Alchemic Spot

Wrimo Gets Cloudy

2010-11-01T13:29:00.005-05:00

For the last two years I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which entails writing atleast 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Given that I am not a professional writer, like most of the other participants, this is quite a challenge. There are times when this could be best described less of a “challenge” and more of an “ordeal”, but this is precisely my reason for doing it. It’s like a marathon for the brain. Our 16 year old son Nick has participated (and won!) the last three years and was the impetus for me starting the challenge and now we provide mutual support in getting going and finishing.

For the numerically challenged, that works out to 1,6667 words per day, which doesn’t seem like much, until you are struck with the realization that the words don’t always come out of your head fit for typing, or necessarily in order. One important thing about NaNoWriMo is that you lock up your internal editor for the month of November and just get the words out, leaving editing for December and beyond. With a real job, family, and other obligations, the 1,667 becomes a painful goal on many days, and even more painful to catch up on, once you miss a day or two.

When I started, I didn’t think much about the tools that I would be using and how they would affect my ability to keep up with that pace. First year I used Microsoft Word (from Office 2004) on my Mac laptop, which worked adequately, but the pain and agony of slow startup time, and periods where I was waiting for it to catch up with my typing, made it seem like I was running a race with ankle weights on. It worked, but not well and I knew there had to be something better suited. That better thing came in the form of Scrivener, who was announced as a sponsor of NaNoWriMo. I try to be a minimalist with my tools and was skeptical at first, as it seemed to have a lot of extraneous bits that might get annoying. Given my annoyance with MS-Word, I decided to give it a try with some preliminary writing and it worked out very nicely. It was like a breath of fresh air, in terms of speed and functionality. Those bits that I expected to annoy me turned out to be highly useful and I soon incorporated them into my bag of tricks. By the time last year competition started, I hit the ground typing my brains out and I figure that Scrivener gave me roughly a 30% jump in productivity, subjectively. Scrivener was waiting on me, rather than the other way around.

That bring me up to 2010 and preparations to hit it hard. To up the ante a bit, Scrivener is updating their app to the 2.0 and providing a beta for wrimos. Additionally they are releasing a Windows version, which will work nicely for Nick, who has switched from a Mac to a Windows laptop for this years competition, saving him from either having to use MS-Word, or OpenOffice. I had in the back of my mind to try some new things this year, such as spending a lot of time writing on my iPad, using a bluetooth keyboard, while being out and about for write-ins at restaurants and coffee shops. Using the external keyboard with the iPad, I would be able to type at full speed and basically I had the equivalent of a netbook without buying a new toy.

In watching the introductory videos for the new release, it demonstrated the sync’ing with various cloud-based writing tools, such as SimpleNote. This was exactly what I needed! The SimpleNote app would provide the word processor on my iPad and I could simply save the results to the cloud and it would get auto-magically sync’d to my Scrivener document back on my laptop. Moreover, I could do writing where ever I could get access to a web browser. The same could be done with the Windows version of Scrivener and thus Nick could work on his novel, if he had extra time at school and access to a computer. Even if it was just a great way to keep research notes, it was a big win. Similarly, I could use the bluetooth keyboard with my iPhone, if I didn’t want to take the bigger and heavier iPad. As someone who has schlepped laptops all over the globe, the idea that an iPad being “heavy” makes me chuckle, but I guess everything is relative.

To fully embrace the wrimo life in the cloud, I am using Mozy as a cloud-based backup solution. Mind you I also have local backups going on, such Time Machine and manual USB backups, but the cloud gives me the piece of mind of offsite backups.

This year will be quite interesting and it will be very interesting to see if the new flexibility and new tools will help or hinder the process of banging out 50k words in 30 days! Here we go!

The Death of Cursive, Thank God!

2010-03-11T10:07:00.005-06:00

When I was growing up, oh so many years ago, we had to learn the alternative penmanship form of writing called "cursive". Even back then it seemed like busy work, but I went along because; A) I had to, B) I slightly bought into efficiency argument, and C) it's what adults did. I was never very good at it and thus argument B never really materialized. Argument C became much less important when I became an adult, although some would argue that they are still waiting for that to occur. So flash forward nearly 40 years. Apparently in the intervening years, it seems to have been de-emphasized, atleast in our school district. Our son never seemed to deal with it much and he was pretty much inclined to type anyways, something that I would have done had it been more of an option for me when I was young.

But here's the rub. These days, two uses dominate the cursive landscape, signatures and writing amounts on checks. I'll take the latter first. That's the way I was taught to do it and thats how everybody else did it. The reason, as stated, was that it makes it much harder to alter the amount and thus affords your checking account a modicum of safety from unethical check recipients. I didn't think about it much and most certainly didn't challenge the notion, until I really started using checks. As it turns out, my aforementioned deficits in cursive writing skills became a big pain in the butt. I often made cursive mistakes in writing the amounts, which lead to wasted checks and wasted time. Quickly realizing that it wasn't some sort of law, I went to "printing" and the errors didn't occur and I never looked back. Problem solved.

The primary usage of cursive is now signatures. When you stop and think about it, nearly all signatures are a visible statement of individuality and bear little resemblance to the cursive that we learned in primary school. It's now a service mark for people. My signature can barely be distinguished as a form of writing, let alone anything Mrs Fleming would have taught me. I have quite a bit of signed sports memorabilia and I am really happy that nearly all of it has the player's name elsewhere, as I wouldn't be able to divine even 5% of the signatures by themselves. It's actually the signature that causes us problems right now. In the past, any "document" that our son had to sign wasn't terribly important in the long term and pretty much any scribbling, or printed name in his case, would do. Things like signing syllabus sheets that indicated that he had read them are plentiful. But now it becomes serious. He just got his new passport and it requires a signature. Suddenly the printed name doesn't seem adequate and his cursive skills aren't such that he can "just do it". It's gonna require the development of a real signature. Thankfully we have plenty of time to do that, so its not a problem.

So, in the end, cursive isn't really used in any manner that it terribly important or required, so they should pretty much dispense with it all together. Rather than waste that critical time in the classroom giving the impression of providing them with a valuable skill, why don't they do something else, like teach them the rudimentary bits of some relevant foreign language. In absence of any other better guidance, most any qualified elementary school teacher should be able to grasp the fundamentals of say Spanish and teach it to little kids. Written and audio materials are plentiful to teach the teachers the basics. You're not going to make them fluent and ready for a job in a foreign country, but you will help prepare the eager little sponges that are their brains for the future. Ours is an intertwined and interdependent culture that would be well served by learning an alternate language, rather than an alternative script.

