Travels and Images
WEEK 20 2007
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Saturday 19 May
2007
Saturday
- The Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers on on top in the west. WhooHoo!
(I have friends and family who are no doubt delighted that the A's and the Padre's have managed to get to second place. Losers)
It was a nice day, spent with my brother, and I'm too tired to blog about it now.
I'm thinking that the new (to me) National Air and Space Museum would be a cool place to visit this year.
Friday 18 May
2007
Friday
- I ran across a link showing that the recent Greensburg tornado wasn't the worst on record. The worst was the Tri-State tornado of 1925, which was an F5 and killed about 700 people. Parts of the description remind me of a theory I once read, suggesting that an F5 wasn't
the worst possible, that an F5 that turned horizontal to the ground
would be worse. The description at Wikipedia of the Tri-State Tornado:
"The unusual appearance (due to its size) of the very fast moving
tornado, best described by the witnesses along most of its path as an
amorphous rolling fog or boiling clouds on the ground, fooled normally
weather wise farm owners (and people in general) who did not sense the
danger until the storm was upon them."
I wonder, if you were to project this same storm onto the current 2007
landscape, with its much greater population, how much worse would the
damage be?
My internet connection has begun it's summer/fall habit of losing
connectivity at random but frequent intervals. I'm not sure if it is
heat in a router room somewhere, or lawn irrigation water percolating
down into the phone lines. It is insanely annoying. Perhaps it is time
to drop DSL and go to cable. If I also dropped my landline phone I
might actually save money.
Friday Cat-Blogging: Riley has
begun to curl up affectionately next to me, putting his head on my arm.
This is disturbing - his usual way of showing affection is to bite me.
Update: Five minutes later - he's gone. He just wanted some food.
Another Update: Apparently cats sitting on keyboards is a wide ranging conspiracy...
Some internet cat humor.
We had a little going away party for an engineer at work. He is leaving
the excitement and glamor (not to mention job security) at NASA to work
for a small company in his Colorado home town. Best of luck, A.
I admire his sense of adventure and confidence.
Thursday 17
May 2007
Thursday
- so, another long day. More work accumulating daily. Bah.
So, I watched the Smallville
season finale. Lana Lang is dead, finally. About time. Except that I'm
pretty sure it's a trick. The script - and the acting - was more wooden
than usual, which is saying a lot.
Then I watched the Supernatural finale. I thought last week was the season finale, since Sam died. But no, this week Dean sold his soul to the devil (I said he was Republican!) and brought Sam back. Also there was the unleashing of a couple hundred demons.
Apart from that, I got nothin'. *
Time for bed.
*Oh yeah, Chloe died, and she is certainly the most three dimensional
character in the whole series. Then again, she might be alive too...
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Wednesday
- today we had an early luncheon for an employee who is leaving us for
greener pastures (Aspen). So I took a quick walk to re-energize myself
before some meetings. About halfway through my walk I realized it was hot! So,
red and perspiring I eventually returned to my desk and saw that it was
about 95F outside. Sheesh.
James Lileks is probably the finest writer in newspaper today. Last
week his newspaper demoted him to a local beat. It is mind
bogglingly insane.
So he went
to Disneyland.
Alcohol and light sabers do not
mix: YouTube.
Tuesday 15 May 2007
Tuesday
- busy at work. And pretty tired when I got home. I did see a pretty
amazing presentation at work about a new measurement system called ARAMIS, from Trilion Systems.
Optical, non-contact reasonably easy to make measurements of
displacement and strain, pretty cool stuff. When I picked up the
brochures that for the ARAMIS module was on top, followed by that for
PONTOS, which my brain interpreted as Porthos.
Smart aleck that I am I immediately asked for the Athos and d'Artangan
brochures - and was met with a blank stare by the salesman. I
told him that they should rename the product line, and give me a cut,
but he seemed unconvinced. Such is my life.
Heh. They could buy up one of the old wired accelerometer companies, just to have a complete product line, and call it Milady.
Apparently there was a debate on TV, the Republicans this time. I
missed it. But I did catch up on Supernatural.
(I'm pretty sure Dean
would vote Republican, likely several times under different ID's.
Sam is probably a Democrat and while agonizing over deep moral issues
would forget to vote).
Of course if they ran the debate 'American Idol' fashion, perhaps with a dash of 'Are you smarter than a fifth grader?', it'd be a killer show.
Since I seem to be on a Singularity kick lately, a blog
post from Charles Stross on what unlimited compact data
storage could do to the world, without any of the other usual
Singularity items, AI, biotechnology, etc. [via The Speculist]
I dropped off the library books in the morning, but had to return a
tape in the evening (they are not "dropoffable"), so thats 25 cents
I'll wish I had some day. I almost checked out a biography of President Martin Van Buren, but decided I had too much reading material as it is. Now I sort of wish I had picked it up.
Monday 14 May 2007
Monday
- back at work, not a lot to say there.
I noticed when I arrived home tonight that I've some library books due
today. I'll just drop them in the box tomorrow morning - the library
closes in ten minutes. I'm not sure if I'll get a fine or not from that.
Sunday 13 May 2007
Sunday
- down in Oxnard, visiting with friends.
It's Mothers Day. I'm missing mine, and watching my friends with their
child. What an amazing amount of work raising a kid is. And I
don't
suppose we are ever properly grateful. Not until it's too late do we
truly realize what people mean to us.
