Ed's Main Page

Travels and Images

WEEK 18 2003

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week

Saturday 3 May 2003

Saturday - I got a flyer on my door the other day: "Serious Poultry Disease Warning". Apparently a caution against the more solemn fowl among us. If they read "Readers Digest" they would know about "Laughter, the Best Medicine". Actually it seems to be "Exotic Newcastle Disease", and I first noticed signs posted at the Los Angeles Country/Kern County border about two weeks ago, forbidding movement of poultry.

It's raining this morning - a fairly good rain for us high ~~plains drifters~~ desert dwellers.. The gutters are full, though the streets are still clear.

Mathematical proof that Girls are Evil. Warning: algebra be there.

The physical therapist kindly brought in a textbook showing the operation that they want to do on me. Ever have the urge to see your hand eviscerated like a fish? Me neither. Fortunately someone had brought in a box of donuts and the "sugar high" kept me from actually fainting. I am beginning to hope for some sort of miraculous intervention - God, nanotechnology, something.

Added all my links for year 2003, so far, down at the bottom of this page.

Hey, just got IM'ed. Cool.

Friday 2 May 2003

Friday - It's been a long week, so not much to say tonight.

I am thinking of buying a new car - well, new to me - from a friend's parents. I haven't seen it yet, but knowing him, and them, it's a good deal and my biggest concern is that I don't want to be taking advantage of them.

It's an SUV, and I haven't seen it yet, but from the description it sorta looks like this:

Yeah baby, those guy's in hummers better watch out!

Thursday 1 May 2003

Thursday - back to work. Ran some testcases and such. Conferred with a friend on a crashed hard drive replacement. Dinner was at the Home Town Buffet - it was ribs night, and crowded. Afterwards we listened to Bertie Wooster, and I split two Chess games with a ten year old...

The president landed on a carrier today - as co-pilot. How cool for him, an ex-fighter pilot. He looked exhilarated.

And how terrifying for the various terrorists and murderers of the world. After nearly a decade of that cowardly snake Clinton, here is a American President, landing himself on an Aircraft Carrier, the supreme symbol of might in the world - this is something that genocidal maniacs everywhere can watch, understand, and fear.

They say terrorist acts are down 40% in the last year - expect them to go down further.

After landing he had coffee with the pilots, and lunch with the crew. To the men of the U.S.N. that probably means more than the speech he made later, or any award handed out later.

Wednesday 30 April 2003

Wednesday - ehh....

Tuesday 29 April 2003

Tuesday - back at work, lot's to do. In the afternoon, visited the hand surgeon. He explained, in some detail, what the specialist was suggesting. It sounds tedious. Bah. In the meantime, more hand therapy...

Monday 28 April 2003

Monday - not a lot to say. On the road again, traveling back to Lancaster. A lot of trucks. I suspect the storm, and the closure of the Interstate 80 through the mountains at Tahoe might have had something to do with it. Lot's of clouds, but nothing more than a sprinkle or two. The car needs a wash now!

So, here is an algebra problem. I passed 45 trucks in 47 minutes, traveling at just above 70mph. (Yeah, I counted. It's a long and boring drive.) The trucks were probably traveling in the low 60's. Assuming a 10mph differential, what was the average distance between trucks? I get about 900 feet - obviously an approximation, as the trucks tend to convoy a bit. Still, it gives an idea of what is happening on the interstate these days.

What I used to consider moderate to heavy traffic is becoming the new norm, it seems.

Sunday 27 April 2003

Sunday - the weather continued to be a little blustery, so we didn't do a lot. The computers are still a little fouled up - mail is coming through on a new account, but only the XP box can successfully access it. The other seems to link up, but finds nothing. We did, however, manage to fix the internet movie signup...

We had considered going to visit my sister's, but the weather and some other things conspired against us. Which is fine, I needed a break.

One thing that my brother and Dad though amusing was my dislike of a show we watched. It was on military fortifications, on the History Channel. It was terrible, starting from the description of the walls of Jerico, whilst showing remains of living quarters, and then showing various old art renditions ( wood prints, made millennia later, but having an "antiquey" feel ) of the walls fall, without even suggesting a reason beyond the trumpets. It then goes on to get the story of the Trojan horse wrong, proceeds to talk about the siege and fall of Masada, without mentioning how it was actually done; then briefly mentions William the Conqueror and Norman castle building, while showing a much more elaborate castle than was built at that time. The bit about Italian fortifications didn't have any glaring errors that I can recall, but the part about the fort at West Point during the American Revolutionary War was so turgid and confused as to almost have no point. The first design was bad, but were the multiple batteries of the second design good or bad? The third design? Then there was an interesting bit on fort design just prior to the American Civil war - given the level of the prior sections you have to suspect wholesale looting of someone else's work by the producers for this section....

Breathe deeply. Ah. Remember, the New Years Resolution is to be a kinder, gentler person.....

May Links:
Magazine: "Readers Digest"
Get paid for your jokes: "Laughter, the Best Medicine".
Mathematical proof that Girls are Evil.

April Links:
That online ecology footprint quiz
Gods and General's
Glen Reynold's Instapundit
Eugene Volokh's Conspiracy,
Alexa. a spyware thing.
Unmentionable Cuisine. Yuck.
page on relative Starship Dimensions cool.
Slashdot Again.
Ebay.
www.eb.com the Encyclopedia Brittanica, online
Giant Tow Truck, which is an M88.
Federation of American Scientists
http://globalsecurity.org/

March 2003 Links:
weatherpixie
utopian community, Llano del Rio.
Warblog: The Command Post
Warblog: The Agonist Later found to be plagarizing other sites. Avoid.
Warblog: Sgt. Stryker
The Core
Canadian web blog site called Daimnation
my first page. Go me, go me....
Flight test software suite: IADS
Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld Series,
Movie: "Children of Dune"
State gasoline taxes? Here
Sparks Crime Blotter...
blogger Ken Layne
Shuttle Columbia Loss FAQ.
Go Global Warming!!!
Comic strip: Day by Day.
AAW flights.
El Mirage Dry Lake Park
Rogers and Rosamond dry lakes out at Edwards
Daredevil,

February Links
Thomas Perry novel, "Dead Aim"
Dave Weber/John Ringo novel "March to the Stars",
Harry Potter book "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"
Pioneer 10 had finally died:
Carquinez Cam.
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn,
My Part of the River
Toonami
Animal Planet
Trim your cat's hair like this
comet NEAT
the NEAT program
blogger Angie Schultz's page: darkblogules,
The, Petaja Pages: The Website of writer Emil Petaja
Falstaff's lines
if Bill Joy is right
blogger Jay Mainfold, over at A Voyage To Arcturus
Website for hubble Hubble
Telescopes on a mountain, crowded

January's Links
Thomas Perry's "Metzger's Dog"
FOTR on DVD
Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist"
China's Gross Domestic Product and space:. Here
The 'Lord of the Rings' as told by Hemingway, or Dr. Seuess, or maybe H.P. Lovecraft..
The landing of an out of fuel Boeing-767, the Gimli Glider .

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Coming back from Martinez on Monday, I was pursued the entire way by a minor storm. Here the late afternoon sun is glinting off the windmill's producing electric power in the hills above Tehachapi.

Last Week- Sun- Mon- Tue- Wed- Thur- Fri- Sat- Next Week