Some more attractive high-tension towers...

Some more attractive high-tension towers...  I don't recall ever seeing high-tension towers that were anything other than strictly utilitarian, but here's a collection of apparently real towers that are...

Caught in the act...

Caught in the act...  This doesn't surprise me at all, but it should be a clarifying moment for anyone naive enough to believe that the Attorney General of the United States (Eric Holder) is operating in good faith.  Yesterday his aide accidentally called Congressman Darell Issa's staff and asked for help spinning some more bad news about the IRS.  Issa is currently investigating the IRS.

The Obama administration isn't unique in its corruption; we've had at least a dozen corrupt administrations since George Washington's time.  But it may be the most blatantly corrupt administration, ever.  It's like they're not even trying to hide it any more...

Cool pencil drawings...

Cool pencil drawings...  Click to embiggen.  More here...

Rain in Paradise...

Rain in Paradise...  Yesterday evening I captured this screenshot of our local weather radar (click to embiggen) – rainstorms approaching.  Paradise is where the circle with a cross in it is, northeast of the Great Salt Lake.  By the time I went to sleep, we had lots of black clouds, but it hadn't rained yet.  At 2 am we had a big thunderstorm pass by just to our south, with lots of spectacular lightning and thunder – and then it opened up and poured.  It's been drizzling steadily ever since, with the occasional intense storm cell passing overhead and dumping on is.

Our field to the south, in alfalfa, was just mowed three days ago.  The windrows were tall and fluffy, but when the storm hit they were completely flattened.  I walked out this morning and the nearly-dry hay is now sopping wet.  It's probably going to take a week or more for this to dry out now...

Magic show...

Magic show...  Cute, despite being French.  Via reader Simi L...

Barn: ready for walls...

Barn: ready for walls...  The last concrete cuts were made this morning, and the concrete has been washed and swept off.  All the lumber needed for the four exterior walls has been delivered.  Tomorrow morning, the framing begins!

All about circuits...

All about circuits...  Electronics texts and references...

Time-waster of the day...

Time-waster of the day...  An in-browser two-dimensional gravity simulator.  You can create objects (“particles”) with an optional speed vector, and get them to collide, orbit, etc.

He ate what?

He ate what?  This year's winners in the veterinary X-ray contest.  The X-ray at right shows a tiny toy alien eaten by a kitten...

McIntyre the merciless...

McIntyre the merciless...  The original hide-the-decline...

An ice-leaf...

An ice-leaf...  More here...

2059 Headlines...

2059 Headlines...  Somehow my brother Mark has obtained a copy:

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest Country in the world, Mexifornia, formerly known as California.

White minorities still trying to have English recognized as the third language.

Spotted Owl plague threatens Northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally!  Scientists stumped.

Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica. No other country comes forward to help the beleaguered nation!

Last Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2060.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.

85-year $75.8 billion study: Diet and exercise is the key to weight loss.

Global cooling blamed for citrus crop failure for third consecutive year in Mexifornia and Floruba.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Abortion clinics now available in every High School in United States.

Senate still blocking drilling in ANWR even though gas is selling for 4532 Pesos per liter and gas stations are only open on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules any punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

A Couple Finally Had Sexual Harmony: They had simultaneous Headaches.

Average height of NBA players is now nine feet seven inches with only 5 illegitimate children.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2060.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

Floruba voters still having trouble with voting machines.

He ends on this note:

I love this country! It's the government that scares me! Stop organized crime - re-elect no one.

Friends in Paradise...

Friends in Paradise...  Yesterday evening, two new friends of ours in Paradise (Bruce and June N.) brought me a present: two locally grown melons.  One was an enormous cantaloupe, the other a Crenshaw.  This morning I cut the cantaloupe in half, intending to eat one half and have the other tomorrow – but when I got finished with the first half, I couldn't resist eating the other as well.  It was so good!

So now I'm planning to have the Crenshaw tomorrow.  If it lasts that long :)

Perfect...

Perfect...

Explosive volcanic eruption...

Explosive volcanic eruption ... captured on video.  I sure hope nobody was anywhere near that caldera when this happened...

This is what happens ...

This is what happens ... when you fly a drone right through a fireworks display.  Spectacular!  I'm amazed the drone survived this onslaught, but I'm glad it did. 

The second video (at left) is a nice collection of video clips from drones.  Via my friend Mike B...

Baby hippos are cute!

Baby hippos are cute!  Click to embiggen...

Why is modern art so bad?