My best case for an iPad

2010-03-01T04:05:00.002-06:00

After reading a blog entry, I have found the thing that seals the deal for me getting an iPad. Of course, being gadget-ophile that I am, I still require atleast a modicum of rationality for getting a new gadget. For instance, my getting an iPhone was green-lighted because it allowed me to go on vacation without a laptop and still keep in touch with the world, as seen through the internet and email. The iPhone is a great platform that is useful yet not overwhelmingly seductive like a laptop in terms of time spent.

Anyways... the aforementioned blog post gave me the killer app for an iPad. Essentially I will use it as essentially a third monitor for my macbook-based development environment on which I would put things like email and facebook and the like. In my home office, the primary monitor is a 24" LG LCD and the secondary is the laptop screen. In my work office, the primary is a 19" LCD. I have already started down this path, using my iPhone as a Biff will running without an email client (thunderbird) on the desktop machine. Most of the time, the email client is just an "attractive hazard" and make me prone to distraction, rather than aiding productivity. On the iPhone its easy to oversee or ignore incoming email without spending too much time on it. When something important comes in, I fire up thunderbird ands its business as usual, except that I close it when finished. The iPad will be a better platform for doing this, as compared to the iPhone, mostly due to the larger screen. As Lucy from "Peanuts" clearly recognizes, its all about real estate.

What is Google Wave? SOLVED!

2009-10-30T11:47:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I am kinda slow and it takes me a while to catch on, and sometimes others don't make it any easier in their effort to help me understand. Google Wave is one of those things that was the moral equivalent of a flash-bang grenade when it comes to grokking its very essence. Given the grandiose pronouncements by its proponents, like "its gonna replace email", I thought it important to cut through the fog and figure out just what it was and why it was allegedly important. As I researched it, I found pretty much nothing but regurgitated text from the initial info that caused the fog in the first place. I kind of nibbled around the edge of understanding until I stumbled upon a great use case for Wave. Suddenly the mental tetris game of understanding accelerated until I was able to synthesize a simple explanation that others might understand. Here goes...

"Google Wave is IRC, with server side logs, as if it was invented now by Web 2.0 people with modern technology."

Server side logs are important, versus old school IRC, in that you can catch up on threads, even if you don't have the client running.

Hopefully this explains Google Wave a bit for people as bewildered as I was.

Please develop my idea!

2009-10-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

While in a hurry to get some place today, I was struck with what I think to be a fabulous idea. The saying "necessity is the mother of invention" is just not a trite phrase, as it turns out. Apart from telling you that I was driving, I will spare you the whole back story about how my idea came about, as I suspect you will figure it out yourself. If you can't figure it out by yourself, you probably don't have the brain pan to develop the idea anyways.

My great idea is to develop a dash-mounted device that would activate an inert femto-cell cellular station every time the left turn signal is engaged. The one problem with this device is that the biggest tools of the driving world don't use turn signals, so it would be ineffective where it is needed the most. In any case, let me say that I would be perfectly happy if it was standard equipment on cars.

Death Panels? Already Here!

2009-09-10T01:47:00.003-05:00

I watch the political fencing contest that is happening between the Democrats and the Republicans on health care and one of the dominant attack methods of the Republicans is to bring up the looming spectre of "Death Panels". As I understand it, those alleged "death panels" would convene to determine quite literally who would live and die based upon the treatments they allow. It seems to be getting some traction as an attack method, as its making the Democrats respond to it, however haphazardly.

The truly humorous thing is that the Democrats are letting the attacks work and not pointing out the simple fact that death panels already exist. After all, who determines who gets organ transplants. Who figures out which candidates are unworthy of a transplant due to factors that would affect the outcome of the transplant. For instance, chronic alcoholics will often find themselves on the bad side of a death panel when it comes to getting a new liver. I am fairly certain that its a group of health care workers that evaluate the issues against a relatively objective set of criteria, but ultimately there are subjective aspects for each of the participants.

Furthermore, the so-called death panels are entirely appropriate whether its for private or public insurance programs. Let's say, for instance, that a cancer patient faces certain death in the short term if they don't get a bone marrow transplant that optimistically gives them a 1/10% chance of survival. There are always more experimental treatments that give the faint glimmer of hope for tragically sick people, but often at extreme costs. For that 0.1% chance of survival the cost to the insurance company (public or private) is >$100,000 and that cost is borne by either taxpayers or other insurance policy holders, thus increasing the cost for all health care, all for a long shot at survival. Ironically, if that same person had the assets to pay cash for the transplant, they likely wouldn't do so to avoid bankrupting their family's future. The natural human inclination is usually to "go for it", if it's on someone else's tab. Perhaps it should be stated in a fashion more like "if you get the bone marrow transplant, $100k gets taken out of your grandson's school budget".

I seriously wish that the people making these decisions would use a little common sense and critical thinking skills. They are too busy thrusting and parrying to actually pay attention to what they are doing.

Red Herring Market

2009-09-04T16:25:00.002-05:00

In watching the annoying hand-wringing of the current health care debate, I've noticed one thing. While watching
Senator Al Franken talk down an angry crowd, I noticed a strange uptick in the Red Herring market. I had seen it happen with other opponents and proponents speaking on the same topic, but it really didn't register. Each of the speakers brings up quite logical and intuitive things that are an utter load of crap. In Franken's case, he said that he had people come up to him and say that they would create start a small business, if not for some aspect of their health care setup that would not allow them to get insured, such as a pre-existing condition. Sounds sensible right? The problem is that most people dream of starting a small business but very few do a single damn thing towards that end. Not so much as setting aside a dollar for start, not read a brochure, and haven't even considered doing a business plan. So why is this red herring even introduced into the theoretically logical discourse. I can say that I am fully covered for lightening strikes, but lets not quibble over whether I am more likely to get hit, versus someone actually making a tangible move towards starting a small business.

I also noticed his mentioning of the old "I can't leave my job because of insurance" thing. Oh what a pity! It's just so horrible that they have to remain employed in perhaps a dead end job to stay nominally responsible for their families health care. In years past, men (and women) gladly stayed employed in jobs that were dangerous, and often deadly, (think miners and fishermen) to feed their families. I'm sure they would have loved to have more cushy jobs than the ones they have. Perhaps the whiners should take their pleas to the tons of unemployed people that would love to be employed. People need to do what they need to do to take care of their families. If it isn't what you want to be doing, figure out a way to do something that is more palatable. And stop whining!

