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October 13, 2008
More Thoughts On Link Requests

A couple of commenters in this post (one of whom needed some lessons in logic and elocution) objected to my supposed "snobbery."

I have the same feelings as Warren. It does sounds a bit snobbish. I mean hell, just say no or ignore him. No need to humiliate the guy, even if it is anonymously. The guy knows he's being made fun of.

I have run technically oriented websites since 1996. Hell, I even ran a BBS back in 1986. We would always swap links (or data numbers) with each other. I honestly can't remember any time someone was lambasted like this, though I'm sure it happened back in the BBS days. A lot of kids ran those things, myself included.

Oh, for the BBS days.

My attitude has nothing to do with my self regard, or with my estimation of the value of the blog, or whether or not it's part of the "A list " (it's not). It is completely independent of the number of readers that I have. It is entirely dependent on the value of my time, and page space. In a follow-up email, the guy said something to the effect, "Well, I ran into that sort of thing from Hugh Hewitt, but who the heck are you?"

Sorry, but I consider my time just as valuable as Hugh Hewitt (and Glenn Reynolds) considers his, and for the same reason--it is ultimately our only finite resource. I find a little bizarre the notion that, any time someone sends me an email requesting that I spend some of it to go check out their blog, with no information as to why it might be of interest to me or my readers, and link to it, I should drop what I'm doing and do so forthwith, and if I don't, I'm a "snob."

Folks, there are literally millions of blogs out there. I could spend the rest of my waning life reading them, and linking to them, and I would end up accomplishing nothing pertaining to my own goals, and my blogroll would be so large as to be completely useless to my readers. "Link exchanges" may have made sense back in the BBS days, but they make no sense whatsoever in the blogosphere.

This humble blog is a publication--my publication. I have to balance my time against maintaining and enhancing its quality, and in fact, the fact that I'm not a top blogger with high hittage, and generate little revenue from it, and must spend most of my time actually making a living, restricts even more the amount of time I have to spend blogging and reading other blogs.

I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect that if someone wants you to read their blog, or link to it, that they invest a little effort to provide a minimal amount of reason to do so, other than "I think you'll like it." If I were a book publisher who received a manuscript with no useful cover letter, would I be expected to read it before one that came well presented? If I were an employer being asked to interview and potentially hire someone without a resume, should I prefer them to the applicant with one, and a good one? And if I don't do these things, am I a "snob"?

Of course, in this case, the problem is compounded by the fact that this was apparently a serial offender, according to other commenters, sending out minor variations of the same request to other people, both via email and comments. That, to me, is only one step removed from spamming (differing only in that it was somewhat targeted). The fact that I had to get around a spam filter to reply to his email was just the icing on the cake, and fraught with irony. I wish now that I'd had a filter to prevent him from emailing me. But maybe that would be "snobbery."

So no, I have no regrets or apologies. It was his behavior that was rude, even if he didn't/doesn't understand that, not mine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:11 AM

October 11, 2008
How Not To Get A Link

At least at this web site.

I just got the following email, subject : Hello from a republican blogger and Pajamas Media guy

Simberg,

I came across your site through the Pajamas Media site.

My blog is the [snipped to protect the guilty].

If you feel it is of a high quality, please consider a link or blogroll exchange.

Also, I get a decent amount (not Pajama-sized!) of traffic, in case you have anything
you would like to promote.

Respectfully,

[snipped to protect the guilty]

Let's start with the subject line. I'm not a "republican blogger," and anyone who has read this blog for any amount of time would know it. I'm guessing that if he came to the blog at all, it was only to get my email address. So it cuts no mustard with me to be informed that somone else is a "republican blogger."

Next, no one addresses me as "Simberg" except spammers and trolls. Either use the honorific, or my first name.

Now there are general rules for how to get a link, none of which this guy followed. One of them is to read the blog for a while, so that you know what the interests are. A second is to send a permalink to some particular post that might be of interest to that blog's readers, based on the prefatory reading. A no-no is to just say, "hey, here's my blog."

But here's where the real joy comes. Just to do the guy a favor, I googled and replied with a copy of the rules for getting a link from Instapundit (though they're generally applicable to other blogs, including this one) of which the two above are a subset.

And what do I get for my trouble? This:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

[snip link]

So, he sends me an email, but doesn't bother to whitelist me to allow me to reply, instead expecting me to take the trouble to go to his site to do it myself, just so that I can provide him with useful information (while he's provided me with nothing except a clueless request for a link). I'm all for blocking spam, but if you're going to send someone an email and expect a response, I think it rude to make someone have to go through machinations in order to do so. Why isn't this stupid anti-spam software set up to do that automatically? Anyone you send email to should be automatically white listed.

Anyway, rather than doing that, I decided to simply document it here, on the off chance that someone else will be educated, and perhaps avoid such things in the future.

[Monday morning update]

I have a follow-up post based on some comments.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:15 AM

October 08, 2008
Wear Your Seatbelt

There's a reason that the flight attendant warns you to stay in your seat with belt fastened.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) today said an "irregularity'' in one of the plane's computers caused the dramatic altitude change yesterday that hurled passengers around the cabin.

I would have been all right, because I rarely get up during a flight. I probably would have had to change my undies, though.

But that's also a reason that I'm always a little nervous on Airbuses. When you have a fly-by-wire system, you're essentially putting control of the airplane in the hands (so to speak) of a machine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

October 05, 2008
Rockette Scientist

My smart, funny (and only slightly crazy) buddy from engineering school, Lynne Wainfan, has decided to torment the world with a new blog. The current top post relates her adventures in wing walking. She also has an iPhone review. But read all.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:50 AM

October 01, 2008
Homing In?

Steve Fossett's ID cards have apparently been found by some hikers in Mammoth Lakes. That's not far from where his plane took off (a hundred miles or so south, IIRC). So maybe they now have a lot smaller area in which to search.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:27 AM

September 17, 2008
Devastation

Here are some before and after pictures of the Bolivar Peninsula.

I wonder what was different about the houses that remained standing?

Our house in Boca is just a few houses from the Intracoastal, on the mainland side, but the barrier island that separates us from the sea is a lot narrower than the Bolivar. I don't know what kind of surge it would take to cross it and fill the Intracoastal and neighborhood canals, but I'll bet a lot of the multi-million-dollar mansions on the ocean would get wiped out, or at least badly damaged in a similar situation. But they might help blunt the blow of the water and keep it from getting to us. A worst-case for us would probably be a similar west-bound storm hitting north Broward, around Deerfield Beach or Hillsboro, which would maximize surge up here.

[Update a while later]

Jeff Masters has more, on the almost total destruction of Gilchrist.

I don't see any description of the type of construction. Our house is cement block on concrete slab. I can see a wood frame getting stripped off its foundation, but it's pretty scary to think what kind of force it would take to empty our lot.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 AM

September 16, 2008
How Is Mark Doing?

Frequent commenter Mike Puckett is wondering (via email) how Mark Whittington is doing in Houston, because he hasn't posted in over four days (at the time of this posting, the link is Mark's most recent post).

I'm a little concerned as well, but for now I assume that he's just lost power and can't post. Fortunately, the storm was not as bad as feared, and we haven't heard of massive casualties.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 PM

September 12, 2008
It's No Ike

At least not yet. I hope that low east of the Bahamas doesn't develop much, because all the models have it aimed right at me in southeast Florida. In fact, BAMD has it coming ashore in Boca, crossing the peninsula and exiting over Tampa into the Gulf. Fortunately, it's struggling under shear right now.

My concern is that it may intensify suddenly right off shore early next week, with little time to prepare. At least we still have most of our shutters up from Hannah.

[Update a few minutes later]

Weather Underground is calling it an "Invest" (I wonder why they call them that), but it actually seems to be the remnants of Josephine. If it becomes a storm again, will they call it that, or Kyle?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:06 AM

Good Luck To The Gulf Coast

My best wishes to Lou Minatti and Mark Whittington and other Houston-area residents (this thing could really be a disaster for JSC and its contractor community). Stay safe there, and if you're in a flood plain, please get the hell out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:40 AM

August 17, 2008
To Shutter, Or Not To Shutter?

I don't have to decide today--it looks like it will still be far enough away tomorrow morning, with a better track, to make the decision then. Right now, I'm inclined not to, even though we're still in the uncertainty cone (but over at the eastern edge of it). Most of the models, other than GFDL, have the thing out in the Gulf or along the west coast of the state. We are on a tropical storm watch on the east coast from Jupiter south, but that's all.

The best outcome overall (other than completely falling apart) would be for it to come up through the swamp and run up the middle of the state, where it would weaken pretty quickly. If it stays out in the Gulf and hits farther north, it could intensify and really pound wherever it comes ashore. Either way, though, barring some dramatic shift in conditions, it looks like we're in for rain and tropical-force winds, at worst, over here on the east coast. That's a lot better than it looked a few days ago, when it looked like it might have come right at us through the Bahamas.

[Early afternoon update]

Well that's good news. Jeff Masters says that this won't be another Charley, despite the similarity in track. One thing that I notice a lot of the weather people talking about are the sea surface temperatures, but they are ignoring the fact that the upper-level winds aren't that favorable for intensification.

[Update at 4:30 PM EDT]

The latest model run (2 PM) has moved it farther to the west, which is bad news for the panhandle, but good news for south Florida. Unless they're all wrong, this thing isn't heading to southeast Florida, and we may not even get much in the way of wind, though we could use the rain. There's actually an outer band moving through Miami-Dade on the radar right now. Hope it makes it up through Broward and into south Palm Beach County.

[5 PM update]

Heh. The headline of one of the stories over at Accuweather is "Florida Approaching Land."

A lot of people who bought swampland down here probably wish that it would do it faster. Now, if they could just give the place a few mountains. Or even hills.

In "The Swamp" (an excellent history of south Florida) the author quotes an early settler who reportedly said, "I've bought land by the acre, and land by the foot, but by God, this is the first time I've ever bought land by the gallon."

Obviously, it was supposed to be "Fay," not "Florida."

[Update a few minutes later]

That was quick. Good thing I caught the screenshot. It now says "Fay Approaching Land."

[Update about 6 PM EDT]

OK, it looks like shuttering tomorrow is definitely off the table. The track, per the models I described above, no longer has us even within the cone. I expect some wind and rain (which we need) but nothing more at this point. The only preparation I did this weekend was to fill up the tank of the car, and it looks like that's all I'm going to do for Fay.

But the hurricane season is still young, and we're heading into the heart of it. It's particularly problematic because I'm going to be in LA for the last week of August and the first week of September, which is one of the highest-probability times for major storms here. I may have to shutter up before I leave, just as a precaution.

[Update a half hour later]

The first squall line from the storm is approaching. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera handy, but it's looking ugly to the south, and the winds are picking up (and the local radar confirms it). We just put in a new tree, which needs watering every day. I've put off doing it all day, in anticipation of this.

[Tuesday morning update]

We didn't actually get much rain from that squall line last night, but about 8:30 this morning, the heavens opened up. The rain's been hard and steady for an hour now. Guess I didn't need to water that satin leaf.

I should note that Brendan Loy's Weather Nerd blog is the go-to place for blogging the storm.

As he notes, it's kind of good news, bad news. The good news is that it's shifted eastward, and will hit Florida sooner, which means it won't have much time to develop. The bad news (for me) is that it will affect the east coast much more than anticipated. Hope I won't regret not shuttering, because it's too late to do so now, unless I want to attempt it in wind and rain. The rains have come sooner than I expected, and a wind gust has already blown off a down spout that I hadn't properly tied to the wall. If I get a break, I might try to fix it later today, though it's not a big problem--just blasting water against the front wall.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

August 05, 2008
It's Healed!

Miraculously (and mysteriously), my internal wireless adaptor started working yesterday. Unfortunately, that gives me one less excuse to return the laptop.

I still have to figure out what to do about Linux. Also, I'm unimpressed with Vista so far. Last night, the machine crawled almost to a halt. It's a 2 GHz Turion with three gigs of RAM. It took forever for task manager to load, and it provided no information as to which process was causing the problem, but the CPU was saturated. I couldn't even shut down applications, or the computer itself. I eventually had to just power it down. It's been OK since I rebooted into safe mode, and then rebooted again, but I have no idea what was going on.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AM

August 02, 2008
Flash Boot?

There was a comment in my previous post about my laptop problems that Vista doesn't play well with others when it comes to dual boot. Could this be gotten around by booting Linux from a flash drive, or a CD?

[Update on Sunday morning]

How about a separate USB hard drive for the other OS?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 PM

It's Always Something

Well, I got what I thought was a good deal on a laptop.

Two problems (well, three, one of which is caused by the other). First, the integrated WLAN adaptor doesn't seem to work. That's an annoyance, but I have a USB adaptor. More seriously, it doesn't seem to accept Linux. When I tried to do a Fedora 9 install, it hung on one of the devices. It didn't occur to me to check to see if it was compatible with Linux--I had just assumed that it had evolved to the point where that wasn't an issue any more. So I'm considering returning, but not sure how to avoid the problem in the future.

Oh, the third problem? It comes with Vista installed. I hadn't cared when I thought that it would running Linux most of the time, but now it's an issue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:25 AM

July 29, 2008
LA Quake

A 5.8 in the Chino Hills. Hope our house in Redondo Beach is all right. I suspect it is--it's about forty miles away. I just hope it's not a foreshock of something bigger.

[Update a few minutes later]

Let me be the first to say that it's Bush's fault. Or some fault out there...

And I expect Al Gore to blame global warming any minute.

[Update at 3:35 PM EDT]

Now I'm hearing that it's been downgraded to a 5.4.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:05 PM

July 20, 2008
I'll Try To Restrain Myself

The FDA says to not eat lobster guts:

Health officials for years have advised against eating the tomalley, the lobster liver some regard as a delicacy. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated its advisory Friday, however, after some lobster livers tested positive for high levels of toxins caused by large blooms of red tide algae.

No problemo for me. I'll stick with the meat, as I always have.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:44 AM

Hello, Dolly

We've had four named storms already, and it's not August yet (and a good chance for one or two more before it is). That may mean a busy season. I just hope that southeast Florida isn't in the bore sights. We've gotten off easy the last two years.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AM

July 14, 2008
I'm Not Sure I Want To Know

How do you cut off your own head with a chainsaw? You've got to think that he bypassed some safety features...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:20 PM

July 12, 2008
Another Great Newsman Gone

Condolences to friends, family and colleagues of Tony Snow. I wonder if major television news people die in threes as well? Unlike Russert, this wasn't as unexpected--he had been fighting the cancer for a long time, and his mother died of it. But I hadn't been aware that he was near the end.

[Update in the evening]

Mark Steyn has a short tribute (not to imply that many others don't, and I suspect that he'll have a longer one in due time). This is a very interesting point politically:

He had a rare temperament in today's politics, and the Administration might have been spared the vicissitudes of these last five years had he become press secretary earlier.
Yes, of the many failings of George W. Bush, one of them is loyalty to previous staff. Scott McClellan was completely out of his element as WH spokesman, yet he was allowed to blunder through during many of the worst years of the administration. Things might have gone much differently had Tony Snow been brought in earlier. He would have challenged much of the nonsense that the press was putting forward much earlier, without looking like a deer in the headlights. It just shows how important perception can be.

[Update a while later]

Here's an encomium from Rick Moran.

It's very hard to come up with anything negative about Tony Snow, though I'm sure that one or two of my regular commenters will make the attempt in the service of their vile political agendas. I hope that I'm wrong.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:19 AM

July 11, 2008
To Mark Steyn Fans

If you're near an EIB station, he's subbing for Rush today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:27 AM

June 26, 2008
An Engineering Manpower Crisis

There's an interesting article over at the NYT about the Pentagon's difficulty in getting good engineers, particularly systems engineers.

In short, the pay is too low, it's not seen as exciting as a lot of the other opportunities for new grads (e.g., Google, or other fields such as finance), programs take too long and are technologically obsolescent, and there's too much bureaucracy. Sounds kind of like the reasons I left fifteen years ago.

This was amazing to me, but I guess that after almost three decades in the business, it shouldn't be:

Their report scolded the Air Force as haphazardly handling, or simply ignoring, several basic systems-engineering steps: considering alternative concepts before plunging ahead with a program, setting clear performance goals for a new system and analyzing interactions between technologies. The task force identified several programs that, hobbled by poor engineering management, had run up billions of dollars in overruns while falling behind schedule.

I've seen this happen at NASA many times over the years, but that doesn't surprise me because space isn't important. National defense is, or at least should be. One wonders how to change the incentives in the system to get better performance. Part of the problem is that the services themselves, particularly the Air Force (with which I have the most experience) don't value procurement highly enough as a career path. It's a lot easier to become a general via the cockpit than it is through logistics or development. The other problem is that you often having young lieutenants and captains given responsibility for programs of a size far beyond what they'd be managing at a similar experience level in private industry. This is good from the standpoint of encouraging recruitment, but it often means that they lack the experience to handle the job, and even (or especially) when they're good, they may be promoted up and out of the program. That's one of the Aerospace Corporation's primary functions--to provide program support to the blue suits, and maintain an institutional memory to make up for the fluidity of personnel changes of the AF staff.

In theory, it's a big opportunity for people like me (I actually have a masters degree in aerospace program management), but it's hard to get consulting work as an individual due to arcane procurement rules. Also (though the article didn't mention it) it's a hassle to deal with a clearance, and I'm not in any rush to renew mine, though I'm starting to consider it, because I really do need the income. Blogging just isn't paying the bills.

Oh, one other thing. The description of the problems above bears a strong resemblance to a certain controversial large NASA project, where maintenance of the job base and pinching pennies seems to take precedence over actually accomplishing the goal. Or "closing the gap."

[Via Chicago Boyz]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:24 AM

June 19, 2008
Cyd And The Cape

Both are discussed today over at Lileks' place. Also, judicial overreach in the Great White North.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:39 AM

June 18, 2008
Important Topic Du Jour

Chinese food does not make use of ground beef.

Discuss.

(Why yes, I am planning dinner. Why do you ask?)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

June 15, 2008
Losing A Father On Father's Day

There are no doubt many people empathetic for Luke Russert today, losing his father, with whom he apparently had a very close bond (and a father who had a very close bond to his own father), two days before Father's day, and fresh out of college.

But I feel particularly so, having been in a similar situation, many years ago.

There were a lot of similarities, but three big differences.

First, while Luke had just finished college, I was in the middle of finals of my second-to-last semester. It was May, in Michigan, only a month before Father's Day. Fortunately, all of my professors were understanding, and allowed me to make up, including delaying the publication of the final report of a class space systems engineering project to which I had to contribute, being a major contributor. I recall sitting on the porch in Ann Arbor, on one of those perfect early summer days in June, after we laid my father to rest, in which the temperature, humidity and sunlight were exactly as intended, writing in longhand (which I hated) the orbital mechanics aspects of the concept to be handed to the Aerospace Engineering Department secretary for inclusion. I also remember Professor Don Greenwood, who literally wrote the book on dynamics, giving me some extra time to study for the oral exam that was part of his graduate course, and passing me, no doubt from pity.

Unlike Luke, I graduated from college without my father having been able to see it happen, something which he no doubt often doubted (as did I, often) would ever happen.

Second, and trivially, my father was not a world-famous newsman, though he was as well-respected in his much smaller community of Flint, Michigan. He had been the producer for many years of the A.C. Spark Plug (now Delphi, and no longer part of GM) spring and fall concerts at the IMA Auditorium, in which he had lined up major stars of the era, including Edie Adams, Peter Palmer, Anita Bryant, and many others, with the contributions of the GM divisions vocal chorus clubs and its many talented employees. I recall going out to Luigi's for the best pizza anywhere with them, a restaurant which still has many pictures of those stars on its walls.

I recall from my own eulogy that I gave at the Unitarian service, that he was an inverse Will Rogers--that he never met a man who didn't like him. I also remember stealing a line from Barney Miller--that whenever someone would tell me what a great guy my dad was, I'd say, "Yeah, he's a block off the young chip."

But another big difference, perhaps the biggest, is that while, as Luke did, I lost my father to a heart attack (at an even younger age than Tim Russert--fifty five), it didn't happen suddenly. It took him over a month to die. It was his second (the first being over a decade earlier, when in his mid forties). The fact that I had to go back and forth between Flint and Ann Arbor to see him for three weeks contributed to my lackluster late-semester academic performance. It really wiped out the last of the semester, but it gave me the chance, unlike Luke, to say goodbye.

Fortunately for Luke, he perhaps didn't have as great a need, though the pain must have cut through him like a knife, being an ocean away when he heard the news, and knowing that there would be no last words. But Luke by all reports had a great relationship with his dad, and perhaps, let us hope, that no last words were necessary.

Almost three decades later, I feel as though I squandered my opportunity, being young and stupid. I felt that he didn't understand me, and what I was about or trying to do. I know now, as I approach the age of his dying (though I hope to live many years longer), that we were in many ways much more alike than in the superficial ways that, as I thought then, we were different. There are many things that I would say to my father given another chance, even only knowing what I knew then, but not having the wisdom to do so. We had had our differences, and even lying in the hospital, his lungs filling with fluid, slowly drowning him from the congestive heart failure, I couldn't tell him that I loved him, but I think that he knew I did. I can only console myself now with that hope. I would hope that had he lived, he would have been proud of what I have done with my life though, in honesty, I'm not always that proud myself. There are many mistakes that I've made, but almost always in good, if naive intent.

The hardest part of that month was that I was the one who had to tell his widowed mother, a woman who had come to this country early in the century, and lost many of those she left behind in Europe to the Holocaust, that he, her only child, who had survived many missions in the waist of a B-25 over Italy, and was the only member of the crew to get out of the last mission without being killed or captured, had died. I still remember her audible grief. "He was my Einstein," she cried, she wailed. I held her, and cried with her. She went back to her condo in Miami Beach, and died herself less than three years later, no doubt from heartbreak.

I doubt if he reads this blog, but on the off chance that he does, on this Father's Day, Dad? Thank you for everything. I love you.

Happy Father's Day.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:25 PM

June 13, 2008
Shocking News News

Tim Russert has apparently died of a heart attack. Condolences to his family.

I suspect that given how unexpected this was, it will shake up NBC news quite a bit.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:04 PM

June 06, 2008
A Tour Of What We Liberated

On the anniversary. Enjoy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:16 PM

June 04, 2008
Memorial Service Arrangements

Note: I've bumped this post to the top, with an update. It will stay at the top for a couple days, so if you see it first, continue reading past--I'll still be posting new stuff.

For any of my Huntsville area readers who wish to pay their respects to Darren Spurlock, David Alan Smith of Boeing passes on the following information:

Kelly and her family is planning for a service this Tuesday and Wednesday as shown below:
Tuesday, June 3
Berryhill Funeral Home
2035 Memorial Parkway North
Huntsville, AL
Visitation: 12:00 p.m.
Funeral: 2:00 p.m.

Wednesday, June 4
Hermitage Memorial Gardens
535 Shute Lane
Old Hickory, TN
Graveside service and burial: 11:00 a.m.

We talked further about those who knew him sharing some remembrances at his service. She and her ministers are very happy to have us do that. Since we don't have much time I offer the following approach. If you will be able to physically attend and want to say something, please tell me and give me an idea of how long you need. If you have something you would like to share at his service but can not come, I will be glad to act as your surrogate. If you have something you would just like Kelly, Ben (6) and James (3) to have I will compile them electronically. I need those items you would like shared Tuesday by COB Monday. As these boys grow older, it will help them know Darren as the man he was.

Kelly's public notice on Darren's death will include the following:

In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the Mayfair Church of Christ:

1095 Carl T. Jones Dr.
Huntsville, AL 35802

However, she very much appreciated our thought to honor Darren through supporting Ben and James education. So as a "work" friend, if you feel moved you can send her a check in her name with the reference to the "Darren Spurlock Education Fund". She can deposit these in Ben and James college savings accounts.

Kelly Spurlock

[Address deleted because I don't want to blast her home address on the Interweb, the world being the sad place that it is these days in that regard. Anyone interested can contact me at the email address in the upper left corner of the blog, and I'll relay it. Actually, I'd suggest that Kelly establish a trust with a PO Box, and a web page to take donations via Paypal--perhaps someone else can help her with this. --rs]

And finally, I can not stress how much a card, note and/or remembrance means to her. Darren touched many lives. Let us show that as a monument to his life with us. Your support, thoughts and prayers for Kelly and the boys are very much appreciated.

David Alan Smith
Advanced Programs, Exploration Launch Systems
Space Exploration, The Boeing Company

If anyone wants to get hold of David and doesn't have his contact info (which again, I didn't want to display), again, email me.

[Update, per my comment about not wanting to post Kelly's home address]

For those of all called to honor Darren's memory in a way that will positively affect his family's future, we have established the "Darren Spurlock Memorial Education Fund" for his two boys Ben and James via 529 college savings accounts. To contribute to this account you may: Make check payable to: College America.
In memo field: Spurlock Education Fund.

Mail to:

First Financial Group
400 Meridian Street, Ste.100
Huntsville, AL 35801

Any contribution you send will divided equally into an account for Ben and account for James. And thank you for honoring a beloved colleague and friend.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:49 AM

May 31, 2008
Senseless

I just got some bad news. When I saw this story at NASA Watch, I recognized the name, but hoped that it wasn't the Darren Spurlock with whom I'd worked three years ago on the CE&R studies for NASA, back before Griffin came in and decided to implement his own ESAS architecture. That Darren was at least a decade younger than fifty, and he worked at Boeing. But it seemed unlikely to me that there would be two aerospace engineers in Huntsville with that name.

Sadly (though of course it would be tragedy regardless of which Darren Spurlock died) I just got off the phone with one of his Boeing former colleagues. The paper got the age wrong, and he had left Boeing to work for Marshall only three weeks ago. I never met his wife, but want to extend my condolences to her. I believe he left a young family. I'll be getting info about memorial services, and post them when I get them, for those interested in the Huntsville area.

I didn't know Darren that long--the CE&R study was my only work with him, but he was a good man, a good, smart hard-working engineer, and he worked very hard to come up with and document architectures that would be affordable and sustainable in getting us off the planet, in consonance with the president's Vision for Space Exploration. He was as frustrated as anyone when NASA basically ignored everything we'd done under Steidle to come up with the current...plan. But he moved on, obviously, and must have been looking forward to doing good things at the agency itself. Now, senselessly, a valuable career and valuable life have been cut short.

[Evening update]

This post now comes up numero uno in a search for "Darren Spurlock.

Who knoweth the ways of Google?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:48 PM

May 26, 2008
Memorial Day

I've been busy working on an article, and finishing the gutters (all done now except strapping the downspouts, because the straps I got are too short), so no posting today. But I did want to note the history of the holiday, for those unaware. Unlike Veteran's Day, it's not a day just for remembering war dead, but dead loved ones in general. I remember as a child that my grandmother would always go up to her home town of Beaverton, Michigan (sometimes stopping by on the way home from our cottage by Houghton Lake) to put flowers on her husband's (my grandfather, who died when I was six) grave.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:11 PM

May 23, 2008
For A Friday Morning

Fifty stunning photos.

[Via Geek Press]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AM

May 18, 2008
Busy Weekend

Slow posting because I'm finishing up painting and starting a new project--reguttering the front where we removed the gutters over the garage, and putting them in on the rest of the front of the house where there was never any, but now we have new landscaping to protect from the rainy season which starts in a couple weeks.

The challenge is that it turns out that the roof fascia board slopes in the direction opposite the one that I want it to in order to put one of the down spouts at the end of the house. In fact, the whole house seems tilted slightly toward the east three inches or so end to end (probably settling toward the intracoastal, since it was built on fill). So it works fine for the east spout, but not so much for the west one. Which means an ugly angle on the westward side to force the water to run uphill, so to speak. Still not sure what to do about that one, but now I know why the old gutter never worked very well...

The other joyous part of the adventure is that the fascia isn't vertical, as the hangars expect--it's seventeen degrees off with a slight overhang. So I get to cut a bunch of wedges from two-by-four to make up the difference. Which is where our new Craftsman double-bevel mitre saw, that we got for crown and base molding installation (which I haven't started yet) will come in handy.

I'll also add that laser levelers are well worth having. It would have been a real PITA to figure this out with a standard bubble and tacked string.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:02 PM

May 14, 2008
Happy Blogiversary

Congratulations to Alan Boyle for six years of Cosmic Log.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:02 AM

April 16, 2008
Remembering Slim Chipley

Most of my readers will find this of no interest at all, but I just ran across a new blog dedicated to remembering the good old days in Flint, Michigan. Nostalgic memories abound.

The population trend in the sidebar is depressing. When I was a kid it had a population of almost two hundred thousand, and there was an ongoing feud with Grand Rapids over whether it or Flint was the second largest city in the state (after Detroit, of course, which had its own hemorrhage of people). Now it's down to just a little over half that.

[Update in the evening]

OK, again, unless you're from southeast Michigan, this will be meaningless, but via the blog above, I found a coney blog. That actually understands the difference between Flint and Detroit style.

And there are those who say that it's a lost art. For many, Angelo's defined the Flint coney island, and once he died (my father was in the hospital with him at the same time, as they both had heart attacks in the late sixties), it became franchised, and lost the magic. But my mother used to tell me (and we even went there when I was young) that the original Flint Coney Island, on Saginaw, north of downtown, was the best. But it went under decades ago.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that it's a hit in Phoenix. Maybe we can keep the brand alive.

My darling Patricia doesn't understand the appeal. But then, she's not a fan of raw onions. Nor is she a fan of me after I ingest them. But once in a while, I have to indulge, consequences be damned...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:40 PM

April 14, 2008
The World's Ten Scariest Runways

I've only flown into three of these, but as I was reading, I wondered if they would mention Saba. Sure enough, it's number ten. I don't recall either JFK or St. Maarten being that scary, from a passenger perspective, but we flew into there on our way to Saba, which is quite an experience. As noted, it is a very short runway, with a dropoff over a cliff into the ocean if you don't stop on time. They fly very short takeoff/land planes in there. We flew in with a naval aviator and his wife who were stationed at Rosie Roads in Puerto Rico, and he said that it would be good training for a carrier landing, except that it was a lot more stable.

Anyway, it was worth it. A very quaint little Dutch tropical island, with a couple nice hiking trails around and up the mountain, with great views of Anguilla, St. Maarten/St. Martin, Nevis and other northern windward islands. And a marine preserve, for great diving.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

I Know What He Means

Lileks:

The Piccadilly was knocked down for the Marriott Marquis, which is really one hell of a hotel. I stayed there for a week; loved the rooms and the hotel and the location, but I absolutely hated the glass elevators. Practically had to huff a bag of laughing gas to get on the things.

It's a problem with Marriotts in general. The large atrium with the glass 'vators seems to be a trademark. I hate them. They don't seem to take into account the acrophobes among us.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:27 AM

March 30, 2008
Back In LA

I took a little longer to drive back from Phoenix because I did two things that I've never done, in all the times I've made that trip over the past thirty years. I stopped at the Colorado River in Blythe and walked across, and I stopped and did a quick tour of the Patton Museum at Chiriaco Summit. I'd show the pictures, but I don't seem to have my card reader with me. I might pick one up at Fry's tomorrow.

The latter was more impressive than I expected, considering that it's private, not official. More so on the interior than outside, though. They have a number of tanks out there, in various states of decrepitude and disrepair, and no signs to provide any useful information about them. Still worth a visit, though, for anyone interested in military history.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:02 PM

March 15, 2008
Very Cool

Literally. There are icebergs in Lake Michigan. Must be global warming.

Hope they aren't a problem for the whales.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:43 PM

March 11, 2008
Heading Back South

Which in Florida, really means that I'm heading north, culturally. I'll be back down in Boca from Orlando this afternoon, God willing and if the creek (in this case, the St. Johns River) don't rise.

Though I'm not a believer in God.

And actually (did you know this?) the expression isn't referring to a trickling and burbling body of water, temporarily making its glass more than half full but, rather, an Indian tribe that was given to the occasional uprising, with a tendency to hinder travel, either temporarily or permanently. So I guess the word should have been capitalized. But that would have given away the game.

Or is it really just about flooding? Who knows? What would we do without the Intertubes?

Anyway, enough philosophy for now. See y'all later (I can still say that while I'm up south).

[Afternoon update]

Back in Boca, but busy (he alliterated).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AM

March 10, 2008
Back To Blogging

Virginia Postrel had successful surgery, and is posting again, including one on John McCain, non-conservative:

McCain is an instinctive regulator who considers business a base pursuit. It doesn't help that the senator's personal connections with commerce are largely limited to a highly protected local industry (distributing beer) and outright corruption (the Charles Keating scandal). And he's every bit as moralistic as Hillary Clinton, our would-be national nanny. His first response to something he doesn't like--particularly something commercial he doesn't like--is to ban it.

This year's presidential options are the most depressing in my memory (and that's saying something).

Anyway, here's to a continued full recovery.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:34 AM

March 08, 2008
First Poppy

With all the rain they've had in southern California this winter, I would expect the poppy season to be gorgeous up in Lancaster. This is a good harbinger of that:

Overlooking the first poppy at the reserve would have been easy. The stem was only a couple of inches high and wind gusts bent the young flower almost sideways. The flower was just off the exit road beyond the park's kiosk.

"I hope it's a sign of a good bloom that's coming," Scott said after she learned of the sighting.

Elgin said she hopes to pass on poppy updates to enthusiasts who phone the information center.

"I figure in the next couple of days there will be five or six more poppies show up, and each day a few more until the full bloom," Elgin said.

"There's indications we'll have a decent season, but I can't really predict one that will be exceptionally good because Mother Nature can turn right around and prove me wrong."

Elgin said the only thing predictable about poppies at the reserve is that they're unpredictable.

