Paradise ponders... Well, the solar installers showed up yesterday morning – but only after getting lost, driving past our place three times, losing track of three of the four vehicles in the their caravan, and finally all assembling an hour late in front of our shed. Then things went downhill from there :)
My plan had been to spend 15 minutes or so talking over the installation details with the installers, then to hightail it over to Tim's to start trenching. The weather was perfect for that sort of work: about 50°F, mostly clear, and no wind. But such was not to be, as within 60 seconds we discovered that virtually nothing could be done as planned. There were four major reasons why this was so: (1) our home's main circuit breaker panel is completely full, (2) we have a backup generator, (3) our shed has two stories, and (4) the shed doesn't yet have an Ethernet Internet connection. All four of these factors were known by the fellow who came out last month to survey the job and generate the quote that I accepted. Something went wrong between his survey and the quote writing, and I suspect that it mainly has to do with his prior experience being limited to homes in the city.
So I spent an hour with Alan W., the supervisor of the installer crew (which was ten people!), developing a new plan. The panels are going on the second story, south-facing roof of the shed, as planned – but – the conduit carrying the high-voltage DC output of the panels will penetrate the second story roof and then run inside the barn to the first floor, then outside to the inverter. The inverter (which we had previously planned to install in our home's garage) will be mounted on the south wall of the barn, outside. The AC output from the inverter will then run underground from the south side of the barn to the north side of the outbuilding where our electric meter is. That's 275' of underground conduit, with one crossing of our driveway. They're going to bring up a trencher in two weeks to dig that out, except that going under the driveway they'll use horizontal boring so as not to wreck our driveway pavement. They'll be crossing three Paradise irrigation 8" water mains, one 2" gas main, the 1" low pressure gas line running to the shed, our cable connection, our landline telephone connection, power to the old greenhouse, and the 1.5" low pressure gas line for the outbuilding. What could go wrong? That AC line, once they run it, will tie into the house's electrical supply inside the automatic transfer switch (ATS) for the backup generator. That's because it must be connected directly with the meter, and not to the generator if it's running. That solves all the actual solar power system issues, but it doesn't even resemble the plan we got a quote on!
Then there's the Ethernet issue. I have CAT6 cable running underground between the house and the shed, but it's not connected to anything. I was planning to do that this winter, when crawling around in the attic won't be so hard (the heat in the summer up there is very uncomfortable!). But the solar system's inverter requires Internet access for them to monitor it, so they need all this to work right now. So...they're going to find themselves a small wiring guy (to make it easier to work in the cramped attic space), and they're going to hook it all up. There's a bit of cable fishing to do in the house, but that's the only real challenge. None of this was anticipated in the original quote, though.
Sheesh.
Finally, after that was all done, I headed over to Tim's house with my trusty Kubota, and we got started on the trenching. We spent about half the day exposing the side of his well casing down to 5' deep, where the water line enters through the side and connects to the pipe going down the well to his pump. This was made challenging by the fact that a fairly large tree has grown 2' from the well casing for 40 years, and the entire area is full of roots going down about 3'. Also, it didn't help matters that starting at about 2' deep the soil transitioned from nice, soft topsoil into rock-hard compacted clay, bone-dry. We used the backhoe when we could, but we had to do a substantial amount of that work with a shovel, iron bar, and (when we got very close to the end) a screwdriver to break up that clay. We did manage to completely expose it though, and there was a bit of good news there that we didn't expect: the junction into the well casing appears to be in fine shape, and there's one critical piece that's brass – so it's completely corrosion-free. We were worried that he'd need a new casing penetration, but that looks like one thing we don't have to sweat.
The rest of the day we spent digging about 30' of trench. That doesn't sound like much for a half-day's work, but the first 4' or so was actually a tunnel! We bored under that tree's roots, in an effort to save it. We're not sure we succeeded, though, as we did break off 4 large roots on the well casing side of the tree, to get that well casing exposed. If Tim's lucky, the rest of the roots (about three quarters of the root disk) will sustain his tree. If not, we'll cut it down next spring and he'll plant a new one.
Tim was visibly cheered by the end of the day, because we'd made such fine progress, didn't find any new problems, and somehow managed not to break any more underground wires or pipes. He's hoping to find some time today to keep trenching, so I'm “on call” for that :)
I was very tired late yesterday afternoon when we finished working, so we ordered a pizza from Pizza Plus, and I ran up to get it (the pizza shop is three miles north of us, in Hyrum). It wasn't ready when I got there, so I ran over to Ridley's to do a little shopping. Mo'i was in need of bananas and buttermilk, so I loaded up with that. Shopping there was a little strange last night – the store was full of people in costume. Not just kids, either – plenty of adults were in costume as well. As I looked at all these people, I noted that it looked very old-fashioned: the costumes were all homemade, every last one. They were also the traditional characters: ghosts, goblins, witches, etc. Interesting, and I suspect a good indicator of the culture here. In San Diego, the homemade costumes would be a small minority; most of them would be commercially made. Then I picked up our pizza and drove home, where Debbie and I promptly demolished it. Very little of it went into the fridge for leftovers :)
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Curioser and curiouser...
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... My neighbor Tim, with the water leak I described yesterday, got a plumber over for inspection and advice. The results were pretty much what we expected: he needs to replace that entire piece of pipe betwixt his well and his house. That means ... today is “trenching day”. I'll be over there this morning with my tractor, and we're really going to mess up his yard :) I'm really happy to have an opportunity to repay the extensive help Tim gave me last year. Hopefully we can avoid breaking any more pipes or electrical wires, but both are unfortunately quite possible. Something underground would have to be mighty tough to survive an encounter with my backhoe...
Yesterday was a cold, drizzly day; unpleasant to be outside in. Today should be clear, sunny, and dry – a good day for trenching. Tim has visitors over the weekend, so we can't continue the work until Monday – and the forecast for Monday is for temperatures in the low 40s, and lots of rain. Actually, it's about the same for Monday through Wednesday, except that on Wednesday the forecast is for snow. After today, it looks like almost a week before we can continue the trenching work! I'm guessing two to three days to complete the trench, but it could be more if we hit unanticipated obstacles. Our experience so far makes me think that's likely :)
Today the solar panel installers are scheduled to put up our installation: about 20 panels on the shed's upper roof, a high-voltage DC cable between the shed and the house, the inverter and controller in our house's garage, and the connection between the inverter and the circuit breaker panel. There's also a new electrical meter going in. They're telling me that they can do it all in a single day, as they'll have a “full crew” (whatever that means!) here, but I'm a bit skeptical of that. Part of the job includes some horizontal boring under our paved driveway, and I'd really like to watch that take place. Unfortunately, I'm almost certain to be trenching at the moment they do that. Dang it! On the other hand, maybe they won't actually finish the job today, in which case I most likely can watch them...
Yesterday was a cold, drizzly day; unpleasant to be outside in. Today should be clear, sunny, and dry – a good day for trenching. Tim has visitors over the weekend, so we can't continue the work until Monday – and the forecast for Monday is for temperatures in the low 40s, and lots of rain. Actually, it's about the same for Monday through Wednesday, except that on Wednesday the forecast is for snow. After today, it looks like almost a week before we can continue the trenching work! I'm guessing two to three days to complete the trench, but it could be more if we hit unanticipated obstacles. Our experience so far makes me think that's likely :)
Today the solar panel installers are scheduled to put up our installation: about 20 panels on the shed's upper roof, a high-voltage DC cable between the shed and the house, the inverter and controller in our house's garage, and the connection between the inverter and the circuit breaker panel. There's also a new electrical meter going in. They're telling me that they can do it all in a single day, as they'll have a “full crew” (whatever that means!) here, but I'm a bit skeptical of that. Part of the job includes some horizontal boring under our paved driveway, and I'd really like to watch that take place. Unfortunately, I'm almost certain to be trenching at the moment they do that. Dang it! On the other hand, maybe they won't actually finish the job today, in which case I most likely can watch them...
It's that time again...
British cheek (and a rant)...
British cheek (and a rant)... A London coffee shop was ordered to take down its sign, because it was “offensive” (a word that's beginning to offend me all by itself!). Look what the coffee shop did in response – it's hysterical, cheeky, and most likely very good for their business. I wonder how the originally offended people are feeling about this development? Passed along by reader, friend, and former colleague Simon M...
The notion that we have some obligation to avoid offending others is about as un-American as you can get. There's a very large distinction between choosing not to offend someone else (a choice I make frequently around my predominantly Mormon neighbors :) and being obligated to do so. The former is your free choice, and should you offend someone else (either deliberately or inadvertently), that's a great example of the exercise of America's key (and nearly unique) freedom of speech. You don't have to think very hard to come to the understanding that our freedom of speech is all about that freedom to offend someone else (or the government) if we want to. There's really no other purpose for that freedom. “Freedom of speech” and “freedom to offend” are really one and the same thing. You cannot have one without the other.
