Weekend Activities...

I spent this weekend engaged in three very different activities: programming, gardening, and our ongoing war against ants. Somehow these three things blended and meshed in a way that was quite...comfortable.

At my job recently I've been working on making our SNMP-based discovery more efficient and much smarter. This weekend I implemented a kind of filtering that can reduce the amount of data we gather, transmit, and process by a factor of hundreds. The idea is simple: only gather the stuff we actually need. Implementing it was considerably more challenging, as it required making our “probe” (the piece of software that actually does the SNMP querying) much smarter than it has ever been before. I got it all working, and tested at home – a very satisfying accomplishment...

On Saturday afternoon, Debbie gave me a ride down to Rancho Jamul Auto Care to pick up my truck (we'd left it there Friday afternoon for routine maintenance). Dave took my $48 (about a fifth of what Toyota of El Cajon charges for the same maintenance) and returned my truck in tip-top shape. Then Debbie and I stopped at Simpson's nursery and picked up some supplies, a couple small pots of blue fescue (very decorative in pots on our patio) – and a couple five-gallon potted Cape Honeysuckles. We were looking for some handsome plants, something on the order of five feet tall and about the same width, to place in pots along our home's north-facing wall bordering our patio. We looked in the tree section in vain, and were about to give up when we spotted these Cape Honeysuckles growing in pots right by the trunk of an enormous old pepper tree (and therefore mostly shaded). These things had obviously been there a while, as they had huge roots growing out of the pots into the sandy soil beneath. They were very reasonably priced, so we bought two of them. I covered the exposed roots with wet newspaper and headed home with four-way flashers going, never going more than 25 MPH...

On Sunday morning, bright and early, Debbie and I went to work on the patio. It was already looking very nice, but now it is working on fabulous! First we potted our new Cape Honeysuckles, replacing one dead and one ailing lilac. We trimmed them up, wove a few of the branches into different directions, and voila! – two beautiful (and big!) additions to the patio. Then we went a little crazy, repotting somethings in bigger pots, raising a lot of pots up on log segments (these look really nice, adding some needed three-dimensionality to the plantings), rearranged a lot of things, added soil and mulch to many of the plants, and fertilized some of the wan-looking plants. When we were finished, I could hardly move – I pulled and stretched and over-extended just about every muscle and tendon in my body. But oh, what a nice-looking result! I'll post some pictures during the week...

Finally, the ongoing ant wars. Last weekend I sealed up all the places I could find where ants were sneaking into the kitchen and livingroom. I used nearly an entire tube of silicone caulking, and it was very effective. However, in the kitchen we were still finding ants somehow getting in. We tracked them down to the area of the dishwasher – somewhere behind there they were getting in. So Sunday afternoon I pulled the dishwasher out, and discovered several cracks between the countertop and the cabinets that the ants were using. I also spotted a crude hole in the wallboard, through which the electrical cable for the dishwasher was protruding. A few more cubic inches of silicone, and the ants will use this no more! This morning we found just a few ants in the kitchen, and Debbie spotted their entry point: a teensy little crack in the frame of our bay window. We're taking that as in indication of antly desperation – and I will pop a little silicone on that tonight.

Just another weekend in Jamul!

Cassini's Calculatedly Risky Move...

The Cassini mission to Saturn has been spectacularly successful – thanks to its work, mankind has gained more understanding of Saturn and its moons in the past few years than in all of previous human history. It's been – and continues to be – a great example of the effective scientific work that NASA and its associated teams can do when they aren't distracted (and de-funded) by the relatively useless manned space “exploration” projects such as the International Space Station (ISS).

Cassini finished its prime mission this past June, but its mission has been extended because the spacecraft is still functioning at 100%, and still has fuel. The project team has done a fantastic job of navigating Cassini through the Saturnian system, making dozens of passes by satellites and to interesting perspectives (especially of Saturn's rings). With all the mission's initial objectives behind them, the team can now consider some riskier moves – and that's exactly what they're doing.

The photo above shows one of the most intriguing of Cassini's many discoveries: the “jets” on the Saturnian moon Enceladus – you can see the backlit vapor shooting out roughly roughly the 8 o'clock position. On previous passes by Enceladus (some of them quite close), scientists have learned a great deal about these jets. They appear to emanate from deep cracks in the surface of the moon, and they are primarily comprised of tiny particles of water ice. Now the Cassini team is preparing to make the closest – and riskiest – pass yet: on Monday, August 11th, Cassini will pass a mere 30 miles (50 km) above Enceladus' surface, right through the jets. The main objective for this pass is imagery: all of Cassini's imaging systems will be used to get more information about those deep cracks – hopefully peering down right inside one of them.

