Yeah, I Rock

I used to be the guy on the left. Then I played the game. Now I understand. (From xkcd.com)

What song is this?

A rousing round of Guess the Backward Song...

[Addendum 12/29/07: Sorry if you haven't been able to see this video. I used the new YouTube feature to post a video directly into a blog. It worked right after I did it, but apparently something changed since then and the video stopped showing. I'm trying again a different way. Better luck this time, I hope.]

Wisdom

Franny says I gotta post more. So here's some philosophy I found enlightening. As always, click to make it readable.

Merry Christmas!

Between the holidays and the toddler, it's been busy, but I had to post a Merry Christmas to everybody out there. Ours was fairly low key. Most of my family was in Colorado, but we couldn't make that trip unfortunately. Only so much leave to go around. We did get a chance to see them on the webcam, and although the Mizz has about a one minute tolerance for sitting still, we still got to see family on the appropriate day.

We actually started Christmas Thursday when my folks came through on their way to the Colorado festivities. They brought along a winner -- a tent and tunnel combo. The Mizz loves it, although it does pretty much fill up the living room. We're down to the tent right now, which is still plenty big for him. It's full of legos rights now. He keeps inviting me inside, but I can only fit about halfway in laying down. He keeps telling me to wake up.

We ducked away Saturday night to Newport, Oregon. It's not exactly prime beach season, but we figured, if you're going to be cooped up out of the rain with a toddler, you might as well be somewhere cool. As we rolled into town, the rain stopped, so we were able to run around on the beach for a while. The Mizz has never really seen the beach, so rain drenched sand in the cold was still pretty cool to him. He did a lot of playing with kelp and sand and just running around. He kept saying that he wanted to go the beach. When we pointed out the fact that he was at the beach, he said, "No, I want to go to the beach of the water." He then ran directly for the surf. Luckily, we had seen this coming and we were a good hundred yards from the waves and the sharks and whatnot so he was easy to catch. We also caught a glimpse of some harbor seal napping on rocks. The next morning, we checked out the historic bayside, specifically to take the Mizz to the Undersea Garden. It wasn't that cool. It was a good sized aquarium, but unlike the brightly colored brochures, it was pretty drab. A whole green and brown aquarium full of green and gray and brown fish. Somewhat interesting, but only for a short time. The Mizz did get to touch a starfish and was pretty pleased about that. More interesting were the sea lions lounging on the dock outside. They were a little wary of us, but stood their ground. After all that, we decided that although getting away was nice, cooped up in a hotel with a toddler isn't that great. We wandered up the coast a way, with a quick stop in Depot Bay (world's smallest harbor) to observe the storm action in the blowholes. The water was shooting maybe 30 feet above the roadway, which was already quite a bit above the water. Very cool. After that, we'd had our fill of driving in the rain, so we called it a trip and headed home.

Today was pretty relaxed. The Mizz got a few things, but he's still pretty young to really understand the whole day. He has fun opening presents, but if they hadn't been there, he wouldn't have noticed. Waiting for him under the tree this morning was an old Tonka dump truck of mine, circa 1974(?). It is labelled as "hydraulic." "Spring loaded" or "catapult" might have been a better description. We'll show the Mizz that feature some other time. He also got a bunch of new legos, as I was feeling limited in my creative possibilities with his old ones. Now we can build much taller towers and much more complicated castles. We even built a house, because the Mizz wanted one to put a flower on. I'm just the builder, not the designer.

We got a taste of white Christmas. We got a good bit of heavy wet snow that made everything pretty, although it didn't stick around for long. We were going to go for a walk in it, but it was already raining again by the time we got moving.

To end the day, some friends brought over Chinese food, and unbeknownst to us, some more gifts for the Mizz. The best was four eggs worth of Silly Putty. The Mizz got four plastic eggs, WITH the original wrapping, and the rest of us got a lump of nostalgia to play with.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, whether it was a big family holiday, or just another day off.

I have GOT to get me one of these!

Give me one good reason why I don't need a glow-in-the-dark cloned cat. It is one of those irritating long-haired beasts, but then, I'll only be looking at it under a UV lamp anyway.

Enough already with the latkes and the fryin'

I have to start this by noting that, as anyone aware of my diet will attest, I can appreciate a fried bit of whatever. However, even I have to admit that there might be a limit. We've eaten latkes (potato pancakes, VERY fried, hash brown looking, but way better) with someone on four of the six nights of Hanukkah so far. I do love me some latkes, but that's too many. I feel like I have oil flowing out of my pores, not to mention the fact that I've had probably twice the recommended calories this week.

Maybe I'll cleanse my pallette for the next couple days by indulging in another Hanukkah tradition -- donuts. I'm pretty sure there's no way those can possibly be fried... (yeah, Dave, about that...)

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Birthday Mom! I know it's a day late, but at least this time I can say I was not near a computer yesterday until late at night and I was three hours jet-lagged. Mom's birthday was actually yesterday, and for the record, yes, I did call her, albeit from an airport while I was chasing the Mizz around trying to tire him out for the plane. I'm not sure how coherent the conversation was, but I'm sure she got the gist.

Since it's not polite to call your mother old, I decided to dig around for a picture to make fun of instead. I was originally thinking of a hospital one from around my original birthday with full-on beehive hair, but this one struck me. It struck me because with the chops, the perpetual squint, and the apparent lack of fashion sense, that could be me in the background instead of Dad. (In case you missed it, I'm the short guy in the blue track suit.) I also thought Mom had quite a good look going too until I realized that the glasses, shirt, and even the hairdo would probably be right at home in Portland today. I'm assuming there's some sort of polyester pants action going on too, but that might have to stay in history's laundry heap. Even in Portland, we have standards. Now that I write that, I can safely assume that the Mizz's generation will bring polyester back just to annoy me. Or maybe they'll work with 80's stuff like parachute pants and Miami Vice colors. Whatever it takes to irritate Dad.

Anyway, back to the point. Congratulations on another eventful year, Mom. Happy Birthday!

Back West

We made it home yesterday. The Mizz likes to kick airplane seats, but other than that, he's an awesome traveller. On just about every flight we take with him, we get an unsolicited compliment about how well he behaved. I always imagine the compliments to be sarcastic, but on the other hand, people who really had a problem with him probably wouldn't bother to say anything at all, at least not directly to us. I attribute his positive public response to exceptional parenting.

It was odd to get back to Portland to find that it was dry. When we left DC, grass and whatnot was covered in snow and it was sleeting on us. In Portland, it's obviously been raining lately, but today, it's clear as a bell and much milder. Franny bundled the Mizz up in the airport and put on her own hat and gloves before we went outside, not realizing that it was almost 50 degrees. I kind of chuckled inside, but it was fun to watch.

