my mom a couple small boxes of teasel seed pods.  She's been turning these into little decorations: Santas and a variety of animals, as at right.

Locals here hate teasel – it's a pernicious weed that's hard to get rid of.  They organize “burn the teasel” weekends to get rid of it.  When they saw me “harvesting” the seed pods, then discovered that I was shipping some seed pods back to my mom in Virginia, they wondered what I had against Virginia – though one fellow immediately saw the benefit of teasel-bombing D.C. :)  My mom is going to send us a couple of these decorations, so I'll be able to show the locals that teasel actually is good for something.  I'm betting that they won't find the argument persuasive, though!

The finder...

The finder...  KLM Airlines (Holland) has turned the problem of lost items upside down.  When the airplane crew or cleaners find personal items left behind, a specially trained dog tracks down the owner in the terminal.  Being a dog, of course he does this by the scent.  Totally awesome!  I might leave something behind on purpose just to have the experience :)  Via my lovely bride, whom I hope to see in not too many days!

Border trouble up north...

Border trouble up north...  Reader Simi L. sends this piece along.  I'm pretty sure it's tongue-in-cheek, as the Manitoba Herald was last published in 1877 :)

The Manitoba Herald:

The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The recent actions of the Tea Party and the fact Republicans won the Senate are prompting an exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and to agree with Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.
"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Southern Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota . "The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields. "Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through and Rush annoyed the cows so much that they wouldn't give any milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, and drive them across the border where they are simply left to fend for themselves. "A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a single bottle of imported drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley Cabernet, though." When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR races.

In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half- dozen young vegans in powdered wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the '50s. "If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and are renting all the Michael Moore movies. "I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Biden met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals. A source close to President Obama said, "We're going to have some Paul McCartney and Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. We might even put some endangered species on postage stamps. The President is determined to reach out."

Sounds plausible, doesn't it?

Geological map of the asteroid Vesta...

Geological map of the asteroid Vesta...  From data collected by the Dawn robotic explorer...

IC 410: the Tadpole Nebula...

IC 410: the Tadpole Nebula...  Via APOD, of course.  This is a false-color image from infrared imaging collected by WISE.  Full resolution version...

Dogs: data vs. popularity...

Dogs: data vs. popularity...  Dog owners are irrationally attached to their favorite breeds, and we're no exception: we love our Field Spaniels, a breed that very few people in the U.S. have ever even heard of, much less seen.  The chart at right (more detail here) attempts to visualize the popularity of dog breeds versus an objective assessment of the reasons why a breed might be popular.  We could debate the parameters they chose until the cows come home, but give the authors this: it's a reasonable stab at it.  Furthermore, the chart passes the sniff test – some of the breeds in the upper left (the “Inexplicably overrated”) clearly belong there, and some of the breeds in the lower right (the “Overlooked treasures”) just as clearly belong there.  Our beloved Field Spaniels are too small a breed to even show up on this chart, but if they did, they'd probably be down in the lower right, alongside the Welsh Springer Spaniels (a close relative).

Wanna start an entertaining fight?  Follow these steps:

1. Gather a number of dog lovers in a room
2. Shut the doors
3. Toss a copy of this chart into the room
4. Run

Farcical...

Farcical...  Bret Stephens in today's Wall Street Journal:

As headlines go, “ Obama Moves Close to Calling Russian Action in Ukraine an Invasion,” from a weekend story in the New York Times , must surely rank among the year’s most revealing. The Obama presidency has long been at odds with the obvious. Once this was called hope.

Now it is generally recognized as farce.

A farce – that's a reasonably accurate portrayal of the entire Obama presidency.  What a damned shame that the first black American president also had to be so ragingly incompetent...

Your feel-good story of the day...

Your feel-good story of the day...  We recently fixed up our old, beat-up RV and gave it to our house cleaner in San Diego – one of the most satisfying things we ever did...

I am no longer concerned about mainland China...

I am no longer concerned about mainland China...  Any culture that could produce the video at right – and have it become wildly popular (over 5 million views at this writing) – is well down the path to doom...

