Shareholder's meeting... When we bought our new home here in Paradise, we also bought some shares in the irrigation water company that provides our pressurized irrigation water. A few weeks ago the fellow that runs alfalfa on our south field stopped by and let me know that he was running for a seat on the Board of the irrigation company, and that he'd really appreciate my attending the upcoming shareholder's meeting and voting for him. I listened to why he wanted to get that Board seat, and I liked what I heard – so I agreed to show up and vote for him.
Last night (way past my bedtime!) was the shareholder's meeting. It was a much more interesting experience than I expected it to be. About 50 people showed up. These are all people who live in or around Paradise, so that's actually a substantial fraction of the total population! Most of them have known each other for many years, and of course most of them attend church together in one of the (four) local LDS wards. This made for a lively and congenial meeting.
The meeting's process was recognizable to anyone familiar with formal shareholder or Board meetings – but really just barely recognizable. The President struggled mightily to stay on track and make sure the right stuff got into the minutes, but it wasn't easy for him. The audience of shareholders was, I think, largely ignorant of the formalities beyond making and seconding a motion. Much of the business was approved by acclamation (a show of hands, absence of opposition) instead of by actual vote. The only actual votes came toward the end of the meeting, when new Board members were being selected. There were four openings, but only two of them had multiple nominees. To vote, the Board handed out blank Post-It notes, and we scribbled our name, the number of shares we were voting, and the name of the candidate we were voting for. Then they retired to another room to tote up the vote and check the share count. It wasn't exactly the procedure you'd see in even a small public company :) But it worked. The four new Board members were duly elected and welcomed on board. The fellow I came to vote for won his seat, much to his delight.
On my short drive home, I reflected on how this Board meeting illustrated the differences between the culture here in Paradise and where we used to live in Southern California. I can't imagine this short, cheerful meeting with it's loose attention to formality ever working in California – not even in the relatively small community of Jamul that we were part of. The closest experience I have to compare it with was a couple of meetings held in Jamul to discuss the (then proposed) Jamul Indian Casino. That was a much larger room full of people who were mainly strangers to one another. There was much mistrust and suspicion, and little shyness about openly voicing it. Absolutely nothing was accomplished, other than a couple of local politicians being able to get their statements in the paper. We left much unhappier than we arrived. Here, by contrast, several contentious issues were discussed in a friendly manner, solutions proposed, courses of action agreed upon, and everyone left with smiles on their faces (and, most of them, with a donut in their hands). It was part social event, part business, and 100% effective.
I love this place!
Friday, March 27, 2015
Barn and house progress...
Barn and house progress... Painters arrived yesterday to start painting my new office on the second floor of the barn. They're planning to finish today, and the tile installers will be here next Monday and Tuesday to put the floor down (wood-look tile). With any luck at all, the construction guys will show up later next week to put in the baseboard and trim (windows and door). After that, it's all up to me: I need to put up an electrical subpanel for the second floor, then wire power and lights in the office (and some lighting in the upstairs storage as well). I also need to install some ducting and a fan so that I can use the heated air from the first floor to keep the office temperatures from dipping below freezing. In two or three weeks, I may be able to start moving my computer, etc. into the new office. Woo hoo!
Yesterday I took delivery of my band saw – a 17" monster from Grizzly. It came in a wooden crate on a pallet, which I was able to drive right to it's location in the woodshop with the tractor. Very convenient, that was.
Yesterday we also got a big furniture delivery, one we've been waiting for with bated breath. The shipment included our dining room table and chairs, a dresser and chest for our bedroom, and a dresser and end table for the guest bedroom. They're all beautiful pieces. I'll post some photos after it gets light enough to take them...
Yesterday I took delivery of my band saw – a 17" monster from Grizzly. It came in a wooden crate on a pallet, which I was able to drive right to it's location in the woodshop with the tractor. Very convenient, that was.
Yesterday we also got a big furniture delivery, one we've been waiting for with bated breath. The shipment included our dining room table and chairs, a dresser and chest for our bedroom, and a dresser and end table for the guest bedroom. They're all beautiful pieces. I'll post some photos after it gets light enough to take them...
We can all be angels now...
We can all be angels now... Angel investors, that is. If I'm reading this correctly (and you'd be totally fair to doubt that!), the SEC just decided that crowdfunding companies can peddle equity to the masses. In other words, companies sites like Kickstarter can now offer stock (or, presumably, instruments like options or warrants) to anyone who signs up to help fund them. Previously they've been limited to offering product, swag, or smiley faces.
