2005.08.31 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Jeanie!
I’ve been duped by my Dad and Aunt Pat. Received this snippet from my sister. “…Gary says you might want to check about the authenticity of that bell before you go bragging around about it. He remembers Doug buying one for Dad ten years ago. If there are two bells, then you probably got the real deal.…” There was only one bell.
2005.08.30 — Alfred, Ohio. Twenty seven years ago today Jeanie walked into my life. Joe and Angie stopped by for a Chinese dinner and a game of Pictionary.
The hurricane Katrina did more damage than expected. Most New Orleans web sites that I’ve tried are down. There is no power or drinking water. Looting is rampant. It doesn’t sound so good and I expect that we will be hearing more grim news for days to come.
2005.08.29 — Alfred, Ohio. Fifty five! Jeanie treated me to dinner at Bob Evan’s tonight. I ordered from the Seniors menu. It was fun.
New Orleans took a beating from hurricane Katrina today. Jeanie and I spent our honeymoon in New Orleans. I have fond memories of the St. Charles streetcar, the old guys playing at Preservation Hall, the artists of Jackson Square, cafe au lait (coffee with chicory and scalded milk) and beignets at the Cafe du Monde, the zoo out by Tulane University, and lake Pontchartrain.
2005.08.28 — Cincinnati, Ohio. Happy Birthday Steve!
Dad, Dennis, Samwise, and I met in Covington, Kentucky for breakfast. Afterwards, we went to a park and took pictures. It is a pretty nice area that reminded me of the German Village in Columbus. Dad had cut down his Buckeye tree and had the trunk to dispose of so I offered to haul it away. He also mentioned that he was wanting to get rid of a riding mower so we settled on a price and I loaded it up as well. It was stored in Aunt Pat’s shed. While loading it up she asked, would you like this old bell? I told here that I would love to have it, and to tell me how much. She insisted on giving it to me once I expressed an interest in it. It was Grandma’s bell. The same dinner bell that I rang as a kid when we lived in the country. The same dinner bell that my dad has rang when he was a kid living in Chasetown. She figures it to be around a hundred years old. I asked again for her to put a price on it. Pat said that Grandma would have wanted me to have it since I live in the most rural area of any of her grandchildren. I looked at Dennis and he nodded so I took it.
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When I got back to Athens, I met up with Steve, Mary Ellen, and Jeanie at her parents house. After a short visit, we enjoyed a nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. It was very nice seeing everyone again. |
2005.08.27 — Alfred, Ohio. Off to Cincinnati today to visit with my Dad.
I wrote a note this morning to Patrick Martino. He is traveling though China. I’m hoping that he will permit me to post portions of his adventure. They are fascinating to read.
2005.08.26 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Angie!
There is a blog on about every conceivable topic. Here is one that has been around only a short time but already turning a lot of heads. It is about the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico. There is nothing top secret about the site. In fact, it is mostly pretty dry reading. However, everyone once in a while, you will find a comment that gives a unique perspective or insight into topics we usually hear about only through the media. Before you decide to post anything to it, please read this posting about anonymous comments.
2005.08.25 — Alfred, Ohio. The Talk program had a little hesitation this evening. Steve reports that when talking with Nick there is none. It is probably due to the dial up speed slow that we have. Steve and Nick both have broadband. Speaking of broadband, Redline has finally come out with their 802.16 line of equipment. I’m tempted to start my own wireless ISP with it. Out here, there would be a unserved market that I believe could be extensively tapped.
2005.08.24 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Dad!
Google has done it again with Talk. It is awesome! We live in the sticks with a dialup connection. We get two speeds. 26.4k or 28.8k. It is always one or the other. Tonight, I was able to talk with Steve and Mary Ellen in Boston through the Google Talk program and it sounded as if they were in our living room. No hesitation, no delay, no static... it sounded better than a speakerphone. If you haven’t already got it, get it today. You can thank me later.
2005.08.23 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Lisa!