Another fun thing about this trip was rediscovering video games. Specifically, by brother-in-law brought Guitar Hero, or more specifically, Rock Band. I always thought this game looked ridiculous and couldn't possibly fun for very long. That was before I played it. My rudimentary guitar experience was irrelevant, since although the controller is shaped like a guitar, it's still pretty much just a video game controller. However, picking up this guitar is much easier than the real thing, so it's easy to feel like you're really making killer music. Even Franny thought it was awesome. Add in Scene It, a movie trivia game with individual buzzers (as all trivia games should have), and Franny and I were actually having a serious conversation about getting an Xbox for Christmas. Perhaps I'm not be as old or mature as I feel sometimes. Knowing how we are, one of us will probably look at a price tag or something and decide that maybe there are better ways to waste money, but it must have been fun if we were actually having the discussion.

We had a good time back East, but it's good to be home. We were in our regular bed and the Mizz seems glad to be back in familiar territory. At the very least, our house is somewhat childproofed, so we can comfortably let him play at his own convenience for minutes at a time. That's worth a ton right there.

Now if I could get him to sleep later than 4:30...

Northwest Storm

If you haven't seen it yet, this is I-5 near Centralia, Washington. I believe the water has subsided somewhat since this picture, but the road is still covered in a lot of mud that has to be removed before it can be reopened this weekend.

If you're interested in seeing some details of the storm, The Oregonian newspaper has put up an interactive map of various pictures, weather satation reports, etc. I especially like the rain guage and wind speed reports, such as 129 mph in Bay City, Oregon (near Tillamook, of cheese fame). It also shows road closures, but those are current, so some previously closed roads are not shown. Yesterday, the roads from Portland to Astoria, Seaside, and Tillamook were all closed.

I'm not sad we missed this one.

How's traffic in your town?

This elephant apparently got mad during an elephant polo match in Sri Lanka. I can't say that I blame him. (Yanked from Yahoo! photos)

I did it again

There I go again, wandering off and forgetting the blog. For three days I was travelling without the internet, but no excuse otherwise. Lazy? Probably.

The internetless travelling was a whirlwind work trip to Bend, Oregon. Lotsa work, long days, whine, whine, whine. Actually, it wasn't horrible. The guy I was working with has a timeshare membership that scored us what amounted to a two bedroom condo for $30 a night (total). No internet, but that per diem is going to feel great for this one. The real problem was coming home. We had to get home Wednesday evening, but Bend is on the other side of the Cascade mountain range from Portland, and as luck would have it, there had been a boatload of snow on the Cascades the night before, with more on the way. Both of the reasonable passes through the mountains had lots of snow and chain requirements. Although we had chains and some snow driving skill between us, we decided to be prudent and go straight north to The Dalles on the road that only had a weather warning rather than the severe weather alert on the passes. This might have added and hour and a half to our trip on a normal day, but due to the snow that happened during the trip, it added more like three. So a trip that's normally about three hours ended up taking us six, although we found that my van, loaded down as it was, actually held the road rather well and we never even had to put on the chains. But still, nine o'clock at night is no time to roll in if you haven't been out doing something fun.

Non sequiter FYI: my capitalization of The Dalles is correct. "The Dalles" is the actual name of the city. Why the mix of the French "Dalles" with the English "The" I have no idea. I was thinking you might see this type of thing in Canada, but then I figured that there, it would probably say "The Falls/Les Dalles" with some kind of legal fight as to which part should be listed first. This is the main reason this country should never officially declare an "official" language, god forbid two of them. We are still free to call things whatever we please, as long as we can convince other people to call them the same thing. Freedom fries, anyone?

Now we're travelling again, this time back east to see family. I wouldn't say the Mizz was a complete joy to travel with, but he could have been so much worse. He got to ride in a taxicab, two airplanes, a bus, a black car, and some escalators, all equally fun to him. He took a good bit of entertaining on the planes, but for the most part, we were able to keep his feet off the chair in front of us and he only cried one in the Chicago airport, mainly from being way overtired and cooped up. Due to a kindly jet stream, we actually got to Chicago about an hour early. However, due to an unkindly winter storm through the Midwest, there were delays all over the place and our next plane took off an hour and a half late. O'Hare is not cool enough to justify four of my hours. The flight from Chicago to DC was pretty bumpy -- not so bumpy as to frighten you, but bumpy enough that the captain kept the seatbelt sign on for the whole flight and wouldn't let the flight attendants up either. Not scary, but miserable for lots of people, especially the Mizz, who kept wanting to "come see Daddy" or "come lay on Daddy". We talked a lot about the signs with the arrows (seatbelt signs) and the fact that Mommy and Daddy both have to wear their seatbelts too. He wasn't buying any of it, but we all survived. The plane was late enough getting in that they were in a rush to get the next set of passengers boarded as quickly as possible so they could get off the ground before 10 pm, as there is a hard and fast curfew at Reagan National. We finally rolled in about midnight, much later than planned, but luckily we have nice relatives, and they were up waiting for us. Thanks guys, you're awesome.

The funnest part of the trip so far has been the car Franny scored for us. She had a couple free upgrades from Enterprise, so she tried to get us a Dodge Charger. They were out of them, but we're running around suburban Maryland in a Chrysler 300. It feels a little wrong. This is quite a bit more car than we're used to driving, but it's kind of fun. It's not the top of the line version, but then, I don't think I've ever driven a top of the line anything, so I don't really know what I'm missing anyway. This one has 250 hp and handles wonderfully, so we can certainly have a little fun. Franny's main gripe is that, since it's not the really nice version, there aren't nearly enough gadgets and buttons for the passenger to play with. The Mizz is fine with it though, as the dash is full of blue lights at night. We could drive him around on a tractor if there were enough lights on it.

How was your Black Friday?

The whole idea of Black Friday really does nothing for me. Why on Earth would a store even bother existing if it depends on lunatic shoppers staying lunatic each year only a month before the year's end to ensure that it can turn a profit? If everything is on crazy sale, how does this help anyway? Aren't there safer ways to make money? (Not in America, Dave. Here, the lunatic shoppers are as dependable as the tides.) And from a shopper's perspective, how little is your time worth that you want to wait in insane lines at four in the morning to get the extra 15% off of crap you don't need anyway? I'm not a big fan of shopping as it is, and shopping in crowds is never worth it.

So naturally, I met Franny at the mall after she got off work Friday. I'm clearly an idiot. Luckily, we didn't last too long and had more fun wandering around downtown in the cold. Actually, the Pioneer Place Mall in Portland wasn't too bad. It's just a couple city blocks in the heart of downtown, so parking is kind of an issue. As Franny put it, lots of people want to be able to park their SUV's in the store.