It will be fascinating to see what happens with this. It's sort of the next stage after the reforms starting in the '70s have made the stock market more accessible to ordinary people unsophisticated in the art of equity investing...
It will be fascinating to see what happens with this. It's sort of the next stage after the reforms starting in the '70s have made the stock market more accessible to ordinary people unsophisticated in the art of equity investing...
Thursday, March 26, 2015
A startling statistic...
A startling statistic... While reading a largely unrelated article this morning, I came across this statistic:
I couldn't find any authoritative data on that question, but I did find several sources that dramatically cited increased arrest rates (250% to 600%, depending on who you want to believe) starting in the late '60s and early '70s – right when I reached that age. That immediately led me to suspect the war on drugs, so I went looking for data on that, and I found it.
Of the over 11 million arrests last year, 13% were directly for drug abuse. Note that this data is for arrests, not people. Some people were arrested multiple times in the year. What's not uncovered by this data is how many of the other crimes related to drugs in some way (generally by users desperate to come up with the money for another high-priced dose of illegal drugs). The dramatic increases in other crimes coincident with the war on drugs suggests that the related crime rates are very high indeed.
That same report gives the overall arrest rate as 3.7% of inhabitants per year. Even if you figure a very high average number of arrests – say, 2 per arrested person per year – that works out to more than 1% of the population being arrested every year. That's really hard for me to wrap my brain around, given how few people I know with an arrest record.
Maybe half my friends are hiding something...
Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23...Do you find that as startling as I did? I've only known a few people who have ever been arrested, and several of those are not even American. Are the arrest rates much higher today than when I was in my early 20s?
I couldn't find any authoritative data on that question, but I did find several sources that dramatically cited increased arrest rates (250% to 600%, depending on who you want to believe) starting in the late '60s and early '70s – right when I reached that age. That immediately led me to suspect the war on drugs, so I went looking for data on that, and I found it.
Of the over 11 million arrests last year, 13% were directly for drug abuse. Note that this data is for arrests, not people. Some people were arrested multiple times in the year. What's not uncovered by this data is how many of the other crimes related to drugs in some way (generally by users desperate to come up with the money for another high-priced dose of illegal drugs). The dramatic increases in other crimes coincident with the war on drugs suggests that the related crime rates are very high indeed.
That same report gives the overall arrest rate as 3.7% of inhabitants per year. Even if you figure a very high average number of arrests – say, 2 per arrested person per year – that works out to more than 1% of the population being arrested every year. That's really hard for me to wrap my brain around, given how few people I know with an arrest record.
Maybe half my friends are hiding something...
No obligation whatsoever...
No obligation whatsoever... Much of what passes for politics these days reminds me of the vacuity of celebrity culture (i.e., the dominant culture in the U.S.). A great example of this: the U.S. – Chinese “announcement” of CO2 reductions. Delingpole summarizes nicely...
The reason for our oil shortage...
A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.
Well, there's a very simple answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our oil is located in:
Alaska, California, Coastal Florida, Coastal Louisiana, Coastal Alabama, Coastal Mississippi, Coastal Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas
Our dipstick is located in the White House!
Any Questions?
No? Didn't think So.
Barn progress...
The model I have uses a four-row spiral carbide cutter head, which is new to me. All the planers I've ever used had tool steel cutter blades; this one uses lots of little square carbide “chips” like the one shown at right. These chips are just over 1/2" square, and can be rotated (“indexed”) to used any one of the four sides as the cutting edge. Wood run through this planer has a subtle pattern showing in the planed face, just barely visible but definitely “feelable”. A couple of passes with 400 grit sandpaper and it's gone, though. This seems a very small price to pay for all the advantages: no sharpening (yay!), easy (and inexpensive) “blade” replacement, and no subtle alignment or calibration issues.
The painters will be here today to paint my office and the baseboard for Debbie's agility court. Hopefully the tile floor will go into my office early next week...
JavaScript has won the browser...
JavaScript has won the browser... You may have thought it had already won, but there was still Google's Dart trying hard to supplant JavaScript as a native browser scripting, or at the very least to supplement it. But now Google has announced that it's giving up. As a language, Dart will live on – but only as a version that compiles to JavaScript. That's the end. There's no other credible effort to replace JavaScript.
