News
September 2006
2006.09.30–Alfred, Ohio. Ashley, a long time friend of our family, is getting married today. Best wishes!
2006.09.29–Alfred, Ohio. Feeling human again and have the day off. Yippee!
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”–Thomas Jefferson
2006.09.28–Alfred, Ohio. Let’s take a look at the likely election outcomes and see how it “feels” Suppose for a moment that the Republicans maintain control of both houses of congress. I know that Democrats would wail and carry on. Think about it for a moment, you have a sitting lame duck president with the lowest ratings ever. You have an unpopular war raging and rather than paying for it are charging it to our children and grandchildren. You have the greatest disregard for the rule of law by a president in memory, probably ever. You get the idea, the Republicans should have a few obstacles to re-election. If they win, it may be wise to question whether the Democrats are fit to rule. After all, they have all but had this election handed to them on a silver platter. If they bungle it, would you really want them in power?
Suppose for a moment that the Democrats do win control of one or both houses. President Bush and his pals would likely be tied up in investigations of wrongdoing until they leave office. It seems likely to me that very little else would be done for the next two years.
2006.09.22–Alfred, Ohio. How appropriate. My electric bill arrived today. It contains the actual data from my electric company for the period 1/1/06 - 6/30/06. 1% Hydropower, 88% coal, and 11 Nuclear. In addition it lists the actual quantity of high-level radioactive waste generated during that same period. .00640 lbs/1,000 kwh. Just for kicks, lets do the math (since my statement also tells me that we have used 12304 kwh in the past 12 months). I assume that we are near average consumers. So, 11% of 12304 is 132.44 kwh. Half of that (to match the six months that the actuals were from) is 66.22 kwh. That makes our family responsible for 0.000423808 lbs of high level radioactive waste. Well, that isn't so easily imagined so let's just see what happens when I try that with a million families like us.
12304(actual kwh used in 12 months) x 1,000,000(average families) = 12,304,000,000 kwh/year
12,304,000,000 x 11% = 1,353,440,000
1,353,440,000 divided by 2 (still making it match the six month chart) = 676,720,000
676,720,000 divided by 1000 (to get multiples of 1000 kwh) = 676,720
676,720 x .00640 = 4331.008 lbs of high-level radioactive waste. About two tons. Two tons of waste for a million families doesn’t seem so bad. Mind you, this stuff will be around 10,000 years from now. How much is two tons? You could have two tons of sand in a sandbox. How long is 10,000 years? About as long as man has been recording history. Hmmm…
Steve and I spent a few minutes on Google chat the other night talking about the speech that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave to the UN. He said the guy came off quite well and actually made the U.S. and U.K. look… well, sorta bad.
Perhaps we need to put this into a little perspective. He was democratically elected. [I’m thinking about the installment of our current leader.] He says that he wants nuclear power to supply energy for his people. [Nearly all civil countries use nuclear energy to supply power for their people.] In short, I can’t call him a lunatic just yet. Let’s compare him to Hitler. Has he:
- invaded sovereign nations unprovoked,
- rounded up people without warrant or court review and swept them off the secret prisons,
- used torture on them,
- opened a second major front during the middle of a war (the classic downfall of all who have tried)
- used peoples emotions (primarily fear) to ursurp tremendous power
I don’t see the correlation to Iran’s leader to Hitler. In fact, it would appear that he seeks to build his nation’s people pride in themselves. That is not a bad thing by itself. I recall when MADE IN USA was a good thing and much preferred over something made anywhere else. When I read the list again, I do notice some uneasy feelings I’m beginning to have about our own leadership.
2006.09.21–Alfred, Ohio. The elections are coming, the elections are coming…
2006.09.20–Alfred, Ohio. In need of a unique business card? A fellow I work with told me about the partnership between moo.com and Flickr. If anyone doesn’t know about Flickr, you should check them out. They are a fabulous place for storing and sharing photos. It costs you nothing (unless you go “pro”) and I will give them an unqualified recommendation.