I kind of wonder about the effect of Black Friday anyway. For one thing, lots of people shop online now, which is not really tied to being at the store opening at 0 dark-thirty, while still allowing you to get some great deals. You can still shop at three in the morning, but you can do it in pajamafied comfort after a case of beer, if that's what floats your boat. I've seen a few things here and there which would never be purchased otherwise.

Another thing that I would think might dilute the after-Thanksgiving sales is the pre-Thanksgiving sales, AKA Christmas creep. I began hearing Christmas music before Halloween this year. Costco had it, but in their defense, they they probably got it in HUGE batches that might actually take two months to completely hear. I was also working at a place where someone brought in AWESOME Halloween cookies that we were enjoying when someone found a radio station that had already switched to 24-hour Christmas programming. Not that there's much Thanksgiving music, but seriously, one holiday at a time, please. To paraphrase Lewis Black (Jewish, but apparently not intensively so), "How long does it take you people to shop?"

One good note about Christmas creep: Nordstrom and I agree on something, which is unusual. Nordstrom is all about fashion and other expensive stuff, while I have no fashion sense that I am aware of, and I am borderline miserly. My mother-in-law is a big fan, but I'm merely aware that it's a department store specializing in things I don't understand. However, Nordstrom apparently refuses to put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. For that I commend them. Perhaps I'll buy something from them some day, although for the life of me, I couldn't begin to guess what.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm sure this picture is on about 10,000 blogs today. I found it years ago, but I still chuckle a little at it every time.

We had a bunch of people over today, including my folks, with whom we haven't shared Thanksgiving in quite some time. It was nice to have experienced help in the kitchen, although that's not why they were invited. Everything was ready at about the same time, which is something that we don't do so well even if we only have a couple dishes to coordinate. As it was, we had maybe 10 different things to prepare or rewarm. My parents pulled it off despite a snafu with our oven being unknowingly turned off prematurely, which says much more about the design of our oven/timer controls than it does about our kitchen staff. (One start button, but two stop buttons. It still catches us from time to time too.) All in all, a great time, with food compliments all around.

Sesame Street is not normally related to Thanksgiving, but since I found that picture again, I can relate this story. Apparently, Children's Television Workshop is releasing some early seasons of Sesame Street with a warning that they are for adults only due to the behavior of some of the characters. Incidentally, we already own this set, but without the warning. They are definitely from another era. Cookie Monster smokes a pipe (and then eats it), Oscar is REALLY a grouch, and Gordon, a grown man, invites a little girl back to his house for milk and cookies. However, as far as I'm concerned, the only real problem with these old episodes is the disheveled puny-headed Big Bird.

Well, poop.

Today just didn't work out right at all. A couple days ago, I was going to have a couple quick stops this morning and then be home in Portland sometime in the afternoon, which is good since I was supposed to drop a piece of equipment off for my boss to use tomorrow morning. That slipped a little bit yesterday when I worked with another one of our techs and he was having trouble getting all his stuff done. He's only been with us a few months and apparently doesn't have the Speedy Gonzalez thing figured out yet.

Anyway, in a fit of stupidity, I said I'd pick up a couple things from him, which put me getting home an hour or two later, but no big deal really. Then the last thing I was working on last night ended up requiring a stop back again this morning. Again, not too bad, but not helping. However, when I got there, my contact was in a meeting, but "he'll probably be out pretty soon." Twenty minutes later, I decided to go get something else done and come back. By the time I got back, nothing continued to happen. "I'm sure he'll be done soon. This is much longer than they usually meet." Great. Now what? My next stop is 70 miles up the road, so I'm not exactly going back and forth, and I have to meet this guy before I leave since some of his stuff is broken and he needs to know about it. So, I wait, watching my getting-home time slipping further into the evening.

About half the equipment at the next two places (the originally scheduled places) was not working right, taking even longer. Now I'm looking at getting home at maybe 9 pm. Not what I had in mind, but it's still home.

And then I get the call from the office. It starts by asking can I stop by one more place tomorrow on the way home? I've got the only stuff to work on this particular equipment, so it's got to be me. Hell, no I can't stop by tomorrow. First, the boss wants the stuff I have tonight, and second, I don't want to be out here anymore. So, naturally, I'll be stopping by tomorrow. The boss decided for some reason to switch his schedule around, so getting home tonight, although still desirable, was no longer an absolute requirement. I ended up deciding that neither I nor the guy who desperately needed this last stop wanted to do it starting at 6:30 this evening. He didn't want to come back to work, and it would optimistically put me home no earlier than 10 or 10:30. Given the rest of the day, optimism seemed misplaced. So, I'll see this guy first thing in the morning, fully caffeinated and ready to go, and then drive like a crazy person to get home before the turkey day traffic gets too bad. It sucks that Franny is stuck alone with the Mizz for another probably too early morning, but what can you do?

We'll see if this plan holds any more water than the one I had today. At least I'm getting paid, right? Sorry for the rant. It's been that kind of day. For reading this far, you get a treat. I give you the true origin of hip-hop.

How smart do I write?

So, as of the previous post, I am apparently writing at a Junior High level according to the Blog Readability Test. I have to admit that I'm feeling a little inadequate after learning that fact. I mean, I wasn't exactly an English major, but c'mon.

I'm not actually sure how this reading level is determined. The website doesn't say what it takes into consideration, but I'm assuming there's stuff about sentence length and complexity, and probably some keywords it looks for. Maybe even something about proper grammar and spelling. Who knows?

Something else I just considered... Is it desirable to be at the Genius end or the Elementary School end? I've plugged some friends into the site and they span the whole range, even though they all seem like smart people. The site gives no clue whether a higher education rating means that you are smarter and it shows in your writing, or that you write things in such a complex way that people need more education just to figure out what you mean. I guess I should be happy in the middle of the pack. Satisfyingly mediocre.

Under a log?

I must have been under a log; I haven't posted in two weeks. I have been busy though. I'll try to be brief. We all know how that'll work out, I'm sure.

I had started a work trip almost two weeks ago. I went out to Bend for a few days of work before continuing on to Southern Oregon. However, a day into it, I had to run back to Portland to spend the night in the hospital with the Mizz. When Franny called me from the doctor's office, it was very clear to me that I had to get back there. I missed the worst of it, as the Mizz was finally asleep by the time I got there. That was the longest three hour drive I've ever taken. I have a very good imagination.

The problem was that the Mizz had a bad reaction to a shot he had received the day before for the croup. It was a normal enough prescription for his issue, but he experienced a rare side effect. Rare enough that it is not a warning you normally get with it, but common enough that the folks at the childrens' hospital understood what was happening. Luckily it seems to have caused him no lasting issues and he seems to be back to his normal toddler antics now.