Consequences of ObamaCare, part 945,823...

Consequences of ObamaCare, part 945,823...  Via CoyoteBlog, who describes one consequence to the business he founded and runs:

So, as a result, I am required by law, under harsh financial penalties, to purchase a product that is not available to me.  Had President Obama required that I buy 2 pounds of rocks from Mars, the result would not have been any more unfair.

Repeal it, Republicans!

Remy on GruberGate...

Remy on GruberGate...

Our income tax system is unfair!

Our income tax system is unfair!  The graph at right is taken from this American Enterprise Institute article.  Each column shows the net taxes paid by each quintile (fifth) of income earners.  By net taxes, they mean income taxes less transfers (such as earned income credits, welfare, etc.) from the federal government.

The bottom line is very simple: virtually all net income taxes are paid by Americans in the upper income quintile.

On what planet is that fair?

It's even worse for residents of states with high income taxes (such as California, Massachusetts, New York, etc.) ... in some of those states, virtually all net taxes are paid by the upper decile (tenth)!

“…these doors might not be that secure!”

“…these doors might not be that secure!”  Oh, I would so love to drive on this road!

Reading the tea leaves...

Reading the tea leaves...  These are some Darjeeling tea leaves, hydrated after steeping them for my morning tea.  The photo is 15x magnification...

“The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change.”

“The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change.”  Nick Gillespie with an excellent piece in Time on Obama's call for “net neutrality” and regulation of the Internet.  A bit more:

There are specific interests who are doing well by the current system and they want to maintain the status quo via government regulations. That’s understandable but the idea that the government will do a good job of regulating the Internet (whether by blanket decrees or on a case-by-case basis) is unconvincing, to say the least. The most likely outcome is that regulators will freeze in place today’s business models, thereby slowing innovation and change.

That’s never a good idea, especially in an area where new ways of bundling and delivering content are constantly being tried.

For a moment I found myself thinking that maybe our legislators were smart enough to see that regulating the Internet was a bad idea.  Then I woke up...

A clever application of physics...

A clever application of physics...  When I first read this headline – “Magnets in helmets might make football safer” – I groaned, and expected to read some pseudo-science claiming more miraculous magnetic effects like those sold by so many Dr. Oz-like charlatans.  Instead I found something totally realistic: using the repelling force of “like poles” on powerful magnets to reduce the deceleration force when two football helmets smack into each other.  Properly done, using magnets for this can be the equivalent of adding a thick layer of foam to the outside of a helmet.  Very clever!

Breathtakingly audacious lawsuit...

Breathtakingly audacious lawsuit...  There are two neighbors in Texas.  One of them owned four pit bull dogs; the other owned a beagle.  The four pit bulls got into the beagle's yard through a hole in the fence that the pit bulls made.  The pit bulls killed the 10 year old beagle.

So, naturally, a lawsuit was filed – but not the one you're most likely expecting.  The beagle's owner decided not to pursue a civil suit, because the police had already taken the actions he thought were needed.  The pit bulls' owner is suing the beagle's owner, asking for $1 million in damages, citing injuries and anxiety resulting from her attempts to retrieve her pit bulls from the neighbor's yard.

Clearly, the human species still has some evolving to do.  The good news?  The venue is in Texas, where the citizens have been known to help evolution along on occasion...

“Bubble-Ball”

“Bubble-Ball”  This looks like fun!

It's another below-freezing day...

It's another below-freezing day...  So I installed some more replacement lamps today.  These three are in our “TV room” on the second floor.  The wide angle lens on the iPhone makes it look like two of the lamps are a couple miles down the road, but in reality the furthest one is about 20' away :)

When we bought the house, there was a very fancy, modern-looking Italian light that stretched all the way across this long ceiling.  It had five low-voltage lamps, each just 20 watts, strung out along a pair of tightly stretched cable that looked like stainless steel.  The whole affair looked like something that might be on the Starship Enterprise, but it put out a paltry amount of light in five beams, as if someone had hung five flashlights from the ceiling.  The new lights have 100 watt (equivalent) LED bulbs in them, very nicely lighting up this entire area.  They look much more like our style, too.