The little mapping widget mentioned yesterday has been a lot of fun and an eye opener for me. I installed it last night at 8:20 p.m. The site said it would take up to an hour before anything would be visible so I waited an hour and checked to see if my own visit would show up. Much to my surprise, I found visitors from: Frederick, Maryland, Natick, Massachussetts, Morehead, Kentucky, Denver Colorado, Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Mt Vernon, Ohio. By morning (6:30 a.m.) I had received additional visits from Virginia, California, Canada, and Australia. Just now after work, I’m seeing Columbus, Toledo, North Carolina, and several locations in both Virginia and Massachussetts. In nearly all cases I suspect that I know the identity of the visitor. However, there are a few that I have no idea about.
“The point or moral to this story please” you ask? Web sites can be found and they are being read (and archived). Speak softly, for we do not know who (or what) will be reading our words, nor for what purpose they will be used.
P.S. If you haven’t done so already, take another look at the widget. It is merely a neat use of Google maps. That means that you can zoom in, choose satellite, you can click any of the balloons to see where and when that person visited from. You can also drag the background map to center everything quickly. Speaking of Google, they released Desktop 2 on Monday. I’ve not been so successful with it as I would have expected but you can clearly see where they are going with the concept. The sidebar is beginning to look very much like a browser.
2005.08.22 — Alfred, Ohio. Who reads Frogtails? I haven’t figured that out… yet. However, I do know where everyone lives. NOTE: this is slow loading on a dialup connection. Be patient and be amazed. Check back in a day or two after we have a little recorded history.
2005.08.21 — Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Steve!
Yesterday, Steve and Mary Ellen took a balloon ride over Boston. Wow! That had to be fun.
2005.08.20 — Nelsonville, Ohio. Joe, Angie, Jeanie and I attended Sean and Audra's wedding today at Stuart’s Opera House in Nelsonville. It was a beautiful and unique setting for a wedding. There were a few amusing moments. By far my favorite was by the best man. When asked for the rings, he managed to drop one. It rolled, as if in slow motion, right off the stage and fell into the orchestra pit. Memories such as this one will become funny stories to tell later on. I offer the young couple my best wishes and much happiness in the years to come.
Sean and Audra
Jacob and Tim
2005.08.19 — Alfred, Ohio. Steve sent this in and I hesitated to print it. I could not believe what he wrote and had to independently verify it for myself. In a nutshell this is the essence of his note:
Kelo V. New London
The property owners are being paid what the property was worth in 2000. The value today is far more than what it was five years ago. Worse, the residents are being charged retroactive "use and occupancy" payments (“rent”) by the city at fair market value for the past five years that the case has been contested.
Heaven help us. This is well beyond simple greed, this is evil.
“In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom… When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free.” – Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
2005.08.18 — Alfred, Ohio. Morehead, Kentucky. We helped move Nick back to campus today. Don’t take this wrong, but it was easier on us this time around. There were far fewer unknowns than last year. Jeanie and I have a better understanding of what it is like to live together without children around. Nick is much more confident than last year. We left him with his friends (and the rain that he so loves) and felt much more at ease on the ride home than last time.
“Knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”–Continental Congress in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
2005.08.15 — Alfred, Ohio. A visit to the woodshed? Yes, I was taken to task over what I wrote about gas prices yesterday. It was well deserved I might add. In part, this is what I found in my inbox:
Being something of an environmentalist, I, of course, would like to see us become more efficient. I would like to see us pollute less. As a practical matter, I would like to see us less dependend on foreign energy sources.
But it does our side of the argument no good to proceed devoid of relevant facts.
The first point, I suppose, is that the average mileage of models sold in the US has very, very little to do with available technology, and almost everything to do with what people want to buy. VW gets 50-60 mpg out of it’s TDI, but not many people buy them.
The second point would be to pay some attention to what you mean when you talk about “efficiency”. Mileage is one measure, but one that’s a lot more meaningful (when deciding whether or not to disparage the progress made in internal combustion over the last century) is simply how much work does an engine get out of a gallon of fuel. The model T put out around 20 horsepower. Cadillac’s Northdtar V8, depending on configuration, puts out in the neighborhood of 300 horsepower. Depending on the model it’s placed in (car or SUV) it’s observed fuel economy (from car magazines, not the EPA) varies between about 13 mpg up to about 25 mpg. Even at 13 mpg, the Northstar gets lightyears more actual work out of that gallon of gas then the model T could ever hope for. AND it goes 100,000 miles between tune-ups, doesn’t burn oil as a matter of course, and won’t overheat EVEN WHEN YOU REMOVE ALL OF THE COOLANT. And that’s just something from GM!