When we felt that he was going in the right direction, I had to return to my previously scheduled job responsibilities. Friday night, it was down to Roseburg to be ready to work first thing Saturday morning. Worked on and on and on through today. Tomorrow is almost a day off, just a couple of hours of driving to be further down the road for Monday morning.

I spent several days on the Southern Oregon coast, even stretching down into California. I thought I was going to get rainy weather all week, but it was beautiful on Sunday when I went out to the coast. Then Monday is was raining with gale force winds. Then it was beautiful, then drizzly, then sunny, and then rainy again, with rain heavy enough to make even Oregonians complain. Most of the time, our rain is just a drizzle. I have a raincoat, but I almost never put it on. With this stuff, however, you could actually get wet.

Lots of places (including Portland) like to make the claim that, "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes." This is intended to help you understand just how unpredictable the weather is in the speaker's particular part of the world. Most people act like they invented the phrase, and hey, aren't they witty. However, although it may actually apply to other places too, the Oregon coast in the Fall is the place I've been that most deserves to say it.

Thursday evening, I made my way down to Eureka, California. It's not super far, maybe 100 miles south of the border, but it was a pretty long trip down US-101. It was slow and twisty, drizzly, foggy, and since that section of road is called the Redwood Highway and goes through Redwood National Park, there were giant freakin' trees right up to the edge of the road. "Elk Crossing" signs too. Somewhat stressful. It was much better on the trip back north the next day. Beautiful, with either huge trees in the mist or ocean vistas. I found the elk. They were lounging on a lawn in front of some cabins by the side of the road. These ones seemed to know about the lack of hunting on national parks. I also passed the "life-size" statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox at Trees of Mystery. It's a side-of-the-road attraction in the middle of the park that has a tour through the redwoods to show you just how interesting 1000 year old trees can be. I remembered the statues like it was yesterday, even though I was only 9 or 10 the last time I saw them.

Eureka is in the middle of Humbolt county. It's reputation preceded it. On my way through the redwoods, the only radio station I could get for a while was playing 2 straight hours of the Grateful Dead. It was interrupted only by commercials for greenhouse and hydroponic equipment dealers. However, despite being in town for almost 14 hours, not one person offered to sell me pot. Luckily, I live in Portland, so if it's ever an issue, I'll just roll down Belmont or something.

I spent today with one of the crassest individuals I've had the privilege of meeting. They customer is always right though, I hear. He has several small locations, so I got to follow him around the mountains all day. I'm done with him though, so tomorrow it's a little further south, and then home by Tuesday. I've put on something like 1,400 miles so far this trip, and I have another 500 or so left. I'm sick of the road.

So much for brief, but you didn't really expect that, did you?

The Mizz is ill

It's been a while since we've had a sick kid on our hands, but daycare sent the first gift of the season home on Friday. The Mizz appears to have croup. I'd heard of this, but until Friday, I had do idea what it meant. It's a horrible sounding cough that apparently isn't normally too bad of a problem. As Yahoo! Health notes, kids with croup usually sound much worse than they feel or actually are. It's true, he sounds awful. His throat is not right, so as Franny noted, he sounds like Minnie Mouse -- much higher pitch than usual, which is an odd thing to hear from a toddler who is already pretty high pitched. The cough itself is often described as sounding like a barking seal. Geek that I am, I also think it occasionally sounds like Gollum. Other than the occasional horrible cough, the only symptom is fever. Not surprising, since apparently the most likely cause is the influenza virus. As long as we keep him calm and give him ibuprofen when he gets too hot, he seems to be doing okay. The real problem is proving to be sleep. He wakes himself up coughing and then is up for a while. It took me about 11 hours last night to get maybe 6 hours of sleep, and that was in four spurts. 6 hours is livable, but not when you do it like that. Franny is especially hit hard, since she's not getting much sleep as it is. We dug out the humidifier this evening. Here's hoping tonight works out better, although it hasn't started out well.

Web 2.0?

Franny asked what the heck I meant by Web 2.0. I don't know if it was a serious question or not, but here's a primer to the webs.

Web 1.0 (although nobody called it that) -- The Internet Bubble. Put up a website full of information for people to look at. Then, um... profit. That's what was supposed to happen anyway. Mosly we just transferred venture capital into the Housing Bubble. Nice one, guys.

Web 2.0 -- User Generated Content. Put up a web site, and then let the people fill it with information. Think Wikipedia and YouTube, but also Twitter and the LOLCat Bible Translation Project. In case that last one doesn't ring a bell, LOLCats are silly pictures of cats (usually) with pidgin sayings that make them ever so hilarious. At least they did for a moment, but they won't go away. I suppose that if you're 40 years old and still living in your mother's basement, sometimes you take a break from the porn and still need something to occupy your time.

Web 3.0 -- The Internet Becomes Self-Aware. Expect terminators to start showing up sometime next year. But don't worry too much. They'll still be running Windows and will need to reboot from time to time, completely forgetting what they were doing. The governor of Kahliforneeah will be very confused. The machines will end up being deported for lack of documentation. Good luck with that, Austria.

Extend your Battery Life

Franny forwarded me a link regarding tips to extend battery life for the devices in your life. Some of the tips are not necessarily helpful for all battery types, but they probably won't hurt.

The biggest issue with batteries (of all types) is temperature cycling. Everybody knows that keeping batteries in the freezer until you use them keeps them good longer, right? Yes and no. The cold of the freezer doesn't really do anything good or bad. What is good about the freezer is that it is a constant temperature. Anyplace that stays more or less at a consistent temperature is a fine storage place. This means that although carrying your laptop in your car with you is fine, leaving it there in the hot sun or overnight in the cold will not do it any favors. (Plus it'll probably get stolen, but at least the thief will have a dead battery. Ha. Who's laughing now?)

Laptops are especially prone to heating problems, mainly since some people seem to want to use them on their laps. The vents are usually located on the bottom and can easily be blocked, potentially causing the computer to overheat. The vents usually don't do anything for the batteries; they are meant to cool the processor, which cranks out quite a bit of heat. However, the batteries are also typically on the bottom and get warm during use. (Anybody remember Toshiba's exploding laptop batteries?) If they are set on a lap or pillow or whatever, they will not properly cool and will likely have some of their life sucked away each time this is done.

I hope this is helpful for someone, and thanks, Franny, for passing it on.

Why Twitter?

For those of you unaware, one of Web 2.0's more annoying, yet for some reason, popular features is Twitter. It is similar to a blog, but you can only add very small messages. The theory is that you continually update your audience, presumably your friends and family, on the mundane activities of your daily life. "Going to lunch now. Tacos, I think." "Eating a burrito instead." "Back from lunch now. Catching up on email." "Drooling on keyboard." Can't you just taste the excitement?