I'm beginning to expect now that each project I begin will run into problems.  This one sure did.  The first lamp I put up, I ran into a junction box with metric screws (4mm, 0.7 pitch).  I didn't even know there was such a thing.  And where did the builder find one around here?  It's as if I opened my front door and spotted a kangaroo!  The second lamp's junction box had totally stripped threads – the lamp I removed had been glued to it.  I ran up to the Ridley's in Hyrum and got a new box.  Sheesh.  The third lamp's junction box was very badly miswired: the hot and cold wires were crossed, and the safety ground wasn't connected.

I wonder what I'll find on my next project!

Fly...

Fly...  This one died of natural causes, so far as I can tell.  I found it on a window sill.  The piece of wood holding it upright is a chip of oak flooring.  Taken at 25x magnification.  Flies sure are a lot hairier than I'd imagined!

“They didn’t understand how men could not see these problems, but it’s because so many of us are being so goddamn quiet.”

“They didn’t understand how men could not see these problems, but it’s because so many of us are being so goddamn quiet.”  What's it like to be a woman in the tech industry?  Are there few women in tech because the experience is so bad?

I don't know Randi Harper; to the best of my knowledge I've never met her or talked to her.  Reading her description of her current job makes me hope I have the chance someday:

Cat herder, spine of steel, puzzle master, obfuscated code whisperer. I complain a lot about things that go bump in the night. Then I track down the monsters and kick them in the junk. I could solve world hunger with a 200 line perl script.

That's a geek with a sense of humor :)  And about as DevOpsy as you can get...

The quote at the beginning of this post is Randi's, from a two-part piece she's written that's guaranteed to have provoke a strong reaction:

Still Here, Part 1: A Memoir
Still Here, Part 2: Call to Arms

I spent 34 years in the tech industry, from 1979 through 2013 (I'm not counting my 6 years in the Navy).  I did a lot of different things, including starting my own businesses, working as an engineer, running datacenter IT, and executive management.  Over those years, I worked with a number of women: peers, superiors, and subordinates.  There were far fewer of them than there were men, to my disappointment (because I like working with women).  Just like the men I worked with, some of the women were good at their jobs, some not so good.  No woman I've ever worked with has told me that she had experienced anything like what Randi describes in Part 1 – but that obviously doesn't mean it didn't happen.  I have had the unhappy experience of investigating accusations of sexual harassment leveled by a subordinate.  Most of these were real, but (so far as I'm aware) isolated instances not part of a pattern the women involved were experiencing.  Certainly none of the women I interviewed ever asserted anything otherwise.

If Randi's experience is actually widespread amongst women in tech, I am appalled – on multiple levels, but in particular because it must mean that some women I worked with were subjected to it.  I wonder what I could have done differently that would have encouraged these women to simply talk with me about it?

Randi's onto something here, I think.  I'm uncomfortable with the inevitable inference that this is somehow the victim's fault, but ... speaking as a former manager, I can guarantee that if a manager doesn't even know about something, they for damned sure can't do anything about it.  Any halfway decent human being (and yes, I'm including managers in that group), if presented with this sort of abuse, would want to do something about it.

I'm no longer in a position (because I'm retired) to help anyone directly.  But I'm hoping that Randi's call to arms will help motivate others to speak up if they're being subjected to the sorts of horrible behavior Randi experienced...

Environmental problems you don't hear about...

Environmental problems you don't hear about...  One of these I discovered years ago, in reading a book about why cities are so dirty.  Once people stopped low temperature combustion (like wood fires, or coal fires) that made carbon soot in staggering quantities, why do cities still get dirty so quickly?  Especially noticeable is the black crud that accumulates on building walls.  What is that?  As you might guess, it's a complicated mess of stuff, but it's dominated by rubber dust – the tiny particles of rubber that wear off tires.  It turns out that is really nasty stuff, and it's been implicated in quite a few health issues that city dwellers suffer much more than rural folks.  There's a much higher concentration of rubber dust in cities.

