It seems I've grown more hateful in my old age. I used to love
thunderstorms but now they aren't any fun at all since I can't stop
thinking about all the problems they might cause me. Last week one storm
took out the entire phone system at one of our schools. That's $2500 that I
no longer have for computers. Then today the power at our main office was
knocked out for three hours. The only good thing was that the phones were
out too so nobody could call me and believe me on a Monday there were a lot
of people that wanted to call me. Oh, add Mondays to my hate list. Actually
I gauge the week by when Monday ends - on a really bad one that would be
Friday afternoon…

There never is enough time. Before going on vacation there was no time since I was trying to get ready for being gone for a week. During the vacation there were too many fun things to do. Even while driving the new iPhone competed with radio, scenery and conversation. Now that I'm back I've had to catch up with all the things I didn't do last week. And dealing with complains. Lot of unhappy people out there,

But it was a fun Berserker marred only by my lack of hydrogen. Funny, the one thing I planned for in advance was the one thing that didn’t work out. Well, I’m ready for next year since we made up an aluminum keel and six 8’ bags for the new and improved Hidenbag.

My other project, the dam, is going great. Every year I add more stone and every year the spring rains wash away less material. What’s interesting is that more and more vegetation is growing as the water gets deeper. I think that I’ve gone from 2” to almost three feet with the flood gate (large rock) closed. Many thanks to all the people who have helped me haul rocks over the years! Next year I have to put in some kind of water wheel…

This was Nora’s first Berserker and she had a great time – except, perhaps, for the close encounter with the snake (make that the large snake). We were very lucky that the wind kept the bugs down so that we made an extensive exploration of the land that I own uphill from the Sands. The surprise was that the blueberries were ripe. The fact that they were delicious wasn’t as surprising but I had forgotten how much better they were then store bought. One weird thing was that the next day the berries that we hadn’t snarfed down seemed to have more of a reddish color then when we picked them.

It was a lot fun. But now I have to pay and the currency is time.

I’ve been recommending SF books to my good friend Nora for the past six months and have done fairly well so far. I also introduced her to D&D at the same time but it turns out she still has some problems with role playing. We’ll, not with role-playing itself but figuring out how her character should act. It turns out that she had never read any fantasy before I had her read “Color of Magic” (which she liked) so now she is asking what book she can read to get a better feel for how her character should be acting in the game. She is playing a female cleric and I can’t think of a book that is a classical quest novel with a female cleric lead! I know there has to be something out there – anybody got any ideas?

Hmm… it says 13 weeks since the last post. How time flies when you’re having fun and, for the most part I have been having fun. I’m spending a lot of time with Nora which many of you met at Ishercon and am busy trying to indoctrinate her. Currently I have her reading the Flying Sorcerer and watching B5. We are near the start of the third season and I can’t get over how good that show is. It doesn’t have the polished effects of modern movies but I don’t think anyone has done space opera better (including ST and SW). Oh Alice, Nora loved Bridge of Birds but there was a little beverage incident so I would be in the market for another copy…

This week we are going to have another rocket launch at one of our charter schools. It will be hard to top last year when we had perfect weather and great media coverage. Every rocket flew and was recovered (almost always intact) but I will be surprised if we are as lucky this year. For one thing the wind has been non-stop which is great for wind farms but bad if you trying to recover rockets. We are also allowing the student who went through the program last year to build bigger rockets. One group is building two stage flying discs and the other is building “D” engine powered rockets. If there wind doesn’t let up the latter may well end up in the nearby airport…

Flowers are cautiously coming out of the ground and blooming so I’m sure spring just around the corner. It’s still chilly in the mornings though and the trees aren’t taking any chances. My neighbor is lobbying heavily for me to do something with the curb lawn but I think it’s just cool to see the neat flowers bloom. Don’t really know what they are but they are small and mostly purple. Then there are clumps of tulips all over the place which will probably wait a week or two before blooming. Maybe there will be order in the fall but now it’s every bulb for himself.

Now I must return to the gear project.

A new year and a new post. I promised a number of people on LJ that I would
do better this year and it is an easy promise to make in January. We'll see
if I can keep posting and reading come September…

The big news of the weekend was the snowfall. We went from almost no snow
on Thursday to 14 inches on the ground on Sunday. It was great! I got 3.5
hours of recreational shoveling in and now have a snow pile in the back
yard over 9 feet high. What's even better is that there is even more snow on the way
tonight so I will have enough for a really good snow fort. The plan is to
build it on Saturday and it might be my largest yet.

Growing up in south Florida, where snow was something that you sprayed on
you window from a can, I would dream of making snowball and building forts.
Now I finally have the chance and yes, it is as much fun as I had dreamed. Did I mention I hated Florida?

I have a cam pointed at the fort at

http://www.isherartifacts.com/Cam_site/SimpleVu.html

It's down at the moment but I'll have it running tonight.