Anyway, I live with the live action version of this phenomenon in the form of the Mizz. He's at a wonderful stage where he's learning words as fast as possible, but has not yet developed a filter between a thought and an out-loud statement. I'm sure it's just practicing to see if he gets the expected reaction, but from the other end, it gets a little old. Putting him to bed now goes something like this: "Turn off the star light. Music on. Turn off the hoodle (little) light. Chill out on Daddy. I huggin' Daddy. Night night Daddy, see you ina moning. Daddy gonna go out. Daddy goin' out. [Muffled through the door...] Daddy out." This is pretty continuous. "One on and one off upstair. That's a stereo. I eat turkey and bread at school. I pway wif da wed ball; Mama pway wif the blue ball." On and on and on...

Why a full grown adult would want to live like this just because it's on the internet is beyond me. Perhaps I'm older than I feel.

Separated at Birth?: Fonzie edition

Make a fist. Make a fumb. Make a AAAYYYY!

Science with Franny: Device Chargers

Everybody has a tangle of wires somewhere that is supposed to charge the various devices that our lives demand these days. We have cell phones, cell phone bluetooth headsets, mp3 players, PDAs, digital cameras, and whatever else we've managed to accumulate. Every one of these things comes with its own unique charger/cable. I have long wondered about this, as has Franny, although she has been much more indignant about it. I have been somewhat more forgiving about it knowing the different voltage and power specifications of different things, but I have certainly thought that it must not be that hard to standardize on something, or at least a minimum number of somethings. I recognize that a charger for a car battery should probably be more robust than the tiny one for my bluetooth headset. However, most personal devices these days are made with similar technology and similar, somewhat low, power requirements. Everything large I buy plugs into the exact same outlets in my house with the exact same electricity. Why can't smaller devices do the same thing?

My first taste of cross-device adaptability was when I realized that my laptop and my portable printer for work both use the exact same AC adapter. Granted they are both HP, but this was a first. As both are battery operated and last quite some time, I now have one less cable to drag around with me and find an outlet for, especially in hotels, which are notorious for their dearth of available plugs. As it is, I often end up unplugging a light or the alarm clock or something to avoid having to charge my phone at the bathroom sink.

I thought we were onto something a couple years ago when Franny and I got our Motorola RAZR phones. I also got a bluetooth headset, and about the same time, got my Creative Zen Micro mp3 player. I was thrilled to see that all these devices charged through a mini-USB port. Knowing that all USB ports are the same and have the same 5V power supply, I stupidly thought that industry had finally agreed on a charger standard. After some experimental research, I found that my Zen charger caused my phone to lock up and be useless. Luckily, removing the battery reset it and it survived, but I learned my lesson. After some more web-based research instead, I learned that although the power circuits on USB cables are identical, the devices apparently send other information back and forth with their respective charges that, at best, can't be understood by other devices, and at worst, cause software errors in those devices. Stuff like, "I'm full now. Enough with the electricity already," but in a different language for each device. I had to wait two more years before industry heard our call.

Enter the Open Mobile Terminal Platform, a mobile industry forum, mainly cellular carriers, but including manufacturers as well. They have decided to adopt the micro-USB (like the mini-USB, but even harder to plug in without looking at it) as the standard charging and data cable for some future generation of cell phones. This means that whatever phone and phone-related device you buy will fit the same generic charger, and that your phone will still cost just as much, but if you want a charger to go with it, you will have to pay extra. Everybody wins. I realize that this is just for cell phones for the time being, but cell phones cross over with PDAs these days, which means that lots of other small personal data devices can't be far behind. I don't know how long we have before seeing this spread as the default way that devices are designed, but I for one can't wait.

Of course iPods and iPhones will probably still be different, but that's just because Apple is special.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone is having a fun Halloween. These are our jack-o-lanterns this year. Tutu helped the Mizz design his, but we just carved it this weekend along with the Mama Pumpkin and the Daddy Pumpkin.

We didn't do candy at home this year, since the Mizz is going down right at prime time. We just left the light off like all the other pathetic anti-social people in our neighborhood, although I did hear someone down the street scaring the crap out of trick-or-treaters. Oh, the memories.

We did take the Mizz out earlier to go trick-or-treating at the mall. He was a dragon, of the Old Navy type. He's a natural. Most of the kids just stood in line and held out their bags like collecting candy was their jobs. But not the Mizz. He delighted in holding his bag (a "happy" skull) at arm's length, and saying, loudly but not screaming, "Twick o tweet!" Sometimes he was several feet away from the person with the candy, and sometimes he was saying it to random trick-or-treaters walking down the hall, but he's getting the idea. Give him time. He got the hang of it after a while and then wouldn't stop. Once we let him eat a couple pieces of candy though, the monster was unleashed and he had a one track mind after that. I also found that young ladies at stores giving out candy in their sexy whatever costumes interact much differently with the old guy and his cute kid after Mama goes off shopping. I wasn't doing research, mind you, just an observation. It does seem that if you're looking to hit it off with someone half your age, for some reason a two year old dressed as a dragon would be a helpful accessory. They still gave out pathetic candy though. Franny snagged the only Reece's cup and there wasn't a Hershey miniature in sight. Just gobs of tootsie rolls and hard candy. You'd think businesses could do better, especially the big boxes. They could have had full size candy bars to give out without putting a dent in their obscene profit margins. Maybe that's not true, but I'm going to imagine it is anyway. I mean, Macy's running out of candy an hour into the event. Seriously. (Sounds like someone's jealous that nobody wants to give him a bag of candy. Poor, sad old man.)

How else does Portland do Halloween? How about a Zombie Walk? Be careful about clicking that. The link might not be too safe for appetites, depending on your zombie/gore tolerance. For the Zombie Walk, a bunch of people gather at Pioneer Courthouse Square at a designated time near Halloween and then stagger around town amusing the locals and freaking our tourists and children. There's something surreal about a video of a bunch of zombies lurching and moaning through Pioneer Place mall and then calmly riding the escalators en masse.

How to Kill Nostalgia

Growing up, I was a huge fan of Star Wars. How could you not be? "70's kid and nerd? You're our exact target audience. But wait, we've got more. Now that it's the 80's and you watch too much TV, we have the Transformers too!" The were both very cool concepts, ones that I still kind of dig.

So what the hell is this?