I'm going to Space Access in about three weeks, in Phoenix. When I was looking for tickets, it turned out to make a lot more sense to fly into LA, for schedule and ticket price, and I have other business there anyway, so I'm going to fly out, drive to Phoenix and back, and then fly back to Florida. But I'll probably be going up to Mojave, so I think I'll take a still and videocam with me, and make the little side trip in Lancaster to the preserve. And hope that it's both sunny and not windy (an intersection of conditions that's unfortunately rare that time of year), because that's the only time that the flowers are really open and in full bloom.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:15 PM

February 28, 2008
Good Medical Advice

Joe Katzman has some, as do his commenters. Doctors are not gods.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 AM

February 27, 2008
Looks Like A Small Lion To Me

Dennis Wingo wants you to vote for his cat. It looks like a worthy cause.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:16 PM

RIP WFB

While I'm not a conservative, and never have been, I came to appreciate William F. Buckley much more as I grew older and started reading National Review (though not consistently--I've never had a subscription) back in the Reagan years. An intellectual giant has passed.

The Corner is (not surprisingly) all WFB all the time right now.

[Update at 2:30 PM]

A tribute from Mario Cuomo:

I was privileged to know William Buckley for more than 20 years and was in fact his opponent in his last public debate.

He may not have been unique. But I have never encountered his match. He was a brilliant, gentle, charming philosopher, seer and advocate.

William Buckley died ... but his complicated brilliance in thought and script will survive him for as long as words are read. And words are heard.

[Early evening update]

Bob Poole weighs in, with a libertarian perspective:

By creating National Review in 1955 as a serious, intellectually respectable conservative voice (challenging the New Deal consensus among thinking people), Buckley created space for the development of our movement. He kicked out the racists and conspiracy-mongers from conservatism and embraced Chicago and Austrian economists, introducing a new generation to Hayek, Mises, and Friedman. And thanks to the efforts of NR's Frank Meyer to promote a "fusion" between economic (free-market) conservatives and social conservatives, Buckley and National Review fostered the growth of a large enough conservative movement to nominate Goldwater for president and ultimately to elect Ronald Reagan.

In many ways, this is a loss for the conservative (and libertarian) movements even greater than that of Reagan. But due to his influence, which is immeasurable, he leaves behind many to pick up and carry the torch for freedom forward.

[Evening update]

Ed Kilgore has further thoughts:

Buckley once said he offered his frequent polemical enemy Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a "plenary indulgence" for his errors after Schlesinger leaned over to him during a discussion of the despoilation of forests and whispered: "Better redwoods than deadwoods." And that's certainly how a lot of us on the Left feel about the legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr. (see progressive historian Rick Perlstein's tribute to WFB's decency and generosity at the Campaign for America's Future site). He made us laugh, and made us think, and above all, taught us the value of the English language as a deft and infinitely expressive instrument of persuasion. I'll miss him, and so should you.

It's a shame that I have to suffer pea-brained feces-flingers in my comments section on the occasion of his passing. That person will clearly never be able to use the English language as an expressive instrument of persuasion, infinitely or otherwise. It's sad that he's unable to realize how unpersuasive, and deserving of the contempt of all, that he is. It's equally sad that he has no sense whatever of shame, no matter how deserving.

[Update early Thursday morning]

The Washington Post says that Buckley will be missed. Well, not by certain scumbags in my comments section, of course. But who cares about them...?

[Update early morning on February 28th]

Here's a huge compendium of encomia from all points on the political spectrum. Sadly, the only unbonum words that I've seen have been expressed in my own comments section. But then, I don't deliberately go to the wacko leftists web sites.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:27 AM

Iowahawk Meets Kato Kaelin

I used to go to parties like this up in the hills. I don't recall the ninja fembot valets, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:08 AM

What A Writer

Lileks:

It was dark, except for the crepuscular light struggling through the stained-glass window.

And he does this every day, seemingly effortlessly.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:29 AM

February 24, 2008
Sore And Sunburned

Yeah, no posting today. Some long-time (over three decades) friends from Michigan were down for the weekend, and we went canoeing/kayaking today, seven miles round trip, on the south fork of the St. Lucie River, up in Stuart. I sunblocked my arms and upper portions, but forgot to do my legs. I'm just not used to wearing shorts, even in Florida.

I may post some pictures later, if after looking at them they seem worthwhile. We were a little disappointed at the wildlife. Only saw a couple gators, and no manatees. We saw several slider turtles though, and a sandhill crane walking through someone's front (on the river side) yard. And no one fishing, which seemed a little surprising.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:06 PM

February 16, 2008
Frying A Turkey Without Oil?

Not exactly, despite the claim of this post:

Deep frying is a form of convection heating. Instead of hot air, you are using hot oil to transfer the heat. Depending on the oil used in the fryer, the temperature is usually about 375 degrees to keep the food from absorbing a lot of oil.

The Big Easy uses infrared energy to "bathe" food. It excites the proteins, not the water. Thus, you are literally frying it. It's just like sitting in the sun all day. The infrared energy will "fry" your meat's skin. The Big Easy doesn't need a lid because it's better to let the hot air escape. That way your food doesn't dry out and there's no basting necessary. Unlike conventional turkey fryers there is also no warm-up period. Just drop your thawed turkey (stuffed or unstuffed, injected or not, sugar-less rubbed or not) into the chamber and turn the Big Easy on. Infrared energy starts cooking it immediately and the cooking time for 12-14-pound turkey will be cut almost in half.

Without expressing an opinion on the relative merits of cooking a turkey this way, it's not equivalent to deep-fat frying. As it says, it only radiates the skin, whereas a deep fryer gets hot oil inside the bird as well, which has to speed up the cooking time considerably. And if the oil is sufficiently hot, there's no reason that it has to make the bird greasy, or any more so than it would be naturally from its own fat.

The Big Easy™ is $165 at Amazon, whereas serviceable friers are available for less than half the price. Of course, with the former, you don't need any oil, which might save you ten bucks or so per turkey preparation, so it might pay for itself over time if you do a lot of turkeys. But considering the time value of money, I think that you'd have to be a real turkey fan to make up the difference. Of course, it might be good for other meats as well.

[Update late evening]

Contrary to Glenn's comment, I don't call "foul." The proper spelling is "fowl."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:46 PM

February 13, 2008
IE Tips

For those who don't want to use a good browser, or are forced by draconian IT policies at work to use Internet Exploder, here is a description of some plug-ins for it that may make it almost as useful as Firefox.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:55 AM

February 12, 2008
Honest Abe

I know that no one knows or cares any more, with that abomination known as "Presidents Day" (we're supposed to honor Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce along with Washington and Lincoln?), but today is Lincoln's birthday, something that we actually observed when I was a kid.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:44 AM

February 07, 2008
How Well Do You Know Europe?

I only came into the top third. But that was on my first try. I'm sure with practice I could get a lot higher.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:47 PM

Best Wishes

It's been rumored for several months that Burt Rutan has been under the weather. He certainly didn't look great when I talked to him briefly in the hallway in Long Beach in September.

Without getting into details, I now have it on very good authority that he underwent (or is undergoing) surgery this morning in California. My understanding is that, if successful, the prognosis will be good, and he'll be doing much better soon. If you're the praying type, and think it does him any good, then you might want to do that. But if you do, it might be best not to tell him. Me, I'll just hope for the best.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:33 AM

February 06, 2008
I Don't Feel Quite So Badly Now

I'm not the only one having issues with Movable Type:

I have succeeded in loading Style Contest templates into my style browser, and have applied them, and been informed I have successfully applied them and republished the site, and they do not show up. In fact it managed to destroy the page entirely, putting all the columns at the bottom of the page. Time to rip it up and start from scratch.

Don't email me until I send up flares. I need to figure this out myself.

Good luck with that, James.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:20 AM

January 08, 2008
In Memoriam

The Rocky Mountain News, where he was a bloggist, has a nice obituary of Andrew Olmsted.

He will not be a forgotten soldier.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:53 AM

December 25, 2007
And To All A Good Night

I don't know how much I'll be posting before Wednesday, but this will stay bumped at the top, so look below it for fresh stuff. Have a great Christmas, for those who celebrate it, and a great holiday in general, even if you don't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 PM

December 19, 2007
Did Space Aliens Get Him?

Dennis Kucinich has lost a brother:

The county coroner said that an autopsy is set to be performed to determine the exact cause of death.
There were no signs of foul play.

Seriously, condolences and best wishes to the Kucinich family.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:11 AM

October 21, 2007
A Deadly Combo

It was one of the driest seasons on record in Southern California this year. The grass and weeds in the local mountains was certainly tinder dry. With the arrival of the hot Santa Ana winds, the area was ripe for a fire, and sure enough, Malibu is in flames. I remember years ago going down to the strand in Manhattan Beach, and looking across the dark South Bay at the orange glow across the water the last time this happened.

It's a beautiful area to live, but the wealthy residents should have to carry their own insurance. But I suspect that, just is the case on barrier islands and other flood and fire zones, they'll get help from the federal taxpayers, most of whom make much less than Malibu residents, and can't afford to live in such places, to rebuild once again.

[Update in the afternoon]

Wow, this sounds like it might be the worst Malibu fire in history. I'm hearing that Malibu Canyon is aflame, including the Presbyterian Church (if it's the one I'm thinking of, it has a beautiful view of the ocean below--I attended a college roommate's wedding there years ago), the Malibu Castle is engulfed in flames, and I'm sure that Hughes Research Lab (or whatever it's called these days after all the acquisitions) and Pepperdine are threatened.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:24 AM

September 23, 2007
Fame, If Not Fortune

I had a first on Friday night--a Lileks-like moment. I'm often recognized by my name badge at space conferences, but when I checked in at the American counter at LAX on Friday night, the agent recognized my name on my driver's license, and asked if I was the space blogger. He told me that space was supposed to be about exploration, not a jobs program. I told him that it actually was a jobs program, but that it should be about space settlement.

Anyway, thanks for the service--usually I have to schlep my bag over to the X-ray myself, but he told me that for Fort Lauderdale, he could put it on the conveyor behind him.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:24 AM

September 21, 2007
Bad News

Virginia Postrel has a bad reason to be glad to be back in LA. Wish her good health.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

September 15, 2007
Uh Oh

Looks like we'll dodge Ingrid, which is falling apart under shear. But this little aside from a much longer tropical blog post by Jeff Masters is a little worrying:

The GFS, ECMWF, and UKMET models all suggest a tropical depression may form in the Western Caribbean on Wednesday and move northwards into the Gulf of Mexico or over Florida.

I'm going to LA tomorrow, and not coming back until early next Saturday morning. I'd like to know a little more. How long will it take to move north, and how much (if any) will it intensify? Do the models have an opinion about that?

We could use a tropical depression here, and even a tropical storm, to help refill up the lake, which is still four feet less than normal (due to draining it last year as a precaution against a hurricane season that didn't happen), as we head toward the dry season. But I can do without a major hurricane, particularly if I'm not here to shutter the house.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:28 AM

September 12, 2007
Snuck Up On Us

Well, it turned out that Humberto formed in the Gulf, instead of east of the Antilles. The tropical depression out there will probably become Ingrid in the next day or so. I don't like the looks of the track. I'm not in the center of it, but it looks like it could go anywhere from the Florida straights to the Carolinas. Of course, it's so far out that there's no way to know--it could also end up heading north and out to sea. I just hope that we know better by Saturday, when we'll have to decide whether or not to shutter before I go out of town.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:37 AM

September 11, 2007
So Far, So Good

Yesterday was the statistical peak of hurricane season, and we haven't even had to consider putting up the shutters yet this year, at least in south Florida. Of course, I'm probably speaking too soon.

[Update mid morning]

Is Humberto about to form? It's still too far out to worry about it, but this is the first potential storm that I've seen this season that any models indicate could eventually target Florida. But it could also head south like Dean and Felix did, or up into the Atlantic and affect no one, as so many storms did last year. Here's more from Jeff Masters:

I expect this will allow 91L to develop into a tropical depression on Thursday. The HWRF brings it to a Category 3 hurricane by Sunday, at a position near 19N 58W, about 500 miles east-northeast of Puerto Rico. This is too aggressive an intensification rate, but I expect 91L will be at least a strong tropical storm by Sunday. The 06Z run of the GFDL model is more believable, making 91L a 55 mph tropical storm about 800 miles east of Puerto Rico on Sunday. This storm is definitely a threat to the Lesser Antilles Islands. It is too early to say if the northern islands are more at risk, as the current model runs are indicating. The system may represent a threat to the U.S. East Coast ten or more days from now, but there is no way to judge the likelihood of this.

I'm going to LA on Sunday for the week, and Patricia will be up in Orlando. It will be just our luck if the hurricane comes while we're out of town and can't prepare for it. I may be putting up shutters on Saturday, depending on what the track look like.

And this is a little disturbing:

Wind shear the past 11 days (Figure 3) has been below normal over most of the MDR. These conditions are expected to continue over at least the next two weeks, according to the latest forecast from the GFS model. African dust activity has been quite low the past month, and I don't see any changes to the general circulation pattern that would change this. Steering current patterns are expected to remain the same as we've seen since since late July, with a series of weak troughs and ridges rippling across the Atlantic, and no major troughs or ridges locking into place. This steering pattern favors a near-normal chance of hurricane strikes for the entire Atlantic. Due to the weak nature of the troughs of low pressure expected, we'll have fewer recurving storms that miss land than normal. Indeed, all but one of the seven named storms we've had this year have affected land (Chantal was the exception).

Even though we're past theoretical peak, it could be a long season.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:39 AM

September 07, 2007
No Place Like Home

I agree with Virginia. I've been living in south Florida for three years now (almost exactly--I came out here on Labor Day of 2004, just in time to board and shutter up the house for Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne (scroll to the bottom and work your way up, if you're interested)), and it still doesn't feel like home to me. And I don't think it ever will, in the way that LA did, and still does, when I visit.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:41 AM

September 03, 2007
Rough Riders

The hurricane hunters earned their pay with Felix:

NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft N42RF experienced a truly awesome and terrifying mission into the heart of Hurricane Felix last night. Flying at 10,000 feet through Felix at 7pm EDT last night, N42RF dropped a sonde into the southeast eyewall. The swirling winds of the storm were so powerful that the sonde spun a full 3/4 circle around the eye before splashing into the northwest eyewall. It is VERY rare for a sonde to make nearly a complete circle around the eye like this. As the plane entered the eye of the now Category 5 hurricane, they found a 17-mile wide stadium lit up by intense lightning on all sides. The pressure at the bottom of the eye had hit 934 mb, and the temperature outside, a balmy 77 degrees at 10,000 feet. This is about 24 degrees warmer than the atmosphere normally is at that altitude, and a phenomenally warm eye for a hurricane. N42RF then punched into the northwest eyewall. Flight level winds hit 175 mph, and small hail lashed the airplane as lighting continued to flash. Then, the crew hit what Hurricane Hunters fear most--a powerful updraft followed a few seconds later by an equally powerful downdraft. The resulting extreme turbulence and wind shear likely made the aircraft impossible to control. Four G's of acceleration battered the airplane, pushing the aircraft close to its design limit of 6 G's. Although no one was injured and no obvious damage to the airplane occurred, the aircraft commander wisely aborted the mission and N42RF returned safely to St. Croix. N42RF is the same aircraft that survived a pounding of 5.6 g's in the eyewall of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

And that low developing off of Florida's east coast is starting to make me a little nervous, and eyeing the shutters.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:41 PM

September 02, 2007
Good Things You Probably Don't Eat

Looks like I should be eating more of these foods. The only way I've ever eaten much beets is in borscht. I'd like to eat more cabbage, but Patricia doesn't like it. What do you do with Swiss chard? Salad?

[Via John Scalzi]

[Update a little later]

She says she does so like cabbage. She just doesn't like it cooked, or with corned beef. That is, she doesn't like corned beef, so she doesn't like corned beef and cabbage.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:03 AM

August 29, 2007
Irony

I just got a spam. Subject: "Beware of fake pills."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 PM

August 28, 2007
A Disturbance In The Force

Well, actually, in the tropical Atlantic. Is Felix forming? And will it be a repeat of Dean? That's what the current models look like, at least in terms of track. If so, let's hope that it's not similar in intensity.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 PM

August 27, 2007
Felicitations

Busy day (and week) ahead, but if I don't post anything else today, happy birthday, Glenn!

Keep 'em coming. That's my advice for a long life--have lots of birthdays.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AM

July 15, 2007
The Sun Also Sets

Key West is a sand-covered mountain, almost 2135 millimeters above sea level. It is said that it is one of the highest mountains in the range called the Florida Keys. They jut up far above the Atlantic, and can be seen from hundreds of yards away by the approaching sailors. But only when the pull of the moon is low, and the seas are calm, and the two-foot waves don't blot out the view.

Key West is the furthest southern point in the land they call the United States of America. Except for Hawaii. At that southern point, there is a buoy that says "Havana--ninety miles." Havana, where the young women roll the cigars between their dusky, unshaven thighs, after tromping the leaves with their muy sexy unshod feet.

Lying in the road by the buoy is a dead six-toed cat. It has been there for days. No one knows what the cat was seeking at that latitude.

We went to Key West. The woman and I walked the streets that he walked.

Key West was hot. It was very hot. Imagine the hottest place that you have ever been. Then imagine ten times that hot. Then imagine harder. You still will have no conception of how hot it was.

The sweat dripped down our faces, searing our eyes with the salt of our dessicating bodies. The sweat poured down. It poured down like the thick, rich red blood gushing out of the buttocks of a fat tourist, who did not outrun the bull in Pamplona.

The sun blazed above us, like a giant ball of flaming gases, burning at temperatures of millions of degrees.

It burned our skin. It burned our skin in such a way that even the soothing balm of aloe from the CVS could not cure. It reddened it, reddened it like the lobsters on which we supped in the evenings, after the sun had dropped into the sea, with the sweat still running down us. The lobsters were out of season, so they were fresh-frozen. But they were lobsters.

We drank drinks. Strong drinks. Manly drinks, though she was, and still is, despite the fact that we were in Key West, a woman. Not a fresh-frozen woman, though the women were out of season as well.

We also drank sweet drinks. Drinks with umbrellas in them, to forget. To forget what?

We don't know. We forgot.

Was it the drinks? Was it the low ceiling in the converted attic in which we stayed and for which we paid over two hundred bucks a night? And because we were not munchkins, or hunchbacks, continually confused walls and ceilings, and disrupted them with our noggins, and bled profusely from our scalps?

It could be the concussions talking, but we forgot.

It made us rethink our lives, and their purpose. It made us rethink our vacation planning methods. And then, with the skin peeling from the backs of our arms, and the backs of our legs, and backs of...well...our backs...we left.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:47 PM

June 07, 2007
They Came To Their Senses

Lileks won't be covering sewer bond proposals, after all. He's got a whole new gig at the Strib.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Hey, the guy is actually blogging! For pay!

It's not just the daily Bleat. He's got a whole new bunch of posts since I linked it this morning. You can actually refresh and see fresh stuff throughout the day. Just like a blog!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:58 AM

May 24, 2007
Rube Goldberg Lives!

What would we do without geeks with too much time on their hands?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:09 PM

May 22, 2007
Condolences

To The Space Show's David Livingston, on the death of his mother.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:22 AM

May 19, 2007
Nasty Email Spam Alert

I just got a message from "Greetings.com":

Hello friend ! You have just received a postcard Greeting from someone who cares about you...
Just click here to receive your Animated Greeting !

Thank you for using www.Greetings.com services !!!
Please take this opportunity to let your friends hear about us by sending them a postcard from our collection !

If you "click here" it takes you to an executable at some web site. I don't know what it does, and I'm not in a mood to experiment. When you get an email like this that's generic (that is, it wasn't specifically addressed to you by name, and it doesn't tell you who sent the greeting) it's a good bet that it's spam of some kind. If you wave the mouse over the link, and it's a different link than the one it purports to be (particularly if the end of the URL is "exe") stay far away from it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeez. Talk about people who shouldn't be allowed on the Internet:

To see how easy it was to lure in users via Google's AdWords, Stevens bought the drive-by-download.info domain and placed an AdWords ad reading:
Drive-By Download

Is your PC virus-free?

Get it infected here!

drive-by-download.info

Stevens has run the campaign for six months now, with 259,723 ad displays, and says he has had 409 clickthroughs.

The ad has cost him only 17 euros so far, which by Stevens' reckoning adds up to €0.04 per potentially compromised machine. Most of the systems visiting the site, 98 percent, ran Windows.

"I'm sure I could get much more traffic with a higher Google Adwords budget and a better-designed ad," Stevens said in a blog posting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:03 PM

May 16, 2007
Behold

Scum, in (almost) human form. If I were so unfortunate as to be on this creature's blogroll, I'd request removal.

Background posts here and here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:37 AM

May 15, 2007
It's A Small Gesture

...but one I can get behind. Left-lane drivers unite.

The inability of many people to recognize the purpose of the left lane is easily the reason for at least half of traffic congestion.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:10 PM

May 14, 2007
Condolences

Megan McArdle has lost her beloved dog.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:54 AM

May 10, 2007
South Florida Drivers

I briefly mentioned south Florida's drivers in the previous post, but this comment elicited further thoughts:

I've driven in southern Florida, and I'm quite surprised to learn they actually have traffic laws. Judging from the near-random maneuvers of the locals, I'll bet they'd be surprised too. It's one thing if you're a farmer stopping in the middle of a country road to chat with your neighbor coming the other way; it's quite another to do it in Coral Gables in the middle of the afternoon.

I praised Florida's laws, not their enforcement, or Florida's drivers. In addition to the complaint here, I'd point out their inability to merge on a freeway, and to find the little stalk on the steering column called a "turn signal." Or once having found it, to turn it off.

There are (at least) three types of lousy drivers in south Florida, which has the worst drivers, overall, that I've experienced in the continental United States. The place that it reminds me of the most is Puerto Rico (though fortunately, it's not quite that bad). As far as his first complaint, that seems to be right out of San Juan, though I suspect that it might be a Caribbean thing in general.

That said, the three groups are:

Cubans
Haitians
Chronologically-Challenged New Yorkers

The first group is similar to Puerto Ricans in their willingness to just pull over and gab if they see someone they know on the road, even on a freeway (though, again, it's nowhere near as prevalent as in PR). Not, of course, to imply that there aren't a lot of borriquenos here as well.

The second are similarly Caribbeans, but have even less experience with cars, coming from the poorest nation in the hemisphere (our own little bit of Africa). On the other hand, most of the dark-complected folks here are Haitian-Americans, rather than "African-Americans" (at least in south Palm Beach County) and great folks (when they're not behind the wheel), because they're grateful to be here and out of the hellhole that is their little bit of Africa, and haven't been here long enough to have absorbed the grievance culture of blacks who were born here, and are still resentful of wrongs done to them decades or centuries ago, fueled by the grievance industry exemplified by the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world. One can always tell them by their unique French dialect. So let me make that a fifth thing* that is better about south Florida than southern California.

The third are people who shouldn't be driving because they've been doing it too long. That is to say, the codgers of both sexes and all genders, of whom there are many down here, in "God's waiting room." They're not only old drivers, but they're people who never drove well to begin with, because they spent much of their lives in one of the five boroughs of New York (this is the sixth, most southern one), and rarely drove, and when they did, didn't have to deal with the kinds of driving and freeways that we do here. On top of that, they have a preference for large cars, over the dashboard of which many of them are too short to see. There have been many essays written on this subject, and I shall say no more. I think you can imagine the situation, based on the information already provided.

* OK, for those who want the whole list:

thunderstorms
warm ocean temps for diving
no state income tax
more rational traffic laws
Haitians, except for their driving skills

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:03 PM

Too Sensible

Mickey channels one of my pet peeves:

Wouldn't we save a lot of gasoline quickly and cheaply if we replaced most of our "STOP" signs with "YIELD" signs? I'm sure there is a safety argument against this, but I'd like to hear it, along with up-to-date comparisons with countries that rely on "yield" more than "stop."

There is no valid safety argument against it. Requiring a full stop adds zero safety, though it is useful for revenue production. The notion that a full stop is somehow safer is...what's the word...oh, yeah. Idiotic.

I too got a ticket for this in Manhattan Beach many years ago, and was supremely irritated by it. It's particularly stupid at four-way stops. We could in fact waste less time and less fuel if such signs were yields rather than stops.

The other idiocy that I see (in southern California--south Florida is actually much better) is the notion that if there is a left green arrow, that once you lose it, you can no longer turn left on the green, even if there isn't another car within a mile. The purpose of green arrows should be to make it easier to make a left, not harder. Yeah, I know, it's partly to protect pedestrians, but either way, people should be allowed to exercise some judgment. There are few things more infuriating to me than sitting at an intersection with a green light to make a left turn in the middle of the night, and knowing that it will be illegal if I don't wait for the arrow.

And I should note that I just realized that there is a fourth thing that I prefer south Florida for, compared to southern California. In general, the traffic regulations are more sane (even if the drivers are much worse). You can turn left any time the traffic is clear, even at intersections with left-turn arrows, and you can do a U-turn almost anywhere. It's the default, whereas in California, you can only do one if given explicit permission from the signage.

[Late morning update]

A recurring theme in comments with which I heartily concur: we need to teach people to drive, not merely operate an automobile. It's far too easy to get a driver's license in this country.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AM

May 09, 2007
It Couldn't Wait

It's not quite tropical, but we already have the first named storm of the hurricane season, three weeks before the season is supposed to officially begin.

I hope that this isn't a portent.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, why are they naming this storm? Do they name nor'easters? No, they don't, even though they can have much higher winds.

How long have they been naming subtropical storms? If we're seeing more named storms now than we used to, I wonder if it isn't because (a) we literally are seeing more than we used to, because many of the ones in the past decades we never even knew about if no ship encountered them, or they encountered no land, and (b) we are changing the naming rules, and comparing apples to oranges.

I think that we ought to stick to the tradition, and only name storms if they're tropical. If "Andrea" becomes tropical, then fine, but for now, I don't think it deserves a name.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AM

May 03, 2007
Laws

...that every bloggist should know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:18 AM

May 02, 2007
Turn The Page

Megan channels one of my gripes:

What the hell is with multiple page web articles? The reason books have pages is obvious; it's hard to carry around a single 110x80 foot sheet of paper, much less unfold it to read. Not so much for web articles. Does someone actually find this preferable?

Yes, what is up with that? More ad space? I don't see why. Maybe more page views to fool the advertisers? Computer World does this, and I do find it annoying.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:48 AM

April 30, 2007
Ouch

I'm showing up on the first page of a Google search for "rosie o'donnell," under "Blog Postings" (at least for now--Google is fickle).

As the first one. Behold, the power of the Instalink.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:06 AM

April 24, 2007
A Welcome New Resident

Congratulations, Joe.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:12 AM

April 22, 2007
Man'o'War

We went for a walk on the beach in Spanish River Park yesterday afternoon. I saw several of these washed up on shore.

You can't really get that much scale from the sand and seaweed, but the body was about the size of my hand. I've heard they can get larger, but I've never seen any much bigger than this one around here.

It makes one a little nervous, walking barelegged through the surf, because the surging waters could deliver one unto your legs and wrap the tentacles around them without your even being able to see it coming. Fortunately, there were no incidents. This one was still alive, but probably not for long. And I wasn't going to try to pick it up and toss it back. Particularly given the almost certain futility of it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:48 AM

April 18, 2007
Good Advice

On defending yourself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:45 AM

Report From The Front

Professor Chris Hall, former aerospace engineering blogger, but now department head at VPI and too busy to blog, checks in with a message:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I have heard from many of you throughout the last 24 hours. I'm sure I speak for the entire department, when I say that we thank you for thinking of us and for your many thoughtful notes. It means a lot to us.

As far as I know there were no casualties from the department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. We won't really know that until the names are released though. My son is a sophomore in Engineering Science and Mechanics, which is the department that Occupies most of Norris Hall. He is safe, but his undergraduate research advisor was one of the fatalities.

The departments of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering lost three good men, and there are several folks in the hospital. The three fallen professors are Liviu Lebrescu, Kevin Granata, and
G.V. Loganathan.

Liviu was an internationally known mechanician and was teaching a junior-level course on Solid Mechanics yesterday morning in Norris Hall. I did not know him well, but occasionally chatted with him about his home country of Romania.

Kevin was a young professor with a young family. His field was biomechanics, and my oldest son chose to major in ESM because he wanted to work in Kevin's lab. My son, Duncan, a sophomore, has worked in Kevin's biomechanics
lab for the past year. I thoroughly enjoyed Duncan's stories of how Professor Granata was teaching him how to program nonlinear controllers for inverted pendula. I know Duncan will miss those lessons.

G.V. was an award-winning professor of environmental engineering, whose expertise was in water resources. Most recently he won the university's prestigious Wine Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Again, I thank you all for your kind messages. I will let you know more when I know more. Please feel free to forward this email to friends and colleagues.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:33 AM

April 17, 2007
Hey, So We're Cheap

Eric Scheie has the same attitude toward haircuts as I do:

I'm definitely into minimizing my disutility, especially if it saves time, plus I'm lazy about these things. I end up having my hair cut too short with relatively long intervals between haircuts. Of course, there's a very noticeable contrast between what I look like right after a haircut and what I look like after six weeks without one, but it's a gradual process interrupted only by sudden contrasts in my appearance. I realize politicians need to look the same all the time, but I don't.

It's not just the cost of the haircut. It's the irritation of it, in terms of time out of my life, and having to interact with the haircutters.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:22 PM

April 13, 2007
Get Well Wishes

I'm certainly no fan of Governor Corzine, but I also certainly hope that he recovers fully and soon from his auto accident. And if he really wasn't wearing a seatbelt, that was dumb, and should be a lesson taken from the incident for all. I'm always amazed at people who don't wear one. My grandmother hated to--she claimed that it was more dangerous to do so because she might get trapped in the car in it, completely misjudging the relative odds of this happening versus getting her face plastered into a dash or through a windshield.

[Update on Friday evening]

I just heard the Lieutenant Governor say that "business in New Jersey would continue to take place as usual." If I were a Garden State resident, I'd take small comfort in those words. One would like an improvement, I think...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:29 AM

April 10, 2007
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

Gerard Vanderleun doesn't think much of O'Reilly's proposal for a blogger code of conduct. Or of James Woolcott:

The balding little metro-sexual neuter who dispatches his hard-core unemployed in this direction is meanwhile at his home suckling his cats and writing yet another scroll of infinite dullness on "the theater in our time," or denigrating the endless Yahoos that come to NYC to get in his way when he wants to go. (No matter that it is only because of these Yahoos that New York has a theater still. Then again what sort of grown man of any talent at all makes his living reviewing plays in this day and age anyway?) That Wolcott has no comments on his own page is enough to tell anyone that his decades of playing a beard have indeed left him the blogosphere's leading white man possessed of an inverted if uninhabited penis.

[Update in the afternoon]

OK, maybe I'll implement Frank J.'s comment policy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:22 AM

April 05, 2007
Pet Peeve

Andrew Stuttaford asks of the Guardian:

...is there something a bit unsettling about the way that has been written?

You mean, besides the fact that they can't spell mischievous? The writer apparently spells it the way the writer (mistakenly) pronounces it.

This is one of my pet peeves. Many people wrongly pronounce this word MISCHEEVEEUS, four syllables, accent on the second syllABle, when there is no long ee sound after the vee, but this is the first time I've seen someone actually spell it that way (perhaps attempting to resolve the disparity between the actual word and the way he wants to pronounce it). It's three syllables--MISchievous.

And, yes, that's not the only problem with the paragraph he quotes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:30 AM

March 29, 2007
Hurricane Forecast

As a current south Floridian (and consumer of Gulf petroleum), I hope they're wrong about this:

Bastardi, who in March of last year correctly forecasted that the region would get “minimal” attention by that season’s hurricanes, said that this year, “the Gulf and Florida face a renewed threat, and we will see more powerful storms across the board. We will not get anywhere near the amount of storms that we did in 2005, but it is the intensity of the storms we do get that will be of major concern.”

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 AM

March 28, 2007
Extend Your Best Wishes

To brave cancer sufferers on both sides of the aisle. Elizabeth Edwards here, and Tony Snow here. (Note: that last is a mailto with a predetermined subject line--if you change it, it probably won't go to the intended recipient.)

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:06 PM

Get Your Own Domain, People

It's only ten bucks a year.

A cautionary tale.

Both Maia's lawyer and Stein said they had strong cases against the other, but both sides also said they had no foreseeable plans to file legal action against the other. In the wake of an increasingly nasty three-year-old feud that only ended with Seipp's death, there's a exhausted calm on both sides.
“Maia's been through a lot,” Thigpen said.

No kidding.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:03 AM

More From The Strange Mind

...of Lileks. On coins:

I upended the bag on the kitchen table, and whistled: wow. Junk. The dimes, for example, might fetch 10.001 cents today. I found many 1945 Mercury Dimes – surely they must be worth something! They’re old! Of course, 200 million were struck, so they’re not exactly in the hen’s-teeth category. I separated the Buffalo Nickels and Mercury Dimes and velvet-smooth quarters, marvelling at the smoothness of the faces and edges. It took decades and numberless hands to accomplish this amount of erosion, and all that effort only served to lessen the value.
At least they survived. What happens to old coins? Destroyed or lost or hoarded, I guess. It’s a big country. The government struck 200 million Mercury dimes in 1945 alone, and I imagine they could be misplaced or hidden quite easily. My bag had 200. Condition? VL, which is a coin-collector term for “very lousy.” Even so, they have mysteries. In fact they have more mysteries than a perfect coin that shines like the day it was minted. Uncirculated coins never knew the jostle of the pocket, the community of the bureau tray, the sudden terror of the hand dipping into the cash drawer, the nose-to-nape comfort of the womb-like roll. They have not lived! They are but princes born in luxury, entombed in gilded vaults! These, my friends, are coins that saw action:

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:39 AM

March 25, 2007
Save The Sharks

No, really. And note, Joe Katzman and I are both avid divers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:15 AM

Don't Waste Good Wine

This has always been my philosophy:

Over all, wines that I would have poured down the drain rather than sip from a glass were improved by the cooking process, revealing qualities that were neutral at worst and delightful at best. On the other hand, wines of complexity and finesse were flattened by cooking — or, worse, concentrated by it, taking on big, cartoonish qualities that made them less than appetizing.