When I was a much younger lad, the liberals – what we'd call “classical liberals” today, but back then they were the only kind – were the ones defending our freedom of speech, and the conservatives wanted to curb it. I can't think of a better example than the desecration of the American flag. In the '60s, laws were on the books, and enforced, that made it illegal to (for example) burn the flag, or stomp on it on the streets. Personally I find such behavior offensive, and I would never do that myself – but the Supreme Court held (correctly, in my view) that such behavior was a form of speech, a symbolic way of protesting the U.S. government's actions – and as such it was protected by the Constitution. Liberals promoted that freedom; conservatives opposed it. Today the situation is completely reversed. The liberal-dominated institutions (especially, at the moment, our universities) are doing their level best to create, impose, and enforce speech codes that would make particular kinds of speech illegal. Naturally it would be the kinds of speech that they decide is offensive. This is not happening without controversy and without resistance, but nevertheless the liberals are making “progress” toward their newly-acquired goals of limiting freedom of speech.
That moves us toward the European norm, where speech is limited in ways that I suspect would surprise and dismay most Americans. It's not a norm I want to live under, and it's my fervent hope that the liberals in America fail in their efforts. I'm afraid, though, that they're succeeding ... and there aren't many other places I'd care to live that have anything like our (alleged) freedom of speech...
The notion that we have some obligation to avoid offending others is about as un-American as you can get. There's a very large distinction between choosing not to offend someone else (a choice I make frequently around my predominantly Mormon neighbors :) and being obligated to do so. The former is your free choice, and should you offend someone else (either deliberately or inadvertently), that's a great example of the exercise of America's key (and nearly unique) freedom of speech. You don't have to think very hard to come to the understanding that our freedom of speech is all about that freedom to offend someone else (or the government) if we want to. There's really no other purpose for that freedom. “Freedom of speech” and “freedom to offend” are really one and the same thing. You cannot have one without the other.
When I was a much younger lad, the liberals – what we'd call “classical liberals” today, but back then they were the only kind – were the ones defending our freedom of speech, and the conservatives wanted to curb it. I can't think of a better example than the desecration of the American flag. In the '60s, laws were on the books, and enforced, that made it illegal to (for example) burn the flag, or stomp on it on the streets. Personally I find such behavior offensive, and I would never do that myself – but the Supreme Court held (correctly, in my view) that such behavior was a form of speech, a symbolic way of protesting the U.S. government's actions – and as such it was protected by the Constitution. Liberals promoted that freedom; conservatives opposed it. Today the situation is completely reversed. The liberal-dominated institutions (especially, at the moment, our universities) are doing their level best to create, impose, and enforce speech codes that would make particular kinds of speech illegal. Naturally it would be the kinds of speech that they decide is offensive. This is not happening without controversy and without resistance, but nevertheless the liberals are making “progress” toward their newly-acquired goals of limiting freedom of speech.
That moves us toward the European norm, where speech is limited in ways that I suspect would surprise and dismay most Americans. It's not a norm I want to live under, and it's my fervent hope that the liberals in America fail in their efforts. I'm afraid, though, that they're succeeding ... and there aren't many other places I'd care to live that have anything like our (alleged) freedom of speech...
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Yesterday morning I met with the realtor representing the sellers of the lots adjacent to the cabin we're buying in Newton, along with a local fellow (Terry G.) who knows all about the water situation there. We quickly discovered that he was the former owner (two owners ago) of the parcels we're looking at. We verified that there are irrigation water rights associated with those parcels, but ... there's a problem with the delivery of water. It seems that the water company is refusing to allow a connection to their distribution canal, which is only 100 yards or so from the parcels. Everybody in the meeting seemed to think this was outrageous behavior on the water company's part, and that a legal challenge would resolve it. The realtor and Terry both resolved to do just that. So ... this morning we put down an offer on the two parcels adjacent to the cabin, with the offer being contingent on the water delivery situation being satisfactorily resolved. If we manage to pull that off, we're going to end up with a piece of land that's 14 acres, with a nice cabin on it, both flat and hilly sections, an intermittent stream, highway access, a good well, and abundant irrigation water. That will be sweet!
My friend and neighbor Tim D. has been worried for several months now about a wet area north of his house. He was afraid it meant a water leak, and the area had pipes for both Paradise pressurized irrigation water and his well water running under it. The irrigation water would be vastly easier to repair, as those pipes are only 18" or so underground. His well water pipe was something over 4' down, and maybe as much as 6'. Paradise pressurized irrigation water was turned off about a week ago, and Tim found that his wet spot was still being supplied with water – there was no sign of it drying off at all. That meant bad news – it had to be his well water.
Yesterday he called me for help. He'd had the “Blue Stakes” people out to mark the locations of his gas, electric, and iron water pipes, so he now knew where it was safe to dig. It was time to figure out where that leak was! So I drove my little Kubota B-26 over to his house and we commenced digging where we'd seen signs of water bubbling up out of the ground. In very short order we broke an electric line. We'd known it was there, as it was marked, but we figured it would more than a foot down. Luckily we were smart enough to have turned it off at the breaker :) That line supplies power to his barn, which only has the power for lights, so this isn't a big deal (and it's easy to fix). By that time the hole had filled with water, so we pumped it out with my little sump pump.
I dug a little deeper, and Tim waved wildly for me to stop – I'd tapped a 2" PVC pipe that we didn't even know was there. He stopped me just in time; it wasn't broken. I repositioned the tractor so my digging would avoid that pipe, and went a little further – and promptly snapped another electrical wire. It wasn't energized, and Tim has no idea what it's for. At first we thought it might be the power to his pump, run very oddly nowhere near the pipeline – but when we turned his pump back on water started squirting out of the ground, so we knew it wasn't that wire. It's still a mystery. We pumped the hole out again.
Then I dug without hitting anything but tree roots, carefully. We'd use the backhoe to dig down 6" or so, then Tim would jump in the hole and explore with his shovel to see if the pipe was close. If it wasn't, he'd crawl out of the hole and I'd dig another 6" or so. We repeated this until we got down to about 5' deep, and then Tim's exploration found the pipe. It was an old (40 years!) galvanized pipe, 1.5", and the hole was right on top and plainly visible. The pipe is terribly corroded, so most likely he's going to have to replace the entire run (100' or so) from his well to his house. Tim's not real happy about that. We figure a big part of his cost for replacement will be the trenching, and he and I can do that. First he's going to get a professional plumber out there to see what the right way to fix it is, then almost certainly he and I will be trenching. This is just like a year ago, when he helped me trench for our shed's electricity, water, gas, and network connections.
Elray the well driller talked with me just before he went home yesterday afternoon. He's now down to 200', and he struck a water-bearing layer that he calls marginally acceptable. He'd stop there if I asked him to, but would prefer to go deeper in the hopes of finding a better layer. We're going deeper – but not until next week, as he's going on a mini-vacation until Monday.
My friend and neighbor Tim D. has been worried for several months now about a wet area north of his house. He was afraid it meant a water leak, and the area had pipes for both Paradise pressurized irrigation water and his well water running under it. The irrigation water would be vastly easier to repair, as those pipes are only 18" or so underground. His well water pipe was something over 4' down, and maybe as much as 6'. Paradise pressurized irrigation water was turned off about a week ago, and Tim found that his wet spot was still being supplied with water – there was no sign of it drying off at all. That meant bad news – it had to be his well water.
Yesterday he called me for help. He'd had the “Blue Stakes” people out to mark the locations of his gas, electric, and iron water pipes, so he now knew where it was safe to dig. It was time to figure out where that leak was! So I drove my little Kubota B-26 over to his house and we commenced digging where we'd seen signs of water bubbling up out of the ground. In very short order we broke an electric line. We'd known it was there, as it was marked, but we figured it would more than a foot down. Luckily we were smart enough to have turned it off at the breaker :) That line supplies power to his barn, which only has the power for lights, so this isn't a big deal (and it's easy to fix). By that time the hole had filled with water, so we pumped it out with my little sump pump.
I dug a little deeper, and Tim waved wildly for me to stop – I'd tapped a 2" PVC pipe that we didn't even know was there. He stopped me just in time; it wasn't broken. I repositioned the tractor so my digging would avoid that pipe, and went a little further – and promptly snapped another electrical wire. It wasn't energized, and Tim has no idea what it's for. At first we thought it might be the power to his pump, run very oddly nowhere near the pipeline – but when we turned his pump back on water started squirting out of the ground, so we knew it wasn't that wire. It's still a mystery. We pumped the hole out again.
Then I dug without hitting anything but tree roots, carefully. We'd use the backhoe to dig down 6" or so, then Tim would jump in the hole and explore with his shovel to see if the pipe was close. If it wasn't, he'd crawl out of the hole and I'd dig another 6" or so. We repeated this until we got down to about 5' deep, and then Tim's exploration found the pipe. It was an old (40 years!) galvanized pipe, 1.5", and the hole was right on top and plainly visible. The pipe is terribly corroded, so most likely he's going to have to replace the entire run (100' or so) from his well to his house. Tim's not real happy about that. We figure a big part of his cost for replacement will be the trenching, and he and I can do that. First he's going to get a professional plumber out there to see what the right way to fix it is, then almost certainly he and I will be trenching. This is just like a year ago, when he helped me trench for our shed's electricity, water, gas, and network connections.