For around $50, you get a Darth Vader robot that transforms into the Death Star. (If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you probably haven't read this far anyway.) These are two concepts, each superbly awesome in its time and on its own, that have been repackaged in an unholy alliance of all that is wrong with both of them. On the transformer side, you have Darth Vader, admittedly a tall guy, but human-sized nonetheless, transforming into the Death Star. ("It's headed for that small moon." "That's no moon. It's a battle station.") Here I'm thinking of Megatron (giant frickin' robot) turning into a pistol (itty bitty little popgun). Even at twelve years old and in love with the concept, I had a problem with the physics. And as far as Darth Vader goes, he was cool because he could choke you to death from a whole other starship. "The ability to destroy a planet pales in comparison to the power of the force." Vader's own words -- probably misquoted, but pretty close. He didn't need to be a giant killer robot; he was already badass. This mirrors the Star Wars action figures changing from the 70's characters, which were shaped much like normal people, to versions which are more along the lines of pro wrestlers. Why did they have to go messing with these things?


Bonus movie review: Transformers

Here I'm talking about the version from this year, not the animated one I missed in the 80's. I'm almost embarrassed to say it's one of only two movies I saw in the theater this year. (To maintain a shred of intellectual dignity, the other one was The Last King of Scotland.) It had to happen. This movie was more or less doomed to look awesome while paying no attention to plot or character development. Of course, I had no choice but to see it. C'mon. It's the Transformers.

It did not fail to deliver. It looked really good. Great actually. The Transformers themselves looked and moved far more realistically than I expected they would. Michael Bay nailed the transforming noise perfectly and he avoided the stupid thing from the cartoon where Optimus Prime had a trailer when he was a truck, but it just disappeared when he was a robot. I always thought that was lame. And, well, they weren't any worse actors than the actual people. The writing and characters in this overpriced toy commercial managed to reach a level of suck that far exceeded what I could have imagined. I would have guessed that the entire thing was written by people my age, but back when they first saw the tv show in 1984. However, a good chunk of the plot twists were ripped straight out of Independence Day, so it must have been more recently. Anyway, this is a classic case of, "we can do this cool looking thing, now we just need a story." In the end, the cool-lookingness was just barely enough to make the theater experience bearable. I would have been sorely disappointed if I had watched this on a two foot wide screen in my living room with the sound turned down so the Mizz could sleep.

The Bleeding Edge of Web 2.0

Scarborough Research (as if I've ever heard of them before) has just released a paper regarding the prevalence of blogging in various cities in the US. I'm proud to say that Portland came in second, as that somehow must make me a better person. Apparently, 14% of Portlanders are bloggers, behind only Austin, TX, at 15%. The national average was 8%. The cities above 10% are:

Austin, TX, 15%
Portland, OR, 14%
San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA, 13%
Seattle/Tacoma, WA, 13%
Honolulu, HI, 12%
San Diego, CA, 12%
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, 11%
Columbus, OH, 11%
Nashville, TN, 11%
Colorado Springs/Pueblo, CO, 11%
Washington, D.C., 11%
Atlanta, GA,10%
New York, NY, 10%

When you round to the nearest percent, there are a lot of ties. The press release is located here. It has a lot of guesswork as to the reasons for these rankings, but get real, the only reason any of you are going to click is to find out where your own city is on the list. (The complete list is on page 3 of the link.) Someone on the radio this afternoon guessed that our reason was Portland's weather forcing us to find some way to amuse ourselves indoors. You can't drink beer and coffee all the time, although both are certainly compatible with blogging.

The only problem I see with the research is that, to Scarborough, you are a blogger if you have "read or contributed to a blog in the last 30 days" (my emphasis). By that logic, I am also a reporter, a novelist, a chef, an actor, a rock star, a magazine editor, and a hard core rapper. You should feel lucky that you heard of me just as I was on the verge of making the big time.

(Careful, Dave. That's two posts in two days about blogging. You're running the risk of becoming a caricature of yourself. Or at least becoming an insufferable Blogger-with-a-capital-B.)

Portland Shanghai Tunnels

An interesting piece of Portland history is the Shanghai Tunnels. Back in the day of the somewhat lawless West (a century or so ago, give or take a decade or two), Portland was known as a bad place to have too much fun in the rougher parts of town. There was a network of tunnels connecting lots of the businesses downtown to the waterfront, which is a park now, but at the time was the main cargo/shipping part of town. Many less-than-honorable captains would pay less-than-honorable Portlanders to abduct young men and conscript them into duty as sailors until their ships landed somewhere else. You would be drinking for free with some kind stranger and wake up later on a ship already at sea, having been drugged and then hauled through the tunnels to the waiting ship without anyone above being the wiser. There was lots of trade with China, hence the "Shanghai" tunnels.

That's the story anyway.

Turns out it might not be actually totally true per se. Archeology and historical record-searching is apparently not finding much of the evidence promoted by the outfit making money by taking people through what is left of the supposed tunnels.

There is evidence of some tunnels, although the extent of the network seems to be in dispute. Also, the practice of Shanghaiing sailors was widespread, with San Francisco being the most notorious city, but with Portland certainly playing a part. The main dispute however, is whether the tunnels that may or may not have existed had anything to do with the kidnappings. According to the stories, law enforcement was widely corrupt at that time and was involved in the kidnappings, at the very least by being bribed to look the other way. Why then, would anyone worry about the expense of building and maintaining tunnels when you could just as easily pay off the cops and drag a poor sucker down the street? We're only talking about something like four or five blocks in the middle of the night.

The reason for the Shanghai Tunnel dispute is that most of the research and evidence seems to be in the hands of the Cascade Geographic Society, and they are not sharing. Supposedly, they (mainly a "he", but supposedly with some volunteer help) are withholding everything they have until they can finish a book about the tunnels. There is precious little other evidence available beyond "My Grandpa knew a guy..." or "I used to play in the tunnels before the city closed them." The problem is that the best anyone can do is a story about a story, since anyone with firsthand knowledge is long gone. In addition, most of the portions of the city involved have since been renovated, so most of the tunnels that were supposed to have existed are also long gone.

The Cascade Geographic Society is not helped academically by the fact that they seem to want to push the "haunted" aspect of the existing tunnels. It certainly make it seem like they are more interested in guiding tours than conducting research, although since they aren't giving specifics, who knows?

I for one hope they have a trove of evidence and blow this story wide open. The Shanghai Tunnels (or "Portland Underground") are a very popular story around Portland. Definitive proof of the stories would only heighten the importance of what some believe is an integral part of Portland history. But I'm not holding my breath.

No matter what evidence is ever produced one way or the other, this story is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon.

Cool new blogger feature

Blogger just introduced something that I stumbled on yesterday. If you comment on a blog hosted on Blogger (like mine for instance) and you send the comment while signed in with a Google account, you can opt to have further comments to that post emailed to you. This seems like a very cool way to turn a single random comment into a conversation.

I personally have a habit of reading a post, leaving a comment, and then forgetting about it completely. Sometimes it would be nice to get a response to a comment or to see what other people have to say, and then have the chance to add something else. I used to have to remember to check back again, which happened far too rarely. There is WAY too much information flowing in my DSL line to remember everything that was interesting.