Despite the prevailing "wisdom," the notion that you shouldn't cook with a wine you wouldn't want to drink unheated never made that much sense to me. Good wines are made with careful attention to how they taste out of the bottle, and boiling simply has to break down a lot of the things that make it worth so much money. In my experience, a rich beef bourguignon made with a jug burgandy comes out fine, and leaves the fine cabernet to drink with it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AM

March 23, 2007
Condolences And Good Luck

I'm very sorry to hear that Elizabeth Edwards has had a medical setback, and though I don't agree with her politics, and don't want her husband to become president in any way, continue to wish her the best of health. Having just lost a friend to cancer, this event seems all the more poignant, particularly seeing all the heartfelt support from the blogosphere that (for the most part) transcended politics. Dean Barnett, who knows something of such things, is much more eloquent.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 AM

March 21, 2007
The Fight Is Over

She lived three years longer than she was supposed to, and then even after being given two days, she lasted a little more. But Cathy is gone now (I assume that she never considered cryonics). But not gone for good. Gone for no reason at all, really. But as someone once said, with all the people she touched and influenced for the better, she left a wake of good in her life whose waves will probably continue to spread for years and decades. Maia seems to have been strong throughout, and she will perhaps be Cathy's greatest legacy.

For those who didn't know her, Moxie has perhaps the best picture of her as we knew her recently. And improbably, of all people, Susan Estrich has some touching thoughts of her own. Being on the wrong end of the country now, I regret not being able to attend the service on Friday (though I'll be in Phoenix, which is a lot closer), and to celebrate her life with mutual friends, who were legion.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here's the obit from her nemesis, the LA Times.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:05 PM

Mysterious Motherboard

Patricia's computer needs more memory. It's got half a gig, but it's being brought to its knees. The board's about four or five years old (I think it's running a 1.8 MHz Athlon). It's got an extra DIMM slot, but I don't know how big a stick it can take. I can't find the mobo manual, but I figured I could find one on line. The only identifier I can see on it says "Micro-Star Model MS-5390." But when I do a search on that, I come up empty. I assume that it's an MSI, but that model number doesn't seem to exist in their data base. Anyone have any idea what's going on? What are the chances that a board of that vintage can't handle a gigbyte stick? I don't want to go out and buy one unless I know it will work. On the other hand, just adding another half a gig would probably solve her problem.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Well, after reviewing the options (buying half a gig for sixty bucks or a full gig for a hundred and ten) and realizing that the memory I was buying would probably be useless on the next upgrade, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade now. Athlon 64 and a gig of DDR2 for ~$250. I can use the other mobo for a development linux box.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:14 AM

March 20, 2007
Death Of A Blogger Lioness

Based on Maia's comment to this latest post on Cathy's blog, by Lewis Fein, it sounds like the end is very near. Much of the blogosphere, even those who disagreed with her politically, is mourning already (happily, I only saw one mean-spirited tribute). She will leave a hole in it, and in Los Angeles journalism, that won't be filled soon, or perhaps at all.

For those who didn't know her, and want to get a sense of her, read Amy Alkon's post:

At the party at Debbie and Morgan Gundel's to celebrate her remission, she announced, "I just want to let everyone know having cancer hasn't made me a better person."

She also has a link roundup.

Mark Steyn:

She’s a very funny writer on a whole range of subjects and she ought to be a lot better known. She’s especially funny on the subject of The Los Angeles Times, whose current despond can be most easily explained by the fact that they’d never dream of hiring her but they’re happy to have all those unreadable plonkers who’ve been tying up prime metro/features/lifestyle real estate at the paper for decades.

Here's a profile by Luke Ford. And Matt Welch has some pictures, recent and not so recent. Emmanuelle (his much better half) has one from childhood.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AM

March 19, 2007
An Impending Loss To The Blogosphere

Cathy Seipp, a witty, insightful and lovely journalist (and someone who I would like to think a friend, based on the many parties of hers to which I was invited, and attended, one a Halloween party in her home) has been waging a valiant fight against inoperable lung cancer for several years (and for those wondering, no, she never smoked). Sadly, it looks like the battle is almost over, and not in her or her family's favor.

Please extend your best wishes (and prayers, for those who do that) to them, and particularly her brave daughter (now in college) Maia. And as she says, contribute to the American Lung Cancer Society, and give an impounded dog or cat a home in her honor.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:50 AM

March 13, 2007
I'm An Auto-Bahner

What kind of driver are you?

Though, actually, I'm not a full auto-bahner. I rarely drive that much over the limit (typically ten MPH at most) unless I'm way out in the middle of nowhere (like back roads in Nevada), and I get a speeding ticket about once every five years or so. But I've never used a radar detector, either, which probably would have helped.

I never accept a red rental car, though. I think they're cop bait. I also avoid the left lane except for passing. I've only gotten one speeding ticket in the right lane (back in '99). I think that cops look for speeders in the left lane.

I recall one incident many years ago, when I was going up to Princeton from DC for Gerry O'Neill's funeral, with another spacer (who was an early L-5 member, but shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) in his rental car. He was a left laner, and I told him repeatedly that he was asking for a ticket, particularly since we were in Maryland, which is notorious in regard to ticketing speeders. Sure enough, he got pulled over.

I also recall seeing another space enthusiast passing us, and laughing when he saw who just got pulled over. Not to mention chiding him after the service. I accepted no responsibility whatsoever. I'd warned him.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:57 PM

March 05, 2007
Not OK

I can't believe I missed Oklahoma. I'm embarrassed, but I guess forty-nine out of fifty isn't too bad.

[Via Paul Hsieh (who I beat by one)]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:05 AM

February 27, 2007
Getting Around To It

As a world-class procrastinator, I found this essay on the subject very interesting. At least, once I actually took the time to read it.

It has a lot of insights that seem obvious once you read them, but are brilliant nonetheless. Kind of like James Welles' thesis on stupidity.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 AM

January 22, 2007
The Most Depressing Day Of The Year?

I dunno. To me, they all suck.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

January 17, 2007
Is The Age Of Carriers Over?

Could be.

Certainly, it's very long in the tooth, and it lasted quite a bit longer than the age of battleships (the transition between the true was, arguably, abrupt, occurring on a quiet Sunday morning in Hawaii in early December 1941).

It will be interesting to see how new space capabilities start to trump conventional air power in the next few decades.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:18 PM

January 16, 2007
Ummmm....No, Dear

I just heard a Fox News half-hour announcer say "John C. Stennis has just left his home port..."

No. John C. Stennis "left his home port," permanently, a dozen years ago. This news story was about a ship. It should have been read, "The John C. Stennis has just left her home port." Yes, I know it sounds strange (particularly given how little gender-driven English is, compared to, say Romance languages or German), but that's how it's done.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:11 PM

January 15, 2007
Must Be Global Warming

The California citrus crop may be wiped out from the cold. I blame George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:10 AM

December 24, 2006
And To All A Good Night

I'm not a Christian, or an adherent to any other major religion, but I want to wish a very merry Christmas to all who welcome it. Probably no posting tomorrow. Enjoy your gifts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 PM

A Week Too Late

If this happened tonight, it would make things seem a lot more like Christmas around here (currently in the eighties and muggy, with a forecast low in the seventies tonight). The current weather forecast for south Florida for New Years Eve is temperatures below freezing. We'll see if that forecast holds up over the week.

[Christmas Eve update]

D'oh!

I'd forgotten that I'd switched my weather forecaster temporarily to Atlanta. Forecast for Boca is low of fifty degrees on New Years Eve...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:22 AM

December 23, 2006
Does Anyone Ever Do A Search

...with a coarse-toothed comb?

Just wondering.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AM

December 18, 2006
What Does Your Robot Head Look Like?

Today's Woot offering is pretty funny:

If the scientist is going to use a home entertainment projector for the head, which one would we prefer him to use?
Woot feels the answer might be the InFocus IN72 Home Entertainment Projector. First of all, just look at it. This thing has awesome robot head written all over it. Not since HAL has there been such a perfect anthropomorphic design, allowing you to choose between:

a) breaking the ranks of soldiers by causing them to flee before your electronic snarl as you march on your state capitol or the state capitol of others.
b) breaking the ranks of soldiers by inviting them to stop and enjoy high quality movies or television in your new living room theater.

Also, the thing has sold out already, and it's not even 10 AM on the east coast.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:13 AM

December 15, 2006
Blast From The Past

This is old news, and pretty inside baseball for new blog readers, but I would never have guessed who Stephanie Dupont was.

Great stuff, Will. It was hilarious. And kudos to Brian Linse as well, for putting it together. And if you weren't around, you might want to follow the link from his site to Stephanie's archives before reading the denouement.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:07 PM

December 13, 2006
A Tough Woman

Go give your best wishes to the fun and funny Cathy Seipp (and her daughter Maia), who has a not-so-fun-and-funny problem--she has been fighting a long battle with lung cancer, but is still hanging in there, and still blogging.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:31 AM

Slow Down, You Go Too Fast

Jane Galt writes about speed reading. I'm a fast reader also, and find it frustrating and painful to have to read something aloud--the baud rate is just too low.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

December 12, 2006
The Big Island

Louise Riofrio has been providing a tour on her blog. Just keep scrolling.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:46 AM

December 11, 2006
Homesick

Charles Johnson has a knack for taking pictures that remind me of when I wasn't in Florida. I've seen this view many times on walks. In fact, for a time, I lived just a few blocks from where it was taken.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:56 AM

December 06, 2006
Christmas Light Bleg

OK, you know those cheap Chinese icicle lights?

Does anyone understand enough about the circuitry to have an explanation as to why the first third of a string wouldn't work, but the rest of it does? I look at the wiring, and there seems to be a lot more than necessary (sometimes four in the strand, sometimes three, sometimes two). What's the deal?

I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, because I can replace them for a few bucks, but if it's something easy, it would be worth not having to run to Tarzhay for them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:31 PM

December 04, 2006
I Like It

Amidst discoursing on cold winters and Superman, Lileks coins a new word: bloggist (ah, I see that the spell checquer in Firefox doesn't recognize it--I'll have to add it to the dictionary...done):

Want to bet that his identity was safe at the end of the comic? Would you care to wager that the Girl of Tomorrow, who came from the future to use mind-reading powers to trap an alien into a loveless marriage – a proposition whose horrible prospect made Superman leap, as though his hindquarters had involuntarily loosed a gas-blast sufficient to lift him off his feet and billow his cape – did not succeed in telling the whole world his useless secret? Maybe that’s why I want to watch the movie; I want to see if they came up with a compelling reason for Superman to have a secret identity. It’s like the world’s longest-running metaphor for being in the closet, which I’m sure two thousand other bloggists have noted.
Bloggists? Where did that come from? I actually like it; better than blogger. Blogger sounds like someone carrying big wobbly Hefty bags of Jell-O; bloggist has a certain precision, as well as an old-world charm. It also lends itself to bloggista and bloggisto, which moves the emphasis from the dull O to the pert & vivacious i vowel.

My deep dark secret--I've always hated the word blog. It's so ugly: it sounds like something mucky you get stuck in, and I remain embarrassed to this day to admit that I have one. But the word caught fire five years or so ago, and I could no more hold it back than could Canute the tide. But I'll never call myself a blogger again. I'm a bloggist!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 AM

November 27, 2006
Holiday Season Bleg

Fred Kiesche could use a new job. Help him keep blogging!

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:29 PM

November 23, 2006
Being Thankful

I've got family visiting, and am making my traditional stuffing with cornbread, turkey sausage (I used to be able to get cranberry sausage in California, but there are no Bristol Farms here), wild rice, pine nuts, wild mushrooms, and the secret ingredient, pomegranate. My niece helped me dissect it for the berries. Her mother is from Iraq, so she knows her pomegranates.

We'll be busy the rest of the day cooking, taking kids to the beach, watching football, ingesting fermented malt beverages, etc.

I'm thankful that we have pomegranates. And turkeys. I'm thankful that at my age, I've still got enough teeth to enjoy them (I recall my grandfather having to cut off his corn with a knife to eat it, when he wasn't a lot older than me). I'm thankful for medical technology in general, which seems to be continuing to get better, and giving me hope that I'll live to see escape velocity.

I'm thankful for family and loved ones, and the ability to share my thanks with them in good health on this day.

I'm thankful for the technology that allows me to express my thankfulness to those people who read this little web site, and I'm thankful for the readers who unaccountably and seemingly masochistically keep coming back to read it.

I'm very thankful that we'll have elections again in two years. And that's not a partisan comment (particularly since I'm not a member of any political party)--it would be true regardless of the results three weeks ago. Having a sister-in-law who is from Baghdad can make you appreciate small things like that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:21 AM

November 07, 2006
Election Day Coverage

For those stuck to computers, follow the goings on at Pajamas Media.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:22 AM

October 27, 2006
More Home Improvement Fun

I want to replace a bathtub. The existing one is a five footer, fourteen inches high. It's wedged into three walls.

I talked to a contractor about it yesterday, and he claims that if he removes the tile, that it can be lifted up at one end, stood up on its side, and then taken through the door. I guess that I can believe this is possible, since the diagonal is only about 61.6 inches, and there's probably enough slack and play in the drywall to scrape it by with tiles removed. What I have more trouble believing is that I'll be able to get the new deeper whirlpool in without major wall surgery. If I go with a depth of 21 inches, that makes a diagonal of 63.5 inches, which seems like too tight a squeeze to me. I'm trying to avoid having to (temporarily) remove studs and move it in through the closet on the other side of the wall.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

The other question is, how do I disconnect the drain without making a hole in the wall opposite? Or is that unavoidable?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:48 AM

October 16, 2006
Missed It By That Much

Unlike (apparently) many who were in Hawaii yesterday, I've been through several significant earthquakes. But if our trip to Kona had been one week later, we'd have gone through the closest major quake in our lives, despite decades in southern California. It would have been only ten miles away, off shore. And if our itinerary had been the same, we'd have been in bed, on the fourth floor in a condo, above the beach, so it would have been pretty exciting. But there was never a concern about a tsunami, at least not there. It didn't have enough distance to build up a big wave, even if it was a big enough displacement to cause one (it wasn't). But we'd probably be stuck there for a couple more days, at least.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:26 AM

September 15, 2006
A Brave Woman

And a great journalist. Oriana Fallaci, rest in peace. Don't know where she'll end up--she was a devout atheist, but unlike many of her (non)religious cohorts, she was able to make the distinction between modern Christianity and the medieval Islamists with whom we are war.

[Update at noon]

Michael Ledeen, who was her friend, has some thoughts. Also, as Monte Davis notes in comments, her book If The Sun Dies is a classic for those interested in space. Perhaps Apogee could do a reprint in her honor, if they could get permission of the estate. And wherever she is now, if she sees Pete Conrad there, maybe she'll finally pay off the bet.

[Update at 5:30 PM EDT]

A more extensive eulogy from Michael Ledeen:

Those who know Italy will recognize Orianna as the quintessential Tuscan, right out of the texts: tough, intellectually brutal, brilliantly and eloquently disparaging of anyone who doesn’t meet impossibly high standards, utterly loyal to “the cause.” Tuscans were the worst fascists and the worst communists, uncompromising, cruel and dogmatic. Happily for us, Orianna’s cause was the pursuit of truth, whatever the political and social consequences. Once considered a fashionable leftists, she positively reveled in her ostracism in later years by her old admirers. She immersed herself in the words of her critics much more than in those of her allies, because she wanted to be able to demolish the criticism. I once spent half a day in her Manhattan town house, deconstructing the attacks against her in the Italian and French press. When we’d been through it all, she laughed happily, and raced to the kitchen to cook lunch.
...Lots of people were surprised to learn that she lived as a virtual recluse in New York City, rather than Florence, but America was a big part of her soul. A real freedom fighter has to love America, and she did, just as she hated America when it failed to meet her high standards. Her writings on America were extraordinary; the words she wrote right after 9/11 deserve to be remembered for a very long time:

The fact is that America is a special country, my dear friend. A country to envy, of which to be jealous…and it is that way because it is born of a spiritual necessity…and of the most sublime human idea: the idea of liberty, or better, of liberty married to the idea of equality…

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AM

September 14, 2006
Scenic

Professor Hall has a pictorial motorcycle tour of northern New Mexico, here, here and here. I'm envious--it looks like it was a beautiful trip.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 AM

September 05, 2006
Condolences

To Josh Marshall, who just lost his father. I know the feeling, though the pain is long dull now--I lost mine half a lifetime ago.

[Update in the afternoon]

While Josh has written a beautiful eulogy, am I the only one to wonder why he has a different last name than his father?

[Update]

Commenters, who read his piece more carefully than I, point out the numerous references as to why they don't share the same last name, which makes his eulogy even more heart felt and sad. He was his father in deeds, if not biology, and the reverence, love and grief should be respected all the more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:38 AM

August 29, 2006
Great

With the Tigers in a slump, their nearest rivals, the Twins and the White Sox are playing the worst teams in the respective divisions, while Detroit plays the Yankees.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:49 PM

August 28, 2006
Dodging A Bullet?

It's starting to look as though Ernesto is running out of steam. Cuba apparently beat it up pretty badly (I always find it weird, and frustrating given that it's hard and unpleasant to visit under the current regime, that while Florida and the Bahamas are flatter than pancakes, Cuba--just a couple hundred miles away--has these several-thousand foot, presumably scenic mountains).

Anyway, it's barely a tropical storm, and will take a long time to reorganize in crossing the Florida Straights, so the expection now is that it will come ashore as a tropical storm, rather than the one or two hurricane that was predicted this morning. It's still headed right at us, though. I'm now debating whether to shutter. I'll still have time to do it in the morning, when we'll have a better idea what's going on.

[Update a few minutes later]

I should note, in deference to the Carolinas and mid-Atlantic, that this storm may still have its say. I hope that they get off as lucky as it looks as though Florida will, but the models for them don't look as optimistic for them right now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:56 PM

Maybe It Can Keep Up The Trend

The storm track has shifted east again. Now we're almost right in the bullseye, with the track having the eye go right over the house. The only good thing will be that, if the trend continues, it will start to move away from us (which doesn't mean it won't hit us directly, of course, since this is all probabilistic). The bad news is that the farther east it is, the more powerful it will get, because it will be out over the warm Bahamian waters getting fueled, and it also means more chance for damaging storm surge on the Florida east coast.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:50 AM

Up Go The Shutters

I was hoping to avoid it this year, but that was wishful thinking. It is ironic, though, that the first hurricane of the season is coming right up the Florida peninsula. Hope it's not a harbinger of the next two or three months.

The scary thing is that the NHS is saying there's a possibility of strengthening to a two or three before it heads into the swamp. It would probably lose some strength over land, but a semi-major hurricane coming all the way up Florida, then continuing on up the coast into the Carolinas is going to cause a lot of cumulative damage, even if it's not as intense as Katrina was, particularly considering property values in south Florida. I just hope the track doesn't shift even further east and scrub us directly or from just off shore, in which case we might actually have to evacuate due to potential for flooding from surge.

It should also be noted that the track of this storm takes it just to the west of KSC. They'll have to roll the Shuttle back (or at least start preparing for it--they could change their minds for a period of another day or so). Probably no launch this week (and maybe none next unless they can get some kind of accommodation with the Russians to resolve the schedule conflict with the Soyuz mission).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:07 AM

August 24, 2006
Nasty Weather?

We've had a quiet season so far, but as we get into the end of August, that could be changing:

The Canadian model continues to be very consistent and very gung-ho, developing 97L into a strong tropical storm on Saturday, south of Jamaica, then taking the storm into the Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:26 AM

July 17, 2006
Do I Post Too Often?

Some thoughts on posting frequency. The old "post daily" rule may no longer apply.

[Via La Postrel]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:57 AM

July 08, 2006
Two Confidence Anecdotes

I recently got a call from Chase left on my answering machine telling me to call an 800 number and have my credit card available to authenticate myself. The trouble is, they didn't authenticate themselves. Anyone could have made that call to me and if I did what the call said, I would be giving my credit card number (and probably the date, secret code and every else they asked me) to a bad actor. I authenticated them by dialing the number on the back of my card, but I worry that there will be a smart confidence man who will figure this out before the rest of the world figures out how to stop leaving openings.

I also received two calls about my "Virgin lottery territory" piece that Buzz Aldrin liked. Two other people called because they received checks from a "Virgin Lottery" that didn't cash, they searched for that on the web and my article and phone number came up. Never mind that my article dealt with the 17th century lottery that helped fund Virginia colonization, they thought I might know something about modern fraud.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:31 AM

July 05, 2006
Another (Frickin') Sunny Day In South Florida

This should be cause for celebration, right?

Wrong. Why?

First of all, I hate the sun. I mean, it's nice that it's up there to provide energy and all, but I really don't like it. It's bright, I have to put on sunglasses, I have to slather myself with goop to protect myself from the rays, it makes it hotter here than it would be without it (which is hot enough, given the latitude). One of the things that I love about coastal California is that it is so reliably cloudy and foggy (and cool) almost every day, at least part of the day if not all day.

Second, the last couple weeks have been predicting rain every day. I look at the radar, and see thunderstorms all around, but they never make it here (the Gulf coast looks like it's been getting drenched, though). It's tantalizing. I see green blotches heading towards us, or standing right next to us, but not moving at all, and either they don't move, or they move and dissipate before they actually get here.

Today, we were supposed to get Yet Another Tropical Wave that was supposed to bring us wind, and rain, and miserable (by the local standard--what do they know?--they like sun. And flat. And hot. And humid) weather, and yet, the sun has been shining all day.

I've filled the pool, I've watered the lawn, in vain, to attempt to cause some non-trivial precipitation, but no go.

One of the few things that I like about this God-forsaken (if an agnostic can use that phrase) land is that it gets thunderstorms. But not here. Not now.

[Rant Off]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:19 PM

Press Conference With Tony Snow

Given the multiple fireworks displays (and no, I'm not talking about last night's standard entertainment) yesterday, it should be interesting. Scheduled in about half an hour, and 12:15 PM EDT.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AM

June 27, 2006
Death In The Blogosphere

Acidman has gone to the big blog in the sky. RIP.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:00 AM

June 24, 2006
Latin Question

Descarte said "Cogito, ergo sum," (I think, therefore I am).

What would the equivalent be for "I think, therefore they are"?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:16 PM

May 25, 2006
Idle Question

We went to see an exhibit of Chihuli glass at the Saint Louis Botanical Garden on Sunday. In watching the video of the artist working, we wondered why he didn't have a glass eye. Just think of all the cool possibilities.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 AM

May 23, 2006
An Honorable Man Has Died

RIP, Lloyd Bentsen. I'm glad he never became vice president, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 AM

May 19, 2006
Woohoo!

The Tigers are in first place in their division, having won seven straight, with the best record in the major leagues. That has to boost the mood in Detroit, amid the GM/Delphi financial woes. Of course, it will also help if the Pistons can pull out two wins to stay alive in the championships. But I hate basketball.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:05 PM

May 17, 2006
New Car Rentals: Smaller, Better, More Expensive

Watch a flexible economy re-price capital in real time. A subcompact is renting for more than an SUV in Boston from Avis according to WSJ. This is a strong signal (though not the first) that it is time to retool. Honda is building new plants to churn out hundreds of thousands of hybrids that will hit the market in a few years.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:05 AM

May 05, 2006
Coffee Maker Blogging

Instapundit is discussing coffee makers.

As a non-coffee drinker who makes the coffee for Her, she objects to me performing initial preparation the night before, because the grounds aren't fresh. I have to get up before her, and make a latte on a little two-cup Krups (model 872-42), complete with milk steamer, which has worked fine except the plastic cover over the carafe broke off the little tabs that clip it on within a few months of purchase (it's about a year and a half old now), and requires careful cleaning of the little pinhole at the end of the steam nozzle with a safety pin (or if one is more bold, a straight one), lest one end up with naught but unfoamy warm mammary juice into which to lovingly pour the sacred sludge.

Lest one think me a true hero of domesticity, let it be known that I work at home while she has an often-ugly commute.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:39 AM

Boeing 797 Flying Wing

Looks like window seats may be harder to get soon. Last week New Tech Spy said this.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 07:04 AM

April 26, 2006
Microsoft in Video Ad Acquisition

Microsoft plans to buy Massive Inc. for $300 million +/- $100 million. They do ad placements in video games. More in the Wall Street Journal. In-game ads are expected to triple from $56 million last year to $160 million this year and be $700 million by 2010.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:04 AM

April 25, 2006
Financial Times Anecdote

I ordered a copy of the Financial Times from my left-over US Air miles. Today, as usual, Richard Branson's face in a Samsonite ad stares up at me from my doorstep. It is a mixed motivation to have my major competitor with over ten million in booked sales and tremendous media recognition start my day. It is an amazing standard to aspire to, but humbling at the same time. A big day of getting the word out for my site Space-Shot.com got easier when I saw on the front page of the second section: game company Xfire was purchased by Viacom for $102 million in cash. (The FT version is subscriber only.) Xfire has 4 million members spending 91 hours per month in advertiser supported game heaven. They earned less than $10 million in ad sales last year. The revenue and subscriber numbers are achievable for Space-Shot.com. Back to work.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:33 AM

April 20, 2006
On Perfection

I don't know if this is a Marriott thing in general, or just TownePlace Suites, but the staff there have taken to the habit of asking me upon checkout, "Did you have a perfect stay"?

I never know how to respond to this question. Perfection is a platonic ideal, never to be achieved in real life--it is a goal only to be sought. To ask someone whether or not they have achieved it is to put one on the spot. I can lie, and say yes (which no doubt many do, just to get out and on their way). Or I can tell the truth, and say no, or in an attempt to avoid the quandary, to inform them that perfection isn't possible. This doesn't get me off the hook--the inevitable response to either of the latter is "...well, if it wasn't perfect, what could we have done to make it perfect?"

I don't know.

Make it so the teevee can be viewed while working on the computer? Have wine glasses? A slightly firmer bed? Protein with the overcarbed muffins in the breakfast room? A quieter room, away from the street? Move the entire hotel to the beach? Move the entire hotel to Cabo? Open bar happy hour? Hot and cold running nymphomaniacs?

It's an unreasonable question, and whatever marketing genius came up with it should rethink it, because it's gotten to the point of making me not want to stay there. I think the next time they ask, I'll say, "My stay would be perfect if you wouldn't ask me if my stay was perfect." Ask if it was good, if it was great, if there were any problems, but please don't place the burden of your failure to achieve the unachievable on me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 AM

April 15, 2006
New Orleans Report

I took my daughter on an air and ground tour of New Orleans yesterday to teach her about the largest man-made disaster in the United States since Richmond was destroyed by the Union Army in the 1860s. A lot has changed since August, but much is still to do.

In my tour, I saw that there were many blue tarps dotting the city's residential sections representing rooves that had not yet been repaired. Many swimming pools in flooded sections were still filled with filth and were completely black from the air. Some sections of town had huge trash piles in front of every house. Trash hauling continues, but my pilot said this generated 30 years worth of trash. One January estimate said extraordinary hauling will continue through Thanksgiving 2006.

Certain sections of town had indications of water levels on the walls that spoke of completely ruining first floors throughout the area. Demolition and gutting of savable structures is starting, but many buildings have not yet had their first floor material removed.

My driver told me an uncorroborated story about gang violence that was darker than the standard reports in the media. Rather than the disorganized food desperation and opportunistic looting that we were led to believe, there was a gang takeover of some buildings and some portions of the city. To stem the tide, there were mercenaries patrolling the streets that had been advised to use lethal force and had to.

The air tour company's, Southern Seaplane's, pilot said that they were one of very few companies doing air tours and that demand was only one or two tours a week and they spent most of their time ferrying petroleum employees. That suggests only a few hundred people have seen first hand the devastation of the wake of Hurricane Katrina and hubris. The pilot says he sees it every day and is numb to it.

For those that can't afford a $500 air tour, there is a Gray Line bus tour for $35 called "The Hurricane Katrina Tour: America's Worst Catastrophe". People have mixed feelings about the tour but the plusses are it brings revenue to the city and helps witness an event that we should not try to repeat.

One thing that was particularly poignant in the air tour was the closed Jazz Land Six Flags amusement park. After the tour, my seven-year-old daughter called her Mom on my cell phone and said, "we just saw hurricane devastation, but let me tell you about the oyster shell I found". It may take her and the nation decades to process this disaster. I am not so lucky and already get it.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:36 AM

April 08, 2006
Annoyance

Far too many people on the Internet write "dribble" when they mean "drivel." I assume that this is because people are either mispronouncing, or they are mishearing the word, and have never seen or noticed it in print.

That is all.

For now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:01 AM

March 30, 2006
A Quarter Of A Century

...since Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley. I was doing some research in the corporate library at the Aerospace Corporation, when the librarian (who I knew) came over and told me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:45 AM

March 28, 2006
Condolences

...to Professor Reynolds, who has a sad explanation of why he posted nothing since before noon today. His grandmother died. It sounds like she had a good life, well lived. We should all aspire to that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:42 PM

March 22, 2006
Bookmark This

Some good tips for improving your writing.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:04 AM

February 17, 2006
The Fool's Golden State

Gerard Vanderleun writes about the decline of Florida, both the Keys and the mainland. It's funny, as someone who is currently living here, and has never particularly liked the place, he makes it sound much worse than the reality seems to me. But then, he's writing as someone who apparently did love it once upon a time, which I never have. I haven't been diving down in the Keys yet (though we still plan to), but he certainly makes it sound uninviting, and I hadn't realized that the deer were in such deep trouble.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 AM

February 16, 2006
Dish Problems

So we decided to upgrade to the HD version of DirecTV, which involves (of course!) replacing, or at least supplementing our current satellite dish. It has a triple horn on it, and looks at three birds simultaneously, instead of just the one, as the standard dish does. This means that not only are azimuth and elevation important, but there's a third axis adjustment, that they call "tilt," to make sure that you're seeing all three of them.

I put up a new mast, got it plumb, set the settings on the tilt and elevation to what they're supposed to be for southeast Florida (45 degrees for both), hooked up the cable, pointed it in the general azimuthal direction (about thirty degrees south of west), and got nada, bupkis, no signal.

Is the cable good? Yup, and here's the weird thing. When I drop the elevation to thirty degrees or so (fifteen below where it's supposed to be), I get a reasonably strong signal on the upper transponders of Satellite A, starting with number 22. No signal on transponders 1 and up (which are the ones you're supposed to use to align the dish). Also no signal on either of the other two birds.

So something's happening, but not what should be happening. What are the chances that this is an LNB problem? The first dish I ever installed, years ago, had a bad LNB right out of the box (which drove me crazy trying to figure out what was wrong--fortunately, part of the deal was a free upgrade to a dual LNB, and when I put in the new unit, I got the signal right away).

Is there anyone out there familiar with the situation who could diagnose this, so I can just take the LNB back to Circuit City and exchange it? Or are these symptoms of something else that I'm doing wrong (though I'm wracking my brains at this point trying to figure out what else it could be).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:07 PM

January 30, 2006
Seals And Scenery

Just a quick postcard or two, since I'm not posting anything consequential (as though that's something new...) but go check out some of the space blogrolls to the left, and this week's issue of The Space Review should be up.

About fifteen years ago, for some reason, a group of elephant seals decided to colonize a stretch of beach by Point Piedras Blancas, just north of San Simeon. It was a surprising location, because it's hardly a remote area--Highway One goes right by it, and I remember that when they first started mating and birthing here, there were a lot of cars just pulling over to the side to look. State wildlife people put up barriers to prevent this, and set up special parking lots from which to view the beach. Several years ago, one could walk among them, but this is now strongly discouraged with fences and docents.

With all the protection, and despite the tourist interest, the population has exploded, and right now is breeding season. There were hundreds of pups on the beach, still in their black pre-weaning coats (they'll molt and go gray after about six weeks, when they start swimming and eating in the ocean). Many are almost newborn, and staying close to mom.

We drove a little farther north, and had lunch at Ragged Point. It was somewhat cloudy and foggy, but the view to the north of the Big Sur coastline was still gorgeous.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:43 AM

January 21, 2006
What Would Pocahontas Say?

Alan Boyle has an interesting story of the restoration of a lost Algonquin dialect. I don't know whether or not the movie is any good in general, but I'm always impressed when a director works hard to get it right, even if few people would know the difference.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:59 AM

January 13, 2006
Guess We'll Have To Try Harder

The global test is no longer number one on Google! It's been demoted to numero dos.

C'mon, blogosphere. Are you going to let some cheesy marketing firm get away with that? Open up your hearts, and links.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

January 12, 2006
No Long Pork For Them

The Donner family didn't resort to cannibalism:

No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments of animal bones at that Alder Creek site, suggesting Donner family members did not resort to cannibalism, the archaeologists said at a conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Sacramento, Calif.
"The Donner family ended up getting the stigma basically because of the name," said Julie Schablitsky, one of the lead authors. "But of all the people, they were probably the least deserving of it."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:56 PM

January 11, 2006
It's 8:45, Do You Know Where Your Cat Is?