On this NASA blog there's a marvelous little video (scroll down toward the bottom) that shows the amazingly complex dance that Cassini will do as it approaches, passes, and flys away from Enceladus. You can see the many maneuvers the spacecraft will be making during this pass, to aim various instruments at the desired targets. All of this will be done autonomously by Cassini – it will all happen so quickly that Cassini will be past and far away from Enceladus by the time the first data arrives back at Earth.

There is lots more good information available at the main Cassini site and on this NASA blog where some Cassini team members are writing about this pass.

Service-now.com On YouTube!

I work for Service-now.com, primarily developing software that does “discovery” – finding out about the existence of any sort of equipment plugged into the network, and then finds out all about it. This software will discover workstations, servers, routers, switches, printers and just about any other kind of device you can imagine.

We're a small company – less than 100 employees worldwide – but we're making a big impact in our world of IT management. One of the ways we're reaching out to prospective customers is in the “new media”, such as YouTube. Here's one of our first YouTube offerings:


YouTube is owned by Google – and Google's technologies are one of the sources of inspiration for our software.

I can't help but think back to the days when I was involved in starting up a company. For example, back in the early '80s, a partner and I founded a company to sell practice management software to optometrists. In those days before YouTube, web sites, or even email, it was very expensive to simply get a message in front of our prospects. Primarily we used direct mail and trade shows. What a difference today's technologies make!

Quote of the Day...

As you may know, not long ago a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day.

John McCain, speaking at a campaign rally today.

RIP, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn...

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's writings – especially The Gulag Archipelago – played a large part in my personal political awakening. Until reading his books in the early '70s, I hadn't really spent much time thinking about political structures and governments. Solzhenitzyn's works brought home the evils of Soviet-style Communism in particular, and liberalism in general, in a manner that I found very persuasive. I re-read The Gulag Archipelago just a few years ago, and found it just as shocking now as it was then.

RIP, Aleksander. The world is a better place for your years here...

Beware Charismatic Politicians...

The indispensable Snopes has verified that this was published as a letter to the editor in the Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch, on July 7, 2008:

Beware Charismatic Men Who Preach 'Change'

Each year I get to celebrate Independence Day twice. On June 30 I celebrate my independence day and on July 4 I celebrate America's. This year is special, because it marks the 40th anniversary of my independence.

On June 30, 1968, I escaped Communist Cuba and a few months later I was in the United States to stay. That I happened to arrive in Richmond on Thanksgiving Day is just part of the story, but I digress.

I've thought a lot about the anniversary this year. The election-year rhetoric has made me think a lot about Cuba and what transpired there. In the late 1950s, most Cubans thought Cuba needed a change, and they were right. So when a young leader came along, every Cuban was at least receptive.

When the young leader spoke eloquently and passionately and denounced the old system, the press fell in love with him. They never questioned who his friends were or what he really believed in. When he said he would help the farmers and the poor and bring free medical care and education to all, everyone followed. When he said he would bring justice and equality to all, everyone said "Praise the Lord." And when the young leader said, "I will be for change and I'll bring you change," everyone yelled, "Viva Fidel!"

But nobody asked about the change, so by the time the executioner's guns went silent the people's guns had been taken away. By the time everyone was equal, they were equally poor, hungry, and oppressed. By the time everyone received their free education it was worth nothing. By the time the press noticed, it was too late, because they were now working for him. By the time the change was finally implemented Cuba had been knocked down a couple of notches to Third-World status. By the time the change was over more than a million people had taken to boats, rafts, and inner tubes. You can call those who made it ashore anywhere else in the world the most fortunate Cubans. And now I'm back to the beginning of my story.

Luckily, we would never fall in America for a young leader who promised change without asking, what change? How will you carry it out? What will it cost America?

Would we?

