Was that a rain drop I felt?

11. June 2008 by admin.

 In case you hadn’t heard, most of middle-eastern Illinois and middle-western Indiana got drenched with rain.  We got a big share of it, but our immediate family was lucky.  The levy didn’t fall apart as expected and we are back into our home today. Overall it was a little bit of an adventure.  It started with the power going out Friday night as we watched the storms roll by.  We had setup folding chairs under the overhang in front of the garage and made a pretty good time of it.  Duke energy was out within a half hour or so of our call and they got the blown transformer fixed right away.  The roads were starting to flood, but it was normal. By early morning it was another story. A huge lightning and thunder storm hit with a vengeance.  Both of the boys came into our room and got in bed with Colleen.  The shaking of the walls and windows from the thunder was tremendous.  As William put it “It sounded like we were under attack.”

By early morning the road in front of our house “Windsor RD.” was running like a stream.  For the first time since we moved here the field behind us started filling up.
 
An hour or so later there were calls for sand baggers at the local Harbor side health care facility.  Chris and I grabbed some gloves and waded over to lend a hand with sand bags.  We got the back of the buildings done enough to slow the water down but it was clear it was a losing battle.  (Unknown to us my father was on a sand bagging crew in West Terre Haute doing essentially the same thing there). The water rose six to ten inches while we were working.  I figured at best we were buying them time to get the elderly residents out before the place flooded.  Chris was a real trooper and he clearly enjoyed the whole thing. 

They announced that another load of sand would be dropped out front and that efforts to keep the drive area clear for loading would happen when it arrived.  Chris and I headed back at that time.  Below is the work crew still bagging around a generator as we left.
 

The water was rising.  Through the center of the neighborhood,  and also North West of us the water was waste to chest deep and still rising.  In some places, like the intersection of 10th and Windsor Road it was like a heavy river with a strong current. We had heard that part of the levy for Honey Creek had broken but there were not many details.I did not get any pictures of William.  I decided loosing my phone in the water was not a good idea.  William and I returned to help with the sand bagging out front, but after waiting a long time the sand truck had still not appeared.  We did get to chase a very large fish through the front drive of the Healthcare facility.  People were starting to bring in boats and the rushing water was getting worse everywhere. William and I headed back. The water was following the ground and flowing South to North through our area.  Most of it was coming from Honey Creek and heading straight north where it rushed over the banks into Thompson’s Ditch.  The Ditch of course was filling up fast.  So was the ditch behind our house.

At some point during the day I decided to put some chairs out in the yard and make lite of a stressful situation.  A well placed fishing pole, tackle box and a No Fishing sign with a big X over it got a lot of laughs from neighbors and people wading down the street.

 

 Chris got some casting practice in.

We replaced ourselves with some scarecrows.

Through out the morning Colleen and I made lots of phone calls to make sure everyone else was safe and doing well.  We had a hard time contacting Michael.  Apparently he had left his phone somewhere. 

I got a little worried as things began to get worse.  I battened down the hatches and took a hike Northwest along Windsor to 7th street to see how bad things really were and to make sure we could hike/wade out.  That side of the neighborhood was in a lot worse shape and it started just just a half a block from us.  I found myself pushing against a current in chest deep water. 

Seventh street was a mass of confusion with volunteers pushing boats into the streets and past flooded vehicles in the neighborhood.  Most of the stranded vehicles were driven by idiots who thought their four wheel drives were invincible. 

It wasn’t too much longer and Windsor river was clearly getting larger.

 

Before I had gotten home someone from EMS or Civil Defense or something had knocked on the door and told Colleen and the kids to move to shelter at

Terre Haute

South

High School.  They were running boats through the area and picking people with Babies etc.  We grabbed up some things, loaded our back packs and began wading. There is something really humbling about stuffing a hand full of possessions into a few back backs and walking away knowing that you might lose everything  else at any moment. I kept in mind that everything important was wading the flood next to me or already safe in another location.The dog was swimming most of the time and several other “refugees” commented on my “swimming the dog”.  The center of

Springhill Drive was shallow and the going was not as rough there.  Water was also flowing East to West across 7th street so we didn’t get out of the water until we got to the other side of Thompson’s ditch.