Elray the well driller talked with me just before he went home yesterday afternoon. He's now down to 200', and he struck a water-bearing layer that he calls marginally acceptable. He'd stop there if I asked him to, but would prefer to go deeper in the hopes of finding a better layer. We're going deeper – but not until next week, as he's going on a mini-vacation until Monday.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
You know the government is out of control...
You know the government is out of control ... when this sort of thing happens with a science agency! The NOAA has data supporting a skeptical view of anthropogenic global warming, but is refusing to release it. Do you think there might be a funding agenda at work here? Sheesh...
Curiosity has lots of new Mars photos being dumped...
A big day for Cassini today...
Workers make a mistake...
CISA passes the senate...
CISA passes the senate... I'm not really surprised by this, but I am certainly disappointed. It's another whack at liberty, which as I recall was actually a founding principal of this country. CISA, in my view, is more horrible as a symptom of the erosion of American liberty (which mainly means freedom from government interference and oversight) than it is in-and-of itself. In other words, the fact that CISA is part of a pattern is worse than it is itself – sort of like Giuliani's “broken windows” thesis about urban crime. The broken window itself isn't all that bad, but as a part of the pattern of urban crime, it is...
Paradise ponders...
The appetizer was homemade Italian bread with garlicky olive oil and herbs, a garnishing dominated by dried tomatoes, a burrata (fresh mozzarella stuffed with mozzarella curds and cream), and several slices of a fine prosciutto. We were amused by the giant knife, suitable for felling trees – but the appetizer itself was heavenly. My entree was veal ravioli in a truffle sauce, topped with slices of black truffle; Debbie's was penne pasta in marinara, with spicy, sausage-y meatballs. Both were superb; the ravioli right up there with the best I've ever had (which was in Italy!). For dessert (the least wonderful part of our last meal) we tried the lemon cake – and it was just as good as the rest of the meal. The cake was light and delicious, the lemon filling evocative of fresh lemons (though not quite as tart as we'd like it), and the accompanying strawberry puree and fresh strawberry the perfect companion. Last time we had creme brulee; I guess the Italians just don't know how to make that French dish :) A memorable meal! Two visits now, and we still haven't ordered anything that was actually on the menu. Both times the waitress listed specials that enticed us...
Last night I got an email from our solar supplier. They're planning to start installation on Thursday morning (tomorrow!). We have rain in the forecast, though, so I've got a question into them about whether they really want to be installing stuff on a slippery metal roof in the rain :)
And speaking of forecasts ... we have snow in the forecast for early next week, and several days of high temperatures in the 40s. Winter is fast approaching!
This morning I'm catching up on our finances. Mainly that means entering receipts into Moneydance (the financial management program we use). We're about to start doing something we've never done before: keep separate accounts for the household (which I do) and for Debbie's spending. This is in an effort to split the workload, and also to have the person doing the work be the one who actually incurred the expense – we've noticed that this makes handling the inevitable errors in reconciliation much easier :) One of the things I did this morning was something that's now become a habit: scanning in all the paperwork involved: receipts, bills, medical paperwork, etc. I started doing this just this past January. At this point I have just over 1,000 documents in the electronic storage – and the original paper has all been shredded. No more file cabinets and shoe-boxes full of receipts! The search facility to find documents in that electronic storage is still just as zippy as it was in the very beginning, and I use it quite often. We used to cringe every time a situation came up that required us to find a piece of paper. Now it's as easy as using Google, because the user interface is just like Google's. This morning I searched for two things: "Paradise irrigation" and a tradesman's name. In both cases, the search responded in well under a second, and the document I was looking for was in the first 2 or 3 results. One click and an image of the document is right there on the screen in front of me. Our paper shredder (a big one) is nearly full for the first time since we bought it last December – all of those more than 1,000 documents are in there. Lovely, that is!
Today I'm headed up to Newton with our realtor for a meeting with several people concerning the property adjacent to the cabin we're buying for my brother. That property – 4.5 acres of hay field and hillside – abuts the cabin's property to its west. It was just listed for sale (although it's been for sale by the owner for over a year) with no “bites”; the owner is eager to sell and the price is attractive. Other than its convenient location, it comes with one other very attractive feature: a share of irrigation water rights. We're thinking that if we were to combine it with the cabin's property we'd end up with the cabin on 10 acres, highway frontage nearly level with the cabin (the cabin's current access a long driveway off a back road), a couple acres of almost-flat field (where the hay currently is), and 3 acre-feet of water per year (that's what the irrigation water right conveys). That's a pretty sweet setup for anyone who wants a place in the boonies, where they can grow something. Adding to that is the fact that the hillside included all faces south to southwest – perfect for growing things in a warmer micro-climate than the flat field would provide. The meeting today is to nail down all the particulars, including (especially!) the water rights. The big unknown for me is how the irrigation water gets to the parcel, though I already know there is a way, as it was irrigated this year for hay.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Elray the well driller is now down to 190'. The water we hoped to find at around 120' didn't materialize, dang it, so we've got to go deeper to the water layers that are sure to be there – but with much more iron in the water. At 180' he struck a source of very “dirty” water, full of clay washings – no good at all for a well. Then at 192' he struck a layer of sandstone so soft that the drill cut faster than in clay. That layer was full of water – but also full of sand from the sandstone. Elray knows from hard experience that a well tapping that sort of geology is unreliable. So tomorrow he'll go even deeper.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Skip to the “Geek-free” label below to bypass the programming content.
Yesterday was a “mostly programming” day for me. I'm building an index class (for use in sparse vectors and sparse matrices) that doesn't use objects for its members (as do all the standard Java collections). Why? Because the matrices (in particular) will have millions of numbers, and storing each in an object triples the amount of memory consumed. It's also a significant performance hit – in my testing prior to deciding to implement this, numbers-in-objects were almost six times slower than numeric primitives. Implementing the index in arrays of primitives is much faster, but it's also a lot harder than simply using the Java collections. In all my years of Java programming, I've never run into a situation like this before – and apparently, not too many other people have, either, as I can't find production-quality (or even working!) open source implementations anywhere.
So down this rabbit hole I go :) The task at the moment is the aforementioned index, which I'm implementing as a red/black tree entirely stored in arrays of longs. Red/black trees are a classic solution for this problem. I've long known about them, have read extensively about them (in particular, their O(log2(n)) performance for all the key operations), but I have never before actually implemented one. Yesterday I finished the first hurdle of difficulty: insertion is up and running, with an implementation I'm happy with. I also have completed a test harness for verifying the correctness of the tree. Next step (and last challenging bit!): tree node deletion.
Geek-free:
As I retrieved my tea cup from the dishwasher this morning, I marveled once again at the unobvious trick that cured our spotted dishes ills. I keep meaning to write about this, but haven't remembered until this morning. After Debbie joined me in Paradise, in December of last year, we noticed something annoying: our dishes would come out of the dishwasher with whitish spots all over them. It was especially noticeable on anything made of metal or glass, but they were actually on all the dishes – if you ran your finger over a porcelain plate, you could feel them there as well. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem, including partially disassembling the dishwasher to check for some kind of blockage. We assumed that the problem was related to rinsing somehow, because the spots came right off if we rinsed the (washed!) dishes under the faucet and hand-dried them. Nothing I tried worked.
In sheer desperation, I resorted to Google – which, in hindsight, should have been my first action (like it is with software engineering these days). In mere seconds, after reading several articles, a pattern emerged: people with soft water are usually putting too much soap in their dishwashers. We have very soft water, the result of my installing a first-class water softener last year. Were we putting too much soap in? Probably, because we were using the same amount we did back in Jamul, where we had extremely hard water. So we reduced our soap by a factor of about four, and ... the dishes came out spotless and sparkling. It really was that simple. The cup for the soap on the dishwasher was sized to handle the needs of people with soft water, so when you “fill” it properly for hard water, it looks like you're putting way too little in. That happened several months ago, and it still boggles my mind every time I pull the perfect, squeaky-clean, sparkling dishes out of the dish washer...
Today is the last day of our inspection period on the log cabin we're buying. We still have a couple of things left to do, so I'm expecting to be out part of the day. Elray (the well driller) will be back today, and he will be drilling past the 120' mark by mid-day – which means today could be the day he hits water. If he does, that's especially good news for us, as the water at that depth has considerably less iron in it than does the water from deeper layers. On Friday I mentioned to Elray that I had never learned to weld. His response: he's going to bring some junk metal and a spare “hood” for me, and he's going to give me some free lessons. He uses a gas welding rig (oxygen and propane), which I have watched in use but never tried myself. Should be interesting! I'm certain Elray will be highly entertained :)
Yesterday was a “mostly programming” day for me. I'm building an index class (for use in sparse vectors and sparse matrices) that doesn't use objects for its members (as do all the standard Java collections). Why? Because the matrices (in particular) will have millions of numbers, and storing each in an object triples the amount of memory consumed. It's also a significant performance hit – in my testing prior to deciding to implement this, numbers-in-objects were almost six times slower than numeric primitives. Implementing the index in arrays of primitives is much faster, but it's also a lot harder than simply using the Java collections. In all my years of Java programming, I've never run into a situation like this before – and apparently, not too many other people have, either, as I can't find production-quality (or even working!) open source implementations anywhere.