Manuel Alvarez Jr.
Sandy Hook

Snopes goes on to cite some ways in which Fidel Castro's rise to power didn't resemble Barack Obama's march. But there's enough truth in Mr. Alvarez's observations to give one pause. I'll also add that part of the “game” of politics is candidates without any particular ideology other than to win – and Obama, with all his flip-flopping, certainly seems to be a member of that species of political animal. His positions seem to depend entirely on the latest poll, and not at all on his core ideology (which I suspect he has not a whit of). McCain, on the other hand, seems to be something like a 80/20 mix of ideology and bending in the wind...

Wealth of Nations...

Megan McArdle posted the map at right (along with two other related and equally interesting maps) a couple days ago. Her post is mainly concerned with the indisputable fact that the wealthiest countries are all either part of the English-speaking world (the “Anglosphere”) or are near them.

First a word about this map (which you can click to enlarge): the darker the shade on the map, the more GDP per capita. The latter is a simple calculation: take the total value of all goods and services produced in a country (the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) and divide it by the number of people who live in that country. The scale is not linear – look carefully at the numbers on the legend.

Something else jumped out at me from this map: many of the “high-tension” parts of the world are around places where there are large disparities in GDP per capita: U.S. and Mexico, Israel and its neighbors, Europe and the Balkans, Nepal and China, etc. Is all conflict essentially economic? Or is economic disparity a prerequisite for violent conflict? Or is it just coincidence?

Solar Power Breakthrough?

Just a couple of days ago, MIT released a rather breathlessly worded press release proclaiming a new breakthrough technology their scientists had discovered – promising cheap, efficient solar power for everyone within 10 years. It's as bad a distortion of the scientists' accomplishments as you might see from a technology company self-adoring their latest product.

The MIT press release is very misleading – the new technology actually has nothing whatsoever to do with solar power, though it could certainly be used in solar power systems. And the new technology isn't ready to go to market; it's only been shown in a lab, and the vast majority of such “lab-ware” fails somewhere along the line between the lab and production. Nonetheless, there are some good reasons to be optimistic about this particular technology – from the descriptions released it seems quite simple and inherently cheap. But I wouldn't place any bets on it quite yet – many risks loom between here and your Solapower 2G5 on the shelves at Walmart…

What does their new technology actually do? Well, at the simplest level it provides an easy and efficient way to split ordinary water into hydrogen and oxygen gas (remember H2O – two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in every water molecule). Once you have separate supplies of hydrogen and oxygen gas, you can recombine them into water, generating electricity in the process. With a system including the new water-splitter, some tanks, and a fuel cell (along with a few technical details I'm ignoring), you can put electricity into it now, and take electricity out of it later. That's the same thing a battery does – but this system is far more scalable (meaning that it can store much more power) and potentially far less expensive. Not to mention that it should be much more reliable.

So what does that have to do with solar power? Well, the dirty little secret of the solar power industry is that they have no reasonable way to power your house at night. Actually, it's far worse than that: even in the land of the sun where I live (Southern California), on a summer day we'd only get 8 - 10 hours of power, and only 6 - 8 in the winter. You can add batteries to your system, and more solar panels, to get 24x7 power – but only at huge costs, both initially and ongoing, as batteries only last 3 - 5 years.

Just last summer I calculated what it would cost for me to take my home completely off the electrical grid, relying only on solar power. The answer: approximately $220,000 initial investment, and about $35,000 per year in battery replacement costs. Of that cost, only $42,000 was the solar panels themselves (and their associated cleaning and pointing systems).

MIT's new technology has the potential to reduce that storage problem to something much more manageable. It seems at least possible that a storage system based on this new technology, large enough to power my home for a few days, might be built for $10,000 to $20,000 in the not-too-distant future. In that sense, this technology is indeed a potential breakthrough for practicable solar power.

It's also useful for a myriad of other purposes, including large-scale commercial power storage to smooth out power demands – something that we have no practicable way to do today. In the area where I live, daytime demand for power (because of air conditioning) can be over 50% higher than nighttime demand. Right now, with no storage capability, we have to have power plants capable of supplying the peak power demand. If you added large scale power storage to the grid, then excess power generated at night (when demand is low) can be stored for use the next day (when demand is high). The net result is that a given set of power plants can handle higher peak power loads.

There's a decent technical description at Popular Mechanics.

Quake!

I'm sure you've heard the news about the earthquake near Los Angeles yesterday – a 5.4 temblor (the big blue square on the map at right). This is a sort of medium-sized earthquake, but the most powerful one we've had since the Northridge quake in the early '90s.