Eventually our little troop of refugees made it to South

High School where everyone was being turned away!  Apparently the

EMS or Civil Defense people were telling everyone the wrong school.  The shelter was at North high school not South.   South was reserved for the HarborSide Health care residents.  Ironically the people we had helped with the sandbags. It was only another 6 or 7 miles of hiking to

North

High School. There was a couple who stopped at the school in a pickup truck.  They offered to give us a ride.  I wish I had gotten their names, but I failed to do so.  Apparently they had been taken stranded residents from the flood area to the school and then discovered that they were all being turned away.  We told them we had just hiked  there and were still catching our breath.  They said they had seen us hiking to the school and understood. They then offered to come back later and check on us.  More importantly hey did.  We however, had a ride.  My father was on his way to pick us up.  We had heard all day that

West Terre Haute was basically flooded out and the streets were closed, but that was only downtown. We thankfully spent the night at Mom and Dads and fearing the worst we returned Sunday to find that everything was fine. The water never entered the house.  We were a lot more fortumate than most of the people in the area. However, while I was typing this Vectren came to the house and ripped out the gas meters.  Colleen went out and asked them what they were doing.  They told her that they are ripping out all the pipes and gas meters in the area and that the time to replace them was unknown. Great, cold showers. I guess I should be thankful.

Lee

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Just some more driving observations…

12. April 2008 by admin.

I believe the Midwest opossum population gathered together in a massive suicide pact the other night.  Shortly after a rain storm blew through I noticed at least four members of this mammalian group lying in distorted and mangled positions along a five mile stretch of highway.  On the chance that this was a natural phenomena and not a political statement or movement I did some  checking on something else I noticed. 

 It seems that there was a strong odor of earthworms in the air that morning.  Now maybe other people don’t notice this, but sometimes after a storm you can actually smell the earthworms that have emerged in large numbers.  At least I think I do.  So, what did I do?  I checked the web.  Believe it or not there are actually people out there doing studies on opossum diet.  Turns out that earthworms are 9% of an opossums diet.

This is good news for many reasons.  First, the connection my brain made was probably correct and second, I feel pretty strongly that a large amount of government money and peoples lives should be spent studying a giant rat that pretty much does not benefit anybody or anything.  I mean, why feed the poor or study cancer when there are opossums out there not getting a balanced diet.

“Correct opossum diet is essential for …”

“A hazard in the opossum’s life is that they eat … ”

Seriously,  I apologize to the opossum lovers of the world.  Perhaps I am just having a bad day. I really believe that we need information concerning everything, but on occasion it seems like our priorities are a little askew.  However, to make up for it, here are some opossum info and picture links…

 (Although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to look at these things.)

http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek030608.html

http://www.junglewalk.com/shop/Products/Opossum-Poster-12046.htm

http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/a_closer_look_at_wildlife/opossums.html

Posted in Random thoughts and questions | No Comments »

Serious and not so serious thoughts on comic books

8. April 2008 by admin.

I’d like to begin this post by proclaiming simply that I am not a “comic geek”.  I have nothing against comic geeks, I just don’t want to be labled incorectly as one.

Now, let me share with you  some thoughts related to comic books.  You see, I am a fan of Iron Man, or at least I was as a youth.  The new movie coming out next month has caused me more than once to ponder on why this particular character is at the top of my list.  Afterall, Tony Stark, A.K.A. Iron Man was a womenizing alchoholic.  Not much of a roll model for young people.  However, if you read my recent post on people I admire from history you will no doubt get some insight as to my super hero choice.

Anyway, these thoughts had me thinking of comic books in general.  I currently do not read them, nor do I collect, but as a younger person I did both.  I am pretty sure that if you did some surveying you would find that a fairly large percentage of males born after 1960 have done both.  As a matter of fact I am going to pause writing for a moment and do some googling on the subject. - pause - I am back. I had a hard time finding any numbers and I did not want to stray to far from my current thoughts. I did find that most people refer to comics written after 1961 as the “Marvel age” and indeed most of my comic book heros where from the pages of Marvel produced comics.