Patricia has been trying to keep the guest bedroom cat-free, in deference to potential allergenic guests. But occasionally she forgets, and Jessica, for whatever perverse feline reason, has decided that it's her favorite room (in fact, her very own room, which we unjustly keep her out of), and lives for the times that the door gets left open.

She's not thrilled to be caught in the act, but on the other hand, she can't be bothered to show much deference to our recognition of her insubordination. She's too mellow and relaxed, and she is, after all, a cat.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:11 PM

January 04, 2006
Up Too Late

...last night watching that weird bowl game. You know, they have the cliche about "no one deserved to lose," but I think that in that game, both teams deserved to lose. They certainly both tried hard enough to do so. It was like watching Michigan play itself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AM

December 28, 2005
Unfinished Business

There remains a lot of bad blood between the Wolverines and Cornhuskers, after many felt that Michigan should have had a sole national title in 1997, after Nebraska's "soccer play" in the end zone that should have cost them the game against Missouri, and a sense that the co-championship was a retirement gift to their coach.

Well, tonight, the issue as to who's the best will definitely be resolved, at least this year, though of course it will tell us nothing about what would have happened in a matchup between the 1997 teams.

[Update after the game]

Geez...

Did they just beat the record for the number of laterals in a single play? As my (semi(?)-lapsed Catholic) sister-in-law said, "That wasn't just a Hail Mary--it was the whole damn rosary."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:54 PM

December 25, 2005
Merry Christmas To All

...all my Christian readers, that is. The rest of you can go suck eggs. Or enjoy the holiday anyway, as I will. And my very best wishes are reserved for those in "the sandbox," trying to help make a better Middle East, at the potential cost of their lives and limbs, and at the definite cost of a holiday at home with their families.

And to all a good night.

[Note: this message will be on top for a while, so don't let that stop you from scrolling down to look for any potential new content. On the other hand, there probably won't be a lot under the circumstances...]

[Update a few minutes later]

All right, happy Channukah to my Jewish readers as well, though we all know that it's a pretty minor holiday as Jewish holidays go, and none of us goyim would pay any attention at all if it hadn't been set up as an alternative to Christmas so the Jewish kids wouldn't feel left out.

And as for Kwanza...please. Well, OK. If I have any readers who actually celebrate it, have a good one.

And to heck with you Festivus people. Get a non-nihilistic religion.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:24 PM

December 22, 2005
Video Bleg

Any HD geeks out there?

I'm looking at this television, which is on sale at Costco for less than a grand.

It looks good, but I found this one review that's giving me a little heartburn, because we have DirecTV, and planned to upgrade to a triple LNB dish and new HD TIVO receiver.

It is an excellent set for HD OTA and regular definition satellite receiver. But I recently upgraded to an HD receiver for DirecTV and found out it doesn't have the capability to keep up with the HD satellite receiver. There is a phenomena called macroblocking that occurs since the digital picture cannot be translated properly. Defined - it is an awful picture on the 480i channels, which means about 95 of my programs looked awful.

I searched all over the web, and couldn't find any other reference to this problem. Is it a real one, or is this an isolated problem for this one reviewer, either because (s)he didn't understand how to set it up, or there was something defective about that unit?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:41 PM

Christmas Pictures

From Iran.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:29 AM

December 20, 2005
Dell Hell

I build my own machines, and having had to deal with upgrading Dells from friends and relatives (and my work laptop as well, since that what the company that I'm working with insists on buying) would never, ever consider buying one.

But now Jane Galt, who has heretofore sung their praises, has finally learned her lesson as well. Not a pretty Christmas story (though I have to confess that my sympathy is not abundant, given my previous attitude toward Dell).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:09 AM

December 14, 2005
Take 85

A tribute to Dave Brubeck, for his eighty-fifth birthday.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:06 AM

What He Said

I use Wikipedia, but I don't take it as gospel, and neither should you. Robert McHenry, former editor of Encyclopedia Britannica, explains why.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:57 AM

December 13, 2005
Rave Review

I've already stated my predisposition (or lack thereof) toward seeing King Kong (even if Jackson didn't do the gay version), but Randy Barnett says that it's one of the best movies he's ever seen.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:46 AM

December 07, 2005
Oxymoron Alert

This story about the Narnia movie seems to have a strange headline to me. If it pleases them, how can they be said to be critics?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:58 AM

November 24, 2005
What They'll Have For Thanksgiving

...on Mars.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:16 AM

November 23, 2005
Stuffing The Turkey

I don't know if there's a Carnival of the Recipes for Thanksgiving, but in response to popular demand [cue sounds of crickets chirping], here's my unique recipe for corn-bread and wild-rice stuffing. It's higher protein than most.

A couple pounds of sausage (I prefer some kind of fancy chicken or turkey sausage--this year I found some chicken/brocolli)
wild rice (maybe half a cup)
pine nuts (maybe half a cup)
a pound or so of exotic mushrooms (oyster, chanterelle, shiitake, etc.)
one onion, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, diced
a few cups of corn bread crumbs, either home made or store-bought stuffing
a few stalks of celery (if desired--I don't like it that much, but some people think it's not stuffing without it), chopped
pomegranate seeds (this is the secret ingredient)
A couple cups of chicken broth (from bouillion is fine, unless you want to be fancy)
salt, pepper, sage, thyme to taste
olive oil

Soak the rice overnight in about twice as much water as it needs to cover. Another good thing to do ahead, while watching teevee, is to divest the pomegranate from its seeds (persnickety work).

In the morning, cut up the sausage into bite-size chunks, and saute in the olive oil (amount depending on the stickiness of your saute pan). Chop the rest of the ingredients and boil the rice for fifteen minutes or so (if you overdo it, it won't have the crunchiness). Set the meat aside and saute the onions, celery and garlic in the same pan.

Put all the non-liquid ingredients in a big bowl and stir well. Add in the broth and mix thoroughly. If it seems too dry, feel free to add as much water...or booze...as you want. It should be moist throughout, but not soaked. You can also add melted butter to taste and texture if you like that sort of thing, and your arteries can take it. Another option, to be more heart healthy, is to fatten it up with olive or canola oil.

Use it like any other stuffing--either inside the bird, or under the skin, or just bake it in its own dish, or all of the above.

Eat, and enjoy.

Oh, and on this Thanksgiving Eve, let us all bow our heads and give remembrance to the woman who invented Stove Top Stuffing™, who has stuffed her last stove top.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:51 PM

More Smog On The Ocean

Charles Johnson inadvertently follows up on my post, with a shot from (I think) Palos Verdes. Though he doesn't comment about it, note the brown haze on the otherwise blue horizon. That means that the Santa Anas continue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:01 AM

November 22, 2005
WTF! Part II

OK, I got the computer fixed (at least for now), but now I have a question for all the DirecTV Tivo mavens out there. This is something that has been driving me nuts ever since I got the farging thing.

Why does it fill up my hard drive with programs that I've zero interest in, have never watched, have never evinced any interest in watching? More to the immediate point, why, when I'm watching Fox News, and have a half-hour of it in the can, and am waiting for Brit Hume to come on, and can zap commercials, does it randomly decide that I'd rather watch Seinfeld, and switch to that channel, thus losing everything on the hard drive from Fox News, so that when I switch back in frustration, I've lost the first half hour?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:33 PM

November 20, 2005
Smog At The Beach

I'm flying back to Florida tomorrow, and it will be good to be home with Patricia, but I thought I'd take a little walk in my old neighborhood this afternoon. If you're interested, click for more, but a warning that there are several pictures, for those limited in bandwidth...

The Santa Ana winds have been kicking up for the last few days, which is why they had the fire up in Ventura. Normally, people who live on Santa Monica Bay have pretty clear air because, like many other things, we import our air from Asia, and it has several thousand miles of ocean to cleanse it. But during the Santa Anas, the high pressure over the Great Basin shoves the air in the wrong direction, and we get off-shore winds. This breaks up the inversion layer in the LA basin and cleans out the air, but it shoves the whole miasma out over the bay, where it lies like a brown layer on a blue cake. You can see it in this picture of Catalina Island.

This is a view from the Strand (a walkway along the beach) in Manhattan beach, looking toward the southwest. Palos Verdes peninsula is to the left, and the island that looks like two islands is Catalina. You can see the smog layer in the isthmus in the center of the island, and in the bay off to the right of it. Looking off toward the north end of the bay, you can see the same effect off Point Dume, up by Malibu.

Of course, the key point is that the air is actually unusually clear on days like this inland (the views of the San Gabriel Mountains are gorgeous today), and even looking up the beach toward El Segundo power plant, the marina and Venice, all the way to downtown Santa Monica in the distance, a lot of detail can be seen in this shot from the Manhattan Pier, though the brown layer can still be seen above the Santa Monica mountains.

Often, a thick marine layer obscures and fuzzes this view, but the dry warm air provides more clarity. Once in a while you'll get this kind of view on a clear day, with no smog at all, and those days are the classic ones that the photogs shoot to lure the tourists out here. They happen quite often in the winter, but then it's usually too chilly to enjoy the beach (at least in terms of bathing suits). When it happens in the warmth of the spring or summer, it's rare, but heaven.

Looking out from the pier, the water seemed to be calm enough for a shore dive, so I checked out the scene beneath the waves.

Just kidding.

It's actually a moray that lives in a little public aquarium out at the end of the pier.

When I first moved out here from Michigan, a quarter of a century ago, there were a lot of little beach houses along the Strand. Now, this is one of only a few left in Manhattan Beach (I suspect that they can be counted on one hand).

I don't know how much the land is worth that the iceplant is covering, but I'm sure it's in seven figures. Most of the houses along the Strand are built right up to the walkway.

I should have bought property here when I first moved, but it's not actually a place I'd like to live. Living right on the Strand is a fishbowl, and you have to be sort of an exhibitionist to do it, particularly in the summertime, with all the people parading right by your little yard, or more likely, front picture window.

Though, if I had, I could be renting out the place for a lot more than my mortgage.

I don't know how much longer that little patch of iceplant will hold out. I imagine that the owners are people who bought the land back in the forties, perhaps with the house, for a few thousand dollars, and it was just one of many, with a lot of empty lots. It's probably been paid off for a long time, and their taxes are locked into the seventies era via Proposition 13. But when they die, it's likely that their heirs will just sell the place to pay the inheritance taxes, or perhaps just to get the equity out of it. Some developer will pick it up, tear down the last of the old beach cottages, tear out the iceplant, and fill the lot with something more mansiony, like this.

It's not really the leaning tower of Manhattan Beach, or an earthquake--just a bad camera angle in an attempt to capture the whole thing without falling down the dune behind me.

The nice thing about the Strand is that there is a huge variety of architectural styles. It's a very interesting walk if you want to see what the rich (and occasionally famous) are doing for domiciles these days. I've also noticed over the past few years as I watch the new construction that many of them have steel frames, rather than the wood frames that has been traditional in southern California. If I were building here, I'd do the same. The advantages are resistance to termites (any walk down the Strand will resemble a circus, with the occasional house tented to gas the little buggers out), and better resistance in a quake. That's a particular problem here, because a major temblor is likely to liquify the sand underneath them.

Seeing all the change in the past twenty-five years makes me wonder what it will look like in 2030. They can't build up, because there are height restrictions to preserve the views of the people on the hill above. I imagine that the creative destruction will simply continue, with the older places making way for the newer ones, and the prices continuing to escalate, because when they say in the real estate business that they're not making any more land, this is the kind of place they have in mind.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:12 PM

November 19, 2005
Tressel's Job Is Safe For Another Year

In fact, he's accomplished something that John Cooper never could. He owns Lloyd Carr:

Ohio State (9-2, 7-1) closed the regular season with six straight wins and gave coach Jim Tressel his fourth win in five games against Michigan (7-4, 5-3).

And the game went pretty much the way the season did for Michigan. Good enough defense to win, and a promising offense that only occasionally lived up to the promises. Still, Michigan was only four scores away from an undefeated season. They're probably the best four-loss team in the country, and they did better than I thought they would. Maybe they'll get a good bowl matchup.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:45 PM

November 13, 2005
Fast Cheap Flu Vaccine

If H5N1 is so lethal, it might be a justifiable move on utilitarian grounds to manufacture and release H5N2 or something so people with partial immunity to the most common variants could obtain partial immunity to H5N1. That would probably not be condoned because the idea of killing tens of thousands to innoculate and thereby protect millions who would otherwise die in an H5N1 pandemic is morally and politically dead on arrival (pun intended). If we can't stomach 2,000 dead in Iraq, there are many high utility strategies that are not options. This one can be pursued, however, by a determined minority.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 04:11 AM

November 12, 2005
Bad News On The Flu Front

Avian flu has spread to pigs in China. This is a common step on the way for it to become a human strain.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:12 AM

November 11, 2005
Remember The Doughboys

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

Note that the number of WW I vets has dwindled down to a few dozen. Barring some miracle medical breakthroughs, in another decade they will all lie (at least metaphorically) in Flanders fields. Honor today the few who are still with us, and their compatriots who no longer are. And thank, silently or otherwise, those in harm's way today overseas.

[Update a few minutes later]

Ralph Kinney Bennett has some further thoughts.

By the way, I'll be keeping this post at the top all day, so if you come back and still see it, scroll down past it--there may be new posts below.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:11 PM

October 27, 2005
Hoarding Tamiflu

Roche announced today that it is stopping US wholesale shipments of Tamiflu to prevent "hoarding". Hoarding is exactly what they are doing. The move will shock wholesalers while people buying in advance of avian flu like me are shocking some retailers. Distributers are the last link in the chain. As they process this news, all retailers will begin to restrict access to Tamiflu. Rationing at a below market price results in the drug not going to people who value it most.

Higher prices put Tamiflu out of range of the bulk of the market. The only way they benefit from the higher prices is indirectly through the higher tax revenues from higher profits in the supply chain or increasingly as shareholders. Rationing benefits people who get the ration cards or whatever. There is an ubounded loss in efficiency when some people who want the drug are turned away because they have money, but do not qualify for a ration. An optimal policy might be a tax on emergency use that is distributed to everyone in the country equally. Don't expect politicians to adopt that one.

Doctors, pharmacists and drug companies clearly know best exactly how much to provide becaue they are so good at economics. And they are prescribing, dispensing and producing Tamiflu for the good of the country. Perhaps I know better how many doctors, pharmacists and drug companies the country should have. I think there should be a medallion system like taxis.

Previous posts: Spanish Flu Published, Flu Update

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:03 AM

October 24, 2005
Helpless

I'm in California, watching a Cat 2 hurricane going right over our home in Boca, and there's nothing I can do. I just talked to Patricia, who has been holding down the fort, and says it's the worst she's ever been through. She's lost power, and will be in the eye shortly, then get beat up from the other direction. My heart and best wishes goes out to other Florida bloggers, and Floridians in general. This may be the worst hurricane for Florida since Andrew in terms of property damage, considering the large population in its path. No telling how long power will be out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:54 AM

October 18, 2005
Flu Update

Roche just announced they are sub-licensing Tamiflu broadly. WSJ picked up the story (subscription required) and noted that some countries aren't waiting and have allowed generic production infringing Roche's patents.

I was able to obtain some more Tamiflu today here in Austin at my local People's Pharmacy. While there is apparently tremendous pressure on Roche at the international level, it looks like the rest of the supply chain has not yet picked up on the coming shortage and telegraphed the price rise. Gas prices these are not.

With no human to human transmission yet, it is hard to produce a vaccine because we do not know what the final pathogen will look like as it has not mutated yet. The risk is that it will spread quickly, but another risk is that it will not spread at all unfairly delegitimizing everyone who raised the warning.

It's a lot to ask people to st0ckpile their own Tamiflu (40 doses is about $300 enough for two acute courses if you show symptoms or 40 days worth of deterrence). But it lasts for three flu seasons. Spending $100/person per year would be $30 billion/year. Roche might part with a license to sell at a few cents a pill in those volumes and the post office distribute it getting the price down to a few bucks a person a year.

But who will st0ckpile it for you if you don't do it yourself? All it takes is 1% of families to buy to make personal st0ckpiling bigger than Roche's US sales in a single flu season. There were only 13,000 prescriptions last year. So if 1% of families bought demand would be increased by a factor of a hundred. Then maybe the wheels of government would move to build some more "push packs" for flu and not just bioterror.

While we are talking good public health policy, maybe we could use Tamiflu prophylactically every year in hard hit regions and not wait for bird flu. This and other measures like more widespread vaccination outreach may even cut the tens of thousands of deaths from regular flu seasons down to the 160 of a typical hurricane season. It would also give the Center for Disease Control good practice.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:41 AM

October 14, 2005
Spanish Flu Published

Charles Krathammer noted today in Washington Post that any terrorist can now obtain a digital copy (electronic or DNA) of the Spanish flu that killed tens of millions in 1918-1919. The powers that be felt that the study opportunities given its similarity to avian flu outweighed the risks. The evolving flu pandemic may provide a stark test of my (Sam not Rand) hypothesis that democratic capitalism protects itself.

I joined Bill Joy in raising an alarm about the publishing of the human genome back in 2000 in my own little way contributing my own Op-Ed piece (not accepted). I have since changed my view. Simon's The Ultimate Resoure 2 changed my view. When we have a bad actor like a terrorist who wants to kill millions, there are trillions of dollars mobilized to combat it when the threat becomes imminent.

That is, if bird flu broke out, there would be massive quarantines, crash vaccine and anti-viral drug production programs, virus safety instructions, massive scientific study and so on. The people in harm's way will pay thousands each to buy black market antivirals, head for the hills, or whatever course of action is open to them.

Capitalism is kind of like if you need a taxi ride to the hospital to save your life you start waving hundred dollar bills to attract a cab. Democracy means we have a government that can field an army if capitalism falters due to breakdown of property rights and rule of law.

You can improve your chances and possibly capitalism's chances if you do the following. Ask your doctor to prescribe a 42-day prophylactic course of Tamiflu. Don't start taking the prophylaxis course until bird flu is sighted in your area. Tamiflu also can be used for 5 days (at twice the dosage) for acute treatment if you start to show symptoms. Track avian flu's spread from chicken to Turkey at the World Health Organization.

There won't be enough Tamiflu if bird flu is a big hit. Unless the price starts to rise now. Unless capitalism's wheels start to turn to produce a lot of it. Unless democracy steps in and does mandatory licensing so every pharmaceuticals manufacturer can produce tamiflu.

"The flu virus, properly evolved, is potentially a destroyer of civilizations," depending on how resiliant they are.

--
2005-10-14 14:57:32

It looks like I am a little late with my advice. A couple weeks ago it was reported Roche said it was unable to keep up with demand. Maybe this prior post was enough for you to act. If you want to have my ten doses, make a conditional pledge to the Space Frontier Foundation in the comments to this post and bring a prescription to next week's SFF meeting in LA.
--
2005-10-17 09:38:00
Henry Miller WSJ (subscription required) echoed my words, "In society, as in biology, resilience means survival."

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 08:31 AM

October 01, 2005
A Squeaker

OK, they pulled the game out in East Lansing, winning in OT. They did better than I thought they would, but there's still a Jekyll/Hyde quality to the offense. But having gotten past the Spartan hurdle, they'll probably have a winning season now. They could even still win the Big Ten, but it still seems unlikely to me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:28 PM

September 30, 2005
How Good A Rider Was She?

When I read this story about a woman apparently killed on her motorcycle up in Sonoma County on the coast highway, I wondered how it happened, and if she might be alive today had she known about this.

Of course, she may also have been a good rider, and just encountered oncoming traffic in her lane, or a slick spot in the road. We may never know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:59 AM

September 25, 2005
Another Rascal Bites The Dust

The man who played "Butch" has died.

I was never a big "Little Rascals" fan, but on a personal note, I was serving on jury duty in LA about fifteen years ago, and I got called to a panel in which he was a civil litigant (plaintiff, I think), and we were asked a number of questions about if we'd seen the series, and recognized the characters, and so on, to determine if any of us would be biased against someone who played a famous bully. We ended up getting dismissed before trial, I think because they decided to settle once they saw that there was a jury, and that this was really going to happen (which is one of the purposes of empaneling a jury).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:45 PM

Living Down To Expectations

Sadly, the Wolverines are performing about as I predicted after the Notre Dame game. I expect the Spartans to mop up the field with them next week.

This will be a long season.

[Update at 8:43 AM EDT]

Speaking of Big Ten football, David "Pretty-in-Pink" Burge writes about locker-room psyops in Iowa City. Even without these kinds of evil tricks, though, I expect the Hawkeyes to beat Michigan next month. In fact, looking at the Wolverine schedule, I could easily see them losing six games this season.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:42 AM

September 22, 2005
Oh, Well That's A Relief

Some people are making too big a deal of the fact that Rita has dropped from a Cat 5 to a Cat 4. It's still going to be very bad, even assuming it doesn't restrengthen.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:10 PM

September 21, 2005
That Didn't Take Long

Rita was a late bloomer (staying a tropical storm long after predictions of becoming a hurricane Real Soon Now), but once she got into the Florida straights and out into the Gulf, she heated up in a hurry. She's now a Cat 5, with winds in excess of 165 mph. Look out, Houston.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:31 PM

September 20, 2005
Unlovely Rita

Here are a couple pictures of the storm from my front yard, over neighbors' homes across the street.

This one is looking south-southeast, out over the Atlantic. Those angry looking clouds are headed my way. The carousel is spinning from left (east) to right, with these clouds below heading away from me, to the west.

A few minutes after I took these, the heavens opened up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:37 AM

September 19, 2005
NASA About To Get Hit Again?

New Orleans is now a potential (but still unlikely) landfall, but Rita may be headed for Houston. It's right in the cross hairs at the NOAA site. This can't be good for oil futures, either.

[Update at 2:50 PM EDT]

Yup, oil prices are up three bucks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:17 AM

September 16, 2005
You Thought New Orleans Was A Disaster?

Wait until the next hurricane hits New York. And it's almost certainly "when," not "if."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:58 AM

September 14, 2005
"Put Up Goal Posts"

As a loyal Wolverine (and the pain of 1998 never goes away completely), I'm compelled to post these Cornhusker jokes, via (bravely) Jonah Goldberg, who's in the heart of Cornhusker country.

Do I need a "College Football" category?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:38 PM

Casting Call

It occurs to me that the Baroque Cycle would make a great HBO series. Someone on an email list suggested Angelina Jolie as Eliza, but I think that Diane Kruger would be a better choice. I'd go with Christopher Lloyd as Isaac, and Johnny Depp as Jack Shaftoe.

Any other suggestions? Who would play Daniel?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:34 AM

September 12, 2005
It Will Cost a Katrillion Dollars

My six year old daughter coined this. Not to be confused with defunct Katrillion.com. I found someone who saw a katrillion bloggers link pictures of looters. No one with "katrillion dollars" and "Katrina" yet.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:40 PM

September 11, 2005
Illogical

You'd think that when number two in the polls plays number four, and number two just barely wins, that's exactly what would be expected, so the polls must have had it right, at least in terms of relative ranking.

So why did Ohio State drop to number nine?

The argument presumably is because they shouldn't now be rated above so many teams with no losses, but the only reason those teams don't have losses could be because they haven't played Texas or USC (or Ohio State). I remember back in the eighties when number one and number two played each other during the season (I think it was Michigan and Iowa, but it might have been Michigan State and Iowa), and number one eked out a win against number two. By any consistent logic, they both should have retained their rankings. The fact that number two fell then, and tOSU fell today, is a testament to the fundamental irrationality of the process.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:52 PM

September 10, 2005
Another Katrina Casualty

Legendary bluesman Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown has died.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:55 PM

Pathetic

Since I know this is the first place you all come for your college football blogging, I just want to say how surprised I was by the Michigan game today. Oh, I expected them to lose, but I expected them to lose because the defense wouldn't be able to keep Notre Dame from scoring the dozens of touchdowns that it would take to overcome the Wolverine offense. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see the defense finally show some steel, and unpleasantly surprised to see the wheels come completely off the offense. An offense which, by the way, was the only reason on paper that Michigan was ranked so absurdly high during pre-season, and even after the pathetic performance of the defense against Northern Illinois last week.

But what's really amazing to me is that despite how badly the offense played (and particularly the quarterback, who really singlehandedly lost the game today), they came so close to winning it so many times. They just didn't seem to want to. Also frustrating was how much they teased their loyal fans throughout the game, continually barely keeping hope alive, so we wouldn't turn the game off and go do something useful. No team that gets inside the twenty yard line three times (and gets a first and goal on the one) and can't come up with a score deserves to win.

Well, the bloom is off the rose, and it's clear that this is a rebuilding year for Michigan. Carr should have changed quarterbacks sometime during the second half--he might have been able to eke out a win if he had. But at least now, there will be no false sense of grandeur, since there's no way that they'll maintain their lofty position in the polls (they never should have been that high in the first place, in my opinion), and get more serious about coming back. If Notre Dame goes on to have a good season, it won't be shameful to have lost to them early, and while it's extremely unlikely that Michigan will get to the Rose Bowl now (and in fact always was, despite the nonsensical early ranking), they still have a good chance at the BCS. I'm encouraged by the defense that I saw today, once they settled down, and the old saying is that it's defense that wins championships.

If Michigan can play up to their potential on both sides of the ball, they'll have a good season. But if the offense can't get it together, or do better than they did today, it will merely be a long one.

[Evening update]

Halfway through the fourth quarter of the tOSU-Texas game, it's clear that Michigan has a lot of improving to do to win the B10 championship this year, even disregarding the slaughter in Ames today, which will have a certain blogger who delights in mocking other people crying in his pork-fortified soy milk. The Buckeyes look pretty damn good.

[One more update, in the last few minutes of the game]

I've seen what seems to me to be an unusually high number of bad fumble calls today, only to see them reversed today after review, in both the Michigan and Ohio State games. I'm wondering if the refs are getting more sloppy in their play calling because they know that the ruling is reversible?

[Final update]

Well, with Ohio State's loss (though they still look like scary opponents for Michigan in November), it was a disastrous day for the Big 10. Three teams in the top ten, and all lost today.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:30 PM

September 06, 2005
So Long, Little Buddy

Bob Denver has died. I actually liked him a lot more as Maynard G. Krebs, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:19 PM

September 02, 2005
Focused Coverage

TechCentralStation has set up a special section exclusively for Katrina coverage.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:00 AM

September 01, 2005
Offers Of Help

Chuck Simmins says that twenty-two countries have offered aidK for Katrina victims.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:38 PM

August 31, 2005
A Bad Joke

Are they really proposing to move people from the Superdome to the Astrodome? That's an upscale move? From a storm-damaged sports stadium as a domicile to one undamaged? The fact that it is is a testament to the catastrophe that has stricken southeastern Louisiana.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:02 AM

August 30, 2005
How To Help

Instapundit has a list of links for those who want to donate for hurricane relief.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 PM

The End Of The War

We've been commemorating sixtieth anniversaries of World War II for a few years now, starting back in September 1999, with the anniversary of the invasion of Poland. I'm watching President Bush give a speech right now in Coronado, almost six decades after the formal surrender of the Japanese government to the Allies in Tokyo harbor (the anniversary will actually be on Friday, September 2nd).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:44 AM

Not So Lucky After All

It's starting to look as though some of the worst predictions for New Orleans are coming to pass, even though they missed the worst of the winds. The north levee has been breached, and the city is filling with water from Ponchartrain. More could die if they can't evacuate the city from the rising waters. In addition, many homes in the city are on fire, with no way to put them out, other than perhaps helicopter or aircraft water drops. It reminds me of San Francisco in the 1906 quake, and it's going to get apocalyptic pretty quickly.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:15 AM

August 28, 2005
Pictures From The Future

If you want to know what the Gulf Coast will look like on Tuesday, take a look at the past. Anyone who's still considering staying for this storm should be persuaded otherwise by these pictures of the effects of Camille in 1969. Unless this storm weakens considerably, it will scrub many buildings right down to the foundations. Here are some more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:03 AM

Potential Catastrophe In The Big Easy

We got off very lucky from Katrina down here in south Florida. But the storm is now a category four or five, and headed for the worst possible place--New Orleans, much of which is below sea level. This could be the worst natural disaster since Andrew, and there's a good chance of it being the worst in US history. I hope that everyone can get out--the odds aren't very good for anyone who stays. But experience shows that many will, thinking or hoping that it will turn, until it's too late for them. Brendan Loy is covering it closely, with lots of graphics.

[Update a few minutes later]

Isobars are lines of constant pressure. Check out this forecast of the storm.

[Update at 8 AM EDT]

It just occurs to me that if bin Laden got hold of a nuke, and set it off in New Orleans, it would be a trifle compared to what this storm may be about to do. They've been dodging these things for years--Betsy, Camille, Andrew...but their luck may have finally run out.

And this is heading for prime oil-production (and gasoline production) country. Expect a big jump in both oil futures and gas prices tomorrow.

[Update ten minutes later]

I've never been to New Orleans, but always meant to. I particularly wanted to see the French Quarter. If the worst happens, I may not ever get the chance, now.

[Update at 8:37 AM EDT]

I'm flying to Los Angeles tomorrow from Fort Lauderdale via Dallas. The route usually goes over the Gulf, coming over land just west of New Orleans, but I suspect that we'll be flying a lot further to the south.

[Almost 11 AM]

Winds are now at 175 mph, with gusts well over two hundred. A lot of people are going to die, because they started the evacuation too late.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:05 AM

August 26, 2005
Agoraphobic

Not only would I not pay twenty five dollars to do this, but I would require receiving vast sums of money to do so. But there may be a market for it.

[Update late, after getting back to Florida]

Yes, I did mean acrophobic, though I suppose the Grand Canyon could be heck on agoraphobes, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:03 PM

August 25, 2005
In The Crosshairs

Well, there's an incipient hurricane heading right at my house tonight or tomorrow morning, according to all the track predictions. And I'm feeling guilty, being up here in DC, where the weather is gorgeous, while Patricia has to batten down the hatches at home by herself. It gives me a sense of deja vu about last year, when we got hit twice in two weeks in September.

A coworker up here just asked me what it is with Florida and hurricanes lately. My theory is simple: Florida sucks. That's just my theory, though...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:26 AM

August 14, 2005
The End Of The War

Sixty years ago today, the Japanese government accepted surrender terms from the allies, saving millions of lives in what would have been a futile last-ditch defense of the home islands. A formal signing would take place a couple weeks later, on September 2, 1945.

And Ann Althouse points out another anniversary today, from a quarter of a century ago. It was the beginning of the liberation of eastern Europe, and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:54 AM

August 12, 2005
The Age Of Exploration Isn't Over

Not even on earth. Not even in California.

McDermott says he's never laid eyes on the nearly 400-foot waterfall that park officials recently discovered in a remote corner of the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, 43,000 acres of wilderness in northern California.
"Sure, I was surprised," he said from his home in the park, where he's lived for more than 70 years. "I've been all around that place, I never seen 'em."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

July 31, 2005
Unbalanced Transfer Offer

I got a call claiming to be from my Discover Card. The caller asked me if I wanted to make a balance transfer at an attractive rate. I said, "Sure, but I won't give you my credit card numbers since you can't authenticate that you really are Discover Card."

Triumphantly, the agent told me the last four digits of my credit card number, my "member since" date and my last transaction. While this does indicate that the caller has access to my bill or account (or did at one time), it does not authenticate them as Discover Card because they could have stolen a bill from my mailbox.

More insidiously, they could have dialed a wrong number or a house guest or sitter could have picked up the phone. They did not authenticate me before giving me the personal information that they were so proud of. Not that they could have authenticated me since I would be reluctant to provide any personal information to someone who I did not already know was authentic and authorized.

I asked if there was a way to contact them through my number on the back of my card. They said no, but "I can make a notation on your account and customer service can verify its authenticity and you can call me back on a separate number." While just possibly securely authentic (if the employee isn't steering me to an illegitimate outsider), it requires me to make two calls. Why not just call the credit card directly and speak with someone else? I could, but my guy would have trouble getting a commission on the transaction. Maybe they should arrange for a share of any transfers I initiate in the next few minutes or ask for me to do a three-way call to my issuer.

I like checks better. They only go back to the offering party after they have been cashed and even then there might not be any evidence of what account I paid off.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 10:56 AM

July 20, 2005
A Couple More Anniversaries

July 20th is chock full. In addition to the first Apollo landing, it's also the day that Viking 1 landed on Mars, in 1976. And in the non-space category, it's sixty-one years since the failed attempt on Hitler's life (an alternate history of what would have happened had that succeeded might be interesting). Also, it's been a dozen years since Vince Foster's body was found in Fort Marcy Park, and his killer and the location where his demise occurred remain unknown.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:14 AM

July 18, 2005
"Better Things To Do"?

Better than blogging? The mind boggles at the concept.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:20 AM

July 07, 2005
Never Give Out Your Creditability

Have you ever gotten a call from a credit card company purporting to be from their security department asking to verify a charge? Asking to call a special number for the fraud/verification department? With the person who answers asking for personal identifying information such as mother's maiden name?

I have multiple times. I ask the credit cards to authenticate. Do the credit card companies authenticate? No.

They tell customers never to give out such secret personal identifying information to strangers. Now a stranger calls and asks for it. Oops.

A credit card fraud department, should ask the card customers to call the main customer service number on the back of their cards and press a button for the fraud department.

Otherwise, the bank may find its fraud department outsourced. Without permission.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 03:29 AM

July 06, 2005
Careful What You Wish For

London has "won" the right to be bankrupted and disrupted by a bunch of athletes and their fans. I watched all of the cheering, and couldn't figure out whether it was because they had gotten the bid, or because France had lost it. I have mixed feelings on the matter, because while having an Olympics is one of those things that I'd wish on my worst enemy, the French (particularly in Paris) seem much too unhappy about it for me to truly feel angst about their "loss."

