News without the bullshytt
This is my semi-annual plug for The Christian Science Monitor news website. If you are thinking this news has a religious bias of some kind, you are mistaken. It is the most dead-neutral news source I have found. They typically delay a day before reporting, and avoid the distortions, "spin" and "hype" that plague the other news services.
In a close second place would be Reuters web site. |
Back Injuries
i broke down and saw a Dr. today about my back .... it's been 5 weeks and i used to get over injuries in 3 days .... he tested this and that and decided (1) 90% sure it's not a disk problem and (2) 100% sure there is no nerve damage ... it's a muscle tear and what made it bad is i re-injured it while it was trying to heal itself.
so .... use the cane as necessary, stretch a bunch every day and if i am not bouncing in a month, call him.
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Motors, Generators, etc.
the topic of generators came up again, so i decided to crank out some numbers, based on John's 6.5kW rated (continuous) generator.
- motor/generator efficiency is typically 80% (0.8)
- i assume the 6.5kW is actual power available at the generator electrical outlets.
- 6.5kW = 8.7HP generator output. this means you can drive electric motors (pumps, etc) that total 8.7 × 0.8 = 7HP, which is plenty for normal household usage.
- oil weight is 5W30 for cold winter starting
- the generator consumes .73 gallons of gasoline per hour, running at 50% power output (it has a speed controller that automatically regulates output, based on demand) . this number is very consistent with the number from Mike's generator data (8kW = 0.88 gals/ hour at 50% power).
- house probably needs some electrical re-wiring to get the generator output line into the oil burner line.
- feeding gasoline into this thing, to me, is the biggest pain ... during the recent major ice storm, most gas stations in this area were shut down. even if gas is available, it takes 15gals / day to run this thing ... doable, but not convenient.
- still a generator is the best option for these power crisis.... runs oil burner, sump pump, water heater (intermittently), refrigerator, pellet stove, a few lights ... get a small propane camp stove for cooking.
- John's 6.6kW generator (made in winsonsin, purchased locally at aubuchon) was $800. Mike's 8.5kW generator was $1000 .... looks like $125 / kW (continuous output).
- i didn't actually buy one yet, but ...Link to sales page
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...however... i did buy this ...
this gizmo will lift stuff above the garage easily...
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What's the problem with "kids" today ? |
Today
I made it to the train on time (though the train itself was late) and I got into the office ahead of everyone else (except the kook who get's in at 8am!).
Worked for a bit, then our 15 minute meeting (that only lasted 1 hour) and then slid into lunch (which I brought!).
Now I'm doing some research (surfing the web) and listening to the hum of an office: copy machine, a/c, murmured chatter and the clickety clack of random keyboards.
Everyone keeps warning of a huge ice storm coming in the next few days, so we'll see about that 5 days in the office thing.
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Olden Days
The train system broke down, so I decided to walk the 15 miles to work, despite the ice storm (governor declared a state of emergency, the whimp) and a severe case of the flu. Got there at 6AM and most everyone was already on their 2nd pot of coffee. They fired Freddie who showed up late (at 8AM) for his lame excuse: his pregnant wife had twins last night at home.
The computers were down again, so we broke out the slide rules and carried on the good battle despite that we worked by candlelight and had to wear insulated gloves to fight off the frostbite (no heat due to power outage).
The weather prediction is for 50F tonight, so we all decided to sleep in at the office, live off vending machine candy and some stale chinese food Bernie (who died last year) left in his desk and melt the roof ice for water while we hover under the radiant heat of a full moon to keep warm.
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i'll skip the details about the melamine food poisoning epidemic that is radiating out of china.
at this point you should not be eating food products from china (snickers, some starbucks coffee, M&M's, some nestle products.... the list is long).
food products are NOT labeled with country of origin ... you must read the numbers shown below the barcode !!
the first 3 digits in the barcodes for chinese food products range from 690 thru 695.
for reference, i checked a bunch of food packages we bought locally and found none of the to have 690-695 bar codes. but we should continue to be vigilant for the next 12 months as china businesses continue to sell melamine-laced goods that they have warehoused.
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Other Barcodes...