Getting back on track I would like to mention a few of my childhood comic hereos.  There were several that I would have to say had an appeal for me because of their simplistic philosophy.  I am pretty sure I admired these charachters because they had a basic motto they lived by and it was never clouded by social concerns.  Two that come to mind are “The thing” from the Fantastic four and Wolverine from the X-men comic.  Basically the answer to everything for these two was simply “It’s clobbering time” and “Just show me where to slash” respectedly.  Of course, the world and life concerns are far more involved and complicated, but it would be nice to boil everything down to this level of simplicity.

As a young child I wanted to be Batman.  I know this because all through grade school my mother kept a small book and one of the questions I was asked each year was “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Several years the answer was Batman.  As I got older Batman was replaced with Iron Man. Now if you think about it, what do these two have in common?  They both created themselves.  Neither of them were dipped in toxic waste, bitten by a radio active spider or born with superhuman abilities.  They are both from planet earth and ordinary people who use their intelligence and wealth to create gizmos and gadgets that make them superhuman.

Promotional picture released for the movie.

Tony Stark does have some redeaming qualities.  He was basically a bad person who changed his life and decided to do good for others. Even before the movie project Iron Man / Tony Stark was getting press again. According to the Wikipedia page on the Iron Man comic book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man  ”Forbes has ranked Iron Man among the wealthiest fictional characters on their annual ranking.^[1] BusinessWeek has also ranked Iron Man as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.^[2]“

^{Note:  I found the whole Forbes magazine thing a bit odd and possibly made up, so I did some checking.  It’s real. If you search for the Forbes 15 wealthiest Fictional charaters be sure to note the date of the publishing.  The 2005 list does not have Tony Stark on it, the 2006 list has him in 8th place just behind Bruce Wayne and the 2007 list has him at 10th place.  Apparently both he and Bruce made some bad investments last year.}

^{Also Note:  If you are wondering about the BusinessWeek article it’s real also.  It is actually called “Smartest superheros”. Bruce Wayne is third and Tony Stark is 4th.}

I don’t know if Iron Man is going to be a great movie or not.  I am hoping it is.  Robert Downing Jr. seemed like a strange choice for the role, but after seeing his “Tony Stark” in the trailers I think he may have been absolutely the right pick.  If you want to see anything about the movie, watch trailers or download desktops go to http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/

Something else that came to mind while contemplating this subject was an incident that occurred with my oldest son when he was in grade school.  He was basically chastised for reading X-men comics.  When I asked him about it he said that the teacher had ranted and raved about how all they do is promote violence.  I offered to speak to her on his behalf, but he said it would not help anything.  He had resigned himself to reading them at home and letting the subject drop.  Had I had the opportunity I would have pointed out several things to his teacher. First off my son was exceptionally intelligent and that many of the words used in the comic were well above the reading level often seen in the newspaper.  I would have also pointed out that this particular comic series had a moral message.  That message was anti prejudice.

If you are interested in the debate over the value of comic book content you might want to start with a little history.  If you go to http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/014_05/2045 you will find a very well written ecerpted article entitled “the ten-cent plague” written by David Hajdu.  I don’t know anything about the author but the excerpt covers the history and the “almost demise” of comic books.  We all read novels about overzealous good-doers who hold book burnings, but we generally take that as an imaginary metaphore.  In the case of comic books the book burnings actually occurred.

Another interesting read is located at http://www.crimeboss.com/history03-1.html It is an article by Amy Kiste Nyberg and it covers the Senate investagation in 1954 on the relationship of comic books and teen delinquincy.  Basically they found none. however it did prompt explathe creation of the  self governing comic code.

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People In History that I admire….

30. March 2008 by admin.

Recently I wrote some friends and contacts an email to let them know how my new job is going and to say hello.  I included a couple of things in the email.  I listed the person I was most envious of and the person who has “the best job ever”.   Those two were Daniel Petri and Dennis Hwang respectively. 