Moo is new to me but the idea is fabulous. Flickr has been around for years and announced the Moo MiniCards on their blog so I guess that speaks pretty well of Moo. 100 unique business cards with images on the back that you choose from flickr for $19.99 USD. DISCLAIMER: I have no financial interest in either company.
2006.09.18–Alfred, Ohio. The dates next to the blog links at left are manually coded right now. I think that I can write a program to automate it. This means that I'll just check the date of your last posting and calculate how long ago it was. Blogs with current info will show first, laggards who don’t bother (I know… the pot calling the kettle black, I’ guilty as well) will drift to the bottom. Since it is currently manual, I’ll only be updating it once a week or so. Still, it will give everyone an idea of what’s hot, and what’s not. [ties go in alphabetical order, sorry Misti).
2006.09.15–Belpre, Ohio. Bill Matheny and his remarkable car. I was just driving along when I spotted this vehicle and happened to have my camera with me. Bill was gracious enough to let me take several pictures and gave me the skinny on his car. Here are the details and more pictures of the 1970 Subaru 360. The pictures and descriptions are worth a minute of your time. It is available. Who knows, you may end up wanting to buy it.
2006.09.13–Alfred, Ohio. I sent this note out to my colleagues a while back. We were nearing the end of a big project and everyone had worked overtime and were getting tired. Several found it amusing so I thought I’d share it with you.
Subject: Cranky
Hello all,
I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve been a little cranky today and wanted to give everyone a heads up to give me a wide birth for the remainder of the day. An urgent request for our web site that finally arrived this morning from yesterday got me started. I just now returned from a big argument with lady over at the Kroger’s in Belpre while buying my lunch. While there I bought a Thank You card for Lee (available for anyone to sign until tomorrow in the empty cube) when it all started. I thought that anyone interested could acknowledge the time and effort she has put into our project. I’ll send it tomorrow. Oh yes, the argument over at Kroger’s. It went something like this:
lady: “Please put the item in the bag…”
Dave: “I’m going to double bag this card so it doesn’t get moisture from my salad and yogurt.”
lady: “Please put the item in the bag…”
Dave: “Just give me another second"
lady: “Please put the item in the bag…”
Dave: [silence, as I’m still fumbling with the bag]
lady: “Please put the item in the bag…”
2006.09.11–Alfred, Ohio. Happy Birthday Mary Ellen!
A strong and unusual earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico? The wrath of God, a fluke, or something man made? I vote for the latter. Count the number of oil wells in the region and imagine the volume of oil being pumped out. Next, imagine the weight of the water above the ocean floor. All of that weight being supported by less and less… and someone is surprised by an earthquake?
2006.09.10–Alfred, Ohio. Joe and Angie bought me an album for my birthday by Corinne Bailey Rae. My very first impression wasn’t all that good. Fortunately, I had taken most of the music out of my truck so I was stuck with it back and forth to work for a couple of days. By then I was hooked. At work, I continued to listen to it and found myself repeating a track named “Put Your Records On”. I really like the entire album but this one sticks out in my mind.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the Christian Science Monitor this Friday and they have a column named Monitor Picks: Five things we think you’ll really like. Number one? Corrine Bailey Rae. The article mentions her irresistible single “Put your Records On”. Nice pick Joe and Angie. I’m ahead of the curve on this one thanks to you two.
The mid-term elections are just around the corner. This election seems pretty important to me so I intend to spend a little time discussing my views on various candidates and issues over the next several weeks.
Let’s start at the top and work our way down. President Bush is a national disgrace in my view. He has done more harm to our system of government than anyone in recent memory. Unfortunately, he is not up for election. However, he does remain in office for another two years. If his party retains control of both houses, he will likely continue as he has. That would be bad news.