The fine line between proper and annoying

2009-07-18T01:55:00.002-05:00

While we were on the aforementioned vacation to Grand Marais, MN, we stayed at our usual hotel in town, but this time we got a fairly newly redone room. A nice thing about this particular hotel is that over the many years that we have stayed there, it has continually improved and upgraded, which isn't something we have seen in other hotels that we frequent. As recurring guests, we have met the owner and its clear that she runs a first class operation. Additionally, they have pretty much the same people working there from year to year, which is probably quite unique in a tourism focused town. Anyways, this new room had a groovy new bathroom with glass shower and double shower head affair, a definite upgrade from previous rooms. As it turns out, something wasn't quite adjust correctly and there was some problems getting it to not spray out the side and over the glass wall and onto the ceiling. But that isn't what this post is about. Of course we called the front desk and they sent the usual maintenance guy up. He's an older guy that is very competent and nice. The problem is that when he knocks on the door, he keeps knocking a bit too long. I reckon that its about twice as long as it should be. To fix the problem, and some other minor issues that we ran into, he had to come up to our room several times and subject us to "the knock". It's such a petty thing and yet so annoying. It's almost insistent and beckoning us to get our asses off the couch and open the door right now. I fear that I am channel Jerry Seinfeld or something, but it was annoying. In reality, it was just a few extra knocks and shouldn't have even registered, but it did. Consequently, I have concluded that sometimes there is a very fine line between proper and annoying.

On Paying Attention...

2009-07-11T02:29:00.003-05:00

While on vacation to Grand Marais, MN, my wife is in the habit of visiting the Viking Hus, that specializes in Scandanavian goods, which is consistent with both our ethnic backgrounds. She secretly wishes she was of Norwegian descendency, but has settled quite nicely with being Swedish, although she won't admit it. Norwegians, after all, have lefse. Anyways, getting to the Viking Hus requires that you go through a drug store and enter the store through a side doorway. It's quite hard to absent-mindedly find your way into the Viking Hus. While she made her pilgrimage into the store, she overheard another customer complaining about all the products that were in foreign languages. I often lament about the profound lack of critical thinking skills in most people, and situations like this illustrate exactly why I do that. Wasn't she suspicious when the name of the store was spelled in such a peculiar manner? Plus, after even a coupla seconds of observation, it isn't too difficult to divine the nature of the store. I'm pretty glad that I was sitting out front, playing with my iphone, as I would have found it hard to contain an audible "well duh".

A Matter of Perspective

2009-07-11T02:08:00.002-05:00

The other day my wife and I were driving home from a very nice vacation on the north shore of Minnesota. We were most of the way home and had to stop to get gas and I chose a nice little locally owned rural-ish gas station that I often frequent in Coates, MN. Approaching the gas station I saw a Hummer that had just pulled in probably 20 car lengths ahead of us. Hummers are always noticeable and that typically suits the owners just fine. As we approached the doors of the Hummer popped open and people started rapidly piling out. One... two... three... pretty soon like ten people have exited the vehicle and were quickly heading towards the front door of the gas station. Obviously a potty break or something. I was frankly startled a little bit by the number of people that had quickly piled out of the vehicle and I was wondering whether the Hummer was just that spacious, or if it was some kind of clown car. As I pulled into the parking lot my angle on the Hummer changed and it turns out that it was a stretched limo version of a Hummer and was about as long as the gas station was wide. My wife had apparently had equivalent thoughts about the clown car nature of the Hummer and we had a good chuckle. Typically limos are very distinctive and you can tell them, even from directly behind them, for miles. It turned out to truly be a matter of perspective.

Liability WTF?!?!?

2009-06-06T09:45:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I stopped in the local outdoors outfitter type store Gander Mountain. I had a few moments while my takeout food was cooking at a nearby restaurant, so I thought I would go over and pick up some carabiners for my son's backpacking trip in a couple of weeks and Gander should have a good selection. After his last backpacking trip, he has expressed an interest in getting a carabiner to attach his water bottle to his belt for convenience sake. So... I go search the camping section, no carabiners. I kind of search around randomly, thinking they may be on an aisle display or something. Eventually I give in and go up to the checkout counter and ask. I did so with trepidation, as its not in my nature to ask such stupid questions and I feared that they would tell me exactly where they should obviously be. The response that I got was quite befuddling. The clerks responded that they don't sell carabiners to "liabilities sake" and that "apparently people had been hurt climbing with them" and that "they would have to keep a qualified climbing instructor on staff to sell carabiners". Apparently attaching his water bottle to his belt was much more dangerous than I thought. When they told me this, my jaw hit the floor, as I was absolutely aghast at how stupid this was. It wasn't until later that I truly was able to behold the full extent of the irony, as Gander Mountain is a huge seller of guns, knives, and fire-starting technology. That is more than just a little messed up. The saddest aspect of this tale is that I will have to go to Walmart to live on the dangerous side and get a, gasp, carabiner.

McDonald's Surprise

2009-06-04T21:08:00.003-05:00

Periodically I run upon things that astound me. Not clever things, or complex things, just things that make a great deal of sense and probably should have been self-evident previously. In this case, the surprise came in a most unexpected place, namely McDonalds. Our 15 yr old son and I were going to take a quick trip to pick something up about 170 miles away in Cedar Rapids, IA and we would come right back. As the trek wasn't on an interstate, or similar, I was uncertain about what to expect along the way. Usually when we travel, we stop at McDonald's drive-thru's and are quickly back on the road. It's just our typical routine and I was interested in finding where Mickey D's were along the way to catch supper at some point. So, of course, I go to the McD's corporate website figuring that they have a restaurant locator that I could use. Lo and behold they had one, but they also had a trip planner. I expected to iteratively check for restaurants in the larger towns along the way, which would be somewhat time consuming. Instead the trip planner was much more like mapquest driving directions in that it had me enter the starting and ending points and it showed the route with McD's dutifully annotated along the way. It also had extra useful info like whether there was playland's and if it was a stand-alone store or not, which would be useful for the just hitting the drive-thru. Furthermore, it had the distances from your starting point to help plan which one you would stop at for the given target time. Absolutely brilliant and useful! The horrible thing is that now I will come to expect such good stuff from other restaurant sites and be pissed off if they don't have it.

National Health Care Database

2009-04-21T11:16:00.002-05:00

The problem with a national health database is "accuracy" and "context".

Accuracy. First, how does such a database intend to have a better track record than the national credit databases? My wife has, over the last several years been plagued with credit bureaus who have erroneously attached our home phone number to a bad loan of a woman with a similar name (middle name is different) and completely different social security number, of course. While we have been assured that the number will be taken out of the database, it persists all these years later. Similarly I have someone with a similar name that skipped out on a Discover card bill and I have been trying to get that off my record since we bought our house, 15 years ago! Personally, I don't want others data erroneously added to my records, nor do I want mine attached to others.

