Morning smile...

Morning smile...

Water in my ear...

Water in my ear...  Tuesday evening, after I took a shower, I had water stuck in my right ear.  No matter what I did that water would just not come out.  Yesterday morning it was still there, and it was starting to hurt – just a little, but enough to make me worry about an infection.  My hearing was affected, too.  So around noon yesterday I headed for the Intermountain Instacare facility in downtown Logan, about 20 minutes from home.

This is the same place we went for Debbie's really bad cough about a week and a half ago.  We got amazingly fast and good service then, so I was hopeful the same might happen for me this time.  When I walked in, there were exactly zero people in the waiting room.  Three clerks at the desk were busy with paperwork and phone calls, but as I walked up to the desk one of them greeted me cheerfully and instructed me to fill out a little sticker (with my name, address, and complaint) and to hand it to one particular clerk.  I did that in about 30 seconds, and the clerk found me in their computer and had me all written up in about another 60 seconds.  I had to electronically sign a couple of forms (a liability release form included, of course), and then she told me to sit down and wait for my name to be called.  She said the wait would be no more than 15 minutes.

So I sat down, popped the top off my iPad, and tapped on “Kindle” to continue reading a book I'd started.  Before the Kindle app could even start up, a nurse stuck her head out a door and hollered my name.  Four minutes after I walked in the door, I was sitting down and having my vitals taken.  Two more minutes and a doctor was examining me.  It took him about 10 seconds to figure out what was wrong: a plug of ear wax had nestled deep within my ear canal, and it needed to be removed.

A pair of nurses went to work on me immediately.  They had me lay on my side, bad ear up, and then filled it to the brim with a chemical solution designed to soften the ear wax.  I had to lay there for about 15 minutes for the stuff to work.  Then they sat me up and squirted warm water in my ear to flush out the junk.  They had a gadget that was sort of like a water pistol with a short hose on it.  It worked – in short order all the bits of ear wax they'd espied had been removed, and I could hear normally again – the water that had been plugged up was gone, and the pain was also gone.

The doctor came back in to double check the results, and I was able to have a good discussion with him about why this might have occurred.  The entire experience was darned near optimal – fast, efficient, pleasant people at every step, and no problems at all getting all the information I wanted.  Thirty two minutes after I walked in the door, I walked out.  Back in San Diego, had I attempted the same thing, I'd still be at the filling-out-paperwork stage!

I love this place...

Mist on the field...

Mist on the field...  I took the photo at right (click to embiggen) just a few minutes ago, standing under our pine trees and looking to the southwest, over our south field.  We had a little bit of rain this morning (maybe a quarter inch), and it's 100% relative humidity.  When the rain stopped, the water that had soaked into the top inch or so of relatively warm soil started to evaporate – but in the high humidity and colder air just above the soil, it quickly condensed back out to make this “fog” swirling above the field.  We see this general thing quite often here...

“To infinity and beyond!”

“To infinity and beyond!”  Diane and Bill Oblock have retired – great for them, tragic for us.  Why?  Because they owned our favorite local bakery (Crumb Brothers), and now they're closed.  Here's the statement they left on their web site:

Dear Friends,

We have recently announced the closing of Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread and Cafe effective March 28.

With respect to the 13 wonderful years at Crumb Brothers, plus our great fortune to share our love of food and books with the community since 1988, we are ready to close our last chapter as business owners. We remain passionate about our love of good food, great books and fine company. But we are now committed to turning our passions toward a more private domain and relishing often-neglected relationships with friends and family.

We have bought the proverbial sailboat to set off on new adventures. Only our sailboat is a new (wonderful) SUV and our adventures largely land-based! Mostly we are retiring from business in order to: stay home, travel a bit, enjoy friends, relish this community and look for new ways to express our commitment to a sustainable lifestyle.

We cannot thank you all enough for supporting us in our business ventures. We love this community. Now onto the next chapter...

"To Infinity and Beyond."

Love,
Diane and Bill

We have no idea where we'll get our gluten fix from now on.  No more wonderful bread, nor pear Danish, or Croque Monsieur.  Pardon me while I resume my crying jag...

Drill press and table saw...

Drill press and table saw ... now with photos!  At right is my drill press, all assembled, placed, aligned, calibrated, and tested.  It's a variable speed machine (250 - 3,000 RPM) that uses a variable diameter pulley for speed adjustment.  On low speeds that means more torque, which is exactly what I'll need for large holes in hardwood.