So down this rabbit hole I go :) The task at the moment is the aforementioned index, which I'm implementing as a red/black tree entirely stored in arrays of longs. Red/black trees are a classic solution for this problem. I've long known about them, have read extensively about them (in particular, their O(log2(n)) performance for all the key operations), but I have never before actually implemented one. Yesterday I finished the first hurdle of difficulty: insertion is up and running, with an implementation I'm happy with. I also have completed a test harness for verifying the correctness of the tree. Next step (and last challenging bit!): tree node deletion.
Geek-free:
As I retrieved my tea cup from the dishwasher this morning, I marveled once again at the unobvious trick that cured our spotted dishes ills. I keep meaning to write about this, but haven't remembered until this morning. After Debbie joined me in Paradise, in December of last year, we noticed something annoying: our dishes would come out of the dishwasher with whitish spots all over them. It was especially noticeable on anything made of metal or glass, but they were actually on all the dishes – if you ran your finger over a porcelain plate, you could feel them there as well. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem, including partially disassembling the dishwasher to check for some kind of blockage. We assumed that the problem was related to rinsing somehow, because the spots came right off if we rinsed the (washed!) dishes under the faucet and hand-dried them. Nothing I tried worked.
In sheer desperation, I resorted to Google – which, in hindsight, should have been my first action (like it is with software engineering these days). In mere seconds, after reading several articles, a pattern emerged: people with soft water are usually putting too much soap in their dishwashers. We have very soft water, the result of my installing a first-class water softener last year. Were we putting too much soap in? Probably, because we were using the same amount we did back in Jamul, where we had extremely hard water. So we reduced our soap by a factor of about four, and ... the dishes came out spotless and sparkling. It really was that simple. The cup for the soap on the dishwasher was sized to handle the needs of people with soft water, so when you “fill” it properly for hard water, it looks like you're putting way too little in. That happened several months ago, and it still boggles my mind every time I pull the perfect, squeaky-clean, sparkling dishes out of the dish washer...
Today is the last day of our inspection period on the log cabin we're buying. We still have a couple of things left to do, so I'm expecting to be out part of the day. Elray (the well driller) will be back today, and he will be drilling past the 120' mark by mid-day – which means today could be the day he hits water. If he does, that's especially good news for us, as the water at that depth has considerably less iron in it than does the water from deeper layers. On Friday I mentioned to Elray that I had never learned to weld. His response: he's going to bring some junk metal and a spare “hood” for me, and he's going to give me some free lessons. He uses a gas welding rig (oxygen and propane), which I have watched in use but never tried myself. Should be interesting! I'm certain Elray will be highly entertained :)
Sunday, October 25, 2015
“…a house of pudding cannot stand.”
“…a house of pudding cannot stand.” That's from the conclusion of Fred Reed's ponder about the wimpiness of today's America:
What Fred describes is precisely what I saw in the past 20 years or so of working in the city. My profession (software engineering) depends on a lot of teamwork – but some of my colleagues took that to an extreme that I found downright scary. Their embracing of interdependence and aversion to independent operation was startling to me – and not just in their professional life, either. Their personal lives were full of the same thing. I worked with dozens of people – mostly men, mind you – who wouldn't be able to even identify the tools in my toolbox, much less actually use them.
How did America get like this? What happened to the ruggedly independent and self-reliant American who was once the symbol of the country?
Well, not all of America matches Fred Reed's description, thank goodness. We saw a much more traditional sort of American when we lived in Jamul, just 35 miles from the city. There we saw many examples of people whom Fred would recognize as those rugged independents. Now that we've moved to Utah, that is the norm, no longer the exception. This is a part of the country where there are no safe houses, where people still hunt for meat, where everybody has a toolbox and knows how to use it.
I suspect Fred would like it here :)
This ménage of middle-school delicates is not the country that fought World War II, or Vietnam. It is a jellyfish threatening to collapse under any serious stress. Corrupt, seriously divided racially, the middle-class sinking, ruled by fools and kleptocrats, a house of pudding cannot stand. Scared, fat, weak, fragile, narcissistic, herd-minded, prissy, censorious and, increasingly, ignorant. Deliberately ignorant. This is wonderful stuff.Read the whole thing.
It warms a curmudgeon’s heart.
What Fred describes is precisely what I saw in the past 20 years or so of working in the city. My profession (software engineering) depends on a lot of teamwork – but some of my colleagues took that to an extreme that I found downright scary. Their embracing of interdependence and aversion to independent operation was startling to me – and not just in their professional life, either. Their personal lives were full of the same thing. I worked with dozens of people – mostly men, mind you – who wouldn't be able to even identify the tools in my toolbox, much less actually use them.
How did America get like this? What happened to the ruggedly independent and self-reliant American who was once the symbol of the country?
Well, not all of America matches Fred Reed's description, thank goodness. We saw a much more traditional sort of American when we lived in Jamul, just 35 miles from the city. There we saw many examples of people whom Fred would recognize as those rugged independents. Now that we've moved to Utah, that is the norm, no longer the exception. This is a part of the country where there are no safe houses, where people still hunt for meat, where everybody has a toolbox and knows how to use it.
I suspect Fred would like it here :)
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Republican 2016 presidential primary...
Republican 2016 presidential primary... The current data (derived from Betfair wagering). While the U.S. polls show Trump and Carson at the top, by far ... the people putting their money down on the race are favoring Rubio by a wide margin. What do they (think they) know that the pollsters aren't picking up?
If you're not familiar with using betting data in a situation like this, here's the one thing that's important to know: since about the mid-'90s, the betting data has been far more reliable in predicting the outcome of elections than polls have been – and that difference is increasing over time. Either bettors are getting better information, pollsters are getting worse (or are more overtly biased), or both. I'm guessing both...
If you're not familiar with using betting data in a situation like this, here's the one thing that's important to know: since about the mid-'90s, the betting data has been far more reliable in predicting the outcome of elections than polls have been – and that difference is increasing over time. Either bettors are getting better information, pollsters are getting worse (or are more overtly biased), or both. I'm guessing both...
Online encyclopedia of integer sequences...
Online encyclopedia of integer sequences... I've posted about this fascinating resource before, but today I ran across a nice story about Neil Sloane, the mathematician who created it...
I don't get too excited...
I don't get too excited ... when I read about foreign countries spying on us. One reason why: we do it too. Another reason: we do almost nothing to stop it. If we don't like the spying, then instead of being all offended and self-righteous when friend or foe spies on us, we should instead concentrate on defending ourselves. The current plague of Chinese industrial spying, for example, should be seen as a failure of our defenses against spying (in effect, inviting the spies!) – not as some nefarious Chinese plot.
The current situation is as if we tore the front door off our house, put giant billboards advertising that fact on the freeway, then act surprised and hurt when thieves rush in to steal all our stuff. I know from personal experience at the last several software companies I worked for that stealing all their source code would only have been moderately difficult for a complete outsider with no internal connections – and completely trivial for anyone with any insider assistance at all. Anyone with even the slightest interest in the technology I worked on could have had it all (and quite possibly did!) very easily...
The current situation is as if we tore the front door off our house, put giant billboards advertising that fact on the freeway, then act surprised and hurt when thieves rush in to steal all our stuff. I know from personal experience at the last several software companies I worked for that stealing all their source code would only have been moderately difficult for a complete outsider with no internal connections – and completely trivial for anyone with any insider assistance at all. Anyone with even the slightest interest in the technology I worked on could have had it all (and quite possibly did!) very easily...
Pluto is weird!
Researchers really hit the jackpot with the New Horizons probe...
Friday, October 23, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Earlier this week, Michelle H. (the wonderful woman who cleans our house for us, but who is fast becoming a good friend) invited Debbie to a “salsa social” put on by Paradise Ward 2's Relief Society. Paradise Ward 2 is the area (including our home) of one congregation of the Paradise LDS (Mormon) church. This particular Relief Society is the same group of women who insisted on feeding us earlier this year, shortly after Debbie was injured.
Last night was the evening of the salsa social, and Michelle picked Debbie up at 6:30 and took her there and back. It was held at the home of Pam and Paul N.; Paul was the preceding bishop of the ward, just after Tim D. (our neighbor to the north), less than a mile from our house. Debbie came back all smiley and happy – she had a wonderful time meeting a bunch (20 or 25) of the local women. She reports that they were all very friendly, eager to get to know her (it's not every day there's a new face in town!). As she told them, it was really nice for her to hear women's conversation, instead of just that with the slug she married :)
We love living here!