00 - 13 USA & CANADA
30 - 37 FRANCE
40 - 44 GERMANY
49 - JAPAN
50 - UK
57 - Denmark
64 - Finland
76 - Switzerland and Lienchtenstein
471 - Taiwan
480 - Phillipines
628 - Saudi-Arabien
629 - United Arab Emirates
740 to 745 - Central America
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Jan.07.2009
Shooting Rubberbands
found out yesterday that i will be running a Jr Engineers Club at the middle school, starting tomorrow ! so i whipped up a good little experiment to start with, about shooting rubberbands. |
My First Day at High School
i remember now why i always had an ax to grind with mom .... my first day at high school is why.
i had gone to catholic elementary schools (they beat the shytt out of us for laughs) and ...
hey... let me digress on that point for a moment ....
this is true or strike me dead.... one day an announcement came over the loud speakers that the principal (sister micheal) was coming around to each class to hit every boy in the school with a ruler. why? you ask .... because something happened in the school yard (that i never found out what it was) and she decided the solution was to hit every boy in the school across the knuckles with a wooden ruler... and she did.
(this of course explains much about my opinion of religions and religious "leaders")
my parents loved me but they were clueless.
anyway... i negotiated very hard (and won!!) to go to a public high school. not just any run of the mill high school ... Brooklyn Technical HS.
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that summer i was rockin and rollin ... until the first day of public school.
my mother (threatening to send me to a catholic school) made me wear a tie and this dipshytt red cardigan sweater with little shapes running around the f^%$#$ collar.... it sucked so bad.
i took the train across brooklyn (i'm not quite 13) and missed the stop ... got off and ran around the williamburg section of brooklyn (the minefield of evil) until i found the school ... ran up to room 5E2 (fifth floor, east wing, room2) ... Mr. Balsam was the home room teacher ... i am 15 minutes late... i open the door (dressed in my ever-so-darling outfit) to a room full of ugly faces (who were dressed in jeans and work shirts !!) and a pissed off old guy teacher, and slithered into a seat (next to a kid who would become a good high school friend, Virg Marino).
to this day i have never forgiven mom for making me wear that outfit to public school.
the rest of my high school life (and teenage years) sucked as well.... and i have always felt my teenage life sucked because i got off on the wrong foot wearing that dipshytt outfit the first day of high school.
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Dave Avery, retarded engineer
obviously my brain flow is over on the nostalgic side tonight....
back at aerojet i worked for a guy who worked for a guy named Dave Avery .... he was aerojet's senior electronics engineer, and whatever electronics you wanted aerojet to build, dave had to sign off on.
one thing led to another and i got to talking one day to dave.
in high school (because of bad grades) dave was tested and classified legally retarded.... so he dropped out, joined the army and did whatever crap the army need retarded people to do.
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for some reason that i have forgotten, he took an army aptitude test, and his scores pegged the dials on the high end and they asked him to do that again .... and he did.
his explanation to me (i didn't ask because he was my bosses boss ! ) was that electronics was the only thing that ever made sense to him .... he did not understand how anything else in the world worked.
i often remind myself of dave, when i think of my students .... somewhere in there is a genius i need to find. |
George
thanks to our neighbor george, i have discovered the best possible way for me to spend $25 every time it snows....
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Jan.11.2009 -
new router table
took most of a day, and 3 trips to the hardware store, but here it is with my router attached.
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 Edyta dropped in again today
she's getting to be a real nuisance... this time she wanted me to take her picture with my camera collection... what could i say.
it's a decent shot but she came out slightly overexposed.
nice cameras, huh?
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Mr. Rogers
mike posted a note on his website about Mr. Rogers.
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here is another posting about the guy.
after years and years of living, i gotta tell you (laugh all you want)...... Mr. Rogers is the Great American Hero..... it's peculiar that it took me so long to realize this.
jungle = we kill each other
civilization = we take care of each other
The Batman vs Mr. Rogers
For a lot of male-oriented reasons, The Batman is my 2nd favorite comic hero (behind Wesley Dodds, the Sandman). Batman, who disguises himself as Bruce Wayne,
has made a personal committment of his life to "fighting crime", and he devotes all he has to do that.
That committment, in and of itself, makes him a great hero .... he puts everything he has on the line for his dream of peace and safety for everyone in his city (Gotham). If you have read the Batman stories over the last 20 years (since Frank Miller wrote the classic, The Dark Knight Returns) you know the high personal prices he has paid over and over again to deliver law and safety to his city.
But ... the Batman does not actually fight crime .... he fights criminals ... he fights the symptoms of a disease, and not its root causes. Batman's role in society is to bring evil people to justice after the fact. The stories of how he does that are very heroic and exciting tales, which of course is why I love those stories.