Context. In terms of context, the problem is that with records in the national database there will be situations where the entire relevant context will not be included with a particular entry. Let's say I am going to do charity work in some third world nation, and as a result get vaccinated for something important like Hep C (or similar). Or perhaps tested for it, before going. In the database goes that injection (or test). Five years hence my hopefully soon to be employer, with my permission runs a query of my national health records, looking for flags. Voila, Hep C transactions, typically indicative of high risk behaviors such as unprotected sex or intravenous drug use. Suddenly I am a potentially bad insurance risk and would cost the company more to insure than #2 on the list to hire. Not wanting to be illegal and discriminating for health issues, my formerly soon to be employer nit picks something else on my resume and moves to the next guy. So because I was doing wonderful work in a crappy part of the world, I have to start looking for a job again. That's all due to the missing context.

Weight Loss Trick: Switch Your Scale

2007-11-20T08:11:00.000-06:00

While working at losing weight, there is a very important emotional component to the process. The first step towards weight loss is the emotional choice that you have, perhaps reluctantly, come to a point where you need to lose weight. If this emotion is strong enough, you embark on the process. As you start diligently working at weight loss, you often lose a large bit of weight relatively quickly. You cut out pop, reduce portion size, eat more salads, and just generally eat better. Suddenly the weight seems to be flying off. That goes for a while and your emotions drive the process. Success breeds success. But at some point you will likely hit a plateau, a place where the weight loss slows or may even stop. Even though you remain diligent, you just can't lose any more weight, or so it would seem. Every morning you stare at the scale and the number remains the same. This goes on for a while and seeing that same number every morning bums you out. You now associate that plateau weight with failure and often this weight is somewhere near some emotional metric (ie. "that's my weight when I graduated from high school").

Little did you know that the ticket out of that disempowering rut is right at your finger tips. Most of the bathroom scale that I have seen have a Pound-Kilogram switch. By switching to the other unit of measurement, you take that emotional number and turn it back into a relative figure of merit. As an American, I am accustom to using pounds as my unit of weight. While I can easily make the conversion in my head, I simply don't think in terms of kilograms. My weight in pounds makes sense and like I said earlier, there are certain emotional metrics along the way towards my goal and those weights in pounds also make sense. As an aside, I have long since given up at hitting my high school graduation weight again, as I topped out at over 100 lbs north of that. Even sitting here thinking about it, being 45.45 kg north doesn't emotionally compute. So back to the trick. Because there is so much emotion connected with that number, on a weight continuum that you all-to-well understand, changing to the other unit of measure turns the number into a simple figure of merit that doesn't have the emotional baggage and will help you get to the next level of weight loss. You still have to plot the next step in your weight loss plan, such as more exercise or whatever, but at least you don't carry around the albatross of your plateau weight. Going from pounds to kilos, cutting the numbers in half, might even have an odd buoyant effect on your mood. On a recent trip, we drove to Winnipeg from Southern MN. I understand miles, but when we got into Canada the kilometers just seemed to fly by and made it seem like we were "really making time". It is, of course, all illusory but anything that helps is good. Similarly, removing a bad emotion from the weight loss process is a good thing too.

Guerilla Tourism Board

2007-02-16T21:09:00.000-06:00

I've told this story to many many people, so I thought I would share it with the world.

Early in December my Son and I went to Winnipeg for an exhibition lacrosse game of our favorite team, the Minnesota Swarm. Winnipeg is about 8 or 9 hours and an border crossing away from our home, so it was a non-trivial jaunt for a sporting event. For us, it was a novel adventure. I'll spare you almost all of the details other than it was a wonderful trip and Winnipeg was an awesome place to visit, even in the winter. Everybody we met was really great and especially helpful, which leads me into the actual story. Two other die-hard Swarm fans made the trek up as well. We sat on one side of the MTS Centre and they had seats on the other side. The game was fun, even if we did lose. Once the game was over the other guys stood up from their seats to leave. Someone tapped one of the guys on the shoulder and when he turned around, he asked him "Did you drive up from the Cities just for the game?". His answer was, of course, "yes". The man handed him a twenty, said "gas money", and walked away. To this day I am still astonished by the man's anonymous generosity and can't help but reflect on how that simple act affected the perception of folks from Winnipeg and perhaps Canadians in general. Like I said, i've told that story to many many people and the universal response is "whoa". I'm sure the people that I told have told it to others and so on.

How quickly and thoroughly did that simple act trump any efforts that the local tourism board could have done?

Another Natural Law Discovered!

2006-02-26T18:50:00.000-06:00

As I go about my daily life I try to be observant. Thinking a little more deeply about things, I sometimes find some patterns, or that what I have observed fits in with some other patterns. Some of those patterns can be loosely described as "Natural Laws". Not the laws of man, or synthesized by science, but truisms that just sort of work.

I found one such Natural Law on friday. Our Son had participated in the local science fair and did a very good job. I was sitting around at the end waiting for the thing to end and one of the parents was getting into a heated discussion about the results of his childs project. From what I could gather he had a second grader and was about to come unglued because of what one or more of the judges expressed in their grading. He was having this fit in the middle of the room and people were kinda looking funny at what was going on. The sad thing is that he was doing this in front of the child, but thats another matter entirely. Anyways, there were lots of comments about how this was going to destroy the enthusiasm of the child and that they would never come back. Blah blah blah. Perhaps it was the parent ranting and raving that would do that for them. But there was a problem with his argument. He was standing there, having his fit, with a plate that contained a potato with some wires sticking out of it. I found it very very hard to take him seriously while he was holding a wired potato. Think about how history would have been changed by this. If Patrick Henry would have been holding a wire potato, would his "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech have been as powerful? Martin Luther King was not wired potato equipped and was thusly very successful in his "I Have A Dream" speech.

So the Natural Law that you should take away from this is that if you wish to be taken seriously, don't stand there with any sort of wired tuber. It need not be just a potato, as I suspect that any wired form of radish, onion, or carrot will be just as problematic. It's not just a good idea, ITS THE LAW!

Saving Energy: Part 1

2006-02-03T01:45:00.000-06:00

With the current spike in nearly all forms of energy, it seems like a good portion of conversations had among familiars seems to either be bitching about utility/fuel/heating bills or on how to save energy. I thought that perhaps I could throw in some simple ideas that we have used in the past to save energy.

Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. As I have mentioned in mentioned in past entries, the new compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs can save you a great deal of money when you replace normal bulbs that you frequently use. Outdoor floodlights are a great place to use them because the CF bulbs typically use a quarter of the energy and have a great number of lumens. Outdoor lights are a good place to start because the quality of light requirements typically aren't as stringent as you would have for say task lighting. In one case, a single bulb switch saves us over $20 per year. Imagine that savings times the number of bulbs you have around the house, give or take. In my previous entry, I replaced 22 bulbs with CF and save roughly 200kwh per month, or about $185 per year in energy costs.
Partial Dry. One of the biggest consumer of power in the home is the clothes dryer. I hadn't really looked at the usage on them, but I was startled to find that they are rated at 5000 watts. Thus if you dry your clothes for 45 minutes, each load takes about 3.75kwh. For even small families it doesn't take much to do 10 loads of laundry weekly, so (4 weeks * 10 loads * 3.75kwh) = 150kwh per month. According to a news report that I saw tonite, that accounts for roughly 10% of a standard households usage. At rate of $0.08 per kwh, thats about $12 and that assumes 45 minutes to dry a load, which is probably a low estimate. To save money in drying your clothes, use good old mother nature. Rather than put up a clothes line, we pounded nails into the exposed overhead joists so that we could hang clothes to dry. This works particularly well in the winter, as the clothes dry much faster in the low humidity and the drying clothes contribute to the humidity of the house. Clearly it doesn't make sense to air dry all your clothes, as the fiddling with things like socks would be time prohibitive for people who are at all busy. We also let our clothes tumble around a bit in the dryer before hanging them up to dry, as it gets some of the wrinkles out and softens them up. We mostly do the partial dry for jeans, flannel shirts, and fine shirts, but air drying things like towels would be a great idea, as they typically take quite a while to dry. Hang a clothes line if you have to, or use pants hangers to hang towels to dry.
Don't wash with hot water. We wash all our clothing in warm water, with a cold rinse, and they are no worse for wear. That isn't strictly true, as we do one bleach load, of basically socks, in hot water and warm rinse, every other week. At the 10 loads per week figure, that would have the heating of a great deal of water.
Turn down your water heater. Most people have their water heaters turned up way to high. It's not only an energy waster, but also a safety issue if you have small children. Max heated water can seriously scald a child that isn't as dexterious as they should be with a single control faucet. With ours, I had to fiddle with it over a few days to get it just right. Initially I turned it way down, basically to a point where the fully hot water wasn't painful, but I found that the hot water wouldn't last for an entire shower at the temperature that I preferred. From there I incrementally moved it upwards until I wouldn't run out during a shower.
Look at your appliances and furnace. If your furnace is over like ten years old, you should evaluate whether it would be cost effective to replace it with a newer, high-efficiency unit. When we bought our house, it had two furnaces, one for each floor. They were old units and in fact were probably used when the guy who built the house installed them. At one point we were getting them inspected and one of them had a cracked heat exchanger and it was blowing carbon monoxide into the basement. Oh joy. Suddenly we were presented with the need to replace a furnace. Instead of just replacing the broken furnace, we took the opportunity to replace both furnaces with a single higher capacity and much higher efficiency model. Think of how much furnace technology has improved in the intervening 40 years. There are almost too many benefits to count. First, a phenomenal jump in efficiency, something like 50% to 94%. Secondly, we consolidated the duct work and regained some height in the central hallway of our basement. Thirdly, the new unit is considerably quieter. No more jets taking off in the basement. Fourthly, the big energy hog fans to circulate the air were replaced by a high efficiency fan. Our natural gas bill went down dramatically and there was a signficant savings in electricity due to the fans. The furnace is a biggy, but you should also check your major appliances, such as hot water heaters, refrigerators, dishwasher, washers, and dryers. Huge strides in energy efficiency have been made in all those areas and you can certainly benefit from them. Some of the new front loading washers and dryers have taken energy efficiency to new lofty heights. One model of clothes washers that we looked at used significantly less water and spun out at some absurdly high rate to dramatically lower drying times. Something like one of those washers might be a good place to start.

Okay that gives a few ideas and stuff for you to consider. I will post more when they occur to me.

Working Out: First 31 Days

2006-02-01T03:36:00.000-06:00

I thought I would give an update on my new years resolution to workout more. I can happily say that I have worked out 15 times in 31 days. Since I was actually out of town for a few days during the months, that means I had a greater than 50% workout rate, which is slightly less than I expected to do, but very good compared to my previous rate. A more hopeful sign is actually more of what I was doing, rather than how many times I did it. Throughout the month I doubled the number of stations that I do in my standard workout. For many of the stations I upped the weight by as much as 30% over the month, which is a truly hopeful sign that I am actually progressing in the process of getting in shape. Happily the process of adding new stations does not cause the morning after pain that I would expect. I am ecstatic to say that my trips are now under $20 per visit and I am well on my way to the sub-$10 figure that I am targeting by August.

Depression Plant

2006-01-09T16:10:00.000-06:00

My Mom, having recently retired, has been going through different bits of her life and organizing things. She has gotten as far as her recipes and its taking the lifetimes worth of accumulated recipes and making it orderly. One of the things that she ran across was the recipe for a "Depression Plant". The recipe is as follows,


   1 piece of coal or coke
   Place in shallow dish
   Pour the following over the coal or coke:

   1.  2 Tablespoons clear ammonia (not the sudsy ammonia)
   2.  5 Tablespoons water
   3.  6 Tablespoons of bluing
   4.  6 Tablespoons of nonidodized salt
   5. 2 drops red food coloring

   Place dish in window or other convenient place.
   Add water to keep moist and watch this grow resembling a coral plant.

She was suggesting that it might be an interesting science experiment for our 11 yr old son, which it would. However, thinking about it a bit, I had several observations, as I do about most everything.

Nothing says childhood experiment like ammonia and bluing. Next week will be the 'tequila and handgun' experiment. That is just the new age father in me, protecting my child against all dangers. Well back in my day we drank ammonia for fun and laughed at pain. Okay, that didn't really happen, but I am certain that its true for generations previous to me. To prove that, my maternal Grandfather ate a jar of vaseline with a spoon, when he was very little. He wasn't forced to eat it, nor was it a bet or anything, he just sat down and ate it. Being the classy guy that I am, I will avoid any Marmite (tm) comments at this point. Anyways, perhaps it was early precursor to a happy meal.
When referring to coke, I was wondering if Diet Coke would work. Ah, no, thats probably not it. Are Depression Plants big in Colombia? Probably not that either. Yes, it is likely something to do with coal. I don't think I have ever been around a house that was coal fired. Closest approximation would be various renditions of Dickens' "Christmas Carol" and maybe the movie "A Christmas Story".
What about bluing? Does anybody under 35 years old have a clue what 'bluing' is? While I am fairly certain that every grocery store probably has it, I do know with some certainty that it is futile to ask a grocery store clerk where the bluing is. Its the same futility that I had quite a number of year ago when I went around to all the stores in town that sold computer gear, looking for a 'SCSI terminator'. I needed one right away and went on a walkabout to get one. Mostly I got bewildered stares with a periodic 'that some kinda software or sumthun?". I eventually found a friend that I could bum one off of until I could order one through the mail.