Daniel Petri has one of the best IT websites for IT people looking for “how-to’s”  The site is not recommended for those with little or no Networking and Administration knowledge. However if you are an IT professional looking for answers about network processes or system administration you really need to check it out as a primary source of information.  Check it out http://www.petri.co.il/ 

 Dennis Hwang has the best job ever.  Not only is he the “master” of the Webmasters for Google, but they guy gets to design all the Google Logo’s for holidays and special events!

 Now you are probably wondering what this has to do with History?  Well, thinking about these two brought to mind the people throughout history I admire the most.  I thought about this for quite sometime.  The names came to me easily enough, but why I admired them over others did not come so easily.  After some reflection I resolved the issue.  It seems that everyone on my “most admired” list was some form of inventor or discoverer.   Although I have a great deal of respect for humanitarians, religious figures and the like they don’t make my list.

The idea that someone could take some information, make some discoveries and then create something completely new fascinates me.  That “spark” of inspiration or that accidental answer is something that is mysterious.  I have experienced it in small ways throughout my life.  We all have.  Whether you realize it or not your mind makes the connections and resolves things in ways that no one has showed you or told you about.  That day you figured out how to attach that thing to the thing so it would not bounce off when…  or the time you added that line of code to that program that fixed the issue with the … We have these moments more often than we think. 

What makes the people on my list stand out is that they resolved big issues or complex matters.  Part of the difference is that they simply took the time or had the freedom to take the time to concentrate on the problem.  A prime example is Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin spent most of his early life bettering his “station”.  It wasn’t until he retired that his inventive qualities began to shine.  Everyone knows the almost cliche story of the lightning and the key, but that really wasn’t the significant thing that Benjamin did.  He took the concepts of Positive and Negative and a few terms like “battery” and created a working vocabulary that explained electricity.  Terms and explanations that we still use today.

So anyway, my list is as follows.  I have tried to order the names in the order of significance to me.

BTW: I am not an expert on each of these gentlemen or their theories and creations nor do I pretend to be.

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Albert Einstein
• Benjamin Franklin
• Galileo Galilei
• Thomas Edison
• Issac Newton

I am sure there are others that should be on the list, but just the American Inventors list on Wikipedia is 808 pages.

 Who knows.  Perhaps someday your name or my own will go on the list.

Lee

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Just a few thoughts that have hit while driving…

30. March 2008 by admin.

Recently I took a contract position.  I now get the honor of driving an hour to and from work.  Since this driving time is interfering with my “typing” time I have purchased a digital recorder so I may “write” while I drive.  This is a lot more difficult to do than I first imagined.  After-all, most people can’t stand the sound of their own voices.  It is nothing like what you hear in your head. It is also awkward.  When you type and make a mistake or want to redo what you have written it is just a matter of backspacing and correcting.  When you record you have to do it all over again or create awkward notes.  Anyway, I hope to make many more updates to this blog once I get use to the process.  The digital recorder I purchased has some software and a USB port, so I might actually be able to post some samples of my verbal writing.  Right now, I’ll just add the two thoughts I had recently while driving.

First, deer do not know anything about daylight savings time.

Second, no matter how fast you travel, everyone else moves too fast or too slow.

Lee

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Lost and almost forgotten…

28. January 2008 by Lee.

OK.  Like many people in the world I got hooked on a T.V. show.  Seldom do my wife and I find something we both like a lot.  However a long time ago the two of us discovered LOST on ABC.  We became dedicated viewers.  We even rented the previous season to watch episodes we had missed.  However, there has been such a huge gap between the last season and this one that I quite frankly forgot about it.

 I am not really sure what the networks are trying to accomplish by producing eight and 9 episode seasons and airing them a year or more apart?  After all, how many fans have they lost?

Thursday night is the premiere for this season and I intend to watch it.  Maybe the networks know what they are doing.

If you are like me and you have forgotten most of the story line just go to the website link below and there is an 8 minute and 16 second recap of the storyline.  It sort of runs as constant ramble, but most of the key elements are there to trigger who is who and what is what.  In case you forgot all of it.