I went out this morning to check in with Elray (the well driller) to see what his progress is. He's got the hole bored down to 90', has 45' of 10" casing down (this will later form the basis for the 40' of "seal" required around every new well), and about to start putting the first 90' of casing down the hole. In the first two photos below, you can see the "sticks" he's just finished pulling out of the hole. The 10" diameter drill bit (the working end of which is in the last photo) is still in the hole at that point, but held up at the very top. You can also see the "mud" (hydrated clay) that has been drilled, puddled in the foreground. There's quite a pile of mud there, and when I commented on that Elray told me that when the mud is loosened and hydrated, it expands – sometimes considerably, by a factor of several times the volume. Who knew that dirt swelled up? The third photo shows the end of a pile of seven 20' lengths of 6" diameter casing. Elray will be welding these into a single pipe as he inserts the casing down the hole. It's fascinating to watch him work on this, especially when he has to move heavy things around – that rig and his skill makes it look really easy. I watched him extract the 10" drill bit this morning. It's a piece of steel about 7' long overall, weighing well over 200 lbs. Elray lifted it out with a hoist, then swung it around like a giant pendulum until the working end was swinging over the spot where he wanted to lay it on the ground, then at precisely the right moment he dropped the lift down and placed it within inches of where he told me he would. He never had to work hard for that whole job...
Last night was the evening of the salsa social, and Michelle picked Debbie up at 6:30 and took her there and back. It was held at the home of Pam and Paul N.; Paul was the preceding bishop of the ward, just after Tim D. (our neighbor to the north), less than a mile from our house. Debbie came back all smiley and happy – she had a wonderful time meeting a bunch (20 or 25) of the local women. She reports that they were all very friendly, eager to get to know her (it's not every day there's a new face in town!). As she told them, it was really nice for her to hear women's conversation, instead of just that with the slug she married :)
We love living here!
I went out this morning to check in with Elray (the well driller) to see what his progress is. He's got the hole bored down to 90', has 45' of 10" casing down (this will later form the basis for the 40' of "seal" required around every new well), and about to start putting the first 90' of casing down the hole. In the first two photos below, you can see the "sticks" he's just finished pulling out of the hole. The 10" diameter drill bit (the working end of which is in the last photo) is still in the hole at that point, but held up at the very top. You can also see the "mud" (hydrated clay) that has been drilled, puddled in the foreground. There's quite a pile of mud there, and when I commented on that Elray told me that when the mud is loosened and hydrated, it expands – sometimes considerably, by a factor of several times the volume. Who knew that dirt swelled up? The third photo shows the end of a pile of seven 20' lengths of 6" diameter casing. Elray will be welding these into a single pipe as he inserts the casing down the hole. It's fascinating to watch him work on this, especially when he has to move heavy things around – that rig and his skill makes it look really easy. I watched him extract the 10" drill bit this morning. It's a piece of steel about 7' long overall, weighing well over 200 lbs. Elray lifted it out with a hoist, then swung it around like a giant pendulum until the working end was swinging over the spot where he wanted to lay it on the ground, then at precisely the right moment he dropped the lift down and placed it within inches of where he told me he would. He never had to work hard for that whole job...
Thursday, October 22, 2015
More photos downlinked from New Horizons...
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
This is pretty funny...
Cyr wheel...
Pretty spectacular! Note in particular how he never runs over his fingers.
Japanese maple...
That's one very impressive machine!
“The fundamental producer of income inequality is freedom.”
“The fundamental producer of income inequality is freedom.” Now there's a ponder-worthy quote, and it's my quote of the day. The writer was George Will, in a shouldn't-be-missed column at NRO. In the occasional conversation I've had with friends about income inequality, I've always defended it as a good thing, and a reflection of capitalism at work – but Mr. Will has reduced that idea to its most pithy, powerful form in that one short sentence...
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... We took our walk yesterday at noon, under a partly cloudy sky. The ground was still damp and slightly muddy from the rains, so we kept to the roads and avoided tromping over the sodden fields. The dogs were disappointed by this, as that meant less voles to sniff out. Still, the high humidity brought exciting aromas to their noses, and both of them were noses down the whole time we were walking. We saw a few hawks circling high, but none perched around the fields. They must have reduced the vole population to the point where they have to work harder to find one. It was only 50°F during our walk; light jacket weather even though we were working hard. Some photos:
Debbie had physical therapy in the morning, and I worked indoors where I could stay warm. Elray had to stay home in the morning to wait for two truckloads of casing pipe to arrive (some of which is for us!); he didn't get here until too late in the afternoon to start drilling. The next step for him is to expand the hole he's got now from 6" to 10" in diameter. That's so he can put a temporary 10" casing down the first 40' or so of the well. That will provide enough room for him to put the water connection in, 6' or so underground (to prevent it from freezing). When he's all done with the well, he'll pull that 10" casing out. A reader wrote yesterday to ask what the drill bit actually looks like. That's what the photo at right is: the 6" rotary drill that he used to drill the hole we've got so far. Those knobby “cones” rotate against the bottom as the drill shaft is turned. Because the shaft itself is heavy, plus there's a big weight on top of it (several tons), those pointy knobs are grinding into the bottom of the well, breaking loose bits of soil and rock as they go. Between the top two cones you can see a small hole; that's one of three air ports that blast out a huge amount of compressed air to blow the debris back up the hole. There's also a bit of water injected in there, about 500 gallons per day, mainly to keep it from creating too much dust. The water also acts as a lubricant, but that doesn't matter too much unless you're drilling through rock. Elray tells me that those rotary drills were invented by Howard Hughes – not that Howard Hughes, but his father. That's how he made his original fortune.
Debbie and I had lunch at Elements, a restaurant on the southern end of Logan that gets high rankings in the snooty restaurant magazines and web sites. We'd only been to it once before; we liked it but were not all that impressed by it. Yesterday we decided to give it another try, and we're very glad we did – both of us had really nice meals. Debbie had an outstanding spinach salad and a barbecue chicken pizza (she's a big fan of these; me, not so much) that she pronounced wonderful. I had a tomato bisque (good, not great; a little sweet for my taste), and a very different sort of fish and chips. That's what they called it on the menu, but it really was Alaskan cod cooked tempura-style, and mashed sweet potato baked with a cinnamony, slightly sweet crust on top. The cod was melt-in-your-mouth good, better than any I've had in many years. The tempura was perfectly done; a very light coating of batter and very little oil. And the sweet potato just might have been the best sweet potato dish I've ever had. Debbie, somehow, had enough room for dessert: key lime pie. I didn't even taste it, but she reports it was mouth-puckeringly tart, just the way she likes it, and reeking of lime. I almost left out the part of the meal that surprised us the most: flavored lemonades. When you order one, you get one free refill. We both started with raspberry, and at the first sip our brains just about fell out on the table. Wonderful stuff! Tart as hell with the lemon, but with a lot of raspberry puree swizzled in. Naturally we both took our refills. Debbie tried the strawberry, and was equally delighted with it. I tried the mango, and it was just as wonderful as the raspberry. We'll be going back there...
The photo above has nothing to do with the restaurant :) It's the view to the southwest of our driveway entrance, as the sun was about to disappear behind the Wellsville Mountains...
The photo above has nothing to do with the restaurant :) It's the view to the southwest of our driveway entrance, as the sun was about to disappear behind the Wellsville Mountains...
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... It rained intermittently yesterday, so the boys (Miki and Race) and I missed our walk. This morning it's a little nasty out (humid and cold), so we're going to wait until later this morning, or maybe even early this afternoon.
Debbie and I took a ride in the Hardware Ranch area late yesterday afternoon. We had some great viewing of several kingfishers under the shadow-less light of a cloudy day. It's interesting what the lighting does to your view. Through the binoculars the colors were dull and flat by comparison to bright sunlight, but we could see the details of the birds much better in the lower contrast. We also caught a fleeting glimpse of a dipper, and Debbie spotted just one deer as it hightailed it over a hill. Hunting season is open, and the deer are smart enough to stay out of sight when the hills are swarming with orange-jacketed hunters.
Elray (the well driller) showed up in the afternoon to start our well, and I went out to observe and chat a bit. Elray is quite a character – a lifetime resident of the general area, as were his parents. His dad was also a well driller. Elray told me about a fun project he's got going – to restore his dad's first well drilling rig to working condition. It's made mostly of wood, which has deteriorated over the years, so he's got a bunch wood working to do. That's all new to him, as everything he does involves steel. That old rig also works completely differently than today's rigs. It didn't use a rotary drill bit; instead, it used a round “bit” that got pounded into the ground with a heavy weight that was repeatedly dropped on the top of the pipe. This is essentially the same idea as a modern pile driver, but with the weight lifted via a cable instead of a diesel piston.