Unsurprisingly, at least one poster at Samizdata is quite unhappy, as he so eloquently expresses.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:59 AM

July 04, 2005
Don't Just Celebrate--Commemorate

That was the title of a Fox News column I wrote three years ago. It's still appropriate:

It is instructive, and educational (particularly for those who haven't seen it since high-school civics class, if then) to read aloud Jefferson's work of genius, the Declaration of Independence. In so doing, we are reminded of the principles on which this country was founded, the offenses committed against our ancestors by the English king, and the reasons that we forged our own nation.

Note also that this is the 142nd anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, and for better or worse, helped preserve the young nation that had begun (in Lincoln's words) four score and seven years before.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

Professor Reynolds has some related thoughts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AM

July 03, 2005
Days To Remember

It's easy to forget on a July 4th weekend that the signing of the Declaration of Independence is not the only profound event that we should commemorate on that day. One hundred and forty two years ago, in a little town in southeastern Pennsylvania, the back of the Confederacy was broken. Today is the anniversary of Pickett's Charge, a disastrous event that represented a watershed--it ended the supremacy of Lee's army of Northern Virginia and cost them the Battle of Gettysburg, and ultimately, combined with the fall of Vicksburg the next day to Grant, the war itself. Here's what I wrote two years ago on the one hundred and fortieth anniversary.

Yesterday, July 2nd, was the anniversary of two critical turning points in that battle, the day before the denoument on Cemetary Ridge--the last-minute defense of Little Round Top, and the suicidal charge of the Minnesotans that broke a gray advance. Powerline has more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:03 AM

June 20, 2005
Obvious Things

...you never thought about before. From (who else?) Lileks:

Saturday I got out the spade and the claw and dug up the worst spots. Dirt into bags, bags down the steps. Dirt is heavy; no wonder the earth weighs so much. Poor Atlas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 AM

June 17, 2005
The End Of The Beginning

Just a few days after the formation of the American Army, from the ragtag Minute Men who had fought the British troops in Concorde and Lexington a couple months earlier, they engaged on their first major battle. Two hundred thirty years ago today, was the battle of Bunker Hill, fought under the eyes of the townspeople of Boston. They didn't win, but they proved they could fight, and it was the beginning of a long and frustrating war for the British, of which they would ultimately tire six years later.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:53 AM

A Cry From The Den

Long-time blogger Mommabear, over at Kathy's place, has lost her Pappabear. Words can never fully express the depth of our condolences, but for most of us in the blogosphere, they're all we have.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:35 AM

June 16, 2005
SoCal Shaker

I was on the phone with someone in South Pasadena (CA), and he just reported an earthquake to me in real time out there.

[Quick check at USGS]

Yup, a 5.3 north of Yucaipa. They should have felt that all the way from San Diego to the high desert. I didn't feel a thing here in Florida, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:21 PM

June 13, 2005
Gooney Bird Down

That's the rumor from Fort Lauderdale, about twenty miles south of me. I hope that there were no casualties on the ground. I wonder how many C-47/DC-3s are still remaining, and how many of them still flying?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Now it's sounding like it was out of Executive Airport, off Commercial Blvd, not out of Fort Lauderdale International.

[Update at 4:50 PM EDT]

Sounds like the pilot was a hero (assuming that he wasn't at fault in the first place). He put it down in the street, missing homes and businesses.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:29 PM

June 11, 2005
More Eurowoes

I haven't previously commented much about it, but it's been clear for a while that after years of losing market share to them, Boeing now has Airbus on the ropes, and even Der Spiegel is admitting it now. I think that the 380 will turn out to be a disaster for them. Of course, Boeing has to watch their back, as some of the regional jet manufacturers, like Bombardier and Embraer start grabbing market share from their smaller planes for point to point. That's a good thing, of course, since it will restore some competition to the market that was lost when Lockheed got out of the commercial business and Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:13 AM

June 08, 2005
Let's Hear It

Musicologists have discovered a previously unknown piece by J. S. Bach. That doesn't happen every day.

And it may never have been played. Pretty cool.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:54 AM

June 07, 2005
Customer (Dis)Service

I have a Chase credit line. I logged on to the site to pay my bill, and find a message:

ATTENTION! Your account is over its credit limit. Please pay now to protect your credit privileges. Please call us at 866-252-5780 immediately.

Why is my account over its limit? Because they charged me a thirty-five dollar late fee. Why did they charge me a thirty-five dollar late fee? Because I pay it on line, and Chase won't tell you when your payment will actually post, so it's pot luck.

I call the number, am put on hold for several minutes, and then finally get someone. She asks me what she can do for me. I explain that I'd like to get my fee waived.

"Oh, we don't do that here. For that, you have to call 800-551-8340."

"But this is the number that it said to call on the web site."

"I wouldn't know about that, but that's the number you have to call."

So I call the other number, and wait again. I finally get a message asking me to input my sixteen-digit number. Of course, since it's a credit line, and not a credit card, the number has less than sixteen digits. I enter it anyway.

"We're sorry, but we don't recognize that account number."

I then get a person.

"What's your account number?"

I read it to him.

"Is that a credit card account?"

No, it's a credit line account.

"We don't handle those here. I'll transfer you over."

(Note, I get no number to call if the transfer doesn't work--I just get to go through the process again).

Ringing again.

"If you want to use our speech recognition system, say 'yes.' If you want to use our touchtone system, press '1'."

I press one, which takes me through a menu of options, none of which are "If you'd like to waive your late fee, because our sucky web site is uninformative about when your bill will actually get paid when you pay it on line, and furthermore can't even provide the right number to call about it, please press..."

I finally hear an option to talk to a representative, and hit it.

"Please enter your account number, followed by the number sign."

I do this (this is probably the dozenth time I've done it on these two calls).

Long pause.

I don't know if this is the exact wording of the next words I heard, but it's close:

"If you think that we're ending this call by mistake, please feel free to call back."

Dial tone.

It would never have occurred to me to try to make this stuff up. No one would believe it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 AM

June 06, 2005
Storming The Beaches

There's nowhere near as much hoopla as there was last year, for the sixtieth anniversary, but sixty-one years ago today, in bad weather in the English Channel, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, with huge casualties. They established a beachhead, however, and it was the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi fascism. In light of the recent vote in France over the EU, it might be useful to read what I wrote last year, on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, about the post-war quagmire there.

[Update at 9:45 AM EDT]

David Galernter had some thoughts last year on the hypocrisy and lack of knowledge of the baby boomer generation when it comes to honoring the "greatest generation."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:04 AM

June 05, 2005
Flawed Execution

OK, so I don't like boxing movies, but what's not to like about a flick about one of the great figures in aviation history?

Well, a few things, actually. I saw The Aviator last night on DVD. It was a watchable movie, but despite his best efforts, and he is a good actor, I just couldn't buy DeCaprio as HH. He just seemed too young, and I doubt if Hughes' voice had that high a pitch.

Kate Blanchett captured the voice and mannerisms of Kate Hepburn pretty well, but she didn't really physically resemble her, so that was a little jarring as well. On the other hand, I didn't immediately recognize her as Kate Blanchett, so that's something.

The thing I liked least about it though was too little emphasis on his technological achievements, and too much on his mental debilities. It was hard to believe that he could go from urine-collecting naked nutcase to someone who embarrassed a Senate Chairman in a hearing just a few days later. But that's probably just my bias--perhaps Scorcese emphasised (and overdramatized) what worked best for a mass audience.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:31 AM

June 04, 2005
Is It Just Me?

I've been reading a lot of good reviews of Cinderella Man, but sorry, I have not just zero, but negative interest in boxing movies, regardless of how good they are. I don't watch live fights, couldn't imagine actually paying money to do so, and in general have no desire whatsoever to watch one man pummel another. I have not seen any of the Rocky series (partly for that reason, but also partly because I'm not a big fan of Sylvester Stallone). If you tell me that a movie features boxing, it's an automatic turnoff to me.

I wonder how out of the norm I am.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:20 PM

June 02, 2005
Rich Loon

John Podhoretz has an amazing story about Ted Turner. Well, at least it would be amazing if it were about anyone other than Ted Turner...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:49 AM

May 30, 2005
Remember

Winds of Change has a Memorial Day roundup.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AM

May 29, 2005
We Many, We Happy Many...

...we band of brothers.

Apparently, there were more Englishman, and fewer French, at Agincourt than mythology about it would have us believe:

“I’ve always assumed the French massively outnumbered Henry’s forces,” said Richard Holmes, the military historian. “But now it is very hard to go against Curry’s figures.”

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 AM

May 28, 2005
Resurrection

There are people building and flying new Messerschmitt ME-262s. Looks like it would be a fun little airplane, albeit a little pricy to operate.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:36 AM

May 18, 2005
Couldn't Wait?

Hurricane season doesn't start officially for two more weeks (June 1st), but the first named storm has already appeared. It's starting in the wrong place (the Pacific--they usually originate in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa) and headed in the wrong direction (northeast, instead of west). That won't stop it from threatening Florida, though, if it survives its excursion across Central America. Time to check the supplies...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AM

May 16, 2005
Whining About State Protectionism

When you have an ill like gambling or liquor, it makes sense to have a state monopoly to curb usage. The high monopoly price limits usage and rakes in more money for the state. State monopolies may be better than outright prohibition. But those are the only things good about them.

This logic of externalities works less well with a price discriminating monopolists. A monopolist may charge different markups on different products based on price sensitivity. That is, they may set a different monopoly price for each kind of liquor. If they can further discriminate with affinity clubs, rebates, personal coupons and so on, then each person can be paying their own personal monopoly price. The price discriminating monopolist does not deter usage if it does a perfect job, just extracts all the consumer surplus out of the sale. That suggests that the value to the citizenry of curbing usage through a state monopoly is falling with technology.

Consider the state lottery machine in the Chicago O'Hare airport. It has about 40 different games. What may have deterred entry through a high price and low choice in yesteryear certainly looks to me like a very aggressive price discriminating monopoly. Some entries cost $10, some just $2. Some have high prizes, some low and some groups of prizes. The state is not curbing the ills of gambling in the slightest via this method. It is just expropriating all the rent for the state.

Monopolies also perpetuate high cost. There has not been much in the way of innovation in internet lotteries coming from state lotteries. Some kind of security dongle distributed in state would allow state internal internet distribution of further lotteries at much lower cost than paper. The monopolist might do a calculus that says that such a system might increase overall revenues and decrease costs, but most of that would go to the state and the players and not us. Don't expect too much innovation from monopolists that do anything except maximize their profits.

How about some conditional federal spending for states that allow liquor sales through the mail to encourage competition? That does not sound like a political winner. Good luck if you like mail order wine. The liquor lobby might well ban all mail order sales in state and out to protect each oligopoly. Cheers.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:11 PM

Florida Wine Blogging

The other day a visiting friend asked me if there was anything I liked about Florida. I managed to come up with three: no state income tax, warm ocean water (good for diving, unlike California), and thunderstorms. One of the other complaints that I've had about the state is that when we moved here from LA, we could no longer receive wines from the Wine of the Month club, something that we'd been doing for years there.

The Supreme Court has apparently ruled that state laws prohibiting the sale of wine to individuals by out-of-state entities (e.g., the Florida one that prevents the WotM Club from sending us wine in Boca Raton) are unconstitutional. However, Professor Bainbridge says that:

...it's not at all certain that consumers in the 24 states that had banned direct to consumer sales will soon be able to buy wine on the internet and have it shipped to their home or office. If the states chose to change their laws so as to ban direct-to-consumer sales by both out-of-state and in-state wineries, those laws almost certainly would be upheld as within the states' powers under the 21st Amendment. Given the considerable power wielded in most of those 24 by the wholesalers and retailers who benefit from bans on direct-to-consumer shipments, as well as lingering Prohibitionist sentiment in some of the more Southern and rural of them, I expect many of the 24 to enact nondiscriminatory bans on direct-to-consumer shipments.

Well, if that's the case, the state (and its wineries) are in a quandary. There are in fact Florida wineries (something I hadn't known prior to researching this blog post). At least one of them (I didn't check any others--it constituted an existence proof) is shipping wine directly to Florida consumers (in fact it probably even does so out of state, though I didn't attempt the order to find out).

That means that, if the good professor is correct, in order to circumvent this ruling, Florida will have to outlaw in-state wineries from shipping direct as well, and only allow them to offer their fermented grape juice through the groceries as other wine is sold or (perhaps) they might even have to restrict wine sales to the state liquor stores (this is less clear). So it's a devil's bargain for the states (certainly small, relative to, say, California) for them. They can keep out the competition, but only at the cost of losing a perhaps-significant part of their own mail-order market. It will be interesting to see how both the state (and lobbyists in the state wine industry, whatever its political strength) responds.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:15 PM

May 12, 2005
In California

And it reminds me of why I didn't want to move to Florida. High in the low seventies, lows in the low sixties, low humidity, gorgeous views of the Santa Monica mountains wrapping around the bay to the north. Unlike the unremitting flatness of the Sunshine State, there's actual relief here, with houses nestled on hillsides, and snow still on the highest peaks of the San Gabriels and San Bernardinos.

Too bad the government sux so much.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:31 PM

May 06, 2005
Too Litigious

Somebody needs suing here, but I don't think it's the ice-cream manufacturer. I'd say that the employee who lost the fingertip was harmed far more than the customer who found it, and refused to return it so it could be reattached. Now it's too late.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:35 AM

May 02, 2005
Recapping Star Trek

I can't think of anyone better to do it than Lileks:

"The Next Generation." The post-Reagan years. The Enterprise was no longer a lone vanguard making its way through realms unknown; now it was like a grand Hilton in space, complete with spa, psychiatric counselor, accommodations for kids, and a French captain who could sometimes be mistaken for a cranky sommelier. Whoopi Goldberg was the ship's bartender, which, in retrospect, really tells you all you need to know. Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean-Luc Picard was much-beloved, and for good reason: His stentorian acting style gave the show a dramatic heft it otherwise didn't always deserve.
The Federation, in this iteration, was like a liberal dream of the U.N.: diplomacy first, multicultural understanding above all, but if need be, a gigantic armada could be summoned to fight off whatever evil leather-clad empire had decided to mess with the goodfolk of Earth. Zeitgeist giveaway: The Klingons became allies, sort of, after the Berlin Wall fell. Grade: B+, not so much for overall quality, but because it relaunched the franchise with a broad-based appeal no subsequent version would match.

RTWT

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:03 PM

April 22, 2005
GM-Related Bleg

My GM post, and reminiscences about my childhood, prompt me to ask if there's anyone out there who can help resurrect some childhood memories, and perhaps preserve them.

My father produced semi-annual concerts for AC Spark Plug, one in the spring, and one in the fall, back in the sixties, performed at the IMA auditorium in downtown Flint (a structure that was demolished several years ago as part of an expansion of the U of M campus, and to attempt to bury memories of the ill-fated and misbegotten Autoworld). They consisted of the AC Men's and Women's choirs, with auditions for others to perform in skits and musical numbers, and he'd always have some kind of headliner, like Edie Adams, or Florence Henderson (this was prior to The Brady Bunch), or Peter Palmer (who was at the time fresh off the Broadway lead of Li'l Abner) but of whom a Google search today reveals little else of note in his apparently unspectacular career. I even have fond memories of Anita Bryant, in her pre-gay-bashing days. I specifically have memories as a small child of going with these famous (at the time) celebrities to Luigi's Pizza over on Davison Road (still the best pizza, anywhere, in my humble opinion), just a couple blocks away from Angelo's Coney Island, in Flint. Some of their autographed pics remain on the wall there.

Google searches for anything relating to these concerts have proven fruitless. If anyone has any old concert programs, I'd much appreciate scans (or if you don't have a scanner, copies mailed to me). I'll probably actually set up a website for them.

By the way, in searching for a Luigi's website, I found this site that only Flint natives will appreciate. But they'll appreciate it a lot.

[Update on Sunday morning]

For all of you who can't get enough of Flint cuisine, here's a discussion of the relative merits between Flint and Detroit coney islands (including a discussion of Angelos, which has indeed gone downhill since they decided to franchise it).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:21 PM

April 20, 2005
Springtime In Oklahoma

Sometimes that state just has more weather than it can hold. These are awesome pictures.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:40 AM

April 19, 2005
White Smoke

For a(nother) white pope. So much for my prognostication.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:13 AM

The Redcoats Came

Two hundred and thirty years ago, the first American revolution started, when British troops attempted to enforce gun-control laws in Massachussetts. This incident was doubtless fresh in the memories of the Founders when they wrote the Second Amendment.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 AM

April 18, 2005
The Near Future of High School

The baby boom echo kids (born between 1982-1995) are almost out of high school on average. It will be another 5 years of reduced enrollments until the baby boom echo echo kids start showing up in the schools. This will have implications for optimal school policy. Underlying this is a richer, better prepared, better nourished, healthier population that is increasingly going to college after high school. The high schools will increasingly adopt the trappings of junior and four-year colleges in order to adapt to the academic and funding environment.

With the schools having a temporarily sufficient capacity, there is a strong incentive for school to heavily recruit students for transfers under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The facilities costs are largely fixed. The money brought in by additional students would be marginal profit for the school system. That money could be used to provide enrichment activities for the existing student body and hold the line on general cuts in services as enrollment subsides.

NCLB encourages high schools to take a step in the direction of becoming like universities by having admissions requirements. College admissions are brutally competitive. High schools develop brands that influence college admissions officers much as the college brands influence employers. A high school needs to have high scores, achievement and diversity from its student body for the school brand to positively influence a college admission decision. It follows that a high school admission requirement be put in place to increase the academic and cultural luster of the high school.

High schools also face a budget squeeze. Money from state and federal sources is often keyed to the number of students. As the number of students fall, budgets come under pressure. Many jurisdictions have property tax caps that prevent further tax increases. School financing has a difficult battle at the ballot box as empty nesters and newlyweds grow in the demographics compared to parents of school age children. Financing pressure leads schools to turn to parents and community to establish and fund foundations and build alumni associations to assist with high school excellence. As contributions go to the foundations and the schools, the money can be used to further improve the brand and upgrade the teaching quality, supplies and equipment.

The curriculum must also evolve to become more relevant to the knowledge age. Vocational tracks should encourage students to become software developers and enter other high wage careers. As computers and the internet have nullified or inverted age stereotypes in many industries, we have already seen high school students driving new SUVs with money they earned from software development. This may be a critical national resource to tap as overseas competition forces older workers even higher up the value chain.

It will no longer be enough to simply offer AP courses. High schools will need to start considering hiring ever more qualified and illustrious professionals to teach their college courses. If many students are taking AP courses, the school must compete with the junior colleges, community colleges and four year universities for staff. With those staff will come research opportunities for students that rival those at highly rated universities. Those will be necessary to match the bios of the Intel Science Talent Search winners. As hundreds of schools aspire to be the next Bronx Science, Bronx Science is aspiring to be the next Caltech and already boasts six Nobel Prize winning alumni. High school researchers from the baby boom echo echo may well be the source of the next shot heard round the world.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 07:29 PM

April 15, 2005
Other Than That, How Was The Play?

It's the hundred and fortieth anniversary of day that Abraham Lincoln was shot.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:46 AM

April 06, 2005
Tornado Blogging

Well, actually I hope not, but northern Alabama does seem to be looking down the barrel of what's going on in Mississipi tonight.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:10 PM

April 04, 2005
Progress

Colorado is actually ticketing people who hog the left lane. More of this, please.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:05 PM

April 02, 2005
"A Well-Lived Life"

That's what Ann Althouse says, and I would agree. We shouldn't be mourning his passing, which was as he wanted it--we should be celebrating his life. And as at a wake, (though it's not, as far as I know, actually true) I have to tell a story about him that Tom Rogers, former president of the Space Transportation Association, used to tell.

It seems that often, the pontiff, weary with the cares of the world, would have trouble getting to sleep. On these occasions, one of the best cures for his insomnia was to take a ride around the beautiful city in which he lived, in the back seat of his limousine. On one of these occasions, he realizes that he's been missing something from his life for many years.

He taps on the window to his driver, and says, "Mario, I haven't driven a car since I was a priest in Cracow. It would give me so much pleasure if I could do it once again."

Mario, of course, is aghast. "Your Holiness, it would be unseemly! You are the Pope!" To which the reply was, "That's right, Mario, I am the Pope. You are the employee of the Pope. I shall drive."

So they switch places, Mario with reluctance and the Pope with glee, and they head off for the driving tour of his life, past the Tivoli Fountains and the Coliseum, up and down the hills. Fortunately, it's late at night, so traffic is light, and like most Romans, he pays little attention to traffic signals or speed limits. Inevitably, the sound of a siren greets their ears from behind, and so the Pope reluctantly pulls over, fearing the headlines the next day.

The patrolman gets off his scooter, walks up to the limo, taps on the smoked-glass driver's window, and his face turns sheet white when it rolls down to reveal who is behind the wheel. He stammers, "A thousand pardons, your Holiness. I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. But can you please wait for just one minute while I contact my superiors"? And the pope nods beatifically.

He goes back to his scooter, radios the station, and says, "Capitano, I need some advice. I'm about to give a traffic ticket to a very, very important person."

The radio crackles back, "What's the problem, Luigi? Who is it? How important are we talking here?"

"I don't know, Capitano, but whoever it is, has got the Pope for a chauffeur..."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:28 PM

Resquiescat In Pace, Take Two

Well, I was a little premature yesterday, but it seems to be official now. The College of the Cardinals will be selecting a new pope in a couple weeks. I wonder if there will be white smoke for a black pope? More on that later...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:07 PM

April 01, 2005
Requiescat In Pace

Apparently, Pope John Paul II is dead.

Not being Catholic, or even a theist, I'm not big on popes, and I disagreed with him on many issues, but like Ronald Reagan, who died almost a year ago, he was one of the great men of the latter half of the twentieth century. He, like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and to an only slightly lesser degree, people such as Lech Walensa and Vaclav Havel, was not willing to merely "contain" a brutal totalitarian empire, but was determined to stand up to it and end it. Along with them, he succeeded, and for that act alone he will go down in history as one of the greatest men to wear the shoes of the fisherman.

It will be difficult for the church to find his like as a replacement.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:46 AM

March 29, 2005
Homesick

It was one of the wettest winters on record in southern California this year, and having moved to Florida last fall (just in time to be hit by two hurricanes), I missed it. All the rain has apparently made for a fantastic bloom of wildflowers there, particularly up in the Golden Poppy Reserve in the hills west of the Antelope Valley. Transterrestrial web designer Bill Simon took a trip up there this weekend, and this is a sample of what he shot.

I liked this one, too:

The rest of the images can be found here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:48 PM

March 24, 2005
Idle Thought

Can there be a jot without a tittle?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:29 AM

March 23, 2005
Insecure

American Express has an insecure login. When you enter the URL http://www.americanexpress.com (a natural enough place to go take care of your accounts, and the address that comes on the bill), you're redirected to this page. Note that it's an "http" site, not an "https."

You can get a secure login by adding an "s" to the URL and reloading the page, but most people wouldn't know to do that, and you shouldn't have to. There's no link to a secure option, and they shouldn't even allow a non-secured login. This is kind of amazing for a company with the reputation of AmEx.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AM

March 16, 2005
Condolences

Walter Cronkite has lost his wife of sixty-five years. That has to be a blow.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:01 PM

March 15, 2005
Beware

I just realized that today's the Ides of March.

Why yes, yes I am trying to avoid work. Why do you ask?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:18 AM

March 10, 2005
The End Times Approach

Rosie O'Donnell has a blog. It's much worse than you might imagine.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:39 AM

March 07, 2005
I Can't Help But Wonder

...why Harry Stonecipher was really fired.

He wasn't popular, particularly with a lot of the former McDonnell Douglas people, and a lot of people think that he's been doing with Boeing's aircraft business the same thing that he did with theirs--running it into the ground, with Boeing now second place to Airbus. Certainly the Sonic Cruiser was a bad joke.

I'd like to know what the rest of the story is.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:27 AM

I Am An English Genius

A genius at English, that is--not a genius who is English.

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 77% Expert!
Compared to users who took the test and are and [sic] in your age group:

* 100% had lower Beginner scores.
* 100% had lower Intermediate scores.
* 100% had lower Advanced scores.
* 100% had lower Expert scores.

Hmmm...

Unfortunately it doesn't tell me what my score actually was. And I guess that if I were a little older, I'd have more competition.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:32 AM

March 05, 2005
Why Poles Don't Trust Russians, Pt. 2,345,376

Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of Stalin's massacre at Katyn Forest, in which he wiped out much of the officer corps of the Polish military.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AM

March 03, 2005
Looks Like He's Going To Make It

Fossett is apparently over Kansas, and close enough to be able to glide in, even if he runs out of fuel, now.

[Update about 2:36 PM EST]

He's almost made it--just a few miles out. Another record, for him, and another feather in Burt's cap.

[Update at 2:48 PM EST]

He's on the ground. I'll bet he'll be happy to find some indoor plumbing. And a bed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:59 AM

March 02, 2005
Trouble Over The Pacific

Steve Fossett's plane seems to be low on fuel:

Moore said fuel sensors in the 13 tanks onboard the single-engine jet differ from readings of how quickly fuel is burning during the flight. Moore said the crew has been forced to assume that 2,600 pounds of the original 18,100 pounds of fuel aboard "disappeared" early in the flight.

Where does 2600 pounds of fuel "disappear" to? Overconsumption early due to a cold engine, or stuck valve?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

March 01, 2005
Helping Out

David Burge has a worthwhile birthday request.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:31 AM

February 25, 2005
Out-Of-This-World Food

Rocket Jones is hosting Carnival of the Recipes this week.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:27 AM

February 18, 2005
Chowdah

One of the most useful "Carnivals" in the blogosphere, I think, is "Carnival of the Recipes."

I used it as the basis for tonight's dinner. I started with the leek and potato soup, and modified it to make a seafood chowder (post title refers to the Simpsons episode in which Freddy Quimby is falsely (though justly, considering what a twerp he is) accused of injuring a French waiter because he wouldn't pronounce "Chowdah" correctly (using the Kennedyesque Boston accent), instead pronouncing it "Chowdair").

Instead of using sausage, and chicken broth, I instead used fresh mahi-mahi, and a couple cans of chopped clams, with juice.

It was delish.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:55 PM

My Best Wishes

...and I hope those of my readers, to the Instawife. And Glenn, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 AM

February 11, 2005
What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

Or, disregarding the Dan Ra^ther reference, what's the (time) signature? A commenter asks in this post:

Uh, pardon me for being clueless, but.....
Can someone explain to me (without using up too much of Rand's drive-space) just what is meant by a tune's "time"? I understand that it refers to the tune's tempo, but the way it's written suggests one quantity is in ratio to some other quantity.....

Yes, I flunked music appreciation in elementary school. :)

We can attempt to explain it to you, but you still may not get it. I've explained it to some very smart people, but they still couldn't get it, even after listening to music that had clear time signatures explained to them.

The top number of a time signature is the number of beats of a measure, which is a unit of music marked off by an accented note. The accent is indicated either by the percussion, in the form of a stronger drumbeat, or by a louder note on the instruments. It's like the accent on a syllable in a spoken word. So if the signature is 3/4, then every third beat (where each beat has an equal spacing in terms of time) will be noticeably different in some way than the other two.

The lower number is an indication as to whether the accent occurs every quarter note, or every eighth note (most signatures are either X/4 or X/8). Generally, signatures demarked in eighth notes will be more up tempo (faster) than those in quarter notes.

If you want to hear the difference, and you have access to specific types of music (you can almost surely find them on the net these days), waltzes (ONE two three ONE two three) are in 3/4 time, jigs (ONE two three four five six ONE two three four five six, spoken twice as fast as the waltz numbers) are in 6/8 time (classic example being The Irish Washerwoman). Hornpipes and reels are in 2/4 (or 2/8) as in (ONE two THREE four ONE two THREE four), and so on. Most rock and roll (and its slower progeniter, blues) is in one of these forms, though it can be in six as well.

Variations on this are syncopated beats, where the accent falls in unexpected places.

Then there are the weird ones, as discussed in the original post. "Take Five" is in 5/4 time, which means that it goes (ONE two three four five ONE two three four five), except that it's slightly more complex than that because of a syncopated beat right after the one and the two. You have to listen to it to understand what I mean. "Blue Rondo a la Turk" is in 9, but it's got subaccents with variations, so it goes ONE two THREE four FIVE six SEVEN eight nine ONE two THREE four FIVE six SEVEN eight nine ONE two THREE four FIVE six SEVEN eight nine ONE two three FOUR five six SEVEN eight nine...

And the Irish have something called a slip jig, which is in 9/8, that goes ONE two three four five six seven eight nine ONE two three four five six seven eight nine...

There are many more, but I hope that helped...someone.

[Saturday morning update]

Lots more good examples in comments, but it just strikes me that one of the most well-known examples of syncopation went out to the stars on the Voyager record.

Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is in a fast four, and if you listen to the guitar riff that leads the song off, for the first few measures every note is right on or between the beat, but in the middle section, you'll hear them staggered for a few measures, after which it goes straight again to finish off the intro before the vocals. Classic.

Syncopation was also a feature of the Big Band sound. The best example that jumps immediately to mind is Artie Shaw's classic version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:15 PM

January 01, 2005
About To Watch A Travesty Of Tradition

Michigan against Texas in the Rose Bowl. Of course, it was Cal who really got jobbed by the BCS this year.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:35 PM

December 28, 2004
Death Toll Rises Further

It's up to almost sixty thousand now.

I was actually surprised at how low the early reports were, considering how widespread the devastation was, and how densely populated many of the areas were. I won't be surprised if the final tally ends up being in the hundreds of thousands, as areas start reporting in that we haven't even heard from yet.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:12 PM

Another Reason To Regret Moving To Florida

Jay Manifold reminds us of the potential for a much larger tsunami than the one that hit this past weekend. Patricia and I were wondering last night what we would do if we heard about a Canary collapse. It might be sufficient to get out to the west county. If we have to go further than that, we might be SOL, because there are only a couple roads that head into the Everglades here, and they'd probably be jammed once people figured out what was happening. Though I wonder if the Bahamas would take the brunt of it, and much of the energy.

Of course, it wouldn't be just Florida that gets hit. The entire eastern seaboard would likely be wiped out, all the way up into Canada.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

December 27, 2004
Cannibalism

I'm always a little disconcerted by holiday products that are food in the form of sentient creatures.

When a child, I loved getting chocolate Easter bunnies, not because I believed in the resurrection, or because I loved bunnies (I don't mind them, but I find cats preferable as pets) but because I love chocolate. But I was always put off a little by the fact that I had to eat a bunny. And a helpless bunny at that, one that, by virtue (if that's the right word...) of being composed purely of sugar and cocoa and various fats, but no proteins or muscle tissue, was in no position to defend itself, and was entirely prostrate to my gustatory whims.

Now comes Christmas, and Patricia has put a chocolate Santa in my stocking. And not just any chocolate Santa, but knowing my weakness (hers is dark chocolate), a milk chocolate Santa.

So what do I do? It's not bad enough that I eat it, but lest I consume the foil wrapping, thus making my teeth and fillings vulnerable to powerful local radio stations and the mind-control beams of the incompetent CIA (whose incompetence extends to the possibility of scrambling my brain, but probably not leaving it uncorrupted by their brain-death beams), I had to strip the foil down from it prior to consuming it and its precious life-giving constituents. Kind of like stripping down a cadaver before consuming it, lest one get the threads of the clothing of the helpless victim caught in one's incisors.

(Ummmmm.......braaaiinnnsss)

Anyway, my choice was to put it out of its misery immediately, by biting off its head. Then, the rest of the body can lie painless and dormant as I consume the remainder over the next few days.

So, am I sick, or should I start a rock band?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:23 PM

Why I Don't Link To Some Worthy Posts

Like, for example, this one by the appropriately named A. E. Brain.

When I see that the blogfather has linked to someone, I assume that it needs no further linking, unless I (rarely) have some unique words of wisdom to append to it.

Is that right? Are there really readers of this website who don't also read Instapundit? If so, then perhaps I should reconsider my position, but my preference is to point out things that people won't read elsewhere, for parsimony of my efforts, if for no other reason.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:55 PM

December 24, 2004
Merry Christmas To All

I'm not a Christian, but I'm certainly not offended when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, and while blogging will be light for the next couple days, I'd like to wish all my Christian readers the merriest one yet.

There has never been a Christmas when the world is at peace, and this year is problematic, but it was one in which Afghan women who used to be beaten or worse for appearing in public with too much face exposed, and without their men, just voted in an election, casting many of their votes for other women. It is one in which the Iraqi people, despite the totalitarian scum who continue to murder them indiscriminately, continue to register to vote in their own upcoming elections.

Sadly, it is also one in which thousands continue to be murdered and raped, in never-ending wars in Africa, and the traffic in human slavery continues unabated. But as I said, these things have been going on since time immemorial, and if there's more of it now, it's only because there are more humans than ever before--not because humans are becoming worse.

Despite that, in many ways, for many millions of people, things are better on this planet than they've ever been, and with diligence and courage, we can continue to spread the zone in which people can celebrate Christmas, and other holidays of this solstice season, free from fear and want.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:21 PM

December 20, 2004
What'll You Have?

I'm originally from Popland, but I've been living in Sodavania for the past quarter century.

And they missed a category. In some parts of the south, it's actually "cocola."

The sharp division between the UP and eastern Wisconsin is fascinating. I remember back in the seventies when my cousins moved to Milwaukee from where we lived in southeast Michigan, they told me about having to get used to the new vocabulary (they also called water fountains "bubblers"--weirdos).