You've always (for a long time anyway) been able to subscribe to an RSS feed for the post, but I have gobs of feeds already, and that's just another thing to remember to check. Now I can get it stuck in my face by Google, but more importantly, only if I want to.

You have to have a Google account to use this feature, but last I checked, they're still giving them away for free. (Note: you don't have to be using gmail. They will send it to whatever email you give them when you register for an account.)

I'm blogging about blogging. How full of myself am I?

Odds and Ends

Here's some more stuff that I've found interesting/amusing, but that for one reason or another, didn't justify immediate mention. You probably won't care about most of this stuff, but that's why it's all lumped together.

Since campaign season is well upon us again, check out FactCheck.org. They are pretty good about cutting through a lot of the political bull, especially where numbers are thrown around.

Anybody heard about Constitution Day? It is on the anniversary of the day of adoption of the U.S. Constitution, September 17th. Specifically it is the day that all high schools and colleges receiving federal money (most schools, certainly all public ones) must teach about the constitution. Don't worry if you don't know about this. Apparently, neither do most students. It is new as of 2004. What ever happened to government class? I remember the Constitution being a pretty important issue back when I was in high school. I don't know anyone in college who wasn't well versed in it. What's happened since? Does Congress assume that since the current administration has apparently never read the Constitution, then probably nobody else is aware of it either. As a fun additional factoid, Constitution Day was proposed by Senator Robert Byrd of WV, who apparently always carries a copy of the document with him.

Google has launched "The Google" for older adults who may or may not be terribly internet-savvy. I originally thought of my parents when I read this article, but that's not really fair. Although they don't know beans about their actual computer, they are pretty good at finding their way around the internet. Which means they're probably reading this and know I'm making fun of them. Crap.

On a related note. For those unaware, RTFM means "Read The Freaking Manual." Or something like that.

Congress is finally standing up to the President and promoting real science again. Yay!

Did you know giraffes do this? I hardly ever even see them as active at all. I saw a film of one running once, but usually they're just slowing rambling around their pen at the zoo munching leaves or whatever.


Lastly, a little debate fodder for Franny's former coworkers.

In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?

Long time, no blog

I'm not sure where I've been lately. Just not in a blogging mood I guess. Things have been happening though.

In case there's anyone reading this who doesn't also read Franny's blog, she's pregnant again. Yes, it was intentional. Thanks for asking. Not super far along yet, but she did decide to dig out the prego clothes this evening. Due next May, so there's still a bit of time to purchase naming rights. We certainly reserve editorial control over the final name, but there's probably a right price for just about anything.

Franny's folks were here last week, and we had a nice visit with them. The Mizz had a great time seeing Gran and Grandpapa. And I didn't have to cook for days. Mothers-in-law aren't that bad after all. Who knew?

The only down moment of their visit was our trip to the pumpkin patch. Actually the trip to it was fine. And the patch was fine too, as far as pumpkin patches go. The Mizz had a fun time trying to pick up pumpkins that weighed more than he did and finally settled on drumming on them. There were also tractors and a barn full of aneeemals, most of which he could name. He failed on the llama, but we'll check again next year.

JUST KIDDING!!!! There's no way in the world we'll be going back there again! At least not at pumpkin time anyway. Every person in Northwestern Oregon was apparently there. For those who don't know, Sauvie Island, as nice as it may be, has only a two lane bridge connecting it to the real world. At the end of that bridge is a light that lets maybe 10 cars out at a time before letting the main road pass you by for several minutes. Do a little math on the huge number of cars on the island for the pumpkins, and you get Dave and Franny and Gran and Grandpapa and the Mizz stuck in a car moving at just over 1 mile per hour for TWO STINKING HOURS! Then for kicks, add another half hour to get back home after the bridge, which would be expected. This apparently happens every year. You think they'd put a cop at the end of the bridge or retime the light or something.

To top it all off, why were we stuck in one car together when we had driven out in two? Because we found that our car was low on gas. This did not seem like a problem on the way in, as we were maybe 5 miles from a gas station. However, we did not count on idling for two hours and decided not to risk it. Franny and I ended up taking a couple gallons of gas back later and found that if we had just waited three more hours, the full round trip took just over an hour.

The only bonus was that we had taken two cars out there in the first place. We hadn't intended to do that, but there was a problem with our car. When we bought it a couple months ago, one of the rear seat belts was damaged and we had it replaced. However, Gran was the first person to try using it and found that the wrong latch had been installed. We now have a useless left rear seat belt until we can get it replaced again. Oh, joy.

Other than that little episode, the in-law visit was fine. They even agreed to keep an ear out for the sleeping Mizz one evening so Franny and I could have a little time out. We were tired and I still had to work in the morning, but we don't get time out together much, so we weren't about to say, "No." We spent a couple hours eating cake, drinking coffee and playing Scrabble at Palio's. We always enjoy their deserts. Plus I won the Scrabble game (but not by much). Don't tell Gran though, 'cuz she'll want to challenge me, and she will most assuredly kick my sorry butt. She's absolutely insane about that game. I don't know is she's the craziest Scrabble person in the world, but she's the craziest one I know.

It never really affected me, but Portland played host last week to a pretend real terrorist attack, which was then interrupted by a real false bomb scare.

We were one of the cities in the Topoff exercise this year. Supposedly, some terrorists blew up a dirty radiological bomb on a light rain train on the Steel Bridge, and the local, state, and federal authorities got to practice what they would do in that case. This ranged from first responders having to check out the scene and deal with "casualties" while wearing protective suits to a local animal shelter trotting out it's new emergency animal shelter trailer. Apparently they learned from Katrina and put together a way to deal with "evacuees" with "pets." In this case, some of the "pets" were "teddy bears," but they wanted to practice, so they logged them in and caged them just like the real animals that came in. Like all of these exercises so far, the responders tried out things learned from previous ones and exposed some gaping holes nobody had thought of. All in all, interesting goings on for a few days.

However, on the "wrap up" day of the exercise, there was a bomb scare when dogs checking out the hotel that Michael Chertoff was going to visit later indicated that they found something bad. Nothing was ever found, but it did close of several blocks for a few hours. In the end, the assumption was that there was some residue on one of the military or other government vehicles already at the hotel. Seems important to make sure, I would think.

In personal news, I was a little ill last Thursday and again yesterday. I don't know what that was about. Most likely, the Mizz had begun the season of bringing microbes home to me from daycare.