If however, the party in power were to lose one or more houses of congress, it is conceivable that Mr. Bush would be tied up with endless investigations into his actions that would effectively neutralize his impact. This would be an imperfect outcome, but far better than maintaining the status quo.
2006.09.09–Alfred, Ohio. Foggy in the morning and then beautiful weather the rest of the day. This is the same weather pattern we have had for several days.
2006.09.08–Alfred, Ohio. I went to visit Angie and her kindergarten class today. The children seemed quite excited to see a visitor. Today was “yellow” day and the children were coloring a picture of a house, a bell, and an apple. A few were very nicely done, a couple were quite surprising. :)
It was pretty odd being a “visitor” in the school that I used to spend so much time in. I didn’t even notice if there were computers in the room or not.
2006.09.06–Alfred, Ohio. I received an update on IPv6 at work the other day and thought it interesting.
IPv6
Consideration is being given for a separate, unique IP address for first anything that is powered by electricity... IT equipment and peripherals, HVAC equipment, thermostats, telephones, light sockets, convenience outlets, electric doors, electric lavatory equipment, water coolers, refrigerators, toasters and microwaves. Second, anything accountable.... security badges, passports, bar codes, highly pilferable items, securities, furniture, critical records. Network engineers are taking this number and multiplying by a factor consistent with their wildest dreams (10, 1,000, 1,000,000) to ensure contiguous address space for a specific function and sub-functions. Consideration is also being given for the length of time an address should be inactive before being re-issued in an IPv6 environment. For example, an IP address for an air-conditioner could be re-issued immediately to the new AC unit, but the IP address for a Security badge may be best served by not being re-issued for 1 year.
2006.09.04–Alfred, Ohio. Sad news today. Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, was killed by a stingray during a diving expedition off the Australian coast. The first time I recall seeing his show was in Seattle with Steve and Nick. Crikey, he was outrageous and wonderfully entertaining.
2006.09.03–Alfred, Ohio. Summer break is over. It is time to write again. It has been one busy and hectic summer for me. Where to begin? First, I’ll continue to try to fill in the blanks of the summer as time permits. It will only be the highlights. If I overlook an event or photo that SHOULD be posted but didn’t, feel free to send an e-mail to remind me.
2006.09.02–Alfred, Ohio. Today was gray and dreary, a bit cold actually for this time of year. We got caught up on household chores and went to Athens for a bit to visit with Jean and do a little shopping.
NOTE: Grey or gray? I’ve been at odds over this for some time now. I had typed grey above and then chose to use gray instead. I've been leaning towards the “a” spelling for some time now and could not say with any degree of certainty why. It just seemed to “feel” less old to me. I’m sure my current hair colour has made me think of it a little more than in times past.
That made me curious. I decide to check the wisdom of the web. A Google search reveals 316,000,000 results for gray vs. 239,000,000 results for grey. How very odd. I can usually retrieve a very lopsided results on most spellings, grammar, meanings, etc. just by searching Google and comparing the results. If 20 million people think it is done this way and 17,431 people think it is done another, I’ll typically go with the crowd (unless it is something really technical or bizarre, or I just know better than to follow). With everyday stuff such as this, I follow the crowd.A near even 3/5 split made me a little more curious so I determined it worthy of a search on meaning. In the search box I typed:
define: gray
and then:
define: grey
It turns out that the meanings are near identical (I was thinking colour rather than a group or individual). The only interesting thing that was mentioned was that the Americans tend to favor gray whilst the English still use grey. Isn’t it curious that I would have chosen to use gray over grey. My only conscious reasoning being was that grey sounded or felt to me to be older than gray.
2006.09.01–Alfred, Ohio. The rain continues so I spent most of the day catching up on old chores. We have little planned for this weekend so it was the beginning of a much needed break. It has been a stressful week.
I met Jeanie at the hospital to visit with her mom. While there, Misti came in and kept us in stitches with Zach stories. After our visit, we saw Invincible at the Athena Grande. It was good to relax.