I'm curious about the "other." What do they call soft drinks in New Mexico?

Further thoughts: harkening back to Albion's Seed, it would seem that both Puritans and Quakers are soda drinkers, whereas the Presbyterians opt for coke. And the Cavaliers seem to be a mix between the two. But which folkway created the pop drinkers? (Note that it really was culturally appropriate to split off West Virginia from Virginia way back when).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:27 PM

December 16, 2004
Last Ditch

Sixty years ago today began what came to be called the Battle of the Bulge. It was Hitler's last, desperate attempt to throw the invaders back across the Channel, or to get them to sue for peace, or at the least, to buy time until he could reconstitute his forces. Initially successful, the battle lasted six weeks, through Christmas and most of January, 1945. When it ended, the Allies had broken the back of the German western front, and all but Hitler himself knew that the war had been lost, though it took another three months to finally occupy Germany.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:49 AM

December 14, 2004
In Linux Hell

My Red Hat server has not had X running on it for months. Whenever I would upgrade, it would be unable to start the X server, and would give indications of a hardware problem. I bought a new video card for it, with no joy.

I recently decided to upgrade to Fedora. It stopped as it was trying to load the X upgrades, with a fatal error, telling me that it was either bad media (the CD passed a media check), inadequate disk space (it's an almost-empty eighty gig drive), or a hardware problem. I replaced the motherboard with a different kind, thinking that the problem might be in the AGP section. Same result.

The worst thing is that since it only did a partial install, I can't boot it any more, except in rescue mode from the CD. All of my data is still there when I mount the partition, so I'm trying to figure out how to back it up and just do a clean install, in hopes that this will finally get me around whatever the problem is. Does anyone have any thoughts as to other options, or just what the issue might be?

[Update a few minutes later]

Is there some way to get it to bypass the X installation, so I can at least complete the Fedora upgrade, and then try to fix X separately? For instance, if I do an install instead of an upgrade, is there some way I could deselect those packages, but still preserve the data in /home?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:23 AM

What A Shame

The idiotic fashion fad of dressing like a gangbanger is (finally) dying.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:54 AM

December 13, 2004
Death Penalty

...for Scott Peterson. I don't really care that much, except I so enjoy seeing that scumbarrel, Mark Geragos, lose.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:56 PM

December 08, 2004
Time Waster

Someone has developed the world's most difficult (but simple) sliding-block puzzle.

You can play it here.

[via Geekpress]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AM

December 05, 2004
Found A Phisherman

Does anyone know if there's someone who this should be reported to? Like the FBI?

[Emergency update later]

Do not, repeat DO NOT, enter any info into the linked page!!!!

It is a phishing page, designed to get your EBay password, and most preferably, your credit card info.

I apologize a thousand times for not making it more clear when I posted originally.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:29 PM

December 01, 2004
I'm Shocked To Hear

...that this marriage didn't last. Well, actually, I'm surprised that it lasted as long as it did.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:55 AM

They Never Learn

Here's what the incoming anchor at NBC News thinks of bloggers (sorry, no permalink):

Mr. Williams — who called himself a "big NASCAR freak, a 'gear-head,' " in an NBC interview yesterday — is even less receptive.
Bloggers are "on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem," he told attendees at a recent Time magazine "Person of the Year" luncheon.

He didn't mention whether or not we were wearing pajamas. I suspect that he'll be feeling the regular wrath of the bathroom brigade.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:37 AM

November 26, 2004
A Tipping Point?

I haven't been tracking the news from Ukraine closely, but this seems like big news, and good news.

Journalists on Ukraine's state-owned channel - which had previously given unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - have joined the opposition, saying they have had enough of "telling the government's lies".

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:18 PM

November 25, 2004
Giving Thanks

Instapundit has a list of sites where you can support our troops, for whom we should be thankful not just today, but every day.

And here are a couple sites that you can go to to support our allies, the British troops. Given the current anti-war mood over there, they may not be getting as much support from home as ours are.

If anyone knows of any similar sites for the other members of the coalition, please let me know.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:09 AM

November 24, 2004
Cranberry Recipes Galore

...over at The Corner. Just Control-F "Cranberry." (If you're reading this in the (more distant) future, go back to the November 24th, 2004 archives.)

In the meantime, I'm appalled that Jane Galt peels her mashed potatoes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:17 PM

Triumphalism Part II

Inspired by this post, Scott Ott has the appropriate take.

It's said that in ancient Rome, when the Emperor was in a parade in his chariot, basking in the cheers of the throngs, he always had a slave standing next to him to whisper in his ear, "Remember sire, thou art but a man." The blogosphere needs one of those occasionally as well.

With apologies to the Bard:

Why, man, they doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men and women
Walk under their huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves....
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth these our bloggers feed,
That they are grown so great?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AM

November 23, 2004
Triumphalism?

Lots of people are claiming that Dan Rather stepping down from his anchor chair next spring is a victory for bloggers. But this isn't really news--there were rumors of it in September. Admittedly, that was after Memogate broke, but I thought that Rather was going to be retiring in '05 regardless, and there had been rumors of his impending retirement of at least the anchor chair for years.

If he were to step down now, and the reason stated was because of Memogate, that would be a blogosphere victory, but this just looks like what was planned all along. He continues to do Sixty Minutes. I don't see that he's being punished at all. Or am I missing something?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:09 AM

November 21, 2004
To Bill Whittle Fans

Both current and prospective. The book is out. Just in time for Christmas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:00 AM

November 19, 2004
One Hundred And Forty One Years Ago

In a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, a war-weary president commemorated a new military cemetery, few of which's first honorees had to travel far to final interment, having laid down their lives on that ground just a few months before. It's useful to remember the words, in light of the recent election, and all the angry talk of Blue and Red, instead of Blue and Gray:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:59 AM

November 13, 2004
Can You Say "Overrated"?

The Spartans are cleaning the (#4) Badgers' clock in the fourth quarter, 35-14. If Michigan beats (The) Ohio State University next week, everything will be coming up roses for them. Except that they may actually make it into a BCS game and let Wisconsin go to Pasadena, since Auburn is also beating Georgia.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oops. Make that 42-14...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:40 PM

November 12, 2004
Break Out The Champagne

That stupid trial is finally over. What will Greta van Susteren find to talk about now?

I don't really care about the outcome, except I'm always glad to see that bucket of scum, Mark Geragos, lose a case. Unfortunately, he gets paid either way.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:34 PM

Worried About The Competition?

This seems a little childish on the part of some programmer in Redmond.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:59 PM

November 11, 2004
Supreme Court Question

Can anyone be nominated as Chief Justice, or does one have to be an Associate Justice first?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:40 PM

Death Of A Young Historian

Andrew Lloyd points out that Iris Chang has died, sadly, apparently by her own hand. Arafat's death is a blessing to the world, but she will be sorely missed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:29 AM

November 05, 2004
Polymath

Here's an interesting interview with Neal Stephenson over at Slashdot. My two favorite bits--first, in a discussion of the bifurcation of the writing community between those who are commercial and those who are "literary":

Like all tricks for dividing people into two groups, this is simplistic, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there is a cultural difference between these two types of writers, rooted in to whom they are accountable, and it explains what MosesJones is complaining about. Beowulf writers and Dante writers appear to have the same job, but in fact there is a quite radical difference between them---hence the odd conversation that I had with my fellow author at the writer's conference. Because she'd never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer---one so new or obscure that she'd never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn't be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.

But this part, about his relationship with Blue Origin was quite intriguing:

As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.

And don't miss his description of his battles with William Gibson.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:31 AM

November 04, 2004
A Rough Week For The Edwards Family

Elizabeth Edwards reportedly has been diagnosed with breast cancer. That might explain Senator Edwards' strange "concession" speech yesterday when he introduced Senator Kerry.

My best wishes to her and her family. But I hope she can find a competent doctor who hasn't been put out of business by her husband's courtroom chicanery.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:20 AM

November 02, 2004
Another Clueless NYT Reporter

...who thinks that Free Republic is a blog.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:55 AM

October 30, 2004
The Worst P0rn Flick Ever Made?

Well, in that genre, he'll have a lot more competition, but if anyone could do it, Ed Wood could.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:30 AM

October 21, 2004
Not All In Hollywood Are Lefty Loons

What do actor Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, Apollo XIII) and Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand have in common?

A noble project.

[via Roger Simon]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:46 AM

October 18, 2004
Back From The Cape

I know, I know, I didn't tell my three long-suffering readers that I had gone up to the Cape, but I did, this morning. Early.

Not a bad drive. Only two-and-a-half hours from north Boca.

It's amazing how much the state changes both culturally and demographically just north of the Palm Beach/Martin County line. South lies the southern annex of New Yawk/Jersey. Italian restaurants and steak houses prevail. Seafood may be found, but generally only at the steakhouses.

North lies the south. Seafood shacks, fried stuff, barbecue, grits.

We used to say in Michigan that Detroit was the only place in the US (well, outside of Alaska) that you can look south and see Canada (go look at Detroit and Windsor, Ontario on a map). Well, Florida is the only state in the US where you have to drive north to get to the South.

It goes suddenly from quite urban to quite rural, with long stretches of nothing but swamp and pine forest--no sign of man except for the freeway itself, upon which one traverses them, up through Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River Counties. They and their suffering inhabitants were ground zero for both Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, in the space of two weeks, only a few weeks ago. Both storms made land in almost exactly the same location, somewhere between Vero Beach and Fort Pierce.

I was surprised to see little damage. Or, I should say, I saw little damage to nature, but perhaps that's because I'm not attuned to recognize it. The angles of the trees on the hammocks in the glades may have been altered, but I wouldn't have known.

Man-made stuff is another matter. I saw many billboards absent both bills and boards, nothing but a frame, a skeleton, remained, appropriate for the upcoming season. Stopping for gas in Fort Pierce, I saw a Golden Arch ungilded, frame only, bereft even of the plywood upon which to place the gold, but with a stalwart handwritten sign below: "We're Still Open."

Had I more time, I'd have toured A1-A along the barrier islands, where I suspect the damage was both more extensive and obvious.

The Cape was in good shape, all considered. I was in a meeting at Boeing, in a conference room with a lovely view of the Indian River, and the Vehicle Assembly Building across it, off in the distance.

It looked closer than it was, as it always does, because there's no sense of scale to indicate that it's one of the largest buildings in the world. It lost some panels in the maelstroms, but neither of the storms were the ones that would put NASA out of the manned spaceflight business. That's one of the reasons that the Cape was chosen for the premiere launch site. Historically, that region has been largely hurricane free, at least when it comes to Cats 3 and above. But that doesn't mean it can't happen. They dodged two bullets this year.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:58 PM

October 13, 2004
Misleading Polls, Again

I've complained about this before, but it continues, and it continues to irritate.

I think the president's doing a lousy job. I think the country's on the "wrong track." So according to conventional wisdom, I should be voting for Kerry, right?

Wrong, because I think that he'd be even worse on most issues of concern to me. Am I weird, or are all these so-called analysts misinterpreting poll internals, mistakenly assuming that unhappiness with Bush automatically translates to a Kerry vote?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:16 AM

Shocking News

The French are arrogant, rude and surly, particularly in Paris. Imagine that.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:47 AM

October 07, 2004
The Power Of The Blogosphere

Guess what's Google Prime for "global test"?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:42 PM

HTML Problem

Is it just me, or are other people having trouble reading Glenn's latest column in The Guardian?

In Mozilla, the column text doesn't show up, and in IE, the page starts to come up, and then redirects itself to the same URL, but gives a "page cannot be displayed" message.

[Update]

It seems to work fine on my laptop machine, but not on my desktop.

Weird.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:21 AM

October 05, 2004
Maybe He'll Get Some Respect Now

Rodney Dangerfield has died.

OK, Gordo Cooper, Rodney Dangerfield...who's number three?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 PM

September 28, 2004
Harnessing The Blogosphere

Speaking of clueless reporters and "experts," Jay Manifold announces a potential blogospheric solution to the problem.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:17 AM

September 26, 2004
A Choice Of Disasters

I was interviewed a few days ago by a reporter from the Sun-Sentinel. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with either space or blogs. He was just looking for people who had recently moved here, to get a newcomer's perspective on hurricanes. He got my name (actually, Patricia's, but she was at work when he called, and I was home) from our next-door neighbor, who is apparently involved with the local Welcome Wagon.

Anyway, here's the result.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:31 PM

September 23, 2004
Can't Stop Loving You

The Big Trunk has a tribute to the late and justly lamented Ray Charles on the first anniversary of his birthday since his recent death.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:23 AM

September 21, 2004
Auto Woes

In another consequence of the hurricane, we had a thousand-dollar repair bill on the BMW. Though actually, in a sense, the hurricane may have simply made us aware of a problem that had been ongoing.

As you may recall, I was blogging with power out by running my modem and laptop off a voltage inverter hooked up to the car's battery. On the Saturday morning before we got full power back (even with partial power, I couldn't get the DSL modem to work from the house current), I was letting it idle in the driveway to recharge the battery, while I watched the (infuriating) Michigan-Notre Dame game.

Suddenly, I heard a loud hissing sound in the driveway. I ran outside and the car resembled a steam locomotive, with its hood obscured by all of the dangerous DHMO in gas phase. I looked at the dash, and the temperature gauge was pegged. I shut the engine off, and let it sit.

The next day, I tried topping it off, and the water was pouring out as fast as it was going in, through a crack in the filler tank that had apparently ruptured.

I tried driving it, and while it ran smoothly, it had no power (top speed about ten MPH), which really started to concern me, because I was afraid that I'd warped or cracked the heads on the V-6 (though that didn't make sense, given how smoothly it was running).

I also couldn't figure out how I'd managed to drive it across the country two weeks previously, through the Southwest in the hottest part of summer, with no problems at all, but then have it overheat idling in the driveway.

Then, of course, the little cartoon lightbulb went on over my head. It has an electric fan to pull air through the radiator when the car isn't moving. Most likely scenario--the fan had failed sometime in the past, and I hadn't noticed it because I'd rarely let the car idle motionless for that long previously.

Sure enough, when we took the car to the repair shop, that was exactly what happened--a resistor had gone bad and the fan had quit fanning. Of course, the resistor isn't replaceable--you have to buy the whole fan unit from Wolfsburg, at over three hundred dollars. Also, it was a cascading failure--the incident, in addition to rupturing the plastic fill container, wiped out the water pump by running the bearing dry, and the thermostat. All told, about a thousand bucks, including labor.

The mechanic told us that he hadn't seen this happen before, but it didn't surprise him, because BMW had gone to a single, non-redundant fan about that time. I'm not sure why they don't just drive it off a belt like in days of yore, but I guess most modern car manufacturers prefer to only run it when it's needed, perhaps to not be a useless power drag, since it's rarely needed. I know that I have one on my eighteen-year-old Accord that's never had a problem. And of course, this would have been avoided if I'd been sitting in the car while it was idling, because I probably would have noticed the temperature creeping up (which would have been a much less costly way of discovering the problem than the catastrophic failure that it actually endured). But there's no telling how long it hasn't been working, or how long it would have been before I discovered it, if it hadn't been for Frances.

The good news is that the engine is all right. The power problem wasn't caused by a lack of compression, but by a slight warping of the throttle body so that the valve couldn't open properly. After cleaning it, they got it working again.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:57 AM

September 20, 2004
Ivan Redux?

The storm apparently did a U-turn up in the mid-Atlantic and headed back down here. It's been dumping rain on us overnight, and through the morning, on its way west. It's headed across Florida and back to the Gulf, where it may reform. Keep an eye out for it, Texas.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AM

September 18, 2004
Idiot Tech Support

That's one of my pet peeves. It's very frustrating to get someone in tech support who a) has no knowledge at all other than what's on the checklist in front of them and b) certainly doesn't know as much as you do, particularly when it comes to first principles or logic and c) doesn't know that they don't know, and answer your questions with gibberish, often in a condescending way as though you're the idiot.

This happens all too frequently, and it happened again today with DirecTV.

I've got a weird problem. Intermittently, I'll lose signal on some channels, starting with pixelation and audio breakup, deteriorating into complete loss of satellite signal. The last time I was having a problem like that, in California, it turned out to be a bad LNB, so I went out and bought a new one, and installed it.

The problem persists. Now here's the really strange part.

When I run a test on the individual transponders while it's acting up, the odd-numbered ones are fine, with signal strengths in the nineties. The even-numbered ones are zero across the board. What kind of failure would cause this kind of selective behavior? What's different between odd-numbered and even-numbered transponders that would cause one to be fine and the other useless? I thought it might be something in the logic programming of the receiver, but I hooked another one up, and saw exactly the same behavior.

It seemed like an intriguing problem to me, and I figured that if I talked to DirecTV about it, they'd have some kind of ready explanation. And indeed they might, if you could actually talk to someone who understands how the system works, instead of a drone with a checklist, who not only couldn't explain it, but didn't seem to think it remarkable. He simply kept leading me through his check list. When I explained to him that even was bad and odd was good, he could only repeat, "that means it's seeking signal," as though that actually meant something significant and useful.

The bottom line was that he said he'd send someone out to look at it. On October 12th. I'm tempted to make another attempt to see if this time I can at least get someone with a little intellectual curiousity, and ability to think, but I'm wondering if anyone out there has any insight.

It's not the receiver, it's not the LNB. It could be dish aim, but the problem with this, as with all hypotheses, is that it doesn't explain why I have a perfect signal on odd transponders and zero on the evens. Same thing with a bad cable, which is the only other thing that I can try at my end.

If someone described the symptoms to me, and I had no other knowledge, my first guess was a problem with the transponders on the satellite itself. But that implies that everyone else would be having the same problem, and it's hard to imagine that occurring for long without DirecTV doing something about it.

Anyway, I guess I'll try swapping cables, just because there's nothing else I haven't tried, but if that's the problem, I'll be very interested to understand what kind of cable failure would affect half the transponders, and only those with even numbers.

[Update on Sunday morning]

Thanks for the input. I finally did get in touch with someone at DirecTV who knew what they were talking about, and he told me that the most common reason for this behavior was cabling, with receiver second, and LNB a distant third. He couldn't explain the physics of it, but said that in his experience, it was usually a bent pin on a cable, or some similar problem.

I went out this morning, and started tracing the wire. I found a corroded connector where it goes into the house on the active line. When I moved it to the other side (on a line we aren't currently using), which wasn't corroded, the problem seems to have gone away. I'll have to watch for a while to see if it recurs, but that looks like it was the culprit. I'll have to go to Home Depot and get a replacement for it, and seal it back up out of the weather (it only had electrical tape wrapped around it, which is probably why it went south).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:48 PM

September 15, 2004
Just When We Thought It Was Safe To Take Down The Shutters

Here comes Jeanne, pointed right at us.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:17 PM

September 14, 2004
New Network Problem

My server is having trouble with DNS. It can ping the internet by IP, and when I ping by name, it makes an attempt and echos the IP, but cannot ping. My /etc/resolv.conf file contains only "nameserver 192.168.2.1" which is the address of the wireless router.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Update]

I finally found the DNS servers for AT&T. When I put them in resolv.conf, everything seems to work fine. Thanks for the suggestions.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:22 AM

Networking Problem

I've got a weird (at least to me, I'm hoping that it will be obvious to someone else) problem with my network.

I'm running an 802.11(g) router. I've got my server and my desktop ethernetted to it, and I'm using my laptop in wireless mode. All machines are seeing the router fine (and getting Internet access), but the laptop is not able to see the other two machines and vice versa on the network. The laptop can ping everyone, but the laptop cannot be pinged. I'm running in encrypted mode on the wireless connection, and wondering if that might be the problem. It doesn't seem like it should be, because I would think that the signal is being decrypted by the router and available through ethernet.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Update]

D'oh!

I'd changed my network from 192.168.1.* to 192.168.2.* and forgot to tell Zone Alarm on the laptop.

Problem solved.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 AM

September 11, 2004
Dodged A Bullet, Again

But by a wider margin.

It looks like Ivan is headed into the Gulf. It may still affect Florida, but the most probably target is the Panhandle, and both weather.com and accuwearther.com have taken southeastern Florida out of the target zone. That's good, because we didn't need another one, particularly so soon, but it may be hard on people in the panhandle, or the Gulf Coast in general. Send them your best wishes, and donations.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:30 PM

Pathetic

I know, you think that's my one-word description of those idiots continuing to defend the memos.

It is, but the purpose of this post was to describe the play of the Wolverine offense against Notre Dame throught the third quarter.

The play calling is atrocious, and when it's good, the execution sucks. They only seem to have two pass plays--a low-percentage long ball down the field, or a short play almost deliberately contrived to avoid being caught beyond the first-down marker. The Irish O-line is making Michigan's look like schoolgirls. Unable to score a touchdown, they may still win this, but they sure don't deserve to. And if they do, it will be the defense and special teams (at least the field-goal kicking unit, and ignoring the guy who tripped Breaston for the fumble) who will be responsible, not the offense.

[Update]

Talk about dumb play calling. Why didn't Notre Dame go for two, after that gift of an interception? Now Michigan can (at least in theory) win it with another field goal (the only offense they're capable of today).

[Update]

A draw play on third and nineteen? A draw play on third and nineteen?!!!!!

Sure, why not.

They deserved that blocked punt. Why not give them the gift of another TD? I mean, it's not like they had any plans to score any more this game anyway.

[Update]

Clearly, the offense needs a lot of work. They are not going to win this game. The only chance at this point is a returned interception.

It's nice to excuse them because they lost Underwood early, but if your offense becomes totally ineffective because you lose your best runner, you don't have much of an offense. Losing Underwood would explain a couple touchdowns in the margin, but not the inability to get into the end zone completely. At least not for a team with the bench depth that Michigan should.

[Update

OK, so they've scored again, off another turnover. Why not?

You can't blame the defense for this (you can rarely blame the defense for a Michigan loss). They're worn out. They've been on the field for far too much of the time, because the offense is...what was the word again? Oh, yeah, up in the post title.

[Update]

OK, as usual, they tease, getting a TD two and a half minutes before the end of the game. Of course, just to tie, they have to get two points after, and repeat the feat...

[Update]

OK, they get the two points, but miss the on-side kick. Now, of course, I have to watch to see if the defense can make a last stand.

[Wrapup]

As I said, the offense lost this game. The Dee did as well as possible under the circumstances, but the O came alive a few minutes too late.

This isn't the end of the season, but it's probably the end of any hopes of a (mythical) national championship for the Woverines this year (unless they go the rest of the season undefeated, and Notre Dame ends up number one at the end of the season).

Carr has to take his O coach to the woodshed, and perhaps even considering replacing him. As I said in the post title, this was a pathetic performance on the part of the Michigan offense.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:20 PM

September 10, 2004
Pet Peeve

Of which I'm reminded amidst all the discussion about the forged documents--people who don't know the difference between a typeface and a font, including journalists, who should know better. Microsoft and the computer industry have blurred the distinction that was once very clear to the printing community.

Times Roman is a typeface, people.

Times Roman twelve-point italic is a font.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:06 AM

September 04, 2004
Lull

The long delay between posts had nothing to do with conditions; it was the normal one that occurs almost every night as I sleep. We've stokd up on canned goods, water, batteries, fuel, and other necessities. Last night was the time to stok up on slumber, because we may not get another chance at it until late Sunday. Fortunately, the storm didn't disturb us, though I heard a few gale blasts about 7 AM.

It's relatively quiet right now. Trees are blowing, but not hard, and it's not raining much. Based on the forecasts, I don't expect that to last long. Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for many others), it continues to head further north. If it makes landfall near the current prediction (up near Melbourne or Fort Pierce), we'll get off pretty easy in Boca, all things considered, even if it restrengthens this afternoon and evening. Most of the storm surge (our biggest fear) will occur to the north of the storm, and most of the winds we get will be from the north and west.

I don't know how much longer I'll be blogging, but at this point, if I quit, it will be because I no longer can (most likely due to power out--the battery's shot in my laptop), not because I'm voluntarily unconscious.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Whoops. Wrote too soon. The wind is picking up now. And there are a couple crazy people out driving down the street.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:53 AM

Another Hurricane Blogger

More in the thick of things, in Melbourne. She's still on the air as of a few minutes ago. Wish her (and everyone here) as much luck as you've apportioned my way.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:05 AM

September 03, 2004
The Hurricane Fraud Continues

There's a light drizzle outside now. No wind worthy of the name, just a gentle breeze.

Damn you, plywood manufacturers! Damn you to hell!!

[Update after a little reflection]

Well, to be philosophical about it, it's kind of like washing your car to make it rain, or carrying an umbrella to prevent same. If the storm doesn't hit us, we've done a great service to southern Palm Beach and northern Broward counties by preparing our house for a hurricane and spending the money to move out of it.

But perhaps I speak too soon. The demon, at whatever strength or intention, continues to lurk off shore.

Anyway, for now, for those grateful, the tip jar is to the left.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:23 PM

It's A Conspiracy!

It's a beautiful balmy night in Boca Raton. No one would ever suspect that there's a killer storm lurking just a couple hundred miles off shore. In fact, I'm not sure that even I believe it.

I'm starting to think that this is an elaborate joint conspiracy by the Plywood Manufacturers of America, and the Association of Concrete Fasteners. They knew, after years of "the boy who cried wolf syndrome," that after Charley's abrupt right turn, after evacuating Tampa, and sending everyone to Orlando, after which they were hit there instead, that people will disbelieve any track projection, and that they could get everyone on the Sunshine State to purchase window-protection accoutrements by simply pretending that there was a storm out there.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, here I am, sitting in a motel with my house boarded up, like a sucker.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:39 PM

Hurricane Blogging

But who knows for how long? It turns out that the Residence Inn that we're staying at has broadband, but I didn't find out about it until a couple hours ago. Then I discovered that I hadn't packed any ethernet cables with my laptop...

So after a trip back to the house between feeder bands (with an additional delay to cover up one door that we missed earlier), I'm on the air, until the power or bandwidth give out, whichever comes first.

As anyone who's been following the storm knows, the damned thing slowed down to nine MPH today, so landfall is coming later than anticipated. We haven't seen much yet, except a couple feeders, with (fortunately) no tornadoes. It still looks like it's heading somewhat north of us, and the Cape is still in danger.

We're still in the target area, at the extreme southern end, as far as being hit by the eye. If it hits north of us, it will be a blessing (for us) because most of the heavy winds will be off-shore, and there won't be as heavy a surge (flooding of the house was the biggest concern, and one that we could do nothing about, other than wrapping it in whatever they put Han Solo in). But the door that we belatedly shored up was on the west side of the house, so we decided to buttress it a little more.

I'm anticipating an interesting twenty-four hours, with (at a minimum) steady tropical-force winds hitting sometime before morning, increasing to hurricane force throughout tomorrow, with eyefall on the land sometime during the day or evening. Earlier is bad, because that means it will hit farther south (us). Later is better, even though it prolongs the agony of the decibels and groaning structure.

We're in a comfortable hotel room, built fifteen years ago, but if the storm hits here dead on, it will be the biggest one it's ever seen, even though the intensity has dropped off to a Cat 3 (it may increase once it's done scouring the Bahamas, in anticipation of slamming the Treasure Coast--lucky us). We're enjoying a meal (possibly our last nice one for a while) of grilled salmon and Caesar salad and champagne (the place has a kitchen).

We're hoping that the hotel will hold out all right, but the worst case is that we all huddle in an interior bath (four of us, with no windows) for the few worst hours, screaming above the winds howling through the broken windows. Obviously, I hope (but don't pray--I still don't know to whom to do that) that it doesn't come to that.

Oh, and to commenter "John" in the previous thread? I rarely use language like this in my blog, but fuck you. With sandpaper.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:17 PM

September 01, 2004
Dark Anniversary

Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, which set off the greatest conflict of the twentieth century. The beginning and (especially) end of this war won't seem quite so clear cut to history. I agree with John Hillen that:

The president should define the goals in the war on terrorism ad nauseum - it will lend strategic and moral clarity to the debate - in much the way that FDR's Cassablanca conference declaration of unconditional surrender put a cap on what was then a murky WWII alliance strategy. In the meantime, Republican policy makers should grab a copy of Reagan defense official Fred Ikle's "Every War Must End" and start figuring out how this applies to the war on terror and the way in which this should be put to the public.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:06 AM

August 25, 2004
Professors Behaving Badly

This is simultaneously funny and sad.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:29 PM

August 24, 2004
The Overst0ck.Com Television Ad

...has to be one of the most effective ones in history, in terms of watchability and effectiveness in selling the product. At least if you're a (heterosexual) male.

There are a lot of ads that are interesting, entertaining, but ineffective in terms of making the viewer (or listener--there are many that have only music as the audio, which provides no cue or clue as to what the product is to those who only listen to the television while doing other things, and aren't watching it) aware of the product and interested in purchasing it. But this one compels healthy males to watch, and hammers the product into their reptilian brains.

[Wednesday update]

I'm curious to know how effective this ad is for women. I suspect that it might be, though not for the same reasons. I'd be interested in the opinion of any female readers who've seen it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 PM

Chechens?

There are reports that two Russian airliners have gone down, almost simultaneously. Sounds like bombs with timers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:45 PM

August 22, 2004
Fair And Balanced

Here's an interesting interview with Brit Hume, with an extensive discussion of his take on media bias.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:07 PM

Still Getting It Wrong

The incompetence of reporting continues to amaze me. This story says in its headline that one of Kerry's crewmates is upset about the Swift Boat ads, but when one reads the story, it turns out to be about Rassman, the Green Beret that Kerry pulled out of the water (hint, reporter Robynn Tysver, Kerry's "crewmates" were in the Navy).

It's a minor thing, but it's just another example of reportorial sloppiness (and sloppiness that somehow always, always, redounds to the benefit of Kerry).

[Update a few minutes later]

Whoops, spoke a little too soon. The dam may really be starting to break. Newsweek has a piece on the Kerry's Bronze. It's the first investigative piece that I've seen that actually discusses what happened, instead of who is making the charges. In fact, they refreshingly point this out themselves:

Obscured by all the political maneuvering is the truth of what really happened 35 years ago.

Yes, heaven forbid anyone actually dig into that.

As Ed Morrissey points out, this story is problematic for Kerry's narrative, because his helmsman is now admitting that he can't remember whether there was fire from the shore when they pulled Rassman out of the water. The Swift Boat Vets all claim that there was not. This is a key element on which the award of the medal was based. Ed also points out other inconsistencies with the Kerry version about boat damage, and says that Kerry and Edwards are hypocritically squealing like schoolgirls over this.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AM

August 19, 2004
Car For Sale

In case anyone's looking for a project car. It's a BMW 2002 tii that I've had for over twenty years. I need to get rid of it before I can leave California.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:39 PM

August 17, 2004
New Earthlings

Belated congratulations to Mrs. Earthling and her pathetic husband (who only got to participate in the fun part of the process), and also to John and Anna Carmack, who apparently aren't only birthing rockets. May the new arrivals have the opportunity to live on other worlds, perhaps ones that they forge themselves.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:20 PM

We Are Stardust, We Are Golden

Woodstock ended thirty-five years ago today. I remember it very well.

That's probably because I wasn't there. And you're really showing your age if you understand the post title.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:00 PM

August 16, 2004
The Storm With No Name

Well, I guess that this post was a little premature. While it's possible that it could regain strength, Earl has been downgraded to a nameless tropical wave. If it restrengthens to become a storm again, does it get a new name, or does it get to be called Earl again?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:32 AM

August 15, 2004
The Next Storm

A lot of people have been saying that Hurricane Earl will be an instant replay of Charley, but the current track looks a lot more like a repeat of Mitch.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:41 PM

Air Show

All weekend I've been hearing the sound of loud prop planes here (in Redondo Beach--still getting the house ready to rent). A quick web search reveals that there's an air show at Hawthorne airport this weekend. At the sound of the most recent one, I went out on the balcony to see what it was. It was a Mitchell bomber, similar to the one in which my father was shot down in Italy (though it may have been a different series--I couldn't tell at that distance).

There were only two survivors--him and one other, and his crewmate was captured behind the German lines, spending the remainder of the war in a POW camp. My father was the second one out because he was a radio gunner at the waist of the plane, and he came down in Allied territory, breaking his leg on landing. The rest of the crew didn't have time to bail, or at least to do so and get a chute open. Reportedly, you couldn't get him in a plane again for many years after that (though he'd gotten over it by the time I was old enough to remember). He'd flown his plane, with his crew, over to Europe (stopping at Ascension Island), but he came home on a troop ship.

It was also the aircraft type that performed the Tokyo raid after Pearl Harbor under Jimmy Doolittle's command.

It's only a twin engine plane. The sound of this single one made me wonder how awesome it would have been to hear whole squadrons of B-17s flying over.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:56 PM

August 14, 2004
Charley Blogger Update

Kathy Kinsley, who unexpectedly ended up being very close to the path of the storm, is all right, but she needs some help.

If you don't want to tip her, hire her to update your web site. She does good work for reasonable rates.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:07 AM

August 13, 2004
Make It Permanent, Please

Claudia Cowan is sitting in for Greta Van Susteren tonight on Fox News.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:50 PM

Storm Blogging

Kathy Kinsley is battening down the hatches in southwest Florida. Looking at the map, it looks like our house in Boca Raton will be OK.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:53 AM

July 25, 2004
A Visit To Cathy's World

Here's a fun interview with the very fun (based on my occasional partying with her) and smart Cathy Seipp:

I think people always considered me more of a contrarian than a traditional values conservative. The problem with the L.A. media isn't that it's dominated by liberals but that it's dominated by idiots. Occasionally someone comes along -- like Allan Mayer, founding editor of the now-defunct Buzz magazine (and a liberal) -- who's smart enough to hire people with different points of view...
...My mother...told me when I was young that when she was looking for an entry level job after graduating college, she noticed the most interesting, better paying jobs were always under "Men Wanted" instead of "Women Wanted," which is how jobs used to be advertised. So she just went ahead and applied for the "Men Wanted" jobs and usually got them. And most of the time the men who interviewed her were not outraged that she'd applied but quite nice; they just said it hadn't occurred to them that a woman might want the job. Which is how it is with most situations, I think; people aren't usually out to oppress you, they're just unimaginative.