There are probably not all that many old farts still around who remember the other half dozen or so scripting languages that have tried to take on JavaScript. The one that made the most traction was Microsoft's Visual Basic, unless you count their JavaScript variant (JScript) as a separate language.
I think having a standard browser scripting language – even if it's only a de facto standard – is a very good thing indeed. It feels a bit overdue, as if the railroads had just now agreed on a standard track gauge, or pipe manufacturers had just agreed on standard diameters and threads. Browser scripting language was already almost at that point – but there was this behemoth out there (Google) declaring their intention to upset that particular apple cart.
No more. JavaScript has won...
There are probably not all that many old farts still around who remember the other half dozen or so scripting languages that have tried to take on JavaScript. The one that made the most traction was Microsoft's Visual Basic, unless you count their JavaScript variant (JScript) as a separate language.
I think having a standard browser scripting language – even if it's only a de facto standard – is a very good thing indeed. It feels a bit overdue, as if the railroads had just now agreed on a standard track gauge, or pipe manufacturers had just agreed on standard diameters and threads. Browser scripting language was already almost at that point – but there was this behemoth out there (Google) declaring their intention to upset that particular apple cart.
No more. JavaScript has won...
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Barn progress...
Early in the afternoon I had some excitement: my planer arrived! I spent the rest of the day removing it from its wooden crate, getting it onto the floor, and starting to assemble it. It's a kit, of course, just like all the other tools I've purchased. It's another beast of a machine – almost 700 pounds of steel and cast iron. The manual was packed inside a cardboard box, which in turn was inside the planer itself. I wrestled the planer off the pallet it was shipped on, onto the barn's concrete floor. That was challenging to do by myself, because of the weight, but I didn't see any safe place to lift it with the tractor. After I got it onto the floor (and rested for a bit), I unscrewed the side panel on the planer, pulled out the box, opened it, got the manual, and started reading about unpacking and assembly. First thing it says: lift the planer off the pallet with a fork lift, using the built in extensible lifting bars. Dang it! The manual is available online; I could have read it before I even uncrated the machine. Next time I get a heavy machine in here, that's exactly what I'm going to do...
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
“The promise of America...”
We thought Mo'i was really bad at catching food...
I hate it when that happens!
I hate it when that happens! Bug report: “ restarting squid results in deleting all files in hard-drive (rm -rf /*)”.
It happen if you try to stop or restart squid on Red Hat Linux 6 – and it's reproducible...
It happen if you try to stop or restart squid on Red Hat Linux 6 – and it's reproducible...
Monday, March 23, 2015
Barn progress...
Barn progress... First off I finished all the lighting in the workshop: fifteen 100 watt bulbs. It's nice and bright in there! Then I got the dust collection system and the table saw wired up today, and tested – both worked great (though they make a lot of noise!). I also assembled and tested the compound miter saw; it also worked great.
My builder showed up today to make the “hatch” doors. He made them out of foam panels with aluminum covers – strong, lightweight, and very good at keeping out the cold air. Finally, this evening the drywall guys showed up to finish the last of the work on my office. It's now all ready to paint. Progress!
My builder showed up today to make the “hatch” doors. He made them out of foam panels with aluminum covers – strong, lightweight, and very good at keeping out the cold air. Finally, this evening the drywall guys showed up to finish the last of the work on my office. It's now all ready to paint. Progress!
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Question from a reader...
Question from a reader... Do I still think that going paperless on my personal finances is a good idea?
Answer: oh, hell yes! I've now got nearly 300 documents scanned, stored, and indexed. It takes very little effort to do this – less effort, in fact, than storing them in a file cabinet with any sort of organization. Best of all, still, is the fact that I can search them just like I can google the web. I find myself now routinely referring to receipts and other records, where before I did so only as an absolute last resort – because it meant manually searching through piles of paper. Another benefit I hadn't really appreciated before actually doing this: my records are now all backed up offsite, into the cloud...
Answer: oh, hell yes! I've now got nearly 300 documents scanned, stored, and indexed. It takes very little effort to do this – less effort, in fact, than storing them in a file cabinet with any sort of organization. Best of all, still, is the fact that I can search them just like I can google the web. I find myself now routinely referring to receipts and other records, where before I did so only as an absolute last resort – because it meant manually searching through piles of paper. Another benefit I hadn't really appreciated before actually doing this: my records are now all backed up offsite, into the cloud...
Early morning light...
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