The first photo below shows the rig while drilling. Note the American flag flying at the top. What you're seeing there is the drill shaft turning (which turns the bit far underground against the hole's bottom), and compressed air (at up to 900 cfm!) blowing the debris right up the hole and out of the top, in the form of gray mud mixed with gravel that you can see at the bottom of the rig. The mud is gray because he's drilling through a layer of clay that underlies the entire valley. The second photo is the same, except with a closer view of the operator's panel and the top of the hole. The third photo shows Elray using the hoist mechanism to add another 40' length of drill shaft. He's doing this because the first 40' piece is now almost entirely underground, so he has to add another segment to go deeper. The last photo shows a later stage of that same operation.
I was fascinated by Elray and his rig. Watching him work through an entire cycle of drilling and adding a “stick” to the drill shaft, I could see just how cleverly this entire system worked together with a skilled operator. The end result is that a single man, nearly 70 years old, can drill a well up to 1,200' feet deep. The rig is full of things that surely were developed after years of in-the-field experience and innovation. To pick on just one example: the system that allows “sticks” to be screwed and unscrewed from one another without requiring the precise alignment of (say) pipe threads. That system is simple, relying mainly on tapered threads (sort of like an “easy-out”, if you're familiar with them), but incredibly robust and easy for the field workers to use. Another: the center-of-gravity hoist mechanism (which you can see in the last two photos) makes it easy to maneuver the 400 lb. “stick” into the proper position. There are probably two or three hundred such bits of cleverness in this rig's design.
When I mentioned to Elray how impressed I was with the rig's engineering, he launched into an apologia of sorts. I had to stop him to ask why he was doing this – and it emerged that the rig I was so impressed with is, by today's standards, obsolete. It's as if someone started praising the cleverness of vacuum tubes to someone like me. The modern rigs, Elray tells me, make this one look sort of silly. They're full of computers that monitor the entire operation and automate much of it. But those modern rigs are extremely expensive (as in well over a million dollars), and with his small business he can't justify that sort of expense unless he raised his fees beyond what the local market would bear. He actually had a relatively sophisticated analysis of the business case, though expressed in the language of a country boy. So he's making do with his two old, obsolete rigs. The cost of maintaining them in working order is a small fraction of the cost of a modern rig's financing, and that allows him to keep his fees low. About the only regret he seems to have is missing the increased safety of the modern rigs.
Debbie and I took a ride in the Hardware Ranch area late yesterday afternoon. We had some great viewing of several kingfishers under the shadow-less light of a cloudy day. It's interesting what the lighting does to your view. Through the binoculars the colors were dull and flat by comparison to bright sunlight, but we could see the details of the birds much better in the lower contrast. We also caught a fleeting glimpse of a dipper, and Debbie spotted just one deer as it hightailed it over a hill. Hunting season is open, and the deer are smart enough to stay out of sight when the hills are swarming with orange-jacketed hunters.
Elray (the well driller) showed up in the afternoon to start our well, and I went out to observe and chat a bit. Elray is quite a character – a lifetime resident of the general area, as were his parents. His dad was also a well driller. Elray told me about a fun project he's got going – to restore his dad's first well drilling rig to working condition. It's made mostly of wood, which has deteriorated over the years, so he's got a bunch wood working to do. That's all new to him, as everything he does involves steel. That old rig also works completely differently than today's rigs. It didn't use a rotary drill bit; instead, it used a round “bit” that got pounded into the ground with a heavy weight that was repeatedly dropped on the top of the pipe. This is essentially the same idea as a modern pile driver, but with the weight lifted via a cable instead of a diesel piston.
The first photo below shows the rig while drilling. Note the American flag flying at the top. What you're seeing there is the drill shaft turning (which turns the bit far underground against the hole's bottom), and compressed air (at up to 900 cfm!) blowing the debris right up the hole and out of the top, in the form of gray mud mixed with gravel that you can see at the bottom of the rig. The mud is gray because he's drilling through a layer of clay that underlies the entire valley. The second photo is the same, except with a closer view of the operator's panel and the top of the hole. The third photo shows Elray using the hoist mechanism to add another 40' length of drill shaft. He's doing this because the first 40' piece is now almost entirely underground, so he has to add another segment to go deeper. The last photo shows a later stage of that same operation.
I was fascinated by Elray and his rig. Watching him work through an entire cycle of drilling and adding a “stick” to the drill shaft, I could see just how cleverly this entire system worked together with a skilled operator. The end result is that a single man, nearly 70 years old, can drill a well up to 1,200' feet deep. The rig is full of things that surely were developed after years of in-the-field experience and innovation. To pick on just one example: the system that allows “sticks” to be screwed and unscrewed from one another without requiring the precise alignment of (say) pipe threads. That system is simple, relying mainly on tapered threads (sort of like an “easy-out”, if you're familiar with them), but incredibly robust and easy for the field workers to use. Another: the center-of-gravity hoist mechanism (which you can see in the last two photos) makes it easy to maneuver the 400 lb. “stick” into the proper position. There are probably two or three hundred such bits of cleverness in this rig's design.
When I mentioned to Elray how impressed I was with the rig's engineering, he launched into an apologia of sorts. I had to stop him to ask why he was doing this – and it emerged that the rig I was so impressed with is, by today's standards, obsolete. It's as if someone started praising the cleverness of vacuum tubes to someone like me. The modern rigs, Elray tells me, make this one look sort of silly. They're full of computers that monitor the entire operation and automate much of it. But those modern rigs are extremely expensive (as in well over a million dollars), and with his small business he can't justify that sort of expense unless he raised his fees beyond what the local market would bear. He actually had a relatively sophisticated analysis of the business case, though expressed in the language of a country boy. So he's making do with his two old, obsolete rigs. The cost of maintaining them in working order is a small fraction of the cost of a modern rig's financing, and that allows him to keep his fees low. About the only regret he seems to have is missing the increased safety of the modern rigs.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Free topo maps...
Free topo maps ... of just about anywhere in the U.S. This is another example of how modern technology has completely upended the old way of doing things. When I was a kid, if you wanted a topo map you either visited a musty old map store and hoped they had the one you wanted (out of the many thousands that were available), or you wrote away to a mail order firm and waited weeks or even months for your map to arrive. They weren't cheap, either. When you finally got your mitts on that map, it was a large piece of quality paper that had to be folded or rolled for transport. They were particularly awkward if you were hiking, and highly vulnerable to spoiling by getting wet or dirty. Usually we put them in a watertight plastic bag with the map folded so we could see the area around us without removing the map.
Fast forward to today. I haven't used a paper topo map for quite a few years now. My device of choice for map work is my iPad, but my iPhone works quite well, too. When I'm home I use my computer with its magnificent 27" screen. I can pan and zoom with the flick of a finger. And the maps got cheaper and cheaper, then free on certain web sites, and now – free to everyone through the USGS Store where you can download a PDF of any topo map for free.
It's an amazing world we live in...
Fast forward to today. I haven't used a paper topo map for quite a few years now. My device of choice for map work is my iPad, but my iPhone works quite well, too. When I'm home I use my computer with its magnificent 27" screen. I can pan and zoom with the flick of a finger. And the maps got cheaper and cheaper, then free on certain web sites, and now – free to everyone through the USGS Store where you can download a PDF of any topo map for free.
It's an amazing world we live in...
Powerful testimony...
Like her, I am ashamed that my country condones and encourages the killing of babies...
Reason interviews Scott Adams...
Sunday, October 18, 2015
The cranky old lady...
The cranky old lady... Via my pistol-packing, Macified mom:
A very cranky old woman was arrested for shoplifting at a grocery store. She gave everyone a hard time, from the store manager to the security guard to the arresting officer who took her away. She complained and criticized everything and everyone throughout the process.Ha!
When she appeared before the judge, the judge asked her what she had stolen from the store. The lady defiantly replied, "Just a stupid can of peaches."The judge then asked why she had done it.
She replied, "I was hungry and forgot to bring any cash to the store.” The judge asked how many peaches were in the can.
She replied in a nasty tone, "Nine! But why do you care about that?”
The judge answered patiently, "Well, ma'am, because I'm going to give you nine days in jail -- one day for each peach.”
As the judge was about to drop his gavel, the lady's long-suffering husband raised his hand slowly and asked if he might speak. The judge said, "Yes sir, what do you have to add?”
The husband said meekly, "Your Honor, she also stole a can of peas.
Twelve foot tall Cosmos!
Special soil prepared by Scott, grown in 12 inch pot on my deck this summer...is 12 + high and just started to bloom. That is some nutritious soil! Warren is 6 feet tall.Scott is my brother, soon to be moving out here to Utah – and hopefully, to be providing said super-soil to us! Warren is my brother-in-law, who (when he's not gaping at giant Cosmos) is a great help to my mom by taking care of a zillion little (and some not so little) maintenance issues at her house.
Newspaper headlines...
Newspaper headlines... Reader Simi L. sent along a great collection of classic newspaper headlines. Many of them I'd seen before, but not these:
First findings released by New Horizons team...
Mammatus clouds...
Warthogs in Estonia...