With those observations in mind, I started wondering where in the hell I would find coal in this day and age. My Mom held the obvious answer. The local power generation plant uses mountains of the stuff. I hadn't been in that part of town for a while, so I am pleading that as my excuse for not recalling that. Those 50 ft mountains of coal aren't all that memorable, are they? Now with a source, how do I go about getting some? My thought was to deftly walk along the railroad tracks by the power plant and pick up any stragglers, in an effort to avoid going up and simply asking for a piece. Can't be having the direct approach, can we? Do that a couple of times and before you you know it, the slippery slope would consume me and I would be stopping for directions when lost. I ruminated on my plan for a bit, but it occurred to me that a mistake could have tragic consequences to the depression plant. Somehow I suspect that the outcome would be different if I accidently selected a frozen chunk of dogshit or something. In principle I can guess what real coal looks like, but i've never seen it to be sure. I guess I will have to do the unthinkable and just ask. To show you just how repugnant the prospect of asking is, I went and checked amazon.com for 'coal'. After all, amazon.com is the principal place to find random items that you desire, right? Well, I was shut out there. Only faux coal and candy coal, neither of which are likely to be sufficient for this experiment.

As my friend Bruce says, this experiment will be a "teachable moment". I am going out on a limb here, but I think that my internet-attached, videogame-obsessed, 24-hr-cartoon-availability-appreciating son will regard it as a 'ho-hum' and likely say something on the order of "thats what you consider entertainment?". I'll happily fend off the attack with "No, thats what Grandma considered entertainment when she was a little girl". After all, we had the benefit of things like Gilligans Island to avoid the appearance of an entertainment wasteland.

We'll see how the experiment goes...

Americans Grow To Fit Their Environment

2006-01-07T21:10:00.001-06:00

What started as a humorous observation got me thinking about the veracity of the statement. I thought "people are getting bigger" and "houses are getting bigger", how do they relate? In this environment of Googleified immediate access to random data, I had the opportunity to go figure that out, in my own non-scientific way. Very quickly I was able to locate the data that I required to figure out whether Americans did have the tendency to grow to fit their environment. I am not picking specifically on Americans, its just that housing is typically constrained in many other places around the world. If one were motivated, they could put a finer point on this amusement by looking at regional trends in both datasets.

I'll leave the conclusions up to you. Keep in mind that this is pure amusement and not terribly scientific in any way.

The housing data can be found at: www.census.gov
The obesity data can be found at: apps.nccd.cdc.gov

Working Out: A 2006 Resolution

2006-01-05T02:33:00.000-06:00

In order to inflict upon myself all the mental anguish that I deserve, I have again this year resolved to workout more faithfully than I have in the past. I bought a "Get 18 months for the price of 12 months" deal at the local AnyTime Fitness that had gone in just down the road. It was meant to replace my membership to the YMCA, which I had stopped going to because the most direct route to the YMCA was blocked off for a long time. Yes, it is a feeble attempt at rationalizing not working out, but its the only excuse that I have. I don't want to leave you with the impression that I went a whole lot, but my son and I would go there periodically and he would go play in the Jr. Gym while I went to the weightroom. Another strike against the YMCA is that Burger King was between it and my home, so we would grab dinner there most of the time, an act that is fairly counter-productive. With the bridge out, it required me to go the other way around and that was the straw that broke the camels back. Then I noticed AnyTime Fitness going in at the local stripmall and it was an answer to my prayers. At the YMCA I primarily used the weight machines, but some time I would use the walking track and racquetball courts, but not enough to consider it essential. The AnyTime Fitness had all the machines that I needed, it wasn't a creepy place, and had the added benefit of being open 24x7. One thing that I didn't get with the YMCA is the ability to work out late at night, when I have the most motivation. I also like working out late at night because I don't have to stand around and wait for machines. I have a pattern and a rhythm and other people definitely get in the way. I bought the membership and I was on my way. I went about as frequently as we were going to the YMCA, but that pattern was broken when summer came and our travel schedule filled up. I just got out of the rhythm and my trips there were far and few between. That is until I resolved to do it more faithfully.

That takes me to my new resolution. I started faithfully on January 1st, braving icy streets to get there. I almost waved off because of the icy roads, but decided that I had put it off enough and had made too many excuses. I wasn't about to start that up again, so I went. I commenced my standard workout regime, a set of machines at weights whose sequence I had tuned carefully both in my YMCA days and the few times at AnyTime Fitness. The regime alternates upper and lower body and puts the most strenuous exercises in the beginning, when my energy is the highest. It works for me and my fitness level and is unlikely to fit anybody else. Part of my design process also has to do with speed. While it isn't the most healthy of attitudes, sometimes I am in a hurry to get the workout over with and back on the road. I haven't been as much in a hurry yet this year, but who knows. Anyways, I started my first workout of the year and it went very very well. I had tons of energy, having eaten at just the right time before the work to maximize energy. I went through my entire usual regime and still had energy to spare, so I added some time on the stationary bike and free weights. I realize that this extra energy is the sirens call to serious pain, so I didn't answer the entire call and walked away with energy left over. The two minute drive home finished off my success. Having been down this road before, I dutifully took Advil before bed to handle pain in the morning.

Day two was a different story, I ate too early for my workout and I was dragging, even without any tiredness from my previous days workout. My mind was enthusiastic, but my body didn't share that quality. I did about three-quarters of my usual workout and was happy with that. Its going to take a while to get back into things and pushing it too early would likely mean injury and setbacks. I again took Advil to take care of the aches and pains. After all, if there aint aches and pains, you aint working, or so my Scandanavian work ethic tells me. I woke up in the morning early to get my son on the bus for the first school day of the year. I was met with pain and agony. Unbeknownst to me, the workout fairies had slipped into my bedroom while I was sleeping and beat me from head to toe with baseball bats. I was thoroughly tenderized and ordinary tasks became adventures in pain. The pain would be low and dull, right up until the point that I made some atypical movement, in which case the workout fairies would sneak up behind me and stick me with a shiv. The act of reaching to change a lightbulb was punished with an ice-pick to the Latissimus Dorsi. Having greater than a room temperature IQ, I took this as natures way of saying "you might want to sit out a day, bozo". I listened to my body and skipped a day. It was a day for walking around gingerly and making no sudden movements to be punished for.

I went into the third workout in four days with sagging energy, but once I started my workout the energy returned. That's really good news and bodes well for my resolutions. Stuff that hurt before no longer hurt and I was happy to find that somehow the exercises were using the muscles that they are supposed to use. Let me explain. During the first two workouts, when I would do the benchpress, I would feel real tightness and pain in my lats. While they are clearly involved and important, I hadn't felt that before and thought it a little strange. The third workout, all work was being felt in right places, namely the deltoids, pecs, and triceps. I did a full workout and very nearly added some more components to the workout, be decided not to tempt fate.