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index

Also, if you are a fan you may want to watch the LOST missing peices on the website.  There are 13 two to three minute episodes segments that did not air.

 Lee

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Disapointment…

27. January 2008 by Lee.

I discovered the greatest disappointment known to man.  My twins asked me for donuts.  We drove to the most popular donut shop in town.  There was a sign on the door.  The sign read “sold out”.

Lee

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Fasinated by Flash Drives …

23. January 2008 by Lee.

For Christmas this year I asked Mr. and Mrs Claus for a flash drive and being the good Kris Kringle couple that they are they came through for me.  I am now the proud owner of an SanDisk Cruzer and better than expected it’s an 8 GIG !

Flash drives, USB Flash drives and flash memory technology has fascinated me for the last couple of years.  I am going to produce some technical documents on the subject with some hints etc for my tech website, but the purpose of this discussion I am just going to give you the general principles. (If you want to know more about the technical issues start by looking up Fowler-Nordheim tunneling.  I suggest www.howstuffworks.com)

There are lots of diferent types and brands of Flash drives and Flash memory, but the only real distinction is  hat the term “USB Flash drive” is used to indicate a moble device and a “Flash Drive” is basically a hard disk that uses the flash technology instead of  a magnetic platter to store data. 

So how does a flash drive or Flash memory store information?  The first thing you need to know is that they all  use a chip technology refered to as NAND.  NAND chips use transistors.  You can think of them as tiny gates or doors that stay open or closed to represent the bits that are on or off .  More exactly there are pairs of these transisitors and the electrical flow between them determines the on and of state.  One transistor or gate opens and a sensor determines the number of electrons passing between the transistors.  So you can think of it like one of the transistors opening and thereby reducing the number of electrons.  You can think of it that way but actually there are no moving parts.  The open or closed gate is actually determined by how much current is passing through.  Like I said you may want to read Wikipedia for the general stuff and go to Howstuffworks.com for details.

Part of my facination with this is that in that tiny thumb drive (One name for a USB flash drive) is sixteen times more storage than the largest hard disk drive I owned 5 years ago!  I put every installer for every utility that I am currently using on my computer and it did not us 1/8th of my Cruzer!

Moble Flash drives,USB Flash Drives, UFD’s, ThumbDrives, Memory Sticks, USB Drives , or whatever you call them are becoming cheaper and easier to find every day.  There is some contention as to when the first USB Flash Drive was developed and sold, but somewhere between 1998 and 2000 the first ones hit the market.  Wikipedia has a history section that covers this.

Early afordable USB Flash Drives and Memory Cards came in capacities of MB or megabytes.   The most popular ones came in 128Mb and 256 Mb sizes. They were impressive at the time.  After all, storing your camera pictures on a small device or SD card was impossible in the years prior.  However, the estimate was that Flash Drive storage space would double about once every two years.  This has not proved to be true.  Instead it is doubling every year!  My 8GIG will be replaced with a 16GIG next year.

Of course small storage USB Flash drives are already laughable.  I was in a line at a Kmart and I saw some on the candy rack.  They were only $5.99.  Of course, when I looked close I saw that they were only 64MB.  I chuckled out loud.  Something that upon reflection seems strange, since just a few years ago tht would have been a bargain!

What does the future hold?  Possibly entire notebook computers that are entirely based on Flash Drive NAND technolgy or a variation of it.  There are draw backs.  The transistors or gates I talked about are only good for about one million uses before they wear out.  Since data is written and read in blocks of transistors that means they could prove not to be a long lasting storage media for a laptop.  When you read one single character that is stored in the block the entire block gets read.

I’ll add to this post as I think of other interesting things.

BTW: Keep your eyes open.  There may be a collectors market for unusual USB Flash Drives someday.  I have already seen a keychain Bible that is a Flash Drive with the entire King James bible on it.  There are others shaped to look like unusual items.

The following links will take you to some unusual USB Flash Drives. 