But, in truth, the Batman comes to town too late, and his "War on Crime" must inevitably go on forever and he can never really win that war, because no-one in his world is facing the root causes that create and re-create criminals every generation.
Then again, there was (the very real) Fred Rogers. Kind, gentle, boring, passive Mr. Rogers. A whimp by anyone's standards, and not anything like the classic American or comic book heroes.
Fred Rogers however did what the Batman, with all his powers and weapons, cannot do .... Mr. Rogers fought some of the root causes of crime in America. He was a most un-glamorous person in his life, for sure, and the rewards of all his work are inevitably invisible and immeasurable, because no-one can ever measure all the crime and hateful acts that will not happen because Fred Rogers saved the souls of countless kids.
In the endless (generation after generation after generation) world of American crime and violence, we desperately needed Fred Rogers a hell of a lot more than we ever needed The Batman, but most of us were too blinded by our distorted idea of "heroism" to see that.
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Jan.14.2009
from the London Telegraph ....
Shipping rates hit zero as trade sinks
Freight rates for containers shipped from Asia to Europe have fallen to zero for the first time since records began, underscoring the dramatic collapse in trade since the world economy buckled in October.
They have already hit zero," said Charles de Trenck, a broker at Transport Trackers in Hong Kong. "We have seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia-Europe is an unmitÂigated disaster."
let that sink in for a few minutes.
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from the NY Times (Jan.09)...
The nation lost 524,000 jobs in December, reflecting a pervasive fear among employers that if they fail to shed workers quickly their companies may go under in a recession poised to become the worst since the 1930s.
.... the so-called total unemployment rate swelled to 13.5 percent, from 12.6 percent in November and just 8.7 percent at the start of the recession. Total unemployment includes the officially unemployed, the part-timers who seek more hours and the nearly 300,000 who would like a job but tell pollsters from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that they are too discouraged to look.
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Spinach Whole Wheat Pasta
on a dare, i once ate a bowl of rubberbands that were sautee'd in a mixture of used engine oil, sawdust and poison ivy .... little did i imagine at the time that someone would ever sell the stuff in a supermarket.
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New Generator
we got one, 5500W continuous output. gonna start it up first warm day (pull start, gas engine).
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Creature of Habit
this robin drops by the front yard at mid-day and sits in the little tree for about 30 minutes. sits ... sits ... sits by itself (while the other birds flock in waves to the bird feeders we put out) .... it sits quietly alone in its own tree, letting the other birds eat all the bird seed.
and every now and then it simply reaches up and grabs a berry off a branch, eats it, sits a while, grabs another berry to eat and sits some more... has the entire treeload of berries quietly to itself.
then it flies off and returns the next day for another peaceful lunch.
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my high school aeronautics teachers used to say ...."any landing you walk away from is a good landing".
word is that everyone on this plane was safely rescued.
the plane hit a flock of geese, blew an engine and ditched in the hudson river. the image here shows passengers standing on the wing waiting for help.
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Surviving a plane crash....
...the truth about most airplane accidents is that people do survive. In fact, according to the US government, 95.7 percent of the passengers involved in aviation accidents make it out alive. That's right. When the National Transportation Safety Board studied accidents between 1983 and 2000 involving 53,487 passengers, they found that 51,207 survived. That's 95.7 percent.
To-do's ...
First, sit within five rows of any exit. One British safety expert reviewed seating plans in more than 100 crashes and interviewed nearly 2,000 passengers. He concluded that five rows is the cut-off for getting out of a burning plane. Beyond that range, your chances of survival are much lower. People in aisles seats have higher survival rates than people in window seats.
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Second, pay attention to the safety briefing and develop your Plan A and Plan B in the event of an emergency. Count the number of rows to your nearest exit and your backup.
Third, focus on your action plan during the first three minutes of flight and the last eight minutes. That's when around 80 percent of accidents happen. In other words, before takeoff and landing, don't take off your shoes; don't put on a face mask to sleep; and don't wear earphones.
Fourth, relax. Your chances of dying on your next flight are one in 60 million. That means you could fly every day for the next 160,000 years and enjoy the peanuts without a problem. |
The Last Trolley in Brooklyn
When I was 10 (1955), we moved from the Prospect Park neighborhood of Brooklyn to Coney Island. I was in the middle of the fourth grade, and my parents decided to let me finish out the year back at my old school (Holy Name School). The trip took about an hour, including standing on a street corner waiting for the trolley (this is not a school bus and I recall walking a long way to the trolley stop.)