The table saw (at left) is also a very nice piece of machinery.  It's a long, long way from the 10" Craftsman saw that a friend and I owned back in the '70s.  Note the very wide table (55" on the right) that lets me cut the full width of a sheet of plywood or MDF, the solid steel tubing to connect the dust collection vacuum hose to the blade guard, and the outfeed table to hold longer pieces of work cut lengthwise.  I've only made a few test cuts so far, but it's easy to tell that I'm going to enjoy using this thing.  It's got a 3 HP motor, which is quite large for such a relatively small saw – it's hard to imagine what I could do to stall the blade.

There are a couple of features that really stood out to me, aside from the generally good build and finish.  One is the fence (far right).  It moves smooth as silk when you raise the red handle, then locks solidly in place when you push the handle down – without moving at all.  None of that takes much force.  Then note the two magnified cursors (one for work to the left of the fence, one for work on the right).  The fence can be used on either side of the blade, thanks to the very long fence rails.  Then (at near right) there's the blade guard.  It's made from several pieces of molded polycarbonate (shatter resistant) all cleverly hinged to keep the blade area enclosed as much as possible – no matter what the thickness of the work or the height of the blade is.  It's ever so much better than the cheap single piece of soft plastic used on that old Craftsman...

Developer survey...

Developer survey...  Doug S. (friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything) sent me a pointer to an interesting survey by StackOverflow.  It's full of interesting tidbits.  The one shown at right was the biggest surprise for me: 42% of all developers responding said they were self-taught!  I've known quite a few developer who were, like myself, self-taught – but it's certainly not two fifths of them.  It's probably more like a tenth.  This makes me wonder what's going on here.  Is my personal experience at odds with norms?  Or is the StackOverflow site more used by self-educated developers?

Something I found amusing: the most dreaded language or technology was Salesforce.com...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  Lot of stuff happening yesterday – I was busy all day, and very tired by the end of the day :)  The remaining parts for my table saw showed up, and I finished assembling it.  It's now all ready to go to work!  My drill press also was delivered yesterday, and I assembled that as well.  It came as a kit, but the head (the big part on top with the motor on it) was mostly assembled.  That thing weighs about 250 lbs, and was way too heavy for me to lift by myself – so I used the forklift on my tractor again.  I lashing it up to the forks with ropes, then just hoisted it up and dropped it onto the column.  I'm really starting to like hydraulics :)

When you need to bang on something, it's really hard to beat an old-fashioned anvil.  I got a 165 pound steel anvil (Ridgid) with a machined flat top, much like the one shown at left.  It came by truck on the smallest pallet I've ever seen – so small that I couldn't get both forks under it at the same time, even when they were adjusted to be touching each other!  I got it into the shop by balancing it delicately on one forklift fork.

Shortly after I set it down, some of my neighbor's kids came over, wanting to look at the barn.  They're fascinated by the machinery, and stop by two or three times a week to see how things are coming along.  Yesterday, though, it was the anvil that captured their attention.  I showed them how you can flatten a piece of copper wire on the anvil, and for the next two hours, three of them took turns flattening every piece of scrap copper wire they could find lying on my barn floor (this is all left over from the still-in-progress wiring work).  None of them could wield even my smallest hammer in one hand, even though the oldest boy looks plenty strong enough.  I think they just don't have much experience with hand tools...

IPv4 address market takes off...

IPv4 address market takes off...  It took a little longer than the IPv6 advocates predicted, but it looks like it's finally happening – unused IPv4 addresses are getting so scarce that companies are willing to pay good money for them.  Willing buyers, willing sellers, and a little exchange of cash ... and you've got a market!

This is exactly the sort of thing...

This is exactly the sort of thing ... that led to the NSA abuses that Snowden revealed.  This time it's in the area of computer security, and may well lead to less secure computers for all of us.

Government: is there anything it can't screw up?

Democrats hold a massive rally for Hillary...

Democrats hold a massive rally for Hillary...  Via my lovely bride :)

Obama: can he do anything right?

Obama: can he do anything right?  No.  But Romney can...

Taxes done...

Taxes done...  But I'm still mad, and I'll be madder yet next week when I have to post those damn big checks.  Grrrr!!!

tax and spend politicians
tar
feathers
high velocity lead
tree
rope
some assembly required!

Alcohol or marijuana?

Alcohol or marijuana?  A pediatrician considers which he'd rather his children used.  A worthwhile read, especially for anyone who still thinks marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol.