I loved this:

I don't mind closely trimmed short beards. But those long, scraggly beards on men are like underarm hair on women. In both cases the tacit message is: "In case you were wondering what my pubic hair looks like, wonder no longer, because now you know."

She just nailed why I no longer have a beard.

RTWT

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:31 PM

Irritating

Someone should tell Dari Alexander that Mackinac Island is pronounced "Mack-i-naw," not "Mack-i-nack." You can sure tell she's not a Michigan native.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:47 AM

July 14, 2004
Wild Weather

Laughing Wolf was live blogging incipient tornadoes in northern Alabama.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:55 PM

July 10, 2004
I Still Want My DNS!

The saga continues.

When I hardwire a DNS into my client, it works. Sort of.

I can get to transterrestrial.com, but pages from Instapundit and National Review (and who knows which else?) won't load.

This is the case not only for my original solution of Earthlink's IPs, but also for Dave Mercer's recommendation of cybertrails.com's.

What the heck is going on?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 PM

July 09, 2004
Now *That's* A Vacation

You know you had a wild vacation when it takes two days to recover from it. You'd think that hanging out with a bunch of neuroscientists would be intellectually stimulating but perhaps a little light on the wild partying. You'd be wrong, at least about the partying part. The social scene surrounding the Marine Biological Laboratory is really something to behold. It was a long weekend, so there were parties every night for four straight nights, and all the parties were too good to leave before the wee hours. I ended up averaging about 5 hours sleep a night, which is nowhere near enough. Somehow biologists simply have better parties than physicists. I think it has to do with the average level of social skills. I know some very socially smooth physicists, but let's face it - the average physics geek is a little on the dorky side, and a bunch of slightly dorky people all in the same place tend to condense into a big glob of mutually reinforcing dorkiness. Biology dorks don't undergo the same transition, probably because they are fermion dorks, while physicists are boson dorks. Or something. There's actually a coherent explanation for why biologist dorks should be fermionic (having to do with the greater degree of distinction between different subfields of biology), but something tells me that it would be better not to go there. Maybe I'm not yet fully recovered from my vacation :-)

Posted by Andrew Case at 02:53 PM

I Want My DNS!

OK, I finally got it working. Sort of. I can ping the LAN. I can ping the internet. I can even get to web sites if I know the IP. But when I ping an internet domain from a client with no IP (even something as simple as yahoo.com) it goes "Huh!" as only computers can do, and sits doing nothing.

Any ideas what I have to do to get ZA (and please, no more stories about what a fool I am to use ZA--those are not helpful at this point) to allow DNS? Or diagnostics I can run to figure out where the problem is?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I still don't know why it's not doing DNS properly, but I fixed it by assigning some DNS servers manually to the client (Earthlink's). It seems to work now, but it also seems like a kludge.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:38 PM

And The Pope Is Still Catholic

Check out this "Dog Bites Man" headline.

[Update a few minutes later]

I'm told that the link requires registration. It didn't require it of me--sorry about that. The headline is "Libertarian Seeks Small Government."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:59 AM

I Wonder?

...if Dick Riordan is starting to lose it?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AM

July 08, 2004
Firewalling Problem

OK, I think I've found the culprit. Zone Alarm does seem to be blocking UDP between host and client, and I can't figure out how to stop it without completely disabling my Internet firewall. It thinks that the ethernet adaptor for the LAN is to the internet, and it won't allow me to edit or change that. It's the only firewall I have, so I can't take it down.

I may have to upgrade from the free version to Zone Alarm Pro, because while the Help menu says that there's an option for setting it up for ICS, it doesn't seem to display it for the version I have.

[Update a few minutes later]

I finally figured out how to change the zone for the adaptor from "Internet" to "Trusted." My LAN is working properly now, but clients are still not seeing the internet.

[Late afternoon update]

I'm having trouble thinking that it's a Zone Alarm problem at this point, because I'm watching the log, and I've seen no activity on the LAN being blocked, even when I attempt an internet connection from a client.

I can ping the host machine, but I can't ping anything on the internet, either by name or IP.

This is most frustrating.

[Update a couple hours later]

At Ian Woollard's suggestion, I momentarily disabled Zone Alarm, and that was the problem. It seems to work if I reduce the security level for the Internet Zone from "High" to "Medium."

I'm not sure that I can configure it more specifically without getting the full version, though.

Now the question is, do I spend the forty bucks on Zone Alarm Pro, or on a router...?

I'm inclined to the former, because I can buy it on line, and it will be a good belt-suspenders system for when I get a good hardware firewall up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:10 AM

July 07, 2004
I Want To Share

My internet connection, that is.

Until I complete the move from California, and bring my Linux firewall and wireless router to Florida, I need to set up a quick'n'dirty router and port forwarder for the network here. I had a spare switch, so I just went out and picked up a second NIC for my main Windoze 2000 machine. The instructions for sharing the internet connection are seemingly simple, but they don't seem to work. I've got the new network set up in DHCP mode, and the machines are talking to each other, but I can't see the internet from the client (i.e., pinging a known IP address times out, though I can do internal network pings). I tried turning off the Zone Alarm firewall for the LAN, but it didn't seem to help. I'm obviously posting this from the machine with the working connection.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Update on Thursday morning]

OK, when I do ipconfig on the host machine, I get this:

***************************************
Windows 2000 IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Interglobal LAN:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Ethernet adapter AT&T DSL Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 67.101.124.115
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 67.101.124.115

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Autoconfiguration IP Address. . . : 169.254.163.94
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

*******************************************

Note that "Local Area Connection 2" is the physical ethernet connection for the DSL (called here AT&T DSL Connection")

netstat -n yields:

*******************************************

Active Connections

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 127.0.0.1:445 127.0.0.1:3093 ESTABLISHED
TCP 127.0.0.1:3093 127.0.0.1:445 ESTABLISHED

*******************************************

I'm having trouble talking to client machines right now--the LAN seems to be flaky. I can ping client from host, but I can't ping host from client. More when I get one of more of the in communication.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:12 AM

July 06, 2004
It Would Please Me

...if I were a rain god. I'm not saying I'd make the rain fall or anything, mind you, but it would please me.

Of course, it would please me even if I weren't. I'm just that kind of guy.

On the other hand, I don't really want to see this.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:03 AM

July 04, 2004
Happy Independence Day

What he said (even though he wears shop goggles when he launches bottle rockets).

Here's what I wrote a year ago (it was also a Fox News column, but it seems to have been lost from their archive). It's still (sadly) pertinent on the second point as well as the first, which is timeless.

And remember, there are only sixteen shopping days left until Evoloterra Day.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:32 AM

July 03, 2004
Shop Goggles?!

Well, I guess later was sooner than I thought.

I repeat for emphasis (including obligatory whiz bang): Shop goggles?!

I always knew (well, as long as I've known him, which is getting to be a disturbingly long time) that Instapundit was a geek, but I never realized he was such a girlie boy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:26 PM

July 01, 2004
Massachussetts

I made it safely to Wood's Hole after driving for nine hours. A good stereo system is a bulwark against madness.

One observation I've made every time I come here (this is the fourth summer) - Massachussetts drivers suck. It's not that they are incompetent a-holes like the drivers in DC. It's that they yield with absolutely no rhyme or reason. For some reason the basic principle that safety in traffic is enhanced by everyone behaving in a predictable manner is just lost on them[*]. My sample is pretty biased, so maybe this is just a Cape Cod phenomenon, but I've already had two incidents in which a dangerous situation was created by someone deciding that despite the fact that they have right of way, they'll stop and let me go. They are trying to be nice, oblivious to the fact that the people behind them think they are turning, so move to pass, just as the benevolent dimwit is waving me to move into a position to be T-boned. Perhaps its that this area is a vacation spot, so there are people from all over the place, each bringing their own local interpretation of how to behave in traffic.

[*] Incidentally, if you ever get a chance to drive in Brazil - don't do it. At least don't do it until you've aclimatized to the local driving customs. I thought Africa was bad, but Brazilians drive according to an unwritten set of rules which are universally understood by other Brazilian drivers and which bear only a passing relationship to the written traffic laws. The lack of carnage on the streets is due to the fact that everyone knows the unwritten rules, knows what to expect, and knows how other drivers will react.

Posted by Andrew Case at 06:39 PM

June 30, 2004
Off to Wood's Hole

I'm going on vacation for a week, so I may not post anything for a while. OTOH, I'm going to Wood's Hole, where my wife is doing research at the Marine Biological Institute and there are all kinds of fascinating people to talk to, so there may be interesting stuff to blog about when I get back.

Posted by Andrew Case at 08:53 AM

June 19, 2004
Painting & Drawing on Mac OS X

I'm running into some pointless frustration trying to put together simple illustrations for a talk I'm going to be giving. The software I have access to is simply too powerful for the task. I'm using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to knock out simple technical illustrations. The crapware paint program that comes with powerpoint is too crapware for the task, but the learning curve required for Illustrator and Photoshop isn't worth climbing for tasks I'll be doing maybe once every couple of months.

Back in the early nineties there was a program for the Mac called SuperPaint. It hit the spot exactly. It had a drawing layer (vector based), a painting layer (pixel based), and the ability to copy stuff from drawing to painting layers. There was a modest selection of tools, an intuitive interface, and a trivial learning curve. I can't believe that such a program doesn't still exist somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. It's such a basic and useful thing that someone has to be making it. There's no reason there should be a large gap between kiddie-style drawing programs and the full fledged professional graphical design software. I can't be the only person who occasionally needs to put together a simple illustration that looks halfway decent.

If anyone in out there knows of a suitable program, please let me know about it, either in email or comments.

[update a few minutes later] Of coursee, as soon as I post this I discover how to do something in Illustrator that I'd been assured was impossible, by people who use the program almost daily. It occurs to me that a lot of high powered software would be made vastly more usable by have a Beginners Mode, or Simple Mode, in which much of the more sophisticated functionality was pushed into the background. My Illustrator learning curve is made considerably worse just due to the sheer number of menus and options I have to dig through to find what I'm looking for. We have this problem at the lab with ProE (CAD software) - the guy who really knew how to use it left, and now we have a detailed set of drawings of the machine that we can't really work with because nobody has the time to learn the ins and outs. If ProE had a Beginners Mode we could just dive in and and at least get some basic use out of the drawings.

Posted by Andrew Case at 10:01 AM

June 15, 2004
I Hate Basketball

The title is a disclaimer to this post.

I've written before on why I think the sport is evil, but I seem to be caught in a perfect storm. I'm watching the last half of the fifth game of the NBA finals (the first game I've watched in years), because for me, it's a twofer. I'm living in LA, which is Lakers crazy (and since I hate basketball, that just makes me hate it all the more). And I was born and bred in southeastern Michigan, so my tribal instincts out, and I get to watch the Pistons dismantle them.

The fact that they were supposed to have already lost the championship by now makes it all the sweeter. Detroit was supposed to get creamed, and instead, the Lakers would have already lost their shot at their legacy if the accused rapist hadn't had a lucky shot in the second game. I'm going to savor the fourth quarter.

Then, I'll hope once more that the sport implodes once and for all, with the collapse of the supposed superstars.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:21 PM

Follow Ups

There's a lot of good discussion going on in this post from this past weekend on leftist revisionism on Reagan, and the Cold War in general.

Carey Gage has a link to the Red Cross ambulance video (which was taken by, of all people, the people who won't call terrorists terrorists).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:08 AM

June 11, 2004
A Little Obscene

I found the last ceremony at the grave site the most emotionally wrenching.

The eulogies of the children were not about his impact on the world, but about his impact on them, as a father. It seemed much more personal and heartbreaking to me, because while I admired Reagan, I knew him only as a politician, and I didn't love him.

Holding the folded flag, Nancy goes up to the now-bare casket, and lays her head on it one last time, saying goodbye to her husband of over half a century. Her children come in to comfort her. I hear a lot of chattering noise in the background, and I suspect that it was a multitude of camera shutters.

Somehow this last seemed, to me, a huge invasion of privacy of the family. But as Patti said in her written eulogy last weekend, she knew she had to share him with an entire nation. Apparently, right up to the end.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:07 PM

Maybe they could get Phish for the halftime show

Via Reason Hit and Run: Cops in Portugal will permit open smoking of marijuana by British fans before the upcoming Soccer match with France. They figure stoned fans won't get into fights. The Dutch tried this in 2000, and it worked. Gotta love pragmatism.

Posted by Andrew Case at 02:02 PM

Family Resemblence

I've never noticed it before, but looking at the audience as the president speaks in the National Cathedral, and seeing them side by side, Patti Davis shares many of her mother's facial features.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:37 AM

Poor Schmuck

I just got a call on my business line from a guy who was peddling the dead-tree LA Times.

Me: No, thank you. I've no use at all for that paper. My parakeet died, by puppy's been trained, and I don't fish any more, so I don't need the wrap.

Him: But it's only $2.75 a week! What can we do to get you to subscribe?

Me: How much will you pay me to read it?

Him: I love this job. Have a good day, sir.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:42 AM

June 09, 2004
How's Daisy Doing?

Donald Duck is seventy years old today. He's still looking good, but at his age, he should watch that temper--he could give himself a stroke.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:38 AM

Seasteading

Sooner or later pretty much everyone with libertarian leanings comes up with the idea of living on the sea in international waters, and I'm no exception. This came up in a conversation with Sean Lynch at the Space Access Society conference, and he pointed me to a very interesting site by some people who are actually making serious plans to do just that. I was on the Oceania project mailing list for most of its life, so I got a chance to see one way not to do this. The greatest value of the Seasteading site is its list of things that have been tried, a much larger list than you might expect. The only real success so far is Sealand, but it's not for lack of trying.

This is quite important from a transterrestrialist perspective because Seasteading can help debug some of the things that will be needed for permanent and free offworld colonies. Most important are the nontechnical issues, like how to deal with governments (Sealand follows the very simple rule of keeping your head down, helped a great deal by being a neighbor of a country that's secure militarily and economically). Eventually some Seastead group or other will run into direct conflict with an established nation (as Minerva already did with Tonga) at a level which merits attention from other nations or the UN. At this point precedent will be established that may kill the idea altogether. How things pan out will depend a lot on the details of the conflict. Unfortunately the appeal of Seasteading is driven in large part by a desire to get away from the busybodyism of existing nations, so the things people are likely to do on a Seastead are exactly the things likely to lead to interference, such as freely taking drugs, engaging in prostitution, providing a haven for euthanasia (including pre-death cryopreservation, which most nations will look on as the same thing), and so forth.

Anyway, it's a great site, with lots of resources and links to a bunch of other sites which are interesting in themselves. I don't much like the technical aspects of their baseline design (some nasty stress risers at the spar-platform joint, for example), but they are talking about incremental development so those issues will be resolved in due course.

Incidentally, I held off on posting about this until I got the nod from the site's proprietor, which he gave a couple of days ago, so I'm not in violation of the "please don't publicize" note on the site. From his email I assume it's no longer in effect.

Posted by Andrew Case at 08:13 AM

June 08, 2004
Public Service Announcement

Apparently about eighty percent of spam is being generated by zombie machines (i.e., home computers that have been taken over by trojans, and are sending out massive emails without the owner even being aware).

Folks, if you don't have at least a software firewall, like Zone Alarm (there is a free version), you are part of the problem. As cheap as hardware firewalls are these days, there is no excuse to have an unsecured machine with a permanent internet connection.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:45 AM

June 07, 2004
Honor Principles

Via Brad Delong, an article about a guy who makes a living selling donuts and bagels on the honor principle. Take an item, drop some money in the box. There are some very interesting regularities in who cheats and when they cheat. Who cheats is basically in line with my expectations based on dealing with people in different lines of work. If it confirms my prejudices, it must be true :-)

Anyway, grab a donut, drop your coins in the slot, and read the article.

Posted by Andrew Case at 12:27 PM

June 06, 2004
Patti Davis, Grownup

Here's a very moving eulogy from a prodigal daughter.

I don't know whether the loss is easier or harder if a parent is famous; maybe it's neither. My father belonged to the country. I resented the country at times for its demands on him, its ownership of him. America was the important child in the family, the one who got the most attention. It's strange, but now I find comfort in sharing him with an entire nation. There is some solace in knowing that others were also mystified by him; his elusiveness was endearing, but puzzling. He left all of us with the same question: who was he? People ask me to unravel him for them, as if I have secrets I haven't shared. But I have none, nothing that you don't already know. He was a man guided by internal faith. He knew our time on this earth is brief, yet he cared deeply about making his time here count. He was comfortable in his own skin. A disarmingly sunny man, he remained partially in shadow; no one ever saw all of him. It took me nearly four decades to allow my father his shadows, his reserve, to sit silently with him and not clamor for something more.

RTWT

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:21 AM

Great Minds Think Alike

Andrew, I don't know how you'll feel about this, but apparently you were channeling Mark Steyn last night.

Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:03 AM

Six Decades On

You may have seen it already, but Blackfive has a nice roundup of D-Day posts to commemorate today's anniversary.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:18 AM

Links Of Links

I may have further thoughts on the passing of the Great Communicator later today, particularly in the context of the somber anniversary in northwest France, but for now go check out these roundups of other blog commentary from Tim Blair and Laughing Wolf.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

June 05, 2004
Sing Goddess...

I finally got to see Troy (the movie) tonight. My wife had already seen it and she was unimpressed. She particularly disliked Achilles, because he's a selfish, arrogant jerk. Just like in the book. She hasn't read the Iliad, so she didn't know what to expect. Over the last 2800 years or so we've become a lot less tolerant of flaws in our heros. We demand that great deeds be accomplished by men incapable of error. This cuts two ways, both on the part of the hagiographer who plasters over the gaping flaws in a man's character, and in the critic who points them out as if this in some way diminishes the greatness of the deed. We look to the Greeks as the founders of our civilization, and their clear-eyed view of human failings should be revived. Heroes are heroic because they do great things, not because they are without failings. By acknowledging this simple fact we are better able to see the greatness in others, and the potential for greatness in ourselves.

The world just lost a man who will be remembered by history long after most of us are dust. I disagreed with much of what he did, but no amount of kvetching on my part can take away from his legacy, which is no less than to liberate the world from totalitarian communism. The Soviet Union is dead, and Ronald Reagan killed it. The rest is details.

Posted by Andrew Case at 07:11 PM

History Trivia

By my count, we now have four living ex-Presidents--Ford, Carter, Bush I, and Clinton. Before President Reagan's demise today, we had five, and I believe that's the most that we've ever had. It seems unlikely that we'd have ever had more than that in our nation's history, given the lengths of terms and the ages at which presidents normally become president, but does anyone know for sure?

Of course, if one wanted to be macabre, one could start a pool on who will be the next to go, and if it will occur before the current president joins their ranks (which of course depends a lot on what happens in November...).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:08 PM

Requiescat In Pacem

Ronald Reagan has died, a day before the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy landing. It looks like Andrew Lloyd's sources were right a few days ago. Given this weekend's somber remembrances, it might be appropriate to replay his D-Day speech from twenty years ago (though that would put a lot of pressure on President Bush to deliver a real humdinger tomorrow if it's not to be overshadowed).

I never voted for him (I voted Libertarian), but he was one of the great presidents of the twentieth century, and I'm glad he won both times (and was at the time, considering the alternatives). The Soviet Union may have collapsed eventually, but there's zero doubt in my mind that he accelerated the process, and broke us out of the failed policy of containment. He was a man of great vision, and in that, we haven't had a president since, including the present one, that was his match.

Of course, in my mind he's been dead for years, and it's sad that we give so much reverence to the body and too little to the mind. I don't know if he was suffering toward the end, but this has to be a sorrow tinctured with relief for his long-suffering family.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:16 PM

June 04, 2004
The Philosopher's Magazine

If you're interested in philosophy but don't have a background in it, check out The Philosopher's Magazine. It's a philosophy version of Popular Science or Discover Magazine. I've subscribed for a year now, and I'm happy with it. It's not mindbogglingly deep, but it also doesn't presume familiarity with lots of jargon, so it's a nice way to stimulate the mind without the frustration of running to the dictionary (or Google) all the time.

Posted by Andrew Case at 02:09 PM

I Hope NORAD's Been Notified

This is kind of cool. Via Jim Oberg, I'm informed that two Russian strategic bombers are going to fly from Russia over the north pole and land in Oregon.

1350 GMT -- Russian strategic bomber to visit U.S. for first time
MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian TU-95MS Bear strategic bomber will conduct a flight to the U.S. for the fist time, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky,head of the Air Force press- service,told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday. According to him,the strategic bomber's flight is timed to the 100th birthday of famous Russian test pilot Valery Chkalov to be celebrated on June 15-21.

"The ferry flight will be conducted along Chkalov's route from Russia to the U.S. via the North Pole," Drobyshevsky said. He also noted that the TU-95MS would be refueled in the air over the Arctic Ocean outside the Novaya Zemlya archipelago by the IL-78 Midas tanker.

The TU-95MS is to fly from the Russian Air Force base in Engels to Portland, while the IL-78 from Anadyr airbase to Portland. The IL-78 will carry a delegation of Russian Air Force officials and various equipment for the bomber. "It will be the first time Russian aircraft of this type visit the U.S.," he emphasized.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:33 AM

Sixty Two Years Ago

The beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific occurred for the Japanese.

The Battle of Midway was the most decisive single naval battle in U.S. history. The battle left two heavy Japanese carriers against four U.S. carriers, and cost the Japanese veteran pilots whose inexperienced replacements would require a full year of training. Furthermore, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost the secret of its Zero fighter, leading to certain improvements of the F6F Hellcat, which would, just a year later, begin to destroy Japanese air supremacy.
The Battle of Midway enabled the U.S. Navy to go onto the offensive. Herein lay the importance of the battle. For this is where I think people are wrong when they say that the loss of the battle would not have been a too important event. If the U.S. had indeed lost all three carriers at Midway there would have been merely three carriers remaining to oppose any Japanese move -- none of which was a really good ship. Saratoga was old and slow in maneuvering, Wasp small and with a small complement of planes, and Ranger slow and small as well as ill-protected. None of these carriers could hope to last in a battle with the Japanese carrier fleet which would allow the Japanese to prosecute several goals: construction of airfields on Guadalcanal; invasion of Port Moresby; invasion of New Caledonia; and more. The Battle of Midway reversed this. The Japanese could never again operate offensively, while the Americans could now do so at places of their own choosing.

Two years later, almost to the day, the successful invasion of Europe at Normandy would signal the beginning of the end of Hitler's regime as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:25 AM

June 02, 2004
A Penny's Worth Of My Thoughts

The folks over at The Corner are debating the merits of phasing out the penny (there are several posts--just scroll down or control-F for "penn").

Most seem to favor keeping it, and make all kinds of arguments for it, few of which I find compelling, and most of which are, in my humble opinion, at base a simple conservative resistance to change, them being conservatives and all. One last holdout was Peter Robinson, who was swayed to the pro-penny side by the following flawed argument:

A penny is to money as entropy is to thermodynamics. When you spend money, you get some useful work (the stuff you bought), some useful left over energy (large change), and some energy lost to entropy (pennies). Sure, if you get enough pennies together, you can make most of them useful, but some will always be lost to the pavement, cracks between the cushions, and not having quite enough to fill a roll of pennies.
Just as you can't get rid of entropy in thermodynamics, I don't think you'll ever be able to get rid of fiscal entropy; the most you can do is turn nickels into the new unit of entropy.

Sorry, I don't find the "entropy" argument compelling. If it were true, then if a hundred to the dollar is good, a thousand to the dollar would be better. Why stop there?

Face it, any choice of the smallest denomination of currency is going to be arbitrary. While it would be nice to see some deflation a la Ramesh, it's a dangerous path to get there, and at the current valuation of the dollar, pennies really are useless.

I'd say that a reasonable criterion for when a coin has too small a value is when it's not possible to purchase anything with a single one of it. A penny may still buy thoughts, but there's nothing else that it can purchase in today's society, since the demise of the penny gumball machine.

Away with it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:52 PM

May 30, 2004
AT&T Bites

I've run into a little bit of a problem with my wireless service that I thought I'd share with y'all. I signed up with AT&T for a one year contract, with free phone thrown in. All good so far. I added a second phone for my wife, at $79.99 for the phone, and ten bucks a month extra for the service. Come billing time, we find that contrary to what we were told over the phone when we signed up, the second phone requires a two year contract, not a one year contract. OK. So let's just eat our little sh*t sandwich and get on with life. They lied, but the hassle of fixing the problem outweighs the hassle of just dealing with it. Trying to sort out an unrelated billing issue, I'm informed that actually, we're now obligated to a two year contract on *both* phones. Needless to say, there was no mention of this when we talked to them, despite explicitly asking about modifications to the original contract. F*ck that! cancel both contracts, have your damn phones back, and here's a nice idea for where exactly you can put them... "We'd be happy to cancel the contracts, at a fee of $175. Per line. "

Ma Bell, meet Mr Tenacious Bastard, Attorney at Law. I'll update as things develop. In the meantime, I suggest you avoid doing business with mendacious *ssholes. Just a suggestion.

Posted by Andrew Case at 12:42 PM

May 29, 2004
Victor Graham MacBurney

The title of this post is the name of my maternal grandfather, known to his friends as 'Mac'. He was a tobacconist and newsagent, a quiet, intelligent man who raised his daughter to think for herself and to delight in words and ideas. It is from him that I get my love of language and music.

This being Memorial Day weekend I thought I'd mention him in honor of his service to King and Country. He fought in the RAF as a navigator on a Mosquito nightfighter, escorting bombers on raids against Nazi Germany. For a few months he was acting squadron leader after the man who had held the position was shot down. He never talked about his experiences during the war. When it was all over he returned home to the little apartment above the shop in Southend-on-Sea, and set about the business of raising my mum and uncle.

There can be no doubt that but for the courage and sacrifice of men like Mac, the world would be a much worse place today. I doubt that any are reading this blog, but if you are, thank you.

Posted by Andrew Case at 06:30 PM

May 24, 2004
Revenooers

I'm still fuming.

I dropped Patricia off at LAX this morning on my way to work, to fly to Florida. She had a 7:40 flight.

She usually carries on, but today she had a couple pieces of luggage to check, so we decided that I'd park the car and help her check in. Now, to park at LAX is a minimum of three bucks for the first hour, but downstairs, at the arrival level, there are metered lots that take quarters, and I figured fifty cents would do me. Of course, this means that one has to enter the airport on the arrival level, which at 6 AM is almost empty since there are few arrivals that early. I cruised past an airport motorcycle cop, at the speed limit, or at least no faster than traffic. But he decided to pull out after me and turned on his flashers.

We pulled over, and he walked up to the car and informed me that we'd been pulled over because we didn't have a front license plate. Now, I've been meaning to put it on, but the last time I tried, the screws that I bought at Pep Boys didn't fit the holes on the front bumper. He took the license and registration (I'm a Wyoming resident, with a Wyoming drivers' license), and took about ten minutes, presumably to run a check on this blatant and dangerous criminal. He finally came back with a ticket. It wasn't a moving violation, and it could be dismissed, with a service fee, if I corrected the problem and drove to the DMV to get it signed off. Of course, because we'd pulled over into a side road heading away from our terminal, we had to backtrack to reenter the airport, costing even more time.

So to save a couple bucks, I now have to deal with the hassle of correcting a problem on a car that's about to move to Florida, and we almost missed her flight. If I'd taken the upper level and parked up there, that cop wouldn't have seen us at all, and there would have been much more traffic, resulting in many better things to do for whatever law enforcement was up there.

The coupe de grace, of course, was that, after all this, the metered lot ended up being closed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:31 AM

May 23, 2004
Off to Sunny Wisconsin

Tomorrow I'm headed out to Madison for the biannual Innovative Confinement Concepts conference, so I may be offline for a while, possibly until Friday. They claim there's WiFi at the conference center, so maybe I'll be able to post from there. I'll certainly post a summary of goings-on.

The conference is a meeting of researchers working on so-called innovative confinement concepts (hence the name of the conference :-). An ICC is basically any fusion concept that isn't a Tokomak or an inertial confinement scheme. Tokomaks (and acronym from the Russian for "Toroidal Magnetic Chamber") are the current leaders in achieving fusion-relevant parameters of temperature, density, and confinement time. Unfortunately they are inherently pulsed devices, and they have other technical features that make them undesirable for power plants. People are working to make Tokamaks power-plant friendly, but progress is slow (as in everything related to fusion). The other mainstream fusion scheme is Inertial Confinement Fusion. This uses a solid pellet of Deuterium and Tritium which is compressed and heated by external energy input from lasers, ion beams, or X-Rays. Currently only lasers and X-rays are used, ion beams having fallen out of favor (for reasons similar to those for the loss of favor of ion beam weapons for BMD - it turns out the beams are damn hard to point and focus accurately if they have any decent amount of energy). I don't think anyone at this point honestly believes ICF is a real contender for power plants (though I could be wrong). The main reason ICF has solid funding is that the physics of the capsule implosion are exactly the same as the physics of the fusion stage of a thermonuclear weapon. In a weapon, X rays are generated by the detonation of a fission device, and passed via a carefully shaped reflector onto the surface of a Lithium Deuteride capsule, which implodes, fuses, and explodes. If you want to understand this process in detail, the ideal way to do it is to detonate small capsules under controlled conditions.

Anyway, the ICCs are the other guys, ranging in funding from ~$10 million down to ~$200K. They are the high-risk, high-reward segment of the fusion development portfolio. The designs range from minor variations on existing technology to outright Wile-E-Coyote designs. I personally believe that the ICCs are the best hope for getting fusion power on the grid in my lifetime, but that to really make things happen we need a fundamental paradigm shift in the fusion community. A lot of folks in the community don't get basic economics, and have little idea about how technologies have historically come into the commercial sphere. That's one of the things I'll be talking to people about at the conference.

Anyway, if you don't hear from me for a while, that's what I'm up to. If I can get decent net access I'll post on the goings-on.

Posted by Andrew Case at 06:32 AM

May 18, 2004
Security Hole in Mac OS 10.3

Title says is all. Check out Making Light for links to details and fixes. It's a Doozy.

Posted by Andrew Case at 08:17 PM

May 16, 2004
Thinner Profit Lines

I predicted this would happen a few years ago, when the low-carb diets were still fringe theories, but I couldn't figure out what exactly was the right play--short selling doesn't make sense for an event that may take years. They're really killing revenues for bread and pasta makers. It's also, just as predictably, hitting doughnut and orange juice sales.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:28 AM

May 11, 2004
I'll Never Shake Their Hands Again

Well, here's a side of sports I didn't need to know about.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:14 PM

One Born Every Minute

Here's the latest spam I got in email:

As you certainly know, http://www.interglobal.org needs to be updated to respect Google's™ latest rules and regulations.
Allow us to evaluate the compatibility of your website with Google's™ search engine.

We now offer written consultation services, reflecting a full study of your website defining its compatibility with Google's™ latest algorithm updates.

We guarantee that one of our qualified experts will review your website and draft a written consultation reflecting a complete analysis of your website's structural profile in regards to Google™ technology requirements.

Whether you are in charge of optimizing your site or currently using the services of a search engine placement company, our consultation services will enhance your ability to cross-check the profile of your website in order to improve your results with Google™ search engine.

Yes, we all know about Google's "rules and regulations." I wonder if they're trying to play off all the buzz about the IPO?

And they only want a hundred bucks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:11 AM

May 09, 2004
An Empty Seat At The Friar's Club

Fox News is reporting that Alan King, the King of comedy, has died. The Borscht Belt just greatly expanded its borders.

[Update on Tuesday, May 11th]

Alan Henderson has some additional commentary.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:26 PM

May 05, 2004
Depressing

Joanne Jacobs has a bunch of testimonials from her readers as to just how worthless high-school, and even college diplomas have become. Particularly dismaying was the inability of young people to do computation without a calculator, or to recognize that an answer was absurd.

Many college students hang on to their calculators much as a young child hangs on to a blanket for security. In my first calculus test, when the professor wouldn't let calculators used, five of 25 students walked out and 10 other students never came back to class. We ended up with nine students at the end of the semester. I have seen the same problem in chemistry, physics and other courses. When courses get hard, most students just drop instead of studying harder.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:59 PM

May 04, 2004
Back in the Ring

I had a chance to talk to Rand at SA'04 and he said I should just post whatever was on my mind and not worry about consistency with the previous course of TTM, which had been a concern for me since I'm 99% aligned with Rand on space policy and much less so on terrestrial politics. Since my Dad's death I've found myself less willing to keep my mouth shut about these things (for reasons which I'm not going to go into right now), so I wanted to check things out with Rand before diving back in. Now that I've cleared down some of my to do list I'll resume posting, and we can see how things work out. I suspect that the upcoming election fight will have us all longing for the solemn dignity of monkeys throwing poo, but hopefully TTM will stay far enough above the fray to avoid the splatter.

Posted by Andrew Case at 07:30 AM

May 03, 2004
So That's How They Do It

I'm having the house exterior painted in preparation for renting it out. We once had a healthy crop of English ivy on it, and after removing it, it left many old tendrils in the stucco that I've always found impossible to remove, so persistent are the roots. I've tried power washing, to little avail, and thought that it would be a long and tedious job with a wire brush, perhaps combined with some sort of acid. I even asked on a home repair newsgroup, but no one had any obvious easy solution.