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... It's raining today; started late yesterday afternoon in a stop-and-go kind of way. There hasn't been much accumulation out. The temperature is in the mid-50s, and it's 100% humidity (naturally), so it feels fairly chilly out even when it's not actually raining. It will be mostly an inside day today, I think. The dogs and I will have to live without our beloved morning walk.
I've been working away on a couple of tough (and therefore interesting) programming challenges. The first one is comparing the result of a double precision floating point with zero, where we want the result of the comparison to zero to be true even when the result of the subtraction is slightly different than zero. That's a far harder problem than one might think, a special variant of the also tough general case of simply comparing two floats. Click on the link to that article if you'd like to know more about the whys and wherefores.
I had an insight yesterday that led to a nice solution for me. In my original formulation, I did something like this:
The solution was crazy simple: I simply rewrote the formulation as:
The reason this solution worked is that epsilon is relative to the exponents of the numbers being compared. In the first formulation, if one or both a and b are computed and should be considered equal, there will likely be a very small difference between
The second issue I haven't solved yet. I need a hash function over an array that is sensitive to each nonzero value and its index. The function should generate different results if the values at a pair of indices are swapped, and should generate the same results no matter what order the values and indices happen to be presented in. I'm still pondering that one...
I've been working away on a couple of tough (and therefore interesting) programming challenges. The first one is comparing the result of a double precision floating point with zero, where we want the result of the comparison to zero to be true even when the result of the subtraction is slightly different than zero. That's a far harder problem than one might think, a special variant of the also tough general case of simply comparing two floats. Click on the link to that article if you'd like to know more about the whys and wherefores.
I had an insight yesterday that led to a nice solution for me. In my original formulation, I did something like this:
if( nearlyEqual( a - b, 0.0, epsilon ) {...}
Where a and b are doubles, and epsilon is how close a - b and 0.0 must be in order to be considered equal. This is a conventional comparison: you subtract the two numbers and compare the result to zero. In this case, however, the results can be wildly different than what you expected, as that linked article explains.The solution was crazy simple: I simply rewrote the formulation as:
if( nearlyEqual( a, b, epsilon ) {...}
Voila! No more problem. It always gives me a kick when I beat my head against the wall working on a tough problem, and the solution turns out to be easy!The reason this solution worked is that epsilon is relative to the exponents of the numbers being compared. In the first formulation, if one or both a and b are computed and should be considered equal, there will likely be a very small difference between
a - b – but exactly how small depends on the size of those numbers. In general, the exponent of the difference will be roughly 16 (base 10) less than the exponent of the given numbers. So if the two numbers were on the order of 10^100, the difference would be on the order of 10^84 – a tiny difference relative to the given numbers, but a long, long way from zero! So of course they don't look like they're nearly equal. In the second formulation, because a and b are the inputs to the nearlyEqual() function, the function knows what their exponents are, and can accurately judge what's close enough. Oh, so easy!The second issue I haven't solved yet. I need a hash function over an array that is sensitive to each nonzero value and its index. The function should generate different results if the values at a pair of indices are swapped, and should generate the same results no matter what order the values and indices happen to be presented in. I'm still pondering that one...
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Paradise projects: the next one...
Several of my neighbors recommended the well driller – one Elray Westlake of Preston, Idaho. Most of these neighbors had had bad experiences with one or another of the other local drillers (Preston is just a few miles north of Logan; we're quite close to the Idaho border here, so Elray is really still local). Of Elray, though, everybody had only good things to say.
I first contacted Elray in September of 2014, just over a year ago. He had quite a big backlog of work as the local construction industry was shaking off the recession. I told him my requirements weren't urgent, and he should just keep me in mind the next time he had his rig down near Paradise. About six weeks ago, he contacted me and said he'd soon be ready to start. We've talked a few times since then – he's quite a character, very entertaining to talk with – and yesterday he called to say he was ready to go. Sometime today he drove his rig over, along with a couple of trailers full of casing pipe. You can see all that in the photo above, where he's parked along the north side of our little pine forest. The well is going in just behind the drilling rig. On Monday the work begins!
What sort of camera do I use?
What sort of camera do I use? A reader wrote and asked, so I'll answer for everyone: for over a year now, I've used nothing other than my iPhone 5. Usually I don't even post-process them; they're straight out of the camera. Occasionally I'll do a little color-correction, temperature-correction, or cropping (I did all three on a few photos this morning).
Do I miss the 35mm SLR? Most of the time, no. And I certainly don't miss lugging all that stuff around! The iPhone's convenience and the fact that I'm always carrying it on my person trumps the technical advantages of the SLR the vast majority of the time. Occasionally I miss the telephoto lens (naturally, the biggest and heaviest of the lot), especially for wildlife. Even more occasionally I miss the macro lens, for flower closeups. Most of the time, though, the combination of the wide angle lens on the iPhone and its pixel density lets me do anything I want to. We'll be getting a new phone sometime soon, and the new iPhone 6 camera with built-in optical stabilization and even higher pixel density will only increase these factors.
I likely will get a system camera again someday, but I'm guessing that it won't be a 35mm system. The old standby camera companies (Nikon, Canon, etc.) are struggling because so many of the people who would formerly have purchased their 35mm SLR products are moving to either the smaller dedicated cameras or, like me, are simply using their mobile phone's camera. The camera companies still have the advantage on the glass (the lenses), but the phone companies (especially Apple) have the upper hand on the software, display, and integration side. The sensors are pretty much a tossup. I'm sure this will all settle out one of these days, and somehow some company is going to get the best of both worlds. I wouldn't dare try to predict which company that would be; there are just way too many possibilities. About the only thing I'd bet on would be that the sensors in the future will trend smaller than 35mm, and consequently the lenses will be much smaller (and therefore more convenient!). When it looks like the dust has settled for a while, and that there's something resembling a standard for the glass emerging, that's when I'll likely jump into a system camera again...
Do I miss the 35mm SLR? Most of the time, no. And I certainly don't miss lugging all that stuff around! The iPhone's convenience and the fact that I'm always carrying it on my person trumps the technical advantages of the SLR the vast majority of the time. Occasionally I miss the telephoto lens (naturally, the biggest and heaviest of the lot), especially for wildlife. Even more occasionally I miss the macro lens, for flower closeups. Most of the time, though, the combination of the wide angle lens on the iPhone and its pixel density lets me do anything I want to. We'll be getting a new phone sometime soon, and the new iPhone 6 camera with built-in optical stabilization and even higher pixel density will only increase these factors.
I likely will get a system camera again someday, but I'm guessing that it won't be a 35mm system. The old standby camera companies (Nikon, Canon, etc.) are struggling because so many of the people who would formerly have purchased their 35mm SLR products are moving to either the smaller dedicated cameras or, like me, are simply using their mobile phone's camera. The camera companies still have the advantage on the glass (the lenses), but the phone companies (especially Apple) have the upper hand on the software, display, and integration side. The sensors are pretty much a tossup. I'm sure this will all settle out one of these days, and somehow some company is going to get the best of both worlds. I wouldn't dare try to predict which company that would be; there are just way too many possibilities. About the only thing I'd bet on would be that the sensors in the future will trend smaller than 35mm, and consequently the lenses will be much smaller (and therefore more convenient!). When it looks like the dust has settled for a while, and that there's something resembling a standard for the glass emerging, that's when I'll likely jump into a system camera again...
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Our salmon yesterday afternoon was great. We had the Ora King salmon again, with Debbie's technique of baking in foil with a mayonnaise-peppadew concoction on top. Yummy stuff! She also made a sort of stir-fry of potatoes, onions, and fresh bell peppers from our neighbor's garden. Also extremely yummy! We were both so full we could hardly move afterwards, though...
The mutts (Miki and Race) and I went for our walk this morning, after missing the past two days for various and sundry reasons. We hit the trail shortly after the sun poked its way up over the Wasatch Mountains, in a partly cloudy sky. This made for some interesting lighting effects, in some cases nicely highlighting the fall color. I spent the entire time looking at the scenery, and didn't actually notice any wildlife (though I'm sure it was there!) until we were walking back over the irrigation canal bridge in our driveway. There, in a box elder tree on the north side of the bridge, was a big, noisy flock of chickadees. There must have been at least two dozen of them, all chattering away like mad, and flitting to and fro for no apparent reason. Miki (the bird dog) completely ignored them. Race (the sheep-herding dog) watched them intently, perhaps thinking that they looked like they needed herding :) Some photos of Paradise for you:
The mutts (Miki and Race) and I went for our walk this morning, after missing the past two days for various and sundry reasons. We hit the trail shortly after the sun poked its way up over the Wasatch Mountains, in a partly cloudy sky. This made for some interesting lighting effects, in some cases nicely highlighting the fall color. I spent the entire time looking at the scenery, and didn't actually notice any wildlife (though I'm sure it was there!) until we were walking back over the irrigation canal bridge in our driveway. There, in a box elder tree on the north side of the bridge, was a big, noisy flock of chickadees. There must have been at least two dozen of them, all chattering away like mad, and flitting to and fro for no apparent reason. Miki (the bird dog) completely ignored them. Race (the sheep-herding dog) watched them intently, perhaps thinking that they looked like they needed herding :) Some photos of Paradise for you:
Down the rabbit hole...