At the time it struck, I was working in my company's offices in Solana Beach, in the building the employees affectionately call the “wooden spaceship” (for its slight resemblence to the disk of Star Trek's Starship Enterprise). From our perspective there were two phases: first a kind of exaggerated rumbling that many of us thought was caused by heavy footsteps, followed in a few seconds by distinct transverse waves (side-to-side motion) large enough to move the building an inch or two. Wooden buildings have a bit of “give” to them, so they move a little more than a steel or concrete building of the same size would. Nobody panicked, or was even truly frightened, but everybody was on alert to see if the quake would get any worse...

We had no damage of any kind in our building, but at that moment we had no idea where the quake's epicenter was. Several of us are very familiar with the USGS earthquake web site for California and Nevada (the source for the picture above). Moments after the shock wave hit us, several people had this site up on their screens. Within a minute or two of the shock hitting us, the initial reports for the quake came in, and the site showed the location and preliminary intensity – quite impressive. Not so many years ago, we'd have had to wait days to get this information, and it wouldn't have been nearly as accurate. For me personally, the news was very comforting: the quake's epicenter was far away from my home. I found out later that Debbie (who was within a few miles of our house when the quake hit) never felt a thing...

Short Takes...

Good for some chuckles and ponders... Sent along by Simon M.:

• Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.

• One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...

• Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

• If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

• The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

• I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

• What if there were no hypothetical questions?

• If a deaf person swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?

• Why do they put braille on the drive-through bank machines?

• If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

• Can vegetarians eat animal crackers?

• If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or naked?

• Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?

• Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

• If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

• What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?

• Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all"?

• Is there another word for synonym?

• If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

• Lenin's tomb is a communist plot.

• If you don't pay your exorcist will you be repossessed?

• Can an atheist get insurance against acts of god?

• If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times, does he become disoriented?

• Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?

• Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?

• Why are hemorrhoids called "hemorrhoids" instead of "assteroids"?

• Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?

• If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

• If you ate both pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry?

• If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too?

• How is it possible to have a "civil" war?

• Does the little mermaid wear an algebra?

• One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.

• What was the best thing before sliced bread?

• How do they get deer to cross the road only at those yellow road signs?

Professional Bull Riders Are Insane...

Last night, I proved this beyond any reasonable doubt. Debbie (my wife) and I traveled to a distant place – the Del Mar race track – to watch a Professional Bull Riders (PBR) competition. After watching forty or fifty of these men attempt to ride a pissed-off bull for eight seconds, I feel completely qualified to render judgment upon their sanity. Conclusion: they have none.

The goal of these bull riders (as best I understand it) is simply to stay on the bull for eight seconds without violating any of the rules. The riders are not allowed to slap the bull with their free hand, and I think there are some other rules as well. They are just sitting on the bull's back, holding onto a rope tied around the bull's chest, just behind its front legs. There's also another rope tied around the bull's body, just in front of its rear legs – I think that rope is there to piss the bull off (that's not hard to do!), encouraging it to spin and buck. If they qualify (by staying on for eight seconds), the riders get up to 50 points for the quality and style of their riding, and up to an additional 50 points for the challenge presented by the bull.

Above right you see the most common outcome: the bull wins, pitching the would-be rider off into the dirt.

The evening started with some patriotic words, a skydiver landing in the ring with a giant American flag streaming behind him, and the singing of our national anthem. There was a lot more patriotic fervor in that stadium than you normally see in people on the street – I suspect this sort of event is most frequently attended by those people who tend to be fervent patriots. It was heart-warming to see this. George Bush and John McCain would have been right at home here; Barack Obama, I'm sure, would have been very uncomfortable...

First we saw the flag, then as the skydiver got closer we could see him as well (and you can see his feet in the photo at right). It was a perfectly still night – great conditions for a stunt like this – and the skydiver was very skilled. He landed smack in the middle of the ring, flag trailing behind him.

As he landed (see photo at left), other people on the field came running to grab the flag before it hit the ground. Seconds after he landed, there were about 15 people surrounding the big flag, stretching it out horizontally at waist height while the national anthem was sung. Then they rolled it up carefully and took it off the field.

I'm sure some people would think this overt display of patriotism rather corny – but I liked it; it reminded me of earlier days when most people thought overt patriotism was normal, and admirable…

My lovely bride naturally had to get properly outfitted before we left for the show. I perched her on my truck's tailgate for this photo (at right) – Debbie in her natural element!