As I go through this adventure in fitness I will write about my progress, some stuff about motivations and techniques that I use to help me out.

Michael Brown Consulting

2005-11-25T15:42:00.000-06:00

I see that former FEMA Director Michael Brown is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm. Some people just don't get it. Next thing you know Monica Lewinisky will be starting a dating service and the Menendez brothers will be penning a followup to Dr. Phil's "Family First". With "Brownie" (nose color?), it isn't just the results of his organization being caught unaware, inspite of years of warnings and scenario-based analysis, it was his conduct revealed in his emails during crisis that are extremely telling. When the going really gets tough in the midst of a real crisis, he's trying to figure out how to quit and planning his wardrobe for biggest aesthetic appeal. Such actions are extremely shallow and pathetic and certainly is not the best that the US has to offer.

And what does having "Brownie" as your disaster preparedness consultant say about your company? I certainly hope that someone keeps track of those companies so that they can be blacklisted from the commerce of people with greater than room temperature IQ's. The mind boggles....

Compact Fluorescent Project - Part 1: Economics

2005-11-23T03:15:00.003-06:00

Just the other day my wife happened to be watching an "Oprah" episode where a Hollywood-type was pitching energy conservation to save the earth "before its too late", in an almost breathless manner. I am more likely to laugh and point at such drama than to stop and listen, but I had been thinking about converting many of the lights in the house to Compact Fluorescent (CF) bulbs. I hadn't spent much time thinking about it in earnest, nor had I done the analysis to figure out whether it made sense. Consequently I decided to do it as a project and fully analyze and optimize along the way, for your viewing pleasure.

I approached this project with two goals in mind. First, it should save me real money, not penny's here and there. Secondly, I should be able to have my quality of life impacted atleast neutrally, and hopefully positively, by the results. At the outset I had a hunch that it would be economical, but any quality of life improvements would only be a result of not spending as much money.

My first task was to assess how many potential incandescent bulbs that I could replace and what their average usage was so that I could calculate whether it would make economic sense to replace a particular bulb. One aspect of our household that makes this project easier is that we have quite a number of lights that are on timers and thus go on and off automatically. This practice makes it very easy to determine how many hours specific lights are on and thus accurately figure monetary effects. I factored in seasonal shifts for the outdoor lights that we would obviously change according to dusk and dawn, given that the difference between minimum and maximum daylight in our area is about eight hours. I discovered that there are quite a few lights that are rarely turned on and it didn't make sense to invest in replacing those.

It hadn't really occurred to me before, but we already have quite a bit of fluorescent lighting in our house. The original owner of this home was a facilities engineer and surprisingly used it in a couple of places. The master dressing area, the laundry room, and the guest room are all lit with the traditional 4 foot commercial fluorescent bulbs, for a total of 14 bulbs. For the dressing area I had replaced the standard bulbs with natural light versions for light quality reasons. In addition to the what we found in the house when we moved in, we have installed further fluorescent lighting for a variety of reasons. For instance, we installed a CF fixture in our son's room, not for economics reasons, but because we liked the fixture and it was very low profile so the room looked taller. We also installed fixtures that used the thin, short fluorescent bulbs under our cabinets that were also low profile and gave off very little heat which would be transferred into the cabinets above.

Our outside light fixtures, which I figured would be likely candidates for big savings, all have two heads. For a long time we have had only one of the lamps is occupied with a functioning light, as having two was overkill and just doubled the pleasure of replacing burnt out bulbs. This made it easy for me to replace the bulbs with their CF counterparts. I would move the working incandescent light to the non-functioning lamp, leave it unscrewed, and that would provide a nice backup or extra souce of light if we needed additional light temporarily.

Once I had figured out how many of the bulbs in the house that I was going to replace I started shopping. I targeted the bulbs that I thought would have the biggest impact, both in terms of economics and quality, like my office. I also wanted to focus initially on bulbs that we would be dealing with frequently so that I could experience the different bulbs and make subjective assessments about aspects like light quality and how many lumens are "enough" in the different areas. Over a week period I made several trips to Home Depot, Menards, and Target to acquire the bulbs. Their selections were quite different and allowed me to pick specific bulbs for different needs that I ran across. There wasn't much difference in pricing between the stores. I did come to hate the stupid clamshell packaging around the bulbs that unceremoniously drew blood on a couple of occasions.

Additional considerations.

As I was thinking about the economic impact of the project, rather than just considering the energy that they consume, I need to mention the cost of the bulbs themselves. When considering the ultimate expense of the new bulbs, it must be said that I frequently use good full spectrum bulbs and that are more expensive than normal bulbs. Consequently CF bulbs aren't that much more expensive than the bulbs I normally use. If I used crappy standard incandescent bulbs, the price difference would have been dramatically more. I guess I am either more sensitive to light quality, or perhaps I am just picky.

Economic Conclusions.

In the table above, the economics of the CF bulbs are pretty clear in many cases. With energy break-even point median value of under one year, you can get your savings right away.

Next: Compact Fluorescent Project - Part 2: Quality

Compact Fluorescent Project - Part 2: Quality

2005-11-23T03:00:00.001-06:00

In part two of this series, I approach the project from a quality of life perspective, rather than simple economy, although that does figure into some of it.

Problems and redux.

I quickly found out that the new CF lighting in my offce was overwhelming, both in quantity and quality. I replaced Reveal full spectrum bulbs with CF bulbs and the new light was very white and very harsh. It hurt my eyes right away and detracted from the ambiance of my beloved office that I spend so much time in. Immediately I turned off half the new bulbs (a further energy savings) and strategically moved the remaining two Reveal bulbs to places that illuminated my most frequently used work areas, namely my desk. I will do some further research to find better full spectrum CF bulbs that don't have such harsh light. When all the CF bulbs were on, it was like going from a dark room to bright outdoors, it was just a little overwhelming. I eventually got used to the change in light quality.

The most surprising problem that I had was that a 60w equivalent CF bulb was too tall for a small lamp in the living room and the bulb stuck slightly over the shade and was aesthetically unpleasing. Had the lamp been in some place other than central portion of the living room, I would have probably left it. The replacement didn't pass the wife test and warranted a "you aren't going to leave it like that" look rating. With further shopping I was able to find a spiral CF bulb that was not only considerably shorter, and fit nicely, but also much lower wattage that worked perfectly for the location. A nice additional monetary perk.