Why is modern art so bad?  A call for a return to objective judgment of art quality, instead of today's conspicuous abandonment of it.  Excellent.  I got a good chuckle from the last few seconds of this short...

Right out of Hitler's playbook...

Right out of Hitler's playbook...  Russia has abducted an Estonian military officer, at gunpoint, from Estonian territory.  Typically, the Russians first denied it, then claimed he was a spy on Russian territory – despite ample evidence to the contrary.  The past few days even the lamestream media has been full of speculation that Putin was about to make a move on the Baltic states, most likely Estonia.  Some reports have even speculated that Putin would use (or would threaten the use of) a nuclear weapon.  All very disturbing stuff.

Some of my Estonian friends are extremely worried about recent developments.  They've been getting increasingly worried ever since Putin first went after Crimea, and his actions and words since then have been anything but reassuring.  At least two of my friends have emigrated from Estonia, with their families – in one case leaving a thriving business behind.  I'm worried for them, and the parallels with Hitler's behaviors are increasing my concern.  About the only comforting thing I see is that at least European leaders aren't taking an appeasement course – at least, not yet.  But they aren't reacting with a vigorous defense of Ukraine (neither an EU nor NATO member), and I have to wonder how much more than words they would use to defend Estonia (an EU and NATO member)...

Math beats thieving government tricksters...

Math beats thieving government tricksters...  Ha!  But I'll bet they take away the “Other” button!

Rappel into an erupting volcano?

Rappel into an erupting volcano?  Um, no, not me.  Tempting, but that looks too risky for my taste.  But this guy said “yes!”

Vacationers' complaints...

Vacationers' complaints...  These are allegedly actual complaints by customers of Thomas Cook Vacations.  They're splattered all over the intertubes, but I haven't been able to verify their authenticity.  They sound plausible, though – we've met travelers like these.  We go out of our way to avoid such people...

• "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
• "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."
• "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."
• "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."
• "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."
• "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."
• "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."
• "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."
• "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."
• "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."
• "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."
• "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."
• "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."
• "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."
• "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."
• "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."
• "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
• "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."
• "My fiancee and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.

I thought this was from the Onion at first...

I thought this was from the Onion at first ... but it's for real.  Some folks in San Diego are quite upset about the city passing an ordinance to raise the minimum wage over the next few years.  They're trying get an initiative on the ballot to repeal it.

A challenge for my barn builder...

A challenge for my barn builder...  An Amish community builds a barn – in ten hours!

If you're skeptical about anthropogenic global warming...

If you're skeptical about anthropogenic global warming ... then you'll enjoy this!

Barn: sawing concrete...

Barn: sawing concrete...  Compared with the hectic events of yesterday, today was a very quiet day.  Well, except for the gas-powered concrete saw running for hours at a volume that makes a jet engine seem almost silent.  Before the sawing started, the builders rolled on a second coat of curing sealer.  After waiting a while for that to dry, they broke out the concrete saw.

The point of sawing 2" deep cracks in the concrete is to encourage the inevitable shrinkage cracks to occur in an aesthetically pleasing straight line.  This doesn't always work, but it usually does.  The cracks are harmless, but some people apparently think a jagged crack that wanders randomly across the surface is less attractive than a straight crack.  Go figure.

You can see the little beast of a saw in the photos below, but there's no way for me to share the earth-shaking (literally!) acoustic volume of this thing with you.  The little engine isn't the source of the noise – you can barely hear the engine.  What you do hear, though, is the diamond saw blade cutting through concrete at an incredible pace.  It sounds something like 100 billion pieces of chalk simultaneously drawn across 100 billion chalkboards, only louder.  That would be the diamond chips scraping across the gravel and sand in the concrete.  Through a mechanism I don't understand, the saw also sets up a low-frequency (roughly 5 to 10 Hz) vibration in the concrete.  When you're standing on the concrete with the saw running, it feels like the earth is shaking – and not in a gentle fashion, either.

Toward the end of the day, Ray was running the saw by himself.  That's a bit tricky, as you need to keep the saw running straight while dribbling water on the blade (water both lubricates and cools the blade).  This particular saw had some quirks that made it even trickier: one wheel was “sticky”, and the engine had a propensity for randomly struggling to handle the load.  Sometimes it even stopped.  So I took mercy on Ray and gave him a hand with the part I was competent to do: dribble water on the blade.  They wore out four diamond-coated saw blades doing this work, and there's still a bit more to go.  Ray will return early Monday with a pile o' blades, plus he's planning to tear down and rebuild the carburetor on the saw (he's pretty sure that's why the engine was struggling today).  If that all works, it shouldn't take more than a couple hours on Monday to finish the work.