When we first arrived at the race track, Debbie was drawn (of course!) to the vendor's booths. Various sorts of items were for sale, things that either were really directly related to bull riding, or which some folks might imagine are. Debbie went straight to the PBR booth; she wanted some official PBR T-shirts.

But the booth operator could only take cash, so we had to go to a portable ATM and withdraw some money. There was a short line there, and immediately in front of us was someone that Debbie recognized immediately: a bull rider named Tony Mendes (see photo at left). We had a silly, brief conversation with him about the probability of the ATM running out of cash, and then a bit about him riding in the competition. At the end of the night, Tony was the winner!

A little later, when we were sitting in the stands waiting for the show to begin, we could see the bull riders off to our left, getting ready for the show. At one point Debbie got quite excited: one of the bull riders took off his shirt briefly, before donning another one. Debbie made me take this photo, which is allegedly for her girlfriend Marsha. I know better!

A woman sitting to our left was even more enthralled with the shirtless bull rider than Debbie was. She was still talking about it when we left...

The actual bull riding events surprised me in one regard: they pay a lot of attention to safety. If you watch them carefully, you can see that there are eight or ten men, each with a particular job, all watching to make sure the bull rider has the best possible chance of emerging from his trial uninjured. There are mounted cowboys with ropes, ready to snag the bull and wrestle him away from the rider. There are people whose entire job is to distract the bull, by throwing hats, waving their arms, and so on. There are three men tending the gate – one to pull it open with a rope, one that acts as a lookout, and one that makes sure the rider isn't crushed between the bull and the gate. Quite elaborate, and, so far as I can tell, quite effective.

During one of the breaks in the bull riding, there was another little piece of entertainment that was, if anything, even crazier than the bull riding! This is something they called “cowboy poker” – wherein four bull riders go sit at a small table in the middle of the ring and pretend they're playing poker. While they're sitting there, an enraged bull is turned loose in the ring. Within a few seconds, the bull is attacking the poker players, with obvious intent to kill.

The objective of this “game” is to be the last man sitting. There was a $500 prize for the winner. You'd have to offer me a lot more than $500 for that to tempt me!

The guy on the ground was uninjured, despite appearances. The table and chairs were completely destroyed. The safety men had quite a time trying to round that bull up and get him off the ring.

I mentioned earlier that Tony Mendes was the champion for the night. He rode twice, qualified both times, and had the highest total score of all the riders. In fact, he was the only bull rider who qualified on both rides. Here he's taking a victory lap around the ring, riding in the saddle but without using the stirrups...

And finally, I'll leave you with a collection of photos capturing the moment that a bull won the contest. Ouch!

Heart-Stopping Geek Experience...

Recently I purchased a Mac “Mini” for my wife. In general I am very pleased with this purchase – the price was right ($800), it reuses components from her old Windows PC (screen, audio, keyboard, and mouse), and it was easier to move her data from her old Windows box to her new Mac Mini than it would have been to migrate to a new Windows computer. And then, of course, she's got OS/X (Leopard) – sleek, beautiful, and zippy – instead of some monstrosity of a Microsoft operating system. Best of all, Debbie (who previously expressed nothing but hatred for her computer) actually likes her new Mac Mini!

But early this morning, as I was attempting to enable file sharing on her new Mac Mini, with a single erroneous click I managed to (temporarily) completely kill it. The steps I took were these: in System Preferences I went to Sharing and added her Mac Mini's hard disk as a shared folder. That worked. Then I noticed that Administrators were granted read only access, and I wanted to limit access to my account – so I removed Administrators from those granted access. Sounds innocent enough, doesn't it?

Any Mac-heads reading this are probably laughing at my expense right now. What I know now, but didn't know then, is that enabling and disabling access to shared folders operates directly on the file system permissions for that folder. Since the “folder” in this case was the entire disk drive, what I did was to remove access permissions for all Administrators from that disk. And Debbie's account is in the Administrator's group. Oops. Suddenly her account had no access to the disk. Nothing worked. I rebooted the system, and all I got was an unadorned dark blue screen with a mouse pointer. I could do nothing whatsoever.

Of course, I figured all this out only later. At the moment it occurred, I didn't have the faintest idea what I'd done. And truth be told, it is kind of dumb for Apple to allow the Sharing settings to affect basic operations that have nothing to do with sharing...