USB FLASH DRIVES that look like robots, food, …. http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/12/strange-usb-flash-drives-on-amazon/

Need to open a bottle?  Just whip out your USB Flash Drive http://designcorner.blinkr.net/OhGizmo_/2007/04/25/Popdrive___USB_Flash_Drive___Bottle_Opener

 Are you a secret agent who needs to hide top secret documents? Check out this watch…

 http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2007/03/30/kronos-usb-flash-drive-watch-by-andrew-wilkerson/

A Thumb Drive that looks like a thumb …

http://www.gearfuse.com/index.php?tag=usb_flash_drive

 Need a classy Ducati?

http://www.ifa-show.com/0061/sandisk/storage/sandisk-extreme-ducati-drive/

Seen any cool USB Flash Drives?

Posted in Gadgets and gizmos | No Comments »

Are people born arrogant and impatient?

23. January 2008 by Lee.

Today I was driving into the local guzzle and gulp (I just made that up.  I am sure someone else has used that before.  How’s about pump and slurp?) and a man was walking through the parking lot across my path.  He looked like your average middle age working guy and he sort of meandered across the lot.  I slowed to a crawl and watched to make sure he was going to move out of my way.  As I watched him he reminded me of  a man who did not have a lot but had done alright by working hard all his life.  He suddenly became aware of me and realizing I was not going to crash into him he relaxed. Grinning a friendly “hello” and tipping his hat he changed direction so I could pull into the parking spot I was aiming for.  I waved a thank you and slid my car into the parking spot.

While I was entering the gas station I noticed a shiny new Mercedes benz pull up and park right in front of the doors.  A woman who appeared to spend a lot of time in a beauty salon waved a cigarette in the air while gesturing and commanding to a passenger .  She seemed to dismiss the passengers apparent arguments by turning her gaze out the window with an upturned nose.  I caught all of this as I was going through the doorway.   I couldn’t't help but notice.  The car had parked as close as it could to the door.  It was blocking the entrance and was practically on the door step. Several people coming across the parking lot from the gas pumps had to make their way around the car.

 Inside I headed for the soda machine and the the same gentleman who was meandering the lot earlier was pulling a cup from the other side of the machine.  I grabbed a cup from my side and stood back to give him room.  He looked at me and I asked if he needed the soda on my side.  He smiled and said, no problem I am in no hurry and gestured for  me to go ahead.  I thanked him and filled my soda.

When I got to the counter area there was a rather long line since one cashier had left her post.   The girl running the second cash register walked back to her station behind the counter and punched something into the cash register . While I waited for the second line to open the friendly gentleman came up and quietly stood behind me.  I turned and offered to let him go ahead of me.   Just then the passenger of the mercedes came through the front door in a huff and obviously in a hurry.  She was a late teen perhaps early twenties and had the clothing and look of someone who had been given everything she ever had a temper tantrum about.  The cashier made the normal announcement that she could help whoever is next and before anyone else could move the girl from the car burst right in front of  me, slammed some money on the counter , barked an order at the cashier and began acting impatient immediately. 

For some reason the contrast between these people has stuck with me all day.    It is not all because of the money either.  I see this kind of behavior in poor people also.   I know a lot of it is upbringing, and some of it is genetics, but there must be something that can be done to curtail this kinda of behavior.  At what point does a person become the friendly gentleman or the arrogant person who is only out for themselves?  At what point do they truly throw out the courtesy and the rules?  There must be a point where Johnny says, “ya know what, to heck with other people.  Me first!”  If there is such a point and we can identify it  then there is a chance.

Or am I dreaming and we are simply stuck because they are born that way?

Lee

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Glacier meltdown?

21. January 2008 by Lee.

 Glaciar National park once had a total of 150 glaciers.  It now has only 27. I read somewhere that  Since 1970 there has been an 80% loss of those remaining glaciers.  I am not sure if this figure is correct or if I have the time frame wrong.

One thing is for sure Glaciers world wide have been receding rapidly over the last 100 years.  There are some good side by side visual comparisons on this website: http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/glaciers.html

The difference between Mt. Hood in 1987 and 2002 is striking. That’s a fifteen year diference. Not 100 years.

Lee

Posted in Ecology | No Comments »