The frame materials are on order and should be here by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.  At that point the sides start going up.  Woo hoo!

RIP Andrew Kay...

RIP Andrew Kay...  Many, many moons ago I did some work (on a BIOS) for Kaypro, Andrew Kay's company that made some of the early “portable” computers.  I briefly met with him in the process.  The Kaypro II computers weren't laptops, mind you – they were more like pieces of luggage (in fact, some writers called them “luggable”). When I did my work for them, Kaypro was growing so quickly that assembly workers were hired to work outside in the pleasant Solana Beach climate, on picnic tables shaded by awnings.  I did some of my BIOS testing on one such picnic table :)

Today comes word that Andrew Kay has died, at age 95.  I've had no contact with since I did that work in (I believe) 1982, and I had no idea he was still alive.  I remember a few of his stories about a career that was already long and interesting in 1982, when he would have been 63 – roughly my age right now...

Let's hope...

Let's hope...  Those are the first few words of the final sentence of Matt Ridley's piece in today's Wall Street Journal:

Let's hope that the United Nations admits as much on day one of its coming jamboree and asks the delegates to pack up, go home and concentrate on more pressing global problems like war, terror, disease, poverty, habitat loss and the 1.3 billion people with no electricity.

The piece is a good observer's summation of the mess the “pause” in global temperature rise has made of the warmist's shouts of impending doom.  Mr. Ridley himself used to be an advocate for global warming mitigation action.  His views have changed in the face of evidence supporting the skeptics...

“It is a muddle, a murk and a desperate-looking thing...”

“It is a muddle, a murk and a desperate-looking thing...”  Peggy Noonan, on Obama's approach to ISIS, in her piece The World Needs a Clarion.

Beautiful ad...

Beautiful ad...  It's really a salute to our military folks, and only very subtly an ad for Food City.  Nicely done.  Via my CCPOAA mom, who's now home and doing well...

Dead battery bounce...

Dead battery bounce...  Did you know that fresh alkaline batteries won't bounce when dropped onto a hard surface – but dead ones will bounce?  I didn't know that, and that seemed very surprising and unlikely when I first heard it.  But watch this video, and you'll not only see that it's true – you'll also find out why.  Via friend, reader, and former colleague Simon M...

Barn: concrete floor time!

Barn: concrete floor time!  Today was a very busy day on the barn project.  The builder had a big crew in to pour concrete for the pier foundations and the floor, covering the elaborate gravel/foam/heating tubing “layer cake” that they've been working on.  As I write this, the floor is finished except for a layer of curing sealer, which they'll be rolling on in just a little while.

The photos below are in time-of-day order.  The earlier ones are bluish because they were taken before sunrise.

At 6 am I heard a diesel engine rumbling toward where the barn is being built.  When I looked out the window, I could see the concrete pump truck, with its long boom unfurling.  By the time I got my jacket on (it was 42°F outside) and got out to watch the goings-on, the pump was ready to go.  It was controlled by an operator with a belt-mounted remote control that allowed him to set a height for the end of the concrete hose, move it horizontally in any direction, and control the pump's speed. 

Just after 7 am, the first (of six) concrete trucks came rolling up.  This first truckload of concrete was placed with the front-mounted chute, on the south side of the barn.  All the rest of the concrete (55 cubic yards all told) was placed with the pump and boom.  A crew of six went right to work on it.  The first step was to rake approximately the right amount of concrete into place, using a smooth concrete placer.  As soon as that was done for a sizable area, a vibrating power screed (the motorized tool with a long bar on it, visible prominently in the eighth photo.  This tool accomplishes several things: pushing gravel down and raising water and fine sand, vibrating the concrete to move it into place around the tubing and eliminating bubbles, and getting the surface to the correct level (for part of the barn, that's a slight slope for drainage).  It was fun to watch that screed turn the surface from rough to smooth.

After that, the surface was “floated” (with a tool called a float).  This tool achieves a finer level and surface texture than the screed can do.  After that, it was time for the finish work – getting a very smooth finish on the surface.  Around the edges this was done with hand trowels and lots of elbow grease.  Everywhere else it was done with a power trowel (visible in the sixth and seventh pictures from the end).  The result of all this work was a surface so smooth that it actually reflected like a mirror. 