So I started troubleshooting in the usual way. I Googled for information, and very quickly found out about booting from the installation CD and using Disk Utility to repair permissions on the disk. Whew! Sounded easy! So I grabbed the CD, inserted it, restarted the computer, held down the “C” key to force it to boot from the CD, and started it back up.

Nothing. Just the evil blue screen again.

Back to Google, where I discovered that it's common for wireless keyboards (which I was using) to be unable to use the pre-boot key combinations that allow OS/X to boot into troubleshooting, repair, and installation modes. Well, that's fine – I've got several wired keyboards lying about. So I went grubbing for one with a USB connector and dang it, I didn't even have one! All my wired keyboards use the old-fashioned PS2 connector. I really had no choice – I drove 20 miles into town to go buy a new keyboard. At 7:30 in the morning on Sunday, there isn't much choice about where to go. First I tried Target, but all they had was wireless keyboards. Next I drove another 10 miles to Wally-World (Wal-Mart), and they had several to choose from – all much fancier than I actually needed, so I just picked up the cheapest one they had and hurried home...

When I got home, I plugged in the new keyboard and rebooted, holding down the “C” key, and voila! – it booted from the CD. I was saved!

Well, not quite so fast. First I ran Disk Utility, and used it to first repair the disk drive, then to repair permissions. Both of those completed successfully, pronouncing the disk to be in fine fettle. So I rebooted with the hard disk, and … nothing but the blue screen of horribleness...

Back to Google, where after a frustrating marathon session of searching I found nothing but an obscure reference to permissions on mounted volumes. This gave me the clue that finally saved the day. It turns out that for the purposes of sharing, finder, and some other things, mounted disk volumes are exposed to the file system in the /Volumes directory. When I looked in there, I found this:

/Volumes/Macintosh HD

and that object turned out to have no read or execute permissions for the group. This is the sort of thing only someone familiar with Unix command line operation would be comfortable fixing. Just FYI, here's what did the trick:

chmod go+rx /Volumes/Macintosh HD

Just that little magic incantation, and my wife's Mac Mini came back to life.

Whew!

One little side note… If I had failed in my efforts to fix it myself, I'd have been forced to take the busted-ass Mac Mini into the local Apple store. There, I'd have had to sidle up to the “Genius Bar” to have one of the Apple “Geniuses” (generally pimply kids with baggy, falling down trousers and metal studs and rings penetrating various parts of their bodies). The humiliation of this possibility was a far better motivator for me than the thought of the Wrath of Debbie (my wife). It would be like a Toyota engineer being unable to figure out how to change his car's spark plugs, so he pays the neighbor's 14 year old daughter to do it for him. Oh, the humiliation!

I'm so glad I avoided that!

10 Worst Insurance Companies?

The American Association for Justice (formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association) has published a list of the 10 worst insurance companies (in terms of customer abuse). Given the source, this needs to be taken with a big grain of salt. But still, it makes one nervous to see one's insurance company near the top of this particular list...

Bumper Snicker...

The upcoming campaign (McCain vs. Obama) is going to produce a lot of political humor – including the iconic political bumper snickers:

New Tax Nixed!

Residents of the San Diego Rural Fire District voted recently on whether to assess all property owners a new tax ($120/year for homes, other amounts for other kinds of property). The tax was voted down, by a very narrow margin. The votes were weighted according to assessed value of property, but the margin was so small that a single vote could have swung the outcome the other way.

I was against this proposal, for reasons I detailed in this post. I'm glad it failed. Two things particularly bother me, however.

The first is the cost of running the election. When I saw the slick, multi-color pamphlet promoting the new tax (this came with the ballot, and no counter-argument was included), I knew this was an expensive election. Now I know how expensive it was:

The election, which was run by a private firm, Koppel & Gruber Public Finance of San Marcos, cost about $26,000, Nissen said. The district mailed 3,458 ballots. On Wednesday night, two members of the consulting firm and three people from the fire district counted the 1,338 ballots that were returned.

That's money we could have used for actual fire protection. Just to cite one obvious example: we could have cleared a lot of brush around structures for $26,000!

The other issue bothering me is the lack of secrecy in the vote. As the Union-Tribune article says:

At a public hearing before votes were counted Wednesday, several residents said they were upset about the non-secret ballots. They said they feared firefighters wouldn't respond to an emergency at their houses if they voted against the tax measure.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that having firemen count the vote, looking at every ballot, is going to be intimidating to some voters. The most likely result is that some voters who opposed the tax measure would simply not vote – afraid to vote no, unwilling to vote yes.