The technology that makes such things possible at the high end trickles slowly to the lower end of the market… people are quite fine with the efficiency they get now, otherwise they’d be buying TDIs and Hyundais (and the efficiency of even your truck is astounding when compared with the model T). With some market pressure, the technology will trickle down – but it’s breathtakingly ignorant to say that we haven’t made enormous strides in efficiency in the last century. That is not to say, of course, that I wouldn’t like to see us make more strides. Certainly we can, and I’m likewise certain that we will.
And don’t even get me started on pollution improvements. Or reliability. Or safety. Or comfort.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to see us be non-polluting and sustainable. But our arguments in that direction must be informed, and not so narrowly-focused that they miss the forest for the trees.
All good points and well made and taken. I wish more people would be so thoughtful and advance other points of view. Meanwhile, a neighbor was talking about high prices (predicting $3.25 within three weeks) and has the opinion that the truck drivers of the country could easily stop the high fuel prices by parking their trucks for a week. That is also an interesting thought.
2005.08.14 — Alfred, Ohio. Nick got in from his cabin trip, Steve and Mary Ellen called from N.H. Everyone is near where there are supposed to be… I can sleep easy.
Steve and Mary Ellen made it down before heading back to Boston. We met up with Joe and Angie for brunch and all headed to see the new house. It was nice.
Have you bought any petrol lately? It is easy to blame the situation in Iran (not Iraq) as a cause for concern and just cause for the reason oil is so expensive. It is also worth noting that the fuel efficiency of cars is going down, not up. I’ve mentioned this before but didn't realize the extent of it. This article titled Car Mileage: 1908 Ford Model T – 25 MPG 2004 EPA Average All Cars – 21 MPG is a real eye opener.
2005.08.13 — Alfred, Ohio. Allan sent this in a couple of days back. Chapter 11 of Thru the Peephole titled: Pigs in Denver – Oink 
Oink !! It has been so hot and humid here this week that I just let it slide until now. Sorry for the delay.
2005.08.12 — Alfred, Ohio. We went to Bob Evan’s tonight and met up with Joe and Angie for desert. Meanwhile, Steve and Mary Ellen are fighting airport delays due to the weather trying to get to Ohio tonight.
It was too hot and humid to work outside today so I finished reading Chapter One of the Origin of Species.
2005.08.09 — Alfred, Ohio. Received this from an old friend in the mail today. I needed a laugh. Thanks Larry.
Dead Horse
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
However, in government, education, and in corporate America, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
- Buying a stronger whip.
- Changing riders.
- Appointing a committee to study the horse.
- Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
- Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
- Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
- Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
- Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
- Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse’s performance.
- Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
- Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
- Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And of course…
- Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
2005.08.08 — Alfred, Ohio. Ouch! The mail pouch brought some critical remarks to me this morning about my evolving thoughts towards evolution. Let me stew on that for a while lest I make more rash comments. After all, I don’t want to merely invite ridicule, but to earn it.
Last night I picked up The Origin of Species and made my way through the introduction by Sir Julian Huxley, an historical sketch, and the introduction. There were a few thoughts that interested me already. It was stated that in every situation there is always more life created than can be supported. Ten years ago I put that very notion on paper in an article titled Efficiency in Nature. What escaped me then and was brought to my attention last night was that a few maple trees and frogs survived. The slightly stronger ones. Those a little more adaptable to the climate and surroundings they found themselves in. The lucky ones.
2005.08.07 — Alfred, Ohio. I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion regarding Bush and Darwin. Lee Harris of the Tech Central Station brought up a couple of arguments that I “felt” but was unsure of and so discarded. President Bush stated:
I really can not argue with that. In his article above, Mr. Harris states: What an insult to Darwin’s intellectual genius to think that his theory is as obvious as two plus two equal four, or as innocuous as the facts contained in an almanac! Anyone who thinks Darwin’s theory is obvious clearly hasn’t a clue about its brilliance or its originality. Meanwhile, I have purchased the book and it sits on my shelf begging to be read. Until I’ve read the book and given it some thought, I’ll keep quiet on the subject.