Soon they'll be rolling on the curing sealer, which keeps the water in the concrete so that it cures properly.  After curing, it also helps waterproof the surface.  Tomorrow they'll be sawing expansion joints; these will divide the floor up into quite large “tiles”, six or eight feet on a side.  The main goal of these saw cuts is to encourage the floor to crack where the saw cuts are.  The floor will crack, as the concrete is shrinking slightly as it cures over the next few days.  The trick is to get it to crack in an aesthetically pleasing way :)

Starting Monday, the framing begins.  At that point it should actually start looking like a barn!

Migration patterns...

Migration patterns...  Via friend, reader, and former colleague Simon M., this fascinating interactive map.  Click on any country, and all the other countries in the world become color-coded to show where immigrants to that country come from.  Click again on the same country, and it shows you where emigrants from that country go.  Just clicking around randomly showed up all sorts of patterns that were unexpected to me.  For example, Thailand is one of the top sources of immigrants to Iceland.  Brazilians emigrate in large numbers to Japan.  And over a million Russians emigrated to Germany in 2013!

Imagine...

Imagine ... discovering a secret room in a house you just bought.  Then imagine that secret room had a doorway to a secret tunnel – and that tunnel led to a giant underground city.  That's exactly what happened to this guy!

Joys of home ownership, part 3,885...

Joys of home ownership, part 3,885...  A few weeks ago I discovered that the former owner of our new home in Paradise had built a small outbuilding directly over top of a gas main.  This is a big no-no, as if anything ever went wrong, leaking gas could seep up through the ground and into the building, resulting in a major KABOOM!.  The local gas company (Questar) discovered this when they came out to help me figure out how to run the gas line to my new barn. 

So we've been doing all the paperwork required for them to move the gas line out from under that building.  Naturally this is at our expense.  Most of this involved getting rid of their old easement and creating a new one.  We got that done last week, and today a crew of four guys showed up, with a tiny little backhoe, a larger loader/backhoe, and two trucks full of tools.  They're working right now, digging trenches very carefully around the various gas, water, septic, and electrical lines buried on our property.  The place where they're working is sort of a nexus for all of these, as it's right near the service entrance.  Of course :)

I was curious how they'd shut off the gas so they could cut the main, which is a 2" polyethylene pipe.  Turns out that's trivial: they have a clamping device that squeezes it off tight, like you might pinch a hose to shut off the flow.  The polyethylene pipe is heat-welded – a very simple electric heating device heats both the male pipe end and the female fitting to the melting point, then it's shoved onto the pipe.  That's it!  The molten polyethylene retains enough heat to weld the two together.

Trenching, very carefully

Heating a part before joining

Trenching the easy part

Barn: more heating tubing and some other details...

Barn: more heating tubing and some other details...  There's more work to installing that heating tubing than I had imagined, and the plumbers didn't quite finish yesterday.  It turns out that each heating tube has a limit on how long it can be.  Each of the zones needs multiple heating tubes, between 6 and 10 for each zone (they're different sizes).  To make this work, they run a supply line from the boiler to a distribution manifold that connects to the supply end of each heating tube.  Then the return ends of each heating tube are connected to a collection manifold, which then empties through a return line (where a pump pushes the water through the boiler and back out the supply line).  This morning they'll be finishing up the installation of supply lines, manifolds, and return lines.  This afternoon, when they're done, they'll pressurize the whole system to test it, and an inspector will sign off on it.  We hope!  Then they'll be ready for the concrete tomorrow morning.

Looks like a swimming pool!

A whole mess of tubing

Tubing with foam clip

Completely covered in tubing

One zone's connections

Septic lines cut into the foam

Completed manifold and boiler connection

One of the zone manifolds

Fighting back against medical billing errors...

Fighting back against medical billing errors...  This doctor's story describes the motivation for these errors (which are always in the hospital's favor!) and the difficulties in correcting them.  His bottom line: either get a dual degree in medicine or law, or don't get hurt or sick such that you need a hospital.  If you can't do one of those, you're screwed...

Obama's response to ISIS beheadings...

Obama's response to ISIS beheadings...  Several readers have written to ask why I haven't commented on Obama's reactions to the beheadings of two American journalists by ISIS. 

I just don't have anything to add to the many comments I've made earlier about Obama's incoherent or non-existent foreign policy strategy (either in general, or specific to the Middle East).  He's amply proven himself to be some combination of ignorant, incapable of exercising leadership, timorous, beholden to the progressive narrative, and just plain not too bright.  John Kerry, of all people, has been far more impressive on all the preceding counts.

This is one of those periods when November 2016 seems so very far away...

UVB-76...

UVB-76...  This is weird!