Shame on the Fire District for (a) wasting taxpayer money on a sham election, and (b) structuring the election to intimidate the voters.

I'd sure like to see reform of our disjoint fire districts along the same lines as the way San Diego County Operations reformed itself decades ago. Governments from around the world come to see our county operations, marveling at its efficiency and service levels (which are, in fact, stellar compared with most governments – though, sadly, not when compared with for-profit businesses). People everywhere marvel at the unrelieved stupidity of our fire protection organizations, and they wonder how many massive firestorms the population will have to endure before they throw the bums out and get a real fire protection organization...

Useless, Self-Beclowning Idiot Harry Reid...

Just ran across this clip, which caused me for the (approximately) 80 millionth time to wonder just what the hell is wrong with the electorate who keeps returning this guy to the Senate:


Rope.
Tree.
Some assembly required.

Faster, please!

Real Estate Resource...

Here's an interesting resource that I just came across: a web site that provides current MLS real estate listings for San Diego County, and also recent closed sales. Looking at the listings and closures nearest to me, and which I have personal knowledge of, it appears to be accurate...

McCain Visits the Intertubes!

Andy Borowitz teases John McCain. The lead:

In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today embarked on an historic first-ever visit to the Internet.

Given that the Arizona Republican had never logged onto the Internet before, advisors acknowledged that his first visit to the World Wide Web was fraught with risk.

But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to "come up with something equally bold for John to do," according to one advisor.

McCain aides said that the senator's journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.

Read the whole thing.

I can't believe I just linked to the Puffington Host!

NASA Images...

Here's yet another fantastic resource appearing on the web: an archive of NASA's imagery. The collection stretches all the way back to NASA's earliest days.

Wandering through this collection this morning triggered all sorts of happy memories for me. I was a young lad during NASA's first years, and I followed the space program with intense interest. Relatively little of it was available on television (the public just wasn't all that interested, and the technology was a bit primitive). Mostly I read news reports, read books, and perused the images in National Geographic. Those were heady days for me, and the few live events that I got to see are vivid memories. The best of them all: watching television in my uncle's basement in the middle of the night when Armstrong and Aldrin landed and walked on the moon (Apollo 11, TV frame at right).

The Ranger project (small satellites aimed at the moon, taking photos until they crashed into the surface) and the Surveyor project (robotic lunar landers that provided the first detailed information about the surface of the moon) were particular interests of mine in the early '60s. I was fascinated by the challenge the engineers faced, using the very best of the day's technology to explore our nearest neighbor in the solar system. It's probably hard for young people today to imagine just how daunting the engineering challenge was. The early robotic missions had very high failure rates. I remember well on the earlier Ranger missions that the little satellites either missed the moon completely, missed their target on the moon, or had failures that prevented them from operating correctly. Only on the last few Ranger missions did the engineer succeed: they hit the moon, they hit their intended target, and the instruments and cameras operated all the way until impact. Today we do amazing things like manuever the Cassini satellite with pinpoint accuracy in its travels around Saturn and visits to its satellites, and put down a Martian lander right where we wanted it – utterly unthinkable feats in the '60s.

If you have any interest at all in space exploration, you'll be amply rewarded by a visit to this site...

Morning Mists...

Those of us privileged to live in Lawson Valley (just east of the town of Jamul) frequently see beautiful mists from a perspective most people don't see very often: from above. We live at a high enough altitude (above 2000 feet) that the coastal “marine layer” tops are well below us. As I drive into work each morning when there is a marine layer, I see it – sometimes right near our home, sometimes not visible until I've driven a few miles toward Jamul.

Once I spot it, I'm in for a real visual treat: cottony white layers of fog, moving at a very slow pace. Often there are very visible “waterfall” formations, apparently formed in slow motion, but looking still or frozen to my eye. Almost always there are mountain tops (as visible near the center horizon in the photo above) that poke out of the “sea” of fog like mountainous islands rising out of some ethereal sea. Eventually I will drive right into this fog, plunging instantly from bright sunshine into gloom and low visibility. Today that transition happened about halfway down the hill on the approach into the town of Jamul down the Skyline Truck Trail.

I love this phenomenon!