Fun, fun, fun…

This seems to have been a weekend for weddings. I went to one on Friday where a long time co-worker tied the knot and was reminded of Doctor Strangelove. No, the place wasn’t nuked but if you recall in the movie there is a scene where the good doctor asks the Soviet leader (paraphrasing) “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of building a doomsday device if you don’t tell anyone?” In this case the doomsday device was the main course. The couple had sprung for a nice dinner but it turned out the main course was late. Since this was dinner time the guests assumed that the food that was laid out was it and descended on the appetizers like piranhas. Not a single cracker or melon ball survived but then when the main course arrived people weren’t that hungry and the groom pleaded for people to eat. Well, having been raised not to waste food I rose to the challenge eating enough to feed a family of eight in China. The next day it was the food that tried to rise…

Moral: Communicate.
Second moral: Send excess food to China not stomach.

I really need to post more often but work has me by the throat. I have now spent 170 hours trying to buy and install 14 computers for new our Detroit office. Trying to get the City to approve anything has been a five month long root-canal. At one point I was trying to find out what the City wanted me to do with the old (Windows NT) machines. I couldn’t just leave them in the old office because even though the city owned them our contract said we were responsible for them. So when I finally found the proper official this is what I got:

Me: “What is the procedure for returning equipment to the City?”
Official: “What equipment do you want to return?”
Me: “A half dozen eight year old Windows NT computer systems.”
Official: “I have to know exactly what they are.”
Me: “Ok, what information do you need?”
Official: “Everything.”
Me: “Err… could you just tell me the procedure… are there forms?”
Official: “I can’t tell you until you tell me exactly what they are.”
Me: “You mean you can’t tell me the procedure?”
Official: “It depends on what the equipment is.”
Me: “Old Compaq desktops, eight years old, 15” CRT monitors (i.e. junk).”

This goes on for another 5 minutes until I finally give in and tell him I will find the original purchase orders and full specs. Which I send to him. A month ago. Guess what, I still haven’t got a “procedure” out of him and now the systems will have to follow us to our new office like albatrosses. Getting them to approve the new equipment was even more fun. I just watch our move date slip and I reach for more Pepto…

Some pictures from the launch on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot more egoboo out of the project then I was expecting. If you want to see the media coverage go to

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080403/NEWS01/804030329



The students and their rockets.



Launching six rockets at a time.



Off they go. This is the first time in 45 years that I worked with A engines, but for all the kids it was the first time ever…

Spam is bad.

Terrorism is bad.

BUT

Overreaction and incompetence by those in power is worse. We are
(hopefully) nearing the end of the Bush regime's carpet bombing of
individual rights but there are others seeking to destroy for the victim's
own good. The Evil Empire in this case is not Microsoft but AT&T - the
terrorist that the Empire is out to destroy is Spam. And I find myself
collateral damage in this battle.

It all started when I tried to email my oldest friend. The mail bounced in
seconds. Looking at the header I saw the following:

host sbcmx8.prodigy.net[207.115.36.22] said: 553 5.3.0 nlpi094,DNSBL:521<
69.51.134.225_is_blocked.__For_information_see_http://worldnet.att.net/gener
al-info/bls_info/block_inquiry.html

OK, this does not look good… could I have been turned into a zombie
overnight? Could my aging server be spewing out Spam even I typed? A quick
check with a packet sniffer slowed down my heart rate a bit - nothing evil
was happening on my network at the moment. So let's go to this web site of
which they speak http://worldnet.att.net/general-info/bls_info/block_inquiry.html . Reading carefully it seemed that AT&T was indeed blocking me. To confirm I tried to
email other people I knew on their network…bounce, bounce, bounce… yup they
really don't like me.

The rest of the internet, however, still thinks I'm ok. Now, one of the
pages on the AT&T site gives three links to blacklists stating "follow the directions provided there for requesting removal." Only problem is that I'm not listed on any of these lists - nor on the 100+ other lists of http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/is-my-ip-address-blacklisted . Alright, there is a form on the AT&T site to ask to be unblocked. Simple enough but "all fields required" including "What changes have you made to your configuration since you have been blocked?" I thought better of telling them what I though and settled with "None - it's not my fault". It's really interesting how all these companies, governments, etc. always assume it is your fault and give you no option to disagree.

While waiting for an email response I did a little surfing. Seems that around the middle of March the people at AT&T/Yahoo decided to nuke Spam by blocking IP ranges. The attack was so intense and random that some people within their network claimed they were being blocked from receiving their own email! Nobody seemed to know exactly what was going on but it was clear I was not alone. I also read up on the GT list and saw that some people were getting a lot less Spam then usual. Well, yes, if you block everyone not on your network it will reduce the amount of Spam - it will also kill the internet (or at least all but the big boys like AT&T). "The network had to be destroyed in order to save it."