Down the rabbit hole... That's where I've been going, in my bits and pieces of spare time. The particular rabbit hole of the moment is matrix operations on gigantic (m x n on the order of 10M) but quite sparse (non-zero entries less than a couple percent). These matrices are used to solve large systems of linear equations, where most operations are done on rows. There are some special challenges here. For instance, the sparsity changes (both up and down) as the calculations proceed.
I'm far from the first person to ever solve such problems – people were working on this exact problem back in the '50s and '60s. There's an enormous body of both research and practical implementations – but remarkably little that's open source, and none that I've been able to find in Java that's well-suited to my problem (circuit simulation). I'm quite surprised by this. On digging into what it would to implement it myself, I've discovered that it's not really all that hard, and that most of the challenges are in optimizing for the large scale of the operations involved. Some of the optimization is actually compression. That all feels like familiar territory – I know very little about matrix arithmetic, but there are a lot of articles and papers on implementation freely available on the web, and it all looks like stuff I should be able to do a good job implementing.
So down the sparse matrix arithmetic implementation rabbit hole I go :)
I'm far from the first person to ever solve such problems – people were working on this exact problem back in the '50s and '60s. There's an enormous body of both research and practical implementations – but remarkably little that's open source, and none that I've been able to find in Java that's well-suited to my problem (circuit simulation). I'm quite surprised by this. On digging into what it would to implement it myself, I've discovered that it's not really all that hard, and that most of the challenges are in optimizing for the large scale of the operations involved. Some of the optimization is actually compression. That all feels like familiar territory – I know very little about matrix arithmetic, but there are a lot of articles and papers on implementation freely available on the web, and it all looks like stuff I should be able to do a good job implementing.
So down the sparse matrix arithmetic implementation rabbit hole I go :)
SPDX: an interesting (and easy!) solution...
SPDX: an interesting (and easy!) solution ... for one of the more annoying challenges facing software engineers these days: copyright and license notices in source code...
New Enceladus photos from Cassini...
Friday, October 16, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... I had quite the busy day yesterday, working with Tyler (the generator guy). Early in the morning I headed up to Thomas Petroleum (where I bought the propane tanks), with the mission of exchanging the regulator I'd bought the day before for a new one with lower output pressure. That turned into a very educational experience for me – these regulators are more complicated than they appear at first blush. Working with an engineer there, we figured out that for our situation we actually needed two regulators (see second photo below): a primary (the red one) and a secondary (the green one). The most unexpected discovery to me is that a single regulator stage can't reduce the pressure from the roughly 200 PSI of the tank to the roughly 1/2 PSI that the generator needs. That 400:1 reduction is beyond the capability of these diaphragm-based mechanical regulators. We need two regulator stages, each reducing the pressure by about 20:1, to get that kind of overall reduction. There are two-stage regulators in a single package, but they can't produce the volume of gas needed by the generator – so we had to get two individual regulators, each fairly large, to do the trick. I now know way more about gas regulator systems than I ever wanted to know as a result of this exercise :)
Because we needed two separate regulators, the plumbing as originally constructed wouldn't work. I gave Tyler a call to let him know the bad news, and we figured what would be needed to get the plumbing right, and gave the plumbers a call. Tyler came to the house a short while later, finished the last of the wiring (you can see this work in next-to-last photo – that's a lot of really big wire crammed in there!), and then it was time to give it a try. This time it fired right up. It works ever so much better when the engine is getting fuel! Then Tyler did a little bit of clean-up work, removed the forms from the slab he'd poured on Tuesday, and he was done. We're now fully backed up, both house and shed. Yay!
Overall I'd unhesitatingly recommend Tyler and the Golden Spike Electric crew to anyone who needs a generator. They were wonderful to work with, accommodating to our needs, and did a job far better than I know how to do. They're also just plain nice folks, the kind I'd like to have over for dinner sometime...
This morning Debbie and I left at the first blush of dawn to go wildlife viewing in Hardware Ranch and Ant Flats. We had a spectacularly successful outing! First up was a group of deer: a doe, a yearling, and a young buck. It's a little unusual to see a buck in a group like that, so we speculate that it was that doe's two-year old son. We watched them mosey down the mountain from our left, cross the road right in front of us, and head down to the river on the right. A little further down the road, we saw an osprey stoop toward the river, just opposite us, and pull back just before hitting the water. Then we watched him fly around, including directly overhead at perhaps 30' of altitude. Great osprey viewing! After he flew away, we headed out toward ant flats and stopped to look at the trout – and I spotted a dipper headed down the stream toward us. This little fellow perched on a large rock in the middle of the stream and spent the next ten minutes posing for us. That was by far the best view of an American Dipper we've ever had. We continued for a mile or so on Ant Flat Road, then headed back to Hardware Ranch to see if we could see some elk. None of them were in view, but on the way out we spotted a kingfisher perched high on a twig, not above the stream where we usually see them. We stopped, fully expecting him to take off (as they generally do), but this one changed perches a few times until settling on a thick fence post, then did a slow 360° turn as if posing for us! We were able to watch him continuously for over five minutes, while he was fully sunlit, and from every angle. Great! Finally, as we headed back down the canyon toward Hyrum, we spotted a pair of northern harriers, near the road, hunting over a large meadow while being harassed by a group of crows. We had exceptionally good viewing of their low-altitude, slow-speed hunting – fully showing off their agile flying.
We love living here :)
Near Hardware Ranch there's a water bubbler, no longer working, that memorializes one A. J. Peterson, who had something to do with the establishment of the big game unit at Hardware Ranch. I couldn't find out much about him online, and nothing definitive.
When we got done we decided to repair to Crumb Brothers for breakfast. That was, of course, wonderful (croque madam for me, chocolate biscotti for Debbie). Next up is a grocery run, and Debbie is going to make us some Ora King salmon for dinner. That's some mighty fine eating for us today!
Because we needed two separate regulators, the plumbing as originally constructed wouldn't work. I gave Tyler a call to let him know the bad news, and we figured what would be needed to get the plumbing right, and gave the plumbers a call. Tyler came to the house a short while later, finished the last of the wiring (you can see this work in next-to-last photo – that's a lot of really big wire crammed in there!), and then it was time to give it a try. This time it fired right up. It works ever so much better when the engine is getting fuel! Then Tyler did a little bit of clean-up work, removed the forms from the slab he'd poured on Tuesday, and he was done. We're now fully backed up, both house and shed. Yay!
Overall I'd unhesitatingly recommend Tyler and the Golden Spike Electric crew to anyone who needs a generator. They were wonderful to work with, accommodating to our needs, and did a job far better than I know how to do. They're also just plain nice folks, the kind I'd like to have over for dinner sometime...
This morning Debbie and I left at the first blush of dawn to go wildlife viewing in Hardware Ranch and Ant Flats. We had a spectacularly successful outing! First up was a group of deer: a doe, a yearling, and a young buck. It's a little unusual to see a buck in a group like that, so we speculate that it was that doe's two-year old son. We watched them mosey down the mountain from our left, cross the road right in front of us, and head down to the river on the right. A little further down the road, we saw an osprey stoop toward the river, just opposite us, and pull back just before hitting the water. Then we watched him fly around, including directly overhead at perhaps 30' of altitude. Great osprey viewing! After he flew away, we headed out toward ant flats and stopped to look at the trout – and I spotted a dipper headed down the stream toward us. This little fellow perched on a large rock in the middle of the stream and spent the next ten minutes posing for us. That was by far the best view of an American Dipper we've ever had. We continued for a mile or so on Ant Flat Road, then headed back to Hardware Ranch to see if we could see some elk. None of them were in view, but on the way out we spotted a kingfisher perched high on a twig, not above the stream where we usually see them. We stopped, fully expecting him to take off (as they generally do), but this one changed perches a few times until settling on a thick fence post, then did a slow 360° turn as if posing for us! We were able to watch him continuously for over five minutes, while he was fully sunlit, and from every angle. Great! Finally, as we headed back down the canyon toward Hyrum, we spotted a pair of northern harriers, near the road, hunting over a large meadow while being harassed by a group of crows. We had exceptionally good viewing of their low-altitude, slow-speed hunting – fully showing off their agile flying.
We love living here :)
Near Hardware Ranch there's a water bubbler, no longer working, that memorializes one A. J. Peterson, who had something to do with the establishment of the big game unit at Hardware Ranch. I couldn't find out much about him online, and nothing definitive.
When we got done we decided to repair to Crumb Brothers for breakfast. That was, of course, wonderful (croque madam for me, chocolate biscotti for Debbie). Next up is a grocery run, and Debbie is going to make us some Ora King salmon for dinner. That's some mighty fine eating for us today!