2005.08.05 — Alfred, Ohio. Topics for today:
- Intelligent design
- Pharming: worse than a computer virus
President Bush recently stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in school. Oh boy! Hear me out on this one as it may not be what you expect. I am in awe of creation, and more so with every passing year. I also appreciate science and the distinction between beliefs and facts. It is very important to realize that our understanding of facts come primarily though our perceptions and they can be influenced by our beliefs.
Darwin proposed his Theory of Evolution as a result of using the scientific method. In his enunciation of a ‘method’ in the 13th century Roger Bacon, under the tuition of Robert Grosseteste, was inspired by the writings of Arab alchemists who had preserved and built upon Aristotle’s portrait of induction. Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. Intelligent Design does not lend itself to this method. For that reason alone, it should be considered, but only outside the realm of science.
Here is a simplistic example of what I’m saying. When we teach our youngsters about math. It is useful to teach them that 2+2=4. Teaching anything else would not be in the best interest of our children no matter what our beliefs are. Suggesting in primary school that 2+2 could equal something other than 4 would give a distorted view of math as it exists today. Attempting to consider such a topic when one is taking number theory or philosophy in college would be much more appropriate and useful.
Pharming is a particularly sinister scam that I thought you should know about. Excuse the technical details and acronyms, I think them necessary to understand how this works. When you type a URL, your computer does a DNS lookup to retrieve the IP address. Your browser then connects to that IP address. IF, the DNS has been compromised, it COULD return the IP address of a scam site made to look like the site you wanted.
Need an example? I purchase from Amazon fairly routinely. When I type http://www.amazon.com in the address line of my browser, it connects to a DNS server and returns the IP address 207.171.175.29. Try it. Type this into your address line: http://207.171.175.29. Both go to Amazon as we know it. If someone hacked your DNS server, they could return the IP address of a scam site set up to mimic Amazon. In your address bar, you would still see http://www.amazon.com so it would easily appear to you that everything is legit. That is why I find it so sinister. The chances of this happening to you are very small, but it is possible and thought you should know about it.
Lock icon in address bar of Firefox
Lock icon in lower right corner of IE
Is there anything you can do to prevent this? Not much. One suggestion is to make certain that you have a lock icon (see above) before sending any personal data (particularly credit card info) over the Internet. The lock indicates a secure site that is using encryption. I would not consider doing business online with anyone who doesn’t provide this. Most scammers would not have such a site.
2005.08.03 — Alfred, Ohio. The Mozilla Foundation announced the Mozilla Corporation. I’m not very happy about it. Here is my thinking. The Mozilla Foundation has encouraged programmers all over the world to contribute their time and effort to the open source concept. The results have been phenomenal. Firefox and Thunderbird have resulted in this effort. You know that I use both every day. With today’s announcement, I expect we will see a few select people getting rich and most of the people responsible for making it possible, getting nothing. Suppose they decide to “take care of” the top 100 contributors to these products and give them all high paying jobs at Google or within the new Mozilla Corporation. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? It sounds great actually, provided you are one of the top 100 being recognized. However, there will most likely be a sizeable group of people who feel that they were #101. How do you suppose they will feel? Do you suppose they will be willing to continue their efforts for free? We will probably end up with a core group of highly talented, highly paid programmers who do their best, but in no way will they be able to match the efforts of thousands of inspired volunteers. Open source development has proven to work very well until someone begins to profit from the efforts of others. I still think Firefox is a much better browser than IE but do not expect much more innovation from them. The only possible benefit that I can imagine is that Google will be free to buy them now.
2005.08.01 — Alfred, Ohio. Bolton simply forgot to mention that he had been interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general in an investigation of intelligence failures related to Iraq, even though he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March that he had not been involved in any such inquiry. Read that again…
Thirty six senators has urged Bush to consider someone else. For months, congress has supplied a long list of reasons why he is not the best person to send to the U.N. and refused to endorse the man. Mr. Bush appears ready to brush all that aside and appoint the man anyway. It is good to know that the man in charge is wisest of us all and beyond taking our advice in such matters. Long live the king!
Additional writings:
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