In the master bath area over the sink we replaced the 60w Reveal bulb with a 60w equivalent CF bulb. Right away we could see that the results were unacceptable on a number of accounts. First, the startup time was way too slow for our quick moving, getting ready in the morning routine. We might just be really impatient, but remember that I set a goal of not impacting my quality of life negatively. Also, the light took a while to get up to full intensity, and the type of light was not appealing in the least. It was almost as if we were jaundiced, a real problem when you are getting yourself up and motivated for the day. I quickly switched back to the Reveal bulb.

In the laundry room, over the washer and dryer, I experimented with several bulbs to get a level of illumination that was right for the task area. Once I was happy with the bulb in the fixture, I had my wife test it out. Unfortunately the light temperature was wholly unacceptable because she was unable to match socks of similar color. The level of illumination was adequate, its just the color of the light that the bulb gave off made it hard to differentiate between the dark navy blue socks and black socks. To solve this issue I shopped further for bulbs and got a daylight CF that gave off much better light for the task. Its still a little harsh and makes you feel as if you are in a refrigerator, but atleast you can correctly match socks.

Good things.

Rather than simply consider this a task requiring action to complete, I spent more than a little time considering the qualitative aspects of what occurred and more specifically the good things that came out of it.

My first big win came early in the experiment. The amount of light coming from the outside CF flood lights was exceptional. It was atleast twice the lumens for a quarter of the power. As we get used to it, there are places that it has almost too much light and we will have to do some balancing of the areas. Our front porch definitely has the feel of a theater stage about it. While its nice to have lots of light, it is wasteful.

Truly one of the most positive aspects of this project was the signficiant reduction of heat in my office. I had previously noticed that it would be much cooler when I entered the office after the lights had been off for a long time. I also had previously noticed a marked drop in temperature when I moved from two 19-inch CRTs to two 17-inch LCD monitors. I have nearly ten cpus worth of computing gear in my home office, so there is lots of heat being generated regardless of what else is going on in the office. I figured that changing to CF would have a slight affect, but nothing major. Boy was I wrong! The difference was dramatic and right away. I no longer felt hot in the room after a long period of working in my office and was no longer sweating. Apparently the office was normally right at the perception tipping point of acceptable and hot, with the additional heat from the lights putting it into the hot category. Moving four 50w bulbs to a net two 11w bulbs is a nearly 10-fold reduction in power usage and much of that power we converted to heat.

Not all the positive aspects of this project were specifically about the lights, but instead about installing the lights. We have one bulb that is a real pain to get to. It's location is inconvenient and requires me, inspite of me not being the most limber camper on the planet, to do some gymnastics to install. Furthermore, this bulb is installed by walking on a second story walkway, which tweaks my slight fear of heights. I think you get the point, its a pain to change that bulb. Now, with the long life bulbs, 4 to 8 times longer, I don't have to change it nearly as often. For that reason alone I would pay the extra cost of the bulb.

Subsequent experimentation.

As I live and work in this newly fluorescent world, I have been tweaking things from time to time. For instance, as I mentioned previously, I reduced the number of powered CF bulbs from four to two because the light was more than adequate. I am also contemplating upgrading some of the bulbs in key areas to daylight bulbs, or atleast something closer to full spectrum, to improve the quality of the light in the areas.

Conclusions.

Could I be a better conservation story? yes. But recall that the aim of this exercise was to save money and not negatively affect the quality of my (or my family's) life. After I had finished replacing the bulbs that I wanted to focus on, I looked around and was surprised by the number of incandescent bulbs remaining in the house. I was able to count atleast another 31 standard bulbs in the house, 19 candelabra bulbs that would be harder to replace with CF, 4 standard bulbs in the garage, and 10 unused floodlight sockets around outside of the house. The remaining easily replaceable standard bulbs in the house were all well below the five minutes per week usage level, which makes the break-even point for them well over 500 years. I am, unfortunately, not nearly that patient.

Anybody who knows me will tell you that I am definitely not a treehugger. I do, however, think that you should sometimes do the "right" thing, but not out of some faux crisis promulgated by a vapid celebrity from Hollywood. In other words, just do it because its easy, it works, and it will save you money. In my case it was approximately $185/yr, but your savings might be much greater if your power costs are higher.

What is the word "grunt" in Korean?

2005-11-11T02:41:00.000-06:00

My young son has been taking Tae Kwon Do at a local place for just about a year. Recently there was a Grandmaster and a Master that came over from Shiheung, South Korea to do training sessions with the students. In honor of their visit and a visiting Korean trade delegation there was a martial arts show to be given by the students of the various arts that are taught at the center. The center is sort of like a big family and I decided to bring small Korean Turtle ship statue type gift that I received for my participation, many years ago, in the benchmarking and eventual sale of a very large Cray-2 supercomputer to the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). It was the first supercomputer on the Korean penninsula.

I thought it would be nice to make a connection with their culture, especiallly with something that they were extremely proud of in their history. The turtle ship was the worlds first iron clad battleship, circa 1592. During the Im Jin War between the Koreans and Japanese, it dominated the seas. But I digress.

The demos went well and there were all kinds of presentations of plaques back and forth between the delegations. After the festivities were over I took the turtle ship over to the office manager. Seeing it, she was absolutely blown away. She quickly brought me over to a woman who was apparently a translator for the trade delegation and had me explain the circumstances behind how I received the turtle ship. She listened intently and once I was done she hustled over two gentlemen from the trade delegation (one of which was reputed to own 4 city blocks in Seoul) and showed it to them. She went into a long explanation in Korean, which I didn't understand in the least. As she was speaking, their faces became longer and more amazed. At the end their was almost a look of shock on their face. They hailed several others from the trade delegation and told them what appeared to be the shortened version of what the translator had told them. Before I knew it, I was swept into the group for a series of pictures with the whole group. This was the same style of picture that had been taken with the President of the Rochester City Council.

Given that I was in an old t-shirt, jeans, and sandals, I wasn't exactly expecting that to happen. There was lots of reverent handshakes with me, which only made me more bewildered. I talked to the office manager who I had taken it to in the first place and asked what just went on. She thought that it had been explained by the translator that I was responsible for the first supercomputer in Korea. Apparently the word 'grunt' doesn't translate very well into Korean. I just pray that the pictures don't end up in the paper or anything.

To be clear, I worked quite a bit on the benchmark, mostly doing menial type tasks like writing tapes and assisted the various other benchmarkers, but was certainly in no way responsible for it being sold. There were lots of other people that were considerably more responsible than I.

It's an odd cautionary tale about different cultures and foreign languages.

To Start Things Off!

2005-11-11T01:08:00.000-06:00

I thought I would start things off by posting some of the backgrounds derived from photos that I have taken. They are available as 1280x1024, 1024x768, and 800x600, which should cover most peoples needs. If you wish other sizes, feel free to contact me. Currently there are images from Scotland and French Polynesia. I will add more as some goes on. Enjoy!