But what really upset me (more) was that it was impossible to talk to anyone about this! After hours on the phone I came to the conclusion that if you were not an AT&T customer they would not help you. In fact, when I finally got to level two tech support they gave me a phone number for "external support" which didn't even work! Then when I called back they denied that there was such a thing as "external support". I have to hope the form on the website does something since there is no way to reach anybody at AT&T!

So if you are an AT&T (Yahoo, SBC, etc.) user and I don't seem to be answering your emails it's not that I snubbing you - it's that I've been blocked for the good of the Fatherland, err… homeland. Just a small sacrifice to keep your inbox free of terrorist err… Spam.

Remember, it's for your own good.

The fact that I disappear in July for a week and return with some rather odd tales (and many mosquito bites) is well known around my place of employment so when it was decided that the students at one of our charter schools needed a “rocket club” I was put in charge. We got off to a great start by showing “October Sky” and my next session in which I introduced center of gravity VS center of pressure was a smash success. What I had the students do was take a one foot length of pool noodle and launch (throw) it. The kids were divided into groups with each group having a “record keeper”, a “launcher” and a “measurer”. They then launched the noodle as far as they could and recorded the results. I believe the record was nearly 6 feet.

Then I suggested adding fins and the students had a ball putting fins of different sizes at different points alone the length of the noodle. Each time they produced a new design they had to record how far the noodle flew. Not only was this fun but they could see that the best designs had fins in the back. Finally I gave them a large wood screw which they could thread into the noodle at any point they wanted. Most quickly figured out that putting the screw toward the front of the noodle resulted in another increase in range. The record “rocket” flew almost 60 feet. We then had the “recorders” put their data on the white board. What I loved was that the data clearly showed an improvement for each condition (fins better then no fins and fins with screw better then just fins) and more importantly I think most of the kids saw it too.

Now we are starting the construction phase and things are getting stickier. I think my first mistake was trying to have the students build the launcher as well as the rocket. The reason I wanted to give them a complete system was so that they could take it home and be able to launch rockets on their own. Unfortunately I failed the take into account how long this would take… So at this point we have the launcher but haven’t started building the rockets yet. We have just one two hour session left before the launch date and the principle has just sent out press releases, announcements, etc.

Yes you might say I’m a little stressed…

I share a large Victorian house with two cats, Alta and Creeper. Alta (the female) has a wide range of verbal behavior which she employs to good effect in getting her way. Creeper (the male) is the strong silent type unless you step on his tail. They are Silver Shaded American Short Hairs (gray cats with smushed faces) and are the sweetest, friendliest cats I have ever known. However, since I am mildly allergic to them they are confined to the first floor. They naturally want to explore the rest of the house so they are continually trying to get into the second floor and basement.

This morning as part of our SOP I was filling their food bowls when I noticed two strange things (in this order). First, Creeper wasn't eating - he was pacing around the bowls but didn't eat. Normally they would be fighting to get at the new food. Second, there was no Alta! OK, maybe she snuck upstairs... rattle food bag...go upstairs, look under beds...check all hangouts...start to panic...check basement...check under couch…check upstairs again...panic. Right, she couldn't just vaporize. Could she have gotten OUT! (the cats are indoor only)… vision of frozen cat…wait, she was around last night so what did I DO last night... hmm, I was talking to Amy (AKA isherEmpress) and she wanted to know what wines I had so I… Run to kitchen cabinet... open door... Meeawwwoooooooo!!!! (I’ve been yelling all night. Get a hearing aid stupid!)

Both cats then line up for breakfast together, I ate at a separate table.

Joan before a hike during which she proved, once again, that she was indeed an Iron Woman".




Another extreme hike. This one was from Glacier Point down into Yosemite Valley.




The next day, a little tired but still standing.



Visiting the wineries.



In full dancing garb.

 

 

 

I had a nice drive down to South Bend today to see my friend John. Fall is my favorite season and today was ideal fall weather - cool and crisp with not a cloud in the sky. Best of all John was in good enough shape to go for a fairly long walk along the river where we watch ducks almost go over a dam. They would come within feet of being swept to their doom and then effortlessly paddle out of the current. I suppose that the remaining ducks make it look so easy since those that couldn't were swept to their doom... We also watched the Goodyear Blimp circle the Notre Dame campus being chased off only momentarily by the F16 fly-by. Then it was back for to his house for Chinese food. 

I told John about the new Dylan movie "I'm Not There". He had not heard anything about it and when I told him that we could download trailers he got one of his daughters to download them - to CD since John has never really figured out computers. It was then that I noticed that they had a new computer running Vista, an OS that I've avoided like the plague. It was very interesting to see what features she used and which ones she really liked. Basically the more Mac-like features got the most use but when I asked if they had considered a Mac she said, "Oh, no I have to use this for school." that brought me back ten years when I switched to PCs because I "had to use them at work" - kind of sad really.

Well all in all a nice day. My thanks to the Empress for telling me about the Dylan movie! 

This is a test, had this been a real post you might find content here... or then again you might not!