A few years ago a friend asked me what provoked my advocacy for decriminalizing drugs.  He was puzzled by it, as he knew that I wasn't a user of any illegal drugs.  I had to think about it for a while, but realized it was the conjunction of these things:

• My increasing awareness over time of the irrationality of many political decisions, resulting in policies that were indefensible on any rational basis.  The U.S. drug policy fits quite nicely into that category.
• My reading of history, which led to the (then surprising to me) discovery that for most of U.S. history there were no illegal drugs.  We survived anyway.
• My growing circle of friends and colleagues, many of whom I discovered were regular users of illegal drugs (most commonly marijuana, but also including LSD, peyote, cocaine, etc.).  My own experiences with these people showed me that the drugs didn't destroy their intellect or their ambition, nor were they addicted any more than I am to Cabernet.  On the other hand, I've known several people whose lives were utterly destroyed by their alcoholism.
• My solidifying libertarian position on personal freedom.  I take the simple position that personal behavior that does not harm others should not be outlawed.  Personal use of so-called “recreational drugs” (including alcohol) usually doesn't harm others – but even when it does, the harmful behavior should be outlawed, not the drug use.  For the most part, that is exactly how we regulate alcohol use today.
• My growing understanding of the systemic damage caused by the war on drugs, which I've written about many times before.

Add all that up, and you've got the source of my advocacy...

A stunning measure of change...

A stunning measure of change...  The graph at right shows the result of a relatively simple calculation: for each plotted year, it shows the percentage of market capitalization represented by intangible assets, for all the companies on the S&P 500 list.  To make this calculation, the authors simply subtracted the companies' tangible assets from their market caps; these are both readily available numbers straight from the companies' quarterly reports.

In the thirty years since 1975, those intangible assets have gone from around 17% of market cap to over 80% of market cap.  What does this mean?  Well, let's make up an example.  Suppose that in 1975, the market cap of an S&P 500 component company was $1B.  If it was an average company, about $830m of that value would be in the form of tangible assets: cash, buildings, equipment, etc.  But the same company in 2015, with the same $1B market cap, would have only about $160m in tangible assets.  What's the rest of the value?  It's those intangible things, mainly an expectation of growth because of the intellectual property value held by the company.

This reflects the enormous shift in American (and worldwide) industry in the information age.  Much of the value of a company is now in the designs that it has made, code that it has written, patents that it owns, and expertise that it possesses – intangible assets that are the drivers for future growth.  Some of the value is simply in market expectations – Amazon and Apple are two good examples of this phenomenon.

The more I think about the changes documented in this graph, the more it sinks in just how profoundly our world has been changed by IT...

You'd be well-advised...

You'd be well-advised ... to stay far away from me today.  Especially if you're a politician, or anything even remotely close to that.  Why?  Today I start on my tax return.  That's guaranteed to get me thinking about things like politicians, waterboarding, high velocity lead, rope, branding irons, and so forth, in various pleasing combinations.

It will wear off in a month or two, but I'll resurrect this emotional state on election day...

The SETI folks are excited...

The SETI folks are excited...  Radio astronomers are observing fast radio bursts with discrete steps in their dispersion function that are hard to explain by natural mechanisms.  In other words, they look like something produced by an intelligent being.  There's some definite suspicion that the signals are man-made, though: the discrete steps are awfully close to round numbers of seconds.  Since seconds are an entirely arbitrary measure of time used by humans on Earth, it seems unlikely that an alien source would come up with the same thing...

We missed this...

We missed this ... though he must have passed right by our home (it's pretty hard to get out of Paradise without passing by our home!).  We don't know David Smith...

Moonlight in Paradise...

Moonlight in Paradise...  I woke up around 3 am this morning, and took our old field spaniel (Mo'i) outside for a walk.  We didn't need any lights this morning – the full moon was very bright.  Subjectively it was amongst the brightest moonlit nights I've ever experienced.  I could easily see the color of virtually all objects within my sight when the moon was at my back.  Certain colors (like orange) were vivid.  Others (green, blue) were unsaturated but clearly visible.  I could see, easily, Mo'i's brown fur against the green grass. 

We walked an extra couple of passes around the yard just to enjoy it...

Barn progress...

Barn progress...  Yesterday was a day of drudgery – I installed lights in Debbie's agility arena all day long.  Nine lights down, six to go – I should finish easily today...

Top 12 science April Fool's pranks from 2015...

Top 12 science April Fool's pranks from 2015...  Lots of geekly fun here!