That was the McDonald Avenue trolley, and it was the last trolley line to run in Brooklyn and the cars are now in various museums.
The McDonald Ave trolly was the last running line from 1916 - 10/31/1956. These tracks were the original Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad tracks 1875 - 1916 and shared by the LIRR from 1885 - 1899 to eastern Long Island. The tracks were also used to deliver new subway equipment to the Ave X subway shop until the 1980s but the right of way has been used for vehicular traffic since the 1960s. The original tracks are STILL under the asphalt.
The trolley tracks often ran below the elevated train tracks.
Our neighbor at the time, Harry Hoffman, told me of the olden days when people shot rabbits from the trolleys. After Brooklyn got civilized (smirk) they banned shooting (rabbits) while riding public transportation.
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Jan.18.2009
more snow today... and i notice the frontyard robin is out there (it's 7:30AM), and the baby cardinal is having breakfast at the feeder.
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mike and i will skip our sunday breakfast today .... it's too sucky out there to dirve around. |
George of the Bungle
(from CBS News website ...)
(CBS) President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush's final approval rating at 22 percent.
Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.
Mr. Bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago.
The rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to CBS News polling.
Recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than Mr. Bush. His father George H.W. Bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while Jimmy Carter's rating was 44 percent.
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Harry Truman had previously had the lowest end-of-term approval at 32 percent, as measured by Gallup.
In November 2008, just before the presidential election, only 20 percent approved of the job he was doing as president - the lowest of any president since Gallup began asking the question in 1938.
But Mr. Bush enjoyed a high approval rating of 90 percent -- the highest of any president -- following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. (my comment: he bungled his enormous popularity and turned it into a disaster.)
Half of all Americans, when they look back on Mr. Bush's eight years in office, believe he has been a poor president. Thirty-three percent think he has been an average president. Twelve percent say he has been a good president, and only 5 percent say he has been a very good president.
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In time, they will forget ... or simply not care...
history, i should say, the readers of history will remember Mr. Bush with the kindness of human memory, which attenuates the bad and highlights the good. also .... why would anyone in the future give a shytt that GWB was a %$#@$% ? .... truth be told, no-one will care, much like we don't care that President ##### was a disaster back in his day.
we (Americans) don't read history anyway, and when we do read it we tell ourselves "these are new times and we have new solutions and history is irrelevant today".
sure it is, buddy, but it is irrelevant simply because you are too stupid and stubborn to learn new things from past experiences.
then again, why should i really care what history thinks of Mr. Bush? except that i wish that people were smarter than we are, and were willing to learn more than we are, and that we thought beyond the confines of their microscopic lives more than we do.
i wish the world was better than it is, but it can't be because we are not nearly as intelligent as we should be. we still kill each other but call ourselves civilized simply because we don't actually eat our victims.
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Why we are (and will always be) kept stupid
because stupid sheep are easy to herd and manipulate. whereas intelligent, educated, informed people are impossible to control.
much better to keep the lot of us uneducated and herdable.
which is why people in power do not care to pour tax money into education in the US, and why the sorry lot of the masses are too uneducated to figure this out.
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Colors
people with basically no brain capacity see the world in black and white. somewhat wiser people see the world in shades of grey. wiser people see the world in colors. even wiser people see colors and all the textures of things .... the wisest people see the world like none of the rest of us can see it.
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The retail price of printer ink now comes to $8,000 per gallon !
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Check out the new
WhiteHouse Website
.... tons of hot info, and you can send the new Pres. a message.
(I just told him what to do about Israel.)
PS: i'm wondering if you looked close enough at the picture over there on the left.)
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Posters
i stumbled into clark photo labs website. they have a scheme where you upload images, click a "make poster" button and it runs through some algorythm to whip out a poster of the size you choose..... cost me $15 for a 16X20 (which will be in the mail soon ..... neat!) ... below is the screencap.... (here is the original set of photos)
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went crazy and ordered a poster of our hilton head 2007 pictures too ...(here is the original set of photos)
there's no stopping me now...
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couldn't forget the grandkids (circa 2000)...
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Jan.23.2008
President Obama and The Oath of Office
from the ABA website....