This morning I read about another pollutant that in many ways reminds me of this: microscopic fibers shed by garments made with synthetic (plastic) fibers.  These are far larger fragments than rubber dust particles, but still small enough in many cases to affect individual cells.  It sounds like something we really should understand better than we currently do...

“Because we’re primates with vested interests in tracking social hierarchies and patterns of social affiliation.”

“Because we’re primates with vested interests in tracking social hierarchies and patterns of social affiliation.”  I read this article – On the Origin of Celebrity – hoping that it would help me understand the phenomenon of celebrity, which has long been a complete mystery to me.  The article raised far more questions for me than it answered.  The basic thesis it puts forth is that celebrity obsession is an innate, genetically transmitted, characteristic of primates.  One paragraph's lead is “So with think a lot about status relations...”, which lost me completely.  I spend exactly zero time thinking about status relations, and I didn't realize that other people do.

Does that mean I'm not a primate?  Not human?

I have a suspicion that this is closely related to introversion (and I'm a fairly extreme introvert, self-trained in the art of getting along with extroverts).  I did a quick search to see if this correlation has been noted before, and found a few anecdotal mentions, but nothing more.  If I'm right, the inverse would be true: extroverts would be more likely to think about status relations, and therefore more likely to be obsessed with celebrities.

One experience I've had many times is to be in a room full of people (usually a business meeting of some kind) wherein someone will say something that everyone finds funny – everyone except me, as I didn't understand it.  Sometimes its a reference to sports (which I pay no attention to), but more often its a reference to some celebrity.  I've always chalked up the celebrity “misses” to my lack of interest, and have long been puzzled why all the other people did have enough interest to have absorbed these things.  Now I'm wondering if all or part of this was yet another difference between extroverts (who dominate in the management world that I was long part of) and introverts...

4°F...

4°F...  That's what it got down to last night.  It's much warmer now, though: 7°F.

One of my neighbors has a ewe, and she's baaaing like crazy.  That's about what I felt like doing when I walked outside this morning...

I left the house at about 6 am, headed for Angie's for breakfast.  This is turning into a regular thing for me, having a Sunday breakfast of chicken-fried steak and eggs with a scone at Angie's.  Yum!  This morning when I walked out the front door, my boots crunched loudly on the snow.  My windshield was clear, so I didn't have to scrape it.  When I tried to start the truck, the engine didn't catch at first.  That never happens on my Toyota Tundra – the engine always starts up within a fraction of a second of my turning the key.  This morning it took 10 seconds or so of cranking before it started, and then it ran ragged for 30 seconds or so.  Maybe my oil froze :)  It was fine after that, thankfully.  I had the heater up full blast for the entire 20 minute drive, and the interior of the truck never got above 20°F.

It's going to take us a while to get used to these low temperatures...

In my basement window casement...

In my basement window casement...

When the sun came up this morning...

When the sun came up this morning ... I could see that it looks like winter outside!  All this will be gone in a few hours, though – the forecast for today has temperatures well above freezing, and the sun shining.  The photos below are all from our front yard, where I dared walk in the snow for a little way :)

Actually it was quite comfortable – it's already over freezing, and I have a pair of Muck arctic sport boots, and those things keep my feet toasty even at 5°F.

Check out the icicles!  I haven't seen icicles since the last time I was in Estonia in the winter, probably 15 years ago...

Inclusion...

Inclusion...  Found in a rock that was cleaved in the process of building our fireplace.  The cleaved surface has hundreds of crystalline inclusions like this, with lots of different colors.  Wandering over the surface with a microscope is like looking at a jewelry store cabinet...

What could this be?

What could this be?  Why, it's a piece of Hershey's chocolate!  But what are all those little specks visible in the photo (60x, click to embiggen)?  I'm guessing the light brown specks are nut fragments, but what's the black?  The light is coming from the right, and the letters are indented into the chocolate...