But I'm sitting here watching the painters prep the house, and they're doing what's obvious in retrospect. They fired up a little propane torch, and simply burn them off, followed by brushing off the ashes. Why didn't I think of that?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:12 AM

April 29, 2004
No Posting Today

Starting a new job. Maybe something tonight, but no guarantees.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:02 AM

April 28, 2004
The End Of A Marque

The last Oldsmobile will roll off the line tomorrow.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:01 PM

April 27, 2004
Justice?

Remember that Claremont psych professor who vandalized her own car, and then claimed that it was done by racists? She's been charged with filing a false police report, and insurance fraud.

Somehow, I suspect that she won't be on the tenure track:

Claremont President Pamela Gann has said the college would conduct its own investigation before deciding whether to retain Dunn, whose contract expires later this year.

I'm sure that she didn't lie--she was just providing an alternative narrative. This loon might make an interesting case study for one of her classes. I wonder how many deluded students she'll be able to continue to rally to her defense?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:32 PM

April 26, 2004
Someone Left The Cake Out In The Rain

Lileks says that Blender magazine wouldn't know a bad rock song if it ran right up and made its ears bleed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:14 PM

April 21, 2004
Light Posting

I'm busy today doing lots of things to get ready to take off to Phoenix for the Space Access Conference tomorrow, and I'll be there until Sunday. I may post from there, depending on what kind of internet access I have, but make no promises.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:08 PM

No More Blogspotwatch

For long-time readers, note that I've taken down blogspotwatch. It hadn't been working properly in months, and I think that the need for it lay in a past era.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:59 PM

April 20, 2004
HTML Problems

Not here, as far as I know, but I've noticed over the last few weeks that some blogs are coming up totally FUBAR in Mozilla (Firebird .7), though they appear OK in Explorer. I'm not sure, but I think they're all blogspot sites. Here's an example (one that's a regular read for me).

I don't have the time or the inclination to dig through the source to figure out what the problem is, but if anyone else is interested, they might want to tell the site owners, so that they'll be more accessible to the rest of the non-Microsoft universe. The problem seems to start right after the words "Advertise on the world's biggest nanoblog!" which makes me suspect that there's a blogads problem.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

I just checked Nanobot again, and it's OK this morning.

<shrug>

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:08 PM

April 19, 2004
Too Cheap To Fix

Sorry, had a busy day. Here's an interesting article at the CSM that says that cars are becoming disposable.

...many new cars today cost so much to fix that it's becoming harder to justify repairs. The BMW that hit McConnell's shop had dual front, side, and side- curtain air bags. Federal safety rules do not allow air bags to be reused. So each bag would have had to be replaced with a brand new one. The sensors and pyrotechnics that set them off also required replacement. Add the cost of labor, more than $1,000 for each air bag, and even more for the sensors, and the result is a totaled car.

It's not just airbags--if it were, we could just chalk it up to idiotic federal regulations.

As the article points out, this is an inevitable (and disturbing, at least to me) trend. I first noticed it over a decade ago when my first "Hi Fi" VCR had the stereo die in it. I took it to a VCR repair place and described the problem to the repairman, upon which he said, "yeah, I can fix it, but you can probably buy a new VCR cheaper."

This came as a shock to me, because when I grew up, when a piece of high fidelity equipment broke, you fixed it. In the early seventies, I was a radio engineer at the local public broadcasting station (in high school). My step-brother had purchased a Sansui stereo receiver when he was stationed in Thailand during the war, while in the Air Force, and one of the channels had died in it. He had paid probably three hundred bucks for it in Asia (a decent amount of money at the time).

The power output transistors had died, which I determined fairly quickly by determining that they were shorted, using a volt ohm-meter. I pulled them off the heat sink and replaced them with new ones from Shand electronics, and he was back in business. My time (at minimum wage--I think a couple bucks an hour) was a couple hours, to diagnose, go to the electronics shop, and solder in the new transistors. It clearly made sense to fix it.

In the face of the VCR problem, I had a piece of equipment that cost a couple hundred bucks, but the repairman's time was fifty bucks an hour, and there were few discrete components on it--it probably involved replacing an entire board that would have cost fifty bucks or so. It just didn't make sense to spend the money since, at that time, the price of a new one had dropped, and would provide much better features. I could spend my own time, but I'd have to get some specialized equipment to do the circuit tracing, and still have to get the original factory parts. It just didn't make sense.

In one sense, it's great that things are getting so cheap that they're not worth repairing. That means that they're becoming extremely affordable.

But I wonder what it means for the new generation. When I was a kid, it was fun to take things apart to figure out how they worked (and useful to do so to figure out why they didn't). If there was a problem with a part of it, it was affordable to go buy a new one and fix the de-vice by replacing it.

What does a high-school kid with an engineering aptitude do now? What opportunities are there for him or her to indulge in exploration and trouble-shooting (the root bases of science)?

I've got a 1986 Honda Accord with a quarter of a million miles on it. It's got lots of problems--a windshield wiper switch that causes the wipers to come on when you hit a bump, a sunroof that doesn't open because it needs a slight adjustment to a tensioner that can only be accessed by completely removing the roof from the car and dismantling it, upholstery that's ripped and dissipated by age and sun, worn carpet, a slightly schizophrenic fuel-injection system that causes the engine to "breathe" when it idles, varying between 900 and 1500 RPM with a frequency of about 0.5 Hz, a hatchback in which the hydraulic lifts have lift their last, the original clutch (which still seems serviceable). It needs a new right axle, which makes little "click-click-click" noises on turns, due to a failed CV joint, and causes an unpleasant vibration in the front end at highway speeds.

On the other hand, the engine still burns no oil. This would have seemed miraculous to a high-school kid of my generation, when cars needed to have rings and valve-guides replaced at least once per hundred thousand miles. The synchronizers in the gearbox are still fine (including the ones in first gear--an unaffordable luxury when I was a teenager--I didn't have first-gear synchros until I got my first BMW in the early eighties). These would have had to be replaced in any of my MGs with regularity when I was a kid, to to the point that always double clutched on the principle that it was easier to change the disk than rebuild a transmission, and I always did compression braking to save on brake pads (and especially, in the rear, on shoes).

When I was in high school, I would have killed for a car with this performance and handling, even with all the cosmetic problems and things to fix. What's it worth to a high-school kid today?

I don't know, but I may find out, because it's not worth driving or shipping 2500 miles from southern California to southern Florida, where I'll be living in a few weeks.

But while it's great to see the costs of sophisticated mechanical equipment or electronics (and the tools to repair things, or construct new things) reduced to the point at which almost anyone can afford them, I think that something has been lost when the cost of manufacturing has become less than the cost of repair--the wonder of taking it apart, and the thrill of putting it back together and having it work, particularly when it didn't work before you took it apart.

And I wonder where our next generation of engineers will come from.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:42 PM

April 11, 2004
A Happy Easter

...to all of my Christian readers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:06 AM

April 08, 2004
The Future Of Dead-Tree Publishing?

David Nott emails me to say that people who subscribe to Reason magazine by 5 PM tomorrow (I assume that's PDT) will get a personalized cover on the June issue--a satellite photo of your house with your name.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:58 PM

April 07, 2004
Busy

Sorry for light posting, but I've got a lot of stuff to do around here, and I've been fighting with my computer all day trying to get a new mouse to work. Why can't I just plug in an optical mouse and get it to work properly out of the box? I tried a Logitech last night, and it wouldn't work at all (I'm guessing because it's a combo USB/PS-2 that I was running into a PS-2 port on my KVM switch). I went out and bought a cheap one from BTC. It sort of works, but I had to install some software to get it to work properly, and when I did, it kept popping up this stupid control panel over the cursor from some program called KeyMeistro every couple seconds, which I had to manually close each time, so it was really impossible to use.

Back to Frys to try something else. Sigh...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:04 PM

My Team Is Undefeated

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but when they're winning, just out of ancient tribal loyalty, I'm a Tigers fan. And given my experience of the past several years, I can't help but feel a little schadenfreude for Joe.

7-0 losers. Against the worst team in baseball. On Opening Day. With last year's Cy Young Award winner on the mound for the Jays. Oh, the embarassment.

As Glenn would say, heh.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:43 AM

April 06, 2004
One Tough Woman

She gave herself an auto-Caesarian.

“She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts ... and delivered a male infant that breathed immediately and cried,” said Dr R.F. Valle, of the Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:32 PM

April 03, 2004
Demeaning Men

Glenn is having a little dispute with Josh Chafetz over whether commercials and programs that depict men as fools and/or weaklings (relative to women) are a good or bad thing. While I agree with Glenn's point, I wonder how much of this is a backlash from previous days when the reverse was true. I'm going to be heretical here and say that I never "loved Lucy." I never found it all that funny, but moreover, if I were a woman I would be appalled at the image that she represented--she was a perpetual adolescent, with no common sense, and values so shallow that they'd be swamped by a dry lake. I don't watch the show, but on those occasions that I have, I was embarrassed for her.

On the other hand, this is anecdotal, because I can't think of any other show, off the top of my head, in which women were depicted as such self-centered idiots as that one. I wonder if anyone has ever done any research on the relative depictions of men versus women on television and radio over the decades, to see if there has been any overall change. Could be a good topic for a sociology thesis.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:44 AM

April 01, 2004
Categorizing

I've had post categories available for a while, but I've been very undiligent in using them, and I wasn't displaying them on the template. From now I will be, as you can see in the rebuilt index page. I've gone back and categorized the last two weeks or so, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to categorizing all 3500+ posts since the fall of 2001.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:33 PM

March 29, 2004
Arrivederci

After too brief a tenure, I've decided to set aside blogging for the foreseeable future. In part this is due to additional pressures from work, and in part it's due to reevaluating my priorities, which had skewed rather too far away from family and friends. I've enjoyed my stay here, though I wish I'd had more time to post. Fortunately it looks like Rand is back to full speed and in fine form.

Ad Astra,
Andrew

Posted by Andrew Case at 04:34 PM

March 28, 2004
A Wonderful Weekend

Not.

It was one of those household projects where one thing turns into another.

I'm getting the California house ready to rent, and finally getting around to fixing up all the little things that I haven't gotten around to for years that make it a little more aesthetic and livable. One of these was replacing the faucet and handles on the downstairs bathtub which, due to the hardness of our water, had become so encrusted with various minerals that they were starting to resemble some of the more active parts of Yellowstone Park.

Of course, that meant that they were also difficult to remove. When I tried to pull the handle off the cold-water faucet, it decided to break off the end of the valve stem, rather than sliding off the spline as designed. This occurred, of course, after I'd already been to Home Depot. In addition, the new spout that I'd purchased turned out to be for a half inch pipe, while removing the old one revealed a three-quarter inch outlet.

What had been merely an upgrade in looks had just turned into semi-serious plumbing. I turned off the water, and tried to remove the valve stem. Unfortunately, whoever had tiled the tub had embedded it in grout and mortar, so I spent a not inconsiderable part of the afternoon cold chiseling around it enough to get a socket on it, while being careful not to damage any visible parts of the tile. I eventually unscrewed it until it was turning freely, but it was still bound by too small a hole, so I had to chisel some more, and finally remove it like a recalcitrant tooth.

Back to Home Depot to exchange the spout, and buy a new valve stem. It's installed now, and I've got water back on, so now it's time to steam an artichoke for dinner. All this by way of explanation of light blogging. I am also working on a piece for Tech Central Station on hypersonics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 PM

March 26, 2004
Back in the USA

I'm back from my travels, which were extended due to the untimely death of my father. I won't go into detail, since that's not what you read this blog for. Suffice to say he was a fundamentally good man who lived his faith in every word and deed. If there is an afterlife in which our actions in this life count for anything, then there can be no doubt he is well rewarded. If not, at least he lead a life replete with meaning, filled with life, laughter, and love.

More blogging after I've recovered from jet lag.

Posted by Andrew Case at 04:55 PM

March 25, 2004
Happy Birthday

Color television is fifty years old today. My family didn't get one until the seventies.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:03 AM

March 23, 2004
By The Way...

I was going to delete this post, but once people decided to comment on it, I decided to leave it up.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:46 PM

Ignore This Post

This is just a test post to demonstrate how easy it is to put up a post (which is what I'm doing to a group of people right now).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:16 PM

March 22, 2004
The Body Count Rises

A man died watching Mel Gibson's latest flick.

I blame George Bush.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:59 PM

March 20, 2004
Pressing Cultural Issue

Bluegrass is indisputably a form of jazz.

Discuss.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:53 PM

March 17, 2004
Music of Erin

I would be remiss on St. Patrick's Day if I didn't point out my favorite Irish band, Altan.

They're traditional, yet they have a very fresh sound. They're led by a fantastic fiddler with a beautiful, ethereal voice, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh (Mary Mahoney to us anglo speakers and readers), from County Donegal (and her ornamentation when she plays is a blend of that county's style and her own). She's the daughter of another famous Irish musician, Frank Mahoney.

They get a unique sound (in my opinion) by having a second fiddle, with very good guitar (and other plucked stringed instruments, such as bouzouki) backup and the traditional bodhran drum. The music is sung in both English and Irish, and is wonderful in both cases. Even if you don't like dancing, their reels, jigs and slip jigs will pull your feet from the floor.

Check out the web site, check out the music, and buy an album or two. I've never found one I didn't like. Also, they're on tour now on the east coast. If you get a chance to hear them live, don't miss it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:55 PM

March 10, 2004
Who is this Case fellow, anyway?

Well, Rand suggested we introduce ourselves, so here it is...

I'm a physicist doing a postdoc on the Maryland Centrifugal Experiment. I'm a space geek and member of the board of the SubOrbital Institute. I'm also building a small bipropellant rocket engine igniter, in part to educate myself about the nitty-gritty of building rockets and in part because I have a long term contingency plan to build an X-Prize class vehicle. I argued that this is within reach for the dedicated amateur in a piece I wrote for the Space Review (though to my undying shame I neglected to mention the SpaceCub -D'Oh.). If I can't afford a ticket to space in about ten years I'll start building something so I can launch myself. I also help out Clark Lindsey with his Advanced Rocketry page. Incidentally, Clark's RLV News is a must-read.

I'm a firm believer in incrementalism in technology development and pragmatism in space policy. My politics are hard to pin down. As a crude approximation, imagine a straight line in N-dimensional political space between the staff of Reason and Joe Leiberman: I'm about halfway between them.

I'm preparing something on the prospects for commercial lunar He3 mining for fusion. I'll post when I get it finished. As Rand mentioned I'm in the middle of a family emergency, so I'll be in Botswana (where the rest of my family is) for the next week or so. Once things settle down I'll post on various topics, with an emphasis on building a spacefaring civilization with the materials at hand.

Posted by Andrew Case at 05:55 PM

March 06, 2004
Where Was Jane Galt?

So, we all got into our skycars last night and blasted over to the Encounter Restaurant at LAX, Jetsons style, to meet and imbibe alcohol and comestibles with the inimitable Jane Galt and estimable companion (whose name, forgive me, has escaped my feeble mind) during their several-hour layover from Mexico back to the drudgery of her job (which she claims to love) in New York.

As can be seen below, I had a camera with me, but decided to not be obnoxious and take pics of everyone there. I've got a rare and (in my humble opinion, difficult to create) unflattering photo of Jane, that I won't post (I'm saving it for extortion purposes, after the point at which she becomes not only famous, but rich).

I sat across the table from the charming and lovely Asparagirl. I captured a picture of her embracing an Evil Democrat (TM). I've no desire to blackmail her (it would be pointless--she just started a job with Mouseland--Eisner, even in his present semi-submissive state, isn't going to make her rich any time soon).

I'm going to post the picture, as a punishment and perpetual reminder, sort of like the Scarlet Letter, to modify her future behavior, and make an example of her for any others who may desire to stray from the true path of non-Democratism (which, I hasten to add, is not the same as being a Republican).

It's probably a fruitless endeavor, though. Given that it's her husband (who's surprisingly charming himself), I suspect that she'll remain incorrigible, and persist in such shameless activities.

The two newlyweds apparently have a new joint blog, called the Protocols of the Yuppies of Zion. I guess I'm behind the times, because I see that all the cool blogs have already blogrolled it.

Others in attendance that I can recall (forgive me again, do I have to remind you that there was alcohol involved?) were Pejman, who has his own report, the lovely Emily Jones (the blogger formerly known as Hawkgirl), and several others who may remind me if they see this.

A good time was had by all. If anyone didn't have a good time, they didn't deserve to. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

[Update on Sunday night]

In looking at the pic, I realize that I didn't realize how spiffed up for the occasion the happy couple were. They're not just dressed for the twenty-first century, with George and Elroy Jetson. As anyone can see, Scott actually garbed himself for the twenty-fourth. He looks ready to step onto the bridge of whatever version of the Enterprise is extant at the time.

"Scotty, the airplanes continue to come in. Can you hold the restaurant steady?"

"I canna' hold her, Captain. I need more power."

And won't Brooke make a positively fetching ensign? And not just one of those unnamed expendable ones that goes off on an away team...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:53 PM

February 17, 2004
Return Of The Queen

For those who were following the saga, I brought Stella home yesterday. She had another close call on Friday, but the antibiotics seemed to finally kick in on the weekend.

She's as ornery as ever, particularly when fighting to keep pills from going down her gullet twice daily. She has banished the usurper, Jessica, and retaken her rightful place in my lap.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:09 PM

February 11, 2004
Wednesday Stella Update

Last night, the prognosis wasn't good.

The doctor still didn't know what was wrong, and didn't think she'd make it through the night without a transfusion. She also didn't know how well she'd do with one--there was a good chance that we'd either get a test in the morning that indicated something dire and untreatable, or only expensively treatable, or that wouldn't indicate anything at all. Any of those results would be bad news. She wasn't hopeful for a test result of something that was easily treatable.

Nonetheless, we decided to, in cryonics parlance, "transport her to the future," in the hopes of superior medical technology on the morrow, by giving her a two-hundred dollar transfusion, but not spend the extra hundreds of dollars to move her to an emergency clinic overnight, where they might do more extensive (and expensive) tests.

Bottom line--the gamble paid off. She was more alert this morning, and her red cell count was doubled from yesterday. An hour or so later, we got lab results that indicated a blood parasite that had been munching on her platelets, easily treated with tetracycline.

Her underlying health seems to be very good for her age--the doctor says that her liver and kidney functions are those of a much younger cat, and if we can get her through this, she should have more good years left.

Hooray!

I could bring her home tonight, but I'm working long hours right now, and going to Fort Lauderdale this weekend, so we decided to keep her at the vet until Monday, where they can keep an eye on her progress and get the medicine in her.

Hopefully, I'll have a healthy cat again next week. Thanks you again for all the good wishes--I really appreciate it.

And though I've never cat blogged before, I'll post pics when I get her home, for those who are now curious.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:21 AM

February 09, 2004
And Speaking Of My Sick Cat

Stella is fifteen (which is probably pretty geriatric in cat years). Which makes me feel old, because I've had her since she was a kitten, and I wasn't any spring chicken when I got her.

She lives for three things--lying in my lap, clawing expensive furniture, and food.

Yesterday, she didn't show up for dinner. In fact, she didn't show up for lap, either. I didn't see her at all.

When I got home from work today, she wasn't upstairs complaining about being fed late. Indeed, she wasn't upstairs at all. I found her downstairs, lying on the floor in the middle of a bedroom.

I picked her up, and carried her up to the kitchen. Normally, she'd be crying by the cabinet in which the cans of food are kept, but she seemed indifferent. I opened a can and put food into the bowls for her and Jessica (the younger cat). She didn't eat.

I couldn't get her to drink, either. She wandered out of the kitchen, and seemed to be walking quite wobbly. She's spent most of the evening lying on one of the stairs.

I don't have a good thermometer for taking her temp, but I'm wondering if she's come down with something. It seems too sudden for her to just be getting old.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Update on Tuesday morning]

Per the advice (and I'm sure I'd have done it anyway) she's ensconced at the vet. No word yet on what the problem is. Thanks for all the good wishes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:56 PM

December 22, 2003
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

I'm hearing about a 6.5 quake up off the California central coast a half hour ago. I'm down in southern California right now (Redondo Beach) and didn't feel anything, but if it was really that big a quake a few miles from San Simeon and Cambria, I hate to think what this place looks like right now. Every time I go in there, I can't help but think about what a disaster in waiting it is, in the event of a significant quake. They have some beautiful art glass there, but their insurance company may have a big bill, assuming they carry quake insurance.

I'm also wondering how many of the antiquities at Hearst Castle in San Simeon were damaged.

[Update a few minutes later]

It also occurs to me that this isn't far from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the one that was being protested by Martin Sheen and other loons back in the eighties. I wonder how it held up?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:53 AM

December 12, 2003
So What Am I, Virginia?

Chopped liver?

I thought bloggers were writers. Some of us, anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:29 AM

December 07, 2003
So What Else Is New?

The BCS is totally screwed up. But we already knew that, didn't we?

I don't know how anyone, even a computer, can think that a team should be playing for the national championship after being clobbered in its last game of the season and losing its conference championship. It should be like that high-school kid who's suing the university that accepted him, but then rejected him after he blew off his last semester.

Removing disparity of scores from the calculation was a good notion, in that it discouraged coaches from running it up for BCS points, but it went too far. They should have retained it, but capped it (perhaps at thirty points or so). Had they done so, I suspect that yesterday's trouncing of Oklahoma by Kansas State would have (justly) knocked them out of a trip to New Orleans in January. And as for LSU, seriously, considering how weak the SEC is this year, how hard is it to survive that conference with only one loss?

Anyway, as many people are saying, it looks like there will be two national championship games this year--one in the Big Easy, and one in Pasadena. There's no question that USC got screwed by the system (particularly because they had a weak strength-of-schedule ranking due to playing in the Pac 10). And as for their opponent, consider the situation had scores been a factor in the BCS calculation. Michigan was only two scores from being undefeated at Oregon and Iowa--they were blown out by no one. It could be just a couple of my degrees talking, but if the number-four team beats the number-one team on New Year's Day, why shouldn't they be considered the national champions?

Anyway, even if not, a Michigan-USC Rose Bowl will seem like old times, and good ones. Let's just hope that it's officiated by NCAA rules, instead of west-coast rules (in which apparently it's not necessary--scroll down the page to number ten of the worst calls in officiating history--to have possession of the ball when one breaks the plane of the goal line).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:10 PM

September 13, 2003
Speaking Of Michigan Football

38-Zip.

Looks like Chris Perry and the Wolverines didn't even let Notre Dame have any lube.

First time they've shut them out in over a century.

And this had to hurt:

Many fans in the NCAA-record crowd of 111,726 started chanting, "Houston's better! Houston's better!" in the fourth quarter.

If they can perform like that on the road next week against Oregon, I'll be a believer.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:18 PM

September 09, 2003
Ad Astra

Edward Teller has died. Despite the pies in the face, and the calumny from the ignorant, he was a valiant warrior for human freedom.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:24 PM

August 29, 2003
What Next?

A Jeebus blog?

I don't know who it is, but it's pretty funny.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

August 04, 2003
@ss Of Steel

Professor Hall rode his bike almost 1400 miles in a single day on his way out west from Virginia. Guess he prefers mountains to plains...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:43 AM

August 02, 2002
Amazing Photo

This is a shot of the Sukhoi 27 that crashed at the air show last weekend in the Ukraine. A few seconds after this picture was taken, almost everyone you see in it was severely injured...or dead. At least seventy people died in the worst air show accident in history.

The crew ejected and survived, but they may have trouble sleeping for the rest of their lives.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:00 PM

March 29, 2002
Feline Heroism

OK, just one more before we take off.

A cat saved its seven-year old owner from being raped.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:17 PM

February 25, 2002
Blogs Want To Be Free

Joanne Jacobs has a new term for what we do--freeblogs. It's not perfect, but I find it far preferable to "warblog," which I've never considered this. I think that the warblog term gained currency because so many of them popped up in the wake of 911, but very few of them focus exclusively on the war, including this one.

BTW, Joanne had a great column at Fox News this weekend. In fact, all of the weblogs at Fox News last week (Will, Ken, Moira, and Tim) were great, with the possible (probable?) exception of my own.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 PM

The Road To Reno (Part One)

I drove up to Reno on Friday from LA. I drove, because flying is such a pain in the ass these days, especially since Norman "egalitarianism at any cost" Mineta made them end the expedited security lines for first and business class passengers.

I rented a car, because my Honda needs new CV joints in one of the axles. It makes that ominous little clicking noise when you make left turns, as though it's tsk-tsking you for not maintaining it better. That's not so bad, but it also has a resulting shimmy at about 75 that is a good simulation of a jackhammer--it'll rattle the teeth right out of your head. I can take it, but I was afraid that a thousand miles of it would send the car to its final rest. Since the State of the Union speech, I've taken to calling it the Axle of Evil.

Anyway, as I said, I rented a car.

I am always frustrated when renting cars--they don't make one for me. At least, not unless I go to one of those places like EXOTIC CAR RENTAL up in Beverly Hills, that hit you for a couple hundred clams a day for a BMW or Lamborghini. With standard rentals, I can't get what I want, even though it wouldn't cost that much if they had it.

The problem is that, first of all, I despise automatic transmissions, but it's almost impossible to rent a stick any more in the US, probably because most people don't know how to drive them these days, and the rental companies don't want to be continuously replacing clutch plates, flywheels, throwout bearings, and gears ground to a fine powder.

Also, I like small cars in theory for the fuel economy and handling, except that the rental agencies' small cars have lousy fuel economy, because they all come with auto transmissions, and most of them don't handle for cheeze whiz, because they're not just small cars--they're cheap cars. And being "economy" cars, they don't have amenities like cruise control, which I've become spoiled enough to consider essential for long road trips. So I usually end up getting a larger car than I'd like to just to get a little quality.

Except for this time, when I found a deal of a week's rental for $139.00 for a "compact."

When I got to the place to pick it up on Thursday night, it turned out to be a Metro, which I'd never previously thought of as a "compact," but rather as an anemic motorcycle with four wheels. They had nothing larger, and no prospects of getting one before I had to leave. So on Friday morning, like John Glenn in that cramped Mercury capsule, I contorted myself into the little white car, and headed off to the northwest. (Here's a good bar bet, by the way. Make a wager as to which city is further west--LA or Reno, Nevada. You'll win every time if you take Reno, at least if you have an accurate atlas handy.)

After I fought the traffic through Sepulveda Pass, I made good time up the 14 Freeway to the Antelope Valley. It was a trip with which I was intimately familiar, because two or three years ago, back in the good old days before the Axle went Bad, I was doing it almost every day on a commute in the Accord--a hundred miles each way from LA to Mojave.

Just as you're getting into Palmdale, the freeway crosses the San Andreas Fault. It's one of the few places that it's very well defined, and can be seen from ground level, if you know where to look. It's a range of rippled hills right by a reservoir, and they define the southern edge of the Mojave desert. If you look at a satellite image of it, it's a very clearly-defined line angling from northwest to southeast, separating the gray-appearing desert from the mountainous areas. And if you let your eyes follow it up to the northwest, you'll see another one that combines with it to form an angle, an arrowhead pointing west--desert inside, mountains out. That upper one's the Garlock fault.

Anyway, as I'm crossing it, and hoping (as I do on each crossing) that this isn't the time that the northern section chooses to throw off the moorings and depart from the southern one, in that cataclysmic phantasmagorical Richter-eight extravaganza that those techtonical illiterates from back east are alway telling us is going to convert Arizona into oceanfront real estate, complete with sand, surf, roller bladers, chain-saw jugglers, and cheezy tee-shirt stands dispensing crude and unamusing apparel, I see three parallel contrails crawling across the cloudless sky. It looks like an improbably large cat is clawing an azure sofa, and slowly releasing the diaphanous white stuffing within. I don't know if it was two aircraft escorting another, or Thunderbirds training, or what, but it's the kind of sight that you'll only see in this part of the country, at least on any kind of regular basis.

Passing through Lancaster, just south of the turnoff for Edwards AFB, I see a billboard advertising the financial benefits to be gained by forming a Nevada corporation. It lauds said advantages with white words on a backdrop featuring the Tetons. Speaking as someone who actually has a Nevada corporation domiciled in Wyoming, in the shadow of those same mountains, I know that they're nowhere near Nevada, and haven't been since at least the Mesozoic period, when Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. Certainly it was long before state personal or corporate income taxes were of concern to anyone--it was a feature of modern life, like asteroid avoidance, that the thunder lizards never mastered. Anyway, it doesn't quite constitute fraud, but it's certainly misleading.

As I drive past the town of Mojave, I glance over at the airport to estimate the current health of the airline industry. It isn't good. There are many more planes parked there than usual, dozens of them with US Air paint on them.

Forget Janes, forget forecasts from The Teal Group, forget all the cooked numbers coming out of the airlines trying to keep their stock from tanking. If you want to know what's going on in the business, just drive up to Mojave, which, it turns out, is one of the places where airplanes go to die, or at least to be mothballed, when there is insufficient demand from the leasing companies for them. The desert climate there is good for preserving aircraft, at minimum storage costs, until demand picks up again. So the Mojave fleet size ebbs and flows in an inverse relationship to air travel levels, and right now it is huge. Thank you, Norm Mineta.

As I get onto 395 north, which will take me all the way to Reno, and head past China Lake, I realize that the car isn't as bad as I'd feared that it would be. It seems to be able to pass, if not quickly, and doesn't seem unhappy cruising at 70+, though the speedometer maxes out at 85, and it sounds like all of the squirrels are running in their cages under the hood at such a speed that their frantic little legs are just a blur.

I pull over at Coso Junction for gas, and a rest stop. Gas is outrageous, compared to LA--at least forty cents a gallon higher. In the restroom, there are not just one, but two dispensers of the traditional prophylactics. Just insert three quarters, push-in, pull-out, click-clack (there's something symbolic about the very act of purchasing one), find a willing pelvic affiliate, and relatively-safe connubial bliss can be had for anywhere from three minutes to an hour or two, depending on skill level and endurance. Is that a bargain, or what? What a country.

And truck-stop toilets carry a variety that can never be found at your local Rite Aid--you have to get out on the open highway for them, out into the Real America, Red Country, where the people voted for Bush by wide margins. You can get a lubricated one, a ribbed one, a Glow-In-The-Dark one, one of seemingly every color in the spectrum (all of them garish), one with a multitude of tiny knobs on it that will have her (or him, if you're bent that way) Screaming For More, an ultra-thin one for Extra Sensation, and one that comes with its own spermicide, just in case you're concerned (as well you should be if you buy one in a place like this) about tiny sperm-sized leaks.

There doesn't seem to be any way to combine the features, though. What I really wanted was a lubricated, ultra-thin, glow-in-the-dark, passionate pink one with little knobs in between the ribs, but it wasn't to be had, for six bits or any other price.

I think that the truck stop of the future, if it's a future worth living in, will have a little nanoassembler on the wall above the urinal, into which you'll punch the specifications, and then insert your three quarters, upon which, using the restroom's fragrant hydrocarbon-rich air as the construction materials, it will quickly fabricate some sort of diamondoid-reinforced thingy that will not only adorn itself in living, swirling phosphorescent colors, but will also feature a dynamic surface texture that alternately converts dimples to bumps and back in sympathetic rhythm with the amorous exertions of its wearer. If your personal or social hygiene is sufficiently pathetic such as to preclude a conjugal companion, it will have sufficient power, strength, and dexterity to provide you with groinal solace all by itself.

And for an extra twenty five cents and three minutes, it'll build you a partner of your gender choice. And only fifty dollars more to make him/her/it interested in you.

The whole experience, as usual, returned my mind to pondering the question that has flummoxed mankind throughout the ages--just what is it that they dispense in women's restrooms?

Heading north, I pass Owens Lake, or what used to be Owens Lake, before Mulholland appropriated the water out of it and shipped it down to LA. They say that the Owens Valley used to be lush and green--a riparian paradise in which huge flocks of waterfowl blackened the skies, you couldn't walk in a straight line across the meadows, they were so thick with all the deer and antelope playing, and the lion lay down with the lamb. I suspect that it's a little exaggerated.

But the dry lake bed is a little depressing, if eerily beautiful, and the dust sometimes blows off it all the way down to Ridgecrest, where residents sometimes have to wear painter's masks when the winds are intense to keep the abrasive particles out of their lungs and nasal passages. There was recently a deal cut to have LA leave enough water to at least keep the lake bed moist, but it wasn't obvious how well it was working.

The whole thing to me is a testament to the insanity of California water policies and politics, in which we subsidize farmers to grow rice in deserts while draining natural estuaries and overcharging the cities. Got markets? Not here.

Further north, the high Sierra come into view--the snow pack seems low for late February.

Mt. Whitney is the highest point in the lower forty eight, and it's only sixty or so miles, as the buzzard flies, from its peak to Badwater in Death Valley--the lowest point. It's hard to pick the mountain out unless you're familiar with the profile, because there are other, lower peaks that are closer, and appear to be higher than Whitney itself. Pulling into Lone Pine, in the shadow of Whitney, the mountains temporarily disappear behind the butt-ugly Alabama Hills. If I were in charge of the Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce, I'd start up a fund to level them, so that the mountains could be seen from the road up to Whitney Portal, which starts in town. As it is, there's little to visually motivate one to head up the highway.

I continue to head up the Owens Valley, past the ruins of the old Nisei internment camp at Manzanar, just south of Independence, through Big Pine and Bishop. North of Bishop, the road climbs up into the mountains, toward Mammoth and the east portal to Yosemite. Up at eight thousand feet, I'm in the pines, and there's snow on the ground, but the road is clear.

[To be continued]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:55 AM