President Barack Obama hesitated as he took the oath of office today.
According to an Associated Press account, Obama paused as he was repeating the 35-word oath administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. "Roberts helped him over the brief awkward moment, repeating a few words to get Obama back on track," AP says.
But in its live coverage after the inauguration ceremony, Diane Sawyer of ABC News said Roberts had slightly changed the order of the oath's words, prompting the hesitation by Obama.
NBC News agrees with its competing network. "Chief Justice John Roberts, using no notes, flubbed his lines, and Obama knew it," its story says.
The oath is supposed to read: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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Instead, Roberts said the words: "that I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully," putting "faithfully" at the end of the phrase, and substituting the word "to" for "of."
from a follow-up ABA report....
Because he got one word out of sequence when taking the oath of office during his inauguration yesterday, President Barack Obama took it again tonight out of an "abundance of caution," his legal counsel says.
Putting to rest a potential issue that has ignited intense interest among readers of ABAJournal.com over the past two days, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. visited the White House tonight and administered the oath to Obama a second time in the Map Room there at 7:35 p.m. ET, reports ABC News in its Political Punch blog.
After donning his robe, Roberts asked Obama if he was ready to take the oath. "I am," Obama replied, "and we're going to do it very slowly."
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Gloves
i get the "Russell's for Men" catalog in the mail. this is not the shytt you find in macy's, jcpenney or sears .... this is serious guys stuff.... leather, brass, wood, pointed objects, sharp edges.
- rambo knife: $50 (mud facepaint extra)
- dynamite: $10 / stick (requires optional safety goggles)
- leather bound WWII squadron 96 airborne flight log: $125 (sold at staples as a 3-ring binder for $19.95)
- 10# bag of plastic explosive and users manual: $1000 (life insurance not available, no refunds)
- infrared night binoculars: $350 (worth every penny if your neighbors do naughty stuff at night ..... camera attachment: $750)
- Savile row "walking stick": $195 (i paid $30 for my genuine imported British gentleman's weldwood cane)
- "cell lithium twin-task light": $47.95 (aka "pocket flashlight" available anywhere at $9.95)
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but.... my personal favorite ....
why?... because often while i'm driving i need to switch quickly from my driving gloves to my shooting gloves (because some %^$#&*@ is driving like a jerk and needs my immediate guidance)..... now, with these gloves on, all i need to is grab my gun, roll down the window and start expressing my opinion, one pellet at a time.
the gloves are a bargain at $79.95 / pair (pellet gun with vibration stabilizer, silencer and night-driving scope : $750)
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Deb will like this movie clip... (so will you) ...
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Slatterys Italian Wine Night
had a good time, and as usual they served so much wine, you couldn't drink it all. the crowd was about ½ size (bad economy i guess), so it was quieter and we all had a great time. pat was showing off her ipod touch .... tempting but it has no SD card slot (???).... doesnt make sense to me.
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 i am buttonizing my desktop, which is already pretty clean and uncluttered, but .... why not?.... and i generally dont like drop-down menus and i forget what the little panel icons mean (with no text), so i programmed a bunch of buttons to my Tcl toolbar.
think of the the damage i can now do with one button:
"exec cd /; exec sudo rm *.*"
i can already feel my life changing.
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New Poster / Disney (circa 1988?)
(here are the original photos)
jees..... my kids are close to the age i was in these pictures !!
that picture in the center with debbie waving is close to my alltime favorite snapshot ... she walked in front of the camera (i was shooting the building) and waves "hi there".
the extra person in the diner photo is D's friend heidi.
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my guess would be about 901.861 miles, give or take 15 feet (roundoff error).
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Cosi finisce gennaio!
("So ends January.")
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The Year 2009 (Brown Cow or Ox) is the 4706th Chinese year. The Chinese believe that the first king of China was the Yellow King (he was not the first emperor of China). The Yellow King became king in 2697 B.C., therefore China will enter the 4706th year on February 4th, 2009. Also, the Chinese Year uses the cycle of 60 Stem-Branch counting systems and the Brown Cow is the 26th Stem-Branch in the cycle. Since 4705 = (60 *78) + 26, therefore this Brown Cow Year is the 4706th Chinese Year. (i gotta ask ...where'd the 78 come from?)
Just in case you were wondering (i actually wasn't until i stumbled upon this info) .... January's zodiak sign is Capricorn. 
