The Roof Project: Panels and Roof - Oh My!

Chris and his boys were here bright and early this morning, guiding the delivery of our roofing panels.  The truck they came on was a 45' tractor-trailer, and it couldn't make it around the corners and up the hills to our house.  The driver parked over a quarter mile away, and hauled five bundles of metal panels up, one at a time, with a three-wheeled (and amazingly maneuverable) forklift.  All arrived without incident.  Whew!

Then the roofers went right to work.  By the time they knocked off work tonight, they had finished more than half of one end of our house, including one of the dormer vents and our gas furnace vent.  It looks great!

Today was one of the hottest days we've had this summer – it hit 96°F, with the humidity as high as 28% (it got drier as the day progressed).  Chris and his two boys were just covered in sweat, from working on a hot roof in direct sunlight all day.  I know I wouldn't survive something like that – yikes!

Here are a few more snaps of the work they did during the day today...

Warning Labels...

Oh, yes.  If only the lamestream media really did use these warning labels...

Makes me wonder how hard it would be to do something like this automatically on the web.  For instance, one could imagine a plugin for Firefox that looked on the web to see if there were blog posts related to a news story you were reading, and warn you if the content were disputed.  Or something that tried to find Snopes articles related to what you were reading about.  Hmmm...

When Soldiers Come Home...

Get the kleenex before clicking on “play”...

The Roof Project: We've Got Dormers!

Chris (our roofing contractor) and the boys came by yesterday and started mounting the dormer vents.  They were worried about the rain, and we thought they'd decided not to put them up – but when I came home from work, there were 7 (of 12) dormer vents, installed!

Progress...

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi...

Not what you're thinking.  Put your morning beverage down before reading further.  Via my mom:

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi are on the same stage in Yankee Stadium in front of a huge crowd.

The Pope leans towards Mrs. Pelosi and said, "Do you know that with one little wave of my hand I can make every person in this crowd go wild with joy? This joy will not be a momentary display, but will go deep into their hearts and they'll forever speak of this day and rejoice!"

Pelosi replied, "I seriously doubt that with one little wave of your hand? Show me!"

So the Pope backhanded the bitch...

...and the crowd went wild!

Tell me the truth: wouldn't you pay good money to see this? And wouldn't you forever speak of that day and rejoice?

Uncle Sam, VC...

Why centralized big government is bad, the venture capital edition...

Tea Party Thoughts...

Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe have an interesting piece in today's WSJ.  This caught my eye:

While the tea party is not a formal political party, local networks across the nation have moved beyond protests and turned to more practical matters of political accountability. Already, particularly in Republican primaries, fed-up Americans are turning out at the polls to vote out the big spenders. They are supporting candidates who have signed the Contract From America, a statement of policy principles generated online by hundreds of thousands of grass-roots activists.

Published in April, the Contract amounts to a tea party "seal of approval." It demands fiscal policies that limit government, restrain spending, promote market reforms in health care—and oppose ObamaCare, tax hikes and cap-and-trade restrictions that will kill job creation and stunt economic growth. Candidates who have signed the Contract—including Marco Rubio in Florida, Mike Lee in Utah and Tim Scott in South Carolina—have defeated Republican big spenders in primary elections all across the nation.

I'm not the first to observe this: the Tea Party, taken as a whole, seems to be animated by a mixture of libertarian and conservative philosophy, perhaps leaning toward the latter.  Some things about it remind me strongly of Heinlein's libertarian manifesto The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  It's going to be quite interesting to see how much the Tea Party does (or doesn't) influence November's results...

Wrinkly Moon...

Cassini, the robot explorer that has been orbiting Saturn now since December 2004, is still going strong.  It's most recent accomplishment was a close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.  On this flyby it was looking closely at the “tiger stripes” where jets of water are erupting from the surface.  In the raw photo at right, you can see the “wrinkles” on Enceladus' icy surface.

The annual cost of the Cassini mission (which has done real science in orbit around Saturn for nearly six years) is less than the cost of the ammonia pumps on the ISS (which does absolutely nothing for science except suck money into a black hole).

Just sayin'...

Cool Technology Animations...

I want to see more like these...

Is This the Kind of America We Want?

Paul Hsieh asks.

Ground Zero Mosque...

Several readers have written me, wondering why I'm not weighing in on this.  Basically it's because I have little to contribute to the discussion – it seems pretty clear to me.  The WSJ has an editorial today that's very close to my position, which I can sum up like this:

1. The developer (Feisal Abdul Rauf) has every legal right to develop the property that he owns, so long as he obeys all the relevant regulation.  From everything that I've read, Cordoba House would obey all existing regulations.
   
   
2. Developing that mosque right next to 9/11 Ground Zero would be a very insensitive and obnoxious thing to do.  We're still free to do that in America, though in the name of political correctness those rights are eroding every day.  As others have often pointed out, freedom of speech (which placing the mosque at Ground Zero is a form of) implies that you're going to offend someone – otherwise it wouldn't need to be protected at all.

So while I really hate the idea of that mosque going up, even more I hate the idea of the government curtailing our freedoms.

And I think Gret Gutfield has the right idea.  Now that's an American idea for dealing with the issue!

On That Oracle vs. Google Suit...

Lots of information from someone who appears to be unusually well-informed about the subject...

Best Card Trick Evah!

I'm pretty sure it's the best I've ever seen...

If You Can Type, You Can Make a Movie...

That's the promise of this site.  Haven't tried it myself yet...

ClimateGate: New Study on Temperature Proxies...

...and it says, basically, they're BS.  See here and here for analysis; the study itself is here (PDF).

Now if we could only get governments to stop behaving as though the science were settled...

John Cleese on Creativity...

Interesting talk:

Where Does Everybody Live?

This surprised me.  Click to enlarge, and study it for a little while – I'll bet you'll find some surprises too...

Get Paid to Start a Company!

Check it out.

Chaparral Morning...

This morning's dog walk marks the first time this summer that I've been able to see my old friend Orion in the early morning.  Head, shoulders, and belt were all clearly visible above the northeast horizon.

Orion is the first constellation I learned to recognize, and it's still the one I can spot most easily (probably because the belt is so easy to spot).  For the next 4 or 5 months, he will be prominent in our early morning sky...

Update: the New Roof...

Here's a snapshot of the fascia and soffits going up on our house.  The drip edge that sticks out a little isn't quite finished yet – there are gutters going underneath that before it's all done.  I don't have any “before” photos, but trust me – this is far more attractive than the old fascia-and-rafters.

At left is a close-up of one of the grills in the soffits.  These are spaced quite closely together (about three feet), much closer together than the now-hidden vents under the eaves.  They're made by a combination of punching and stamping, exposing small slots along side each punched area – too small for embers to get in, and very strong.  Because there are so many of these grills, we're expecting that there will be no significant restriction in the airflow.  When our roof is hot, the warm air in the attic will rise and flow out of the dormer vents (yet to be installed), and relatively cool air will flow in through these grills (and the pre-existing under-the-eaves vents).  This should produce much more airflow than our old roof, and will hopefully keep the temperatures down below the typical 170°F we've seen in the attic during the summer...