This weekend, we finally got up to see my folk's new place. Unfortunately, due to job stuff, we had to go up Saturday and come right back Sunday, but that's all we could do for now, and we had to see it. It's awesome. The house itself is fine I suppose, for a house that was last renovated in the 70's. Importantly though, someone had the foresight to put it on the western slope of Whidby Island, Washington overlooking the Olympic Mountains, Port Angeles, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Victoria, BC, and the San Juan Islands. It could be a teepee, for all it matters. I'm glad to report that Dad is getting excellent use out of the telescope we got him for retirement. We thought he might have a good time watching the ships going by into Seattle. We didn't know that both he and Mom would have a hard time doing anything else. From what I hear, they are forever running because one of them sees a cool ship or a whale or something. The scope even has a prominent place in their living room and appears to be permanently located for easy, and constant, use. I want to retire.

We also met up with my younger sister in Seattle on the way home. Younger, but she just turned 30 on Friday, so I don't know if that counts as young. I was definitely told that I was old at 30. Anyway, she's doing well. Plus she's pregnant too. We got an "official" announcement, so I suppose it's okay to share. Plus plus, she's due the same day as Franny. What're the chances?

To bring things completely up to date, I got to visit the dentist this afternoon. I think I mentioned a while back that I would need some crowns. Dental work from years ago finally giving up the ghost, or the teeth anyway. Well, now I have two temporary ones in place. I'm going to be eating like an invalid for a couple weeks until I can get the real ones. They don't look horrible, but they apparently can't handle things like biting. Joy. The experience was as good as it could have been, I suppose, but I can't say I enjoy being pumped on adrenaline for an hour and half while having to sit still. It's not like it hurt, what with the gallon of Novocaine, but I kept imagining it was about to start any minute. When a guy is drilling in your teeth, it's hard to think of much else.

This would have been easier in a few smaller posts.

Who needs Zagat's

This sounds vaguely familiar. (Click if it's too small to read.)

Huh?

This is what I get when I ask for a really big smile. Something gets lost in translation.

And the Mother-of-the-Year Award Goes to...

...the woman in Oklahoma who decided to use her toddler as a shield when a bounty hunter tried to use a taser on her boyfriend. There are just so many wonderful parts to this story, I don't know where to begin.

Maybe this is why my sister decided to have so many kids. A little army of human shields. For like 9 years, she's had someone small enough to keep her out of harm's way. Heck, for most of that time, she's been able to have at least two of them at wearable age; a toddler in a backpack with a little one strapped on the front. A little drooling flak jacket. Good thinking Jenn. Maybe there's a method to your madness after all.

I'm not sure the Mizz would stop much. He's kind of a bean pole. His alarm scream is excellent though.

Hey, wait a minute...

I've been told (mainly by my sisters) that I can be like this from time to time. Probably because I'm usually right. Maybe us nerds are just smarter than everyone else, and therefore we're more likely to be right. Yeah, that must be it.

More Metrology Notes

I find it interesting that not long after my metrology tirade, I noticed a mention of the International Prototype Kilogram in this news article. Interesting little twist of English to metric conversion.

(For those of you unfamiliar with BBsopt, this is the same website that also reported "Apple Stores to Begin Charging Entrance Fee", "Bush Proposes Faith-Based Firewalls for Government Computers", and "Microsoft Reveals Windows Vista SP1 Will Install XP". I just found the coincidence with my last post amusing.)

[Addendum 12/28/07: I find that I occasionally get hits to this post that come from searches on "metrology". If you are actually looking for metrology information, you'll probably find this post more interesting.]

Mass Metrology: A small taste of Dave's job

From time to time, I hear, "So what exactly do you do anyway?" For some reason, metrology and calibration are unusual concepts for most people. My sister heard metrology, and wondered why I wanted to be a weatherman. The details of what I do really don't matter that much to most people. The world keeps on ticking as long as people like me are out doing our thing. Yeah, Dave, but what is your "thing"?

Don't worry if your eyes glaze over while reading this and you don't finish. I'm sure you'll be in the majority. I just present it in case anyone is interested in the arcane science of what I do.

I'm a small part of a large system linking measurement devices all over the world back to standard measurements somewhere. That's metrology, or the sturdy of precision measurements. Calibration is just the comparison of one measurement device back to something that is traceable through an unbroken chain of comparisons to one of those standards. Most measurements in this country are traced back to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a part of the Commerce Department. NIST laboratories maintain the U.S. national standard for thousands of things. Some are basic measurements like the second or the meter and some are more obscure such as standard Columbia River beach sand or whatever.

I'm more concerned with the basic measurements. NIST has extensive experimental apparatus that can determine with a great deal of precision exactly how long a meter is using light speed and how long a second is using atomic fluctuations. Most basic units are defined this way. There is an accepted standard that the distance light travels in a certain fraction of a second equals one meter. Everybody agrees on that definition, so anyone can find the meter depending only the ability to isolate the fraction of a second and measure how far the light went.

It used to be that all measurements were based on artifacts, or specific things that defined a yard or a foot or what ever. In the beginning, the myth goes that a yard was the distance between the king's thumb and his nose. Someone decided that something more specific might be useful since different places had different kings, so he decided to use a particular stick that was about the right length. He then could make copies of that stick and pass them around so everybody was using the same yard. However, over time, this method begins to fail as the specific artifacts are used and damaged. You end up with a bunch of sticks that are something like a yard, but none of them are exact anymore and none of them completely agree with each other, which kind of defeats the purpose. So over the years, most units have been defined in terms of physical properties of certain materials, properties that will theoretically never change. Therefore everyone who can set up experiments to measure those properties can recreate the units as precisely as they can measure them.

The sole exception to this method is mass. Up until around 1800, the kilogram was defined as the mass of one cubic decimeter of water. A cubic decimeter was used instead of a liter because length is a base unit, while volume is derived based on length. However, since water can change due to temperature and pressure, a better method was needed. Again, like the stick, someone made a prototype kilogram, which was from that point considered the de facto definition of a kilogram. However, nobody has yet come up with a proper physical property measurement for mass to replace this old method of measurement.


The current, most exact kilogram was made in the 1880's, as were the various copies of it scattered around the world. The primary kilogram prototype (pictured above, inside concentric bell jars) is in France and the U.S. top kilogram (pictured below) is at NIST. The primary kilogram is kept sealed and locked in a vault almost all of the time. It is brought out once in a great while (maybe once every decade or two) for comparison with the various national standards. Other than that, it never gets touched. The U.S. national kilogram is then compared occasionally by NIST against several copies they use for checks against other weights. My company has a master set of weights that are sent to NIST every five years for comparison against that second tier of weights. Those are then compared against our other weights once a year and against another set that is used for customer weight calibrations. I then take my weights and calibrate balances and scales used in the world. We even work on other metrology balances that are used for further weight checks. The idea is to handle the sets closer to NIST as little as possible in order to keep them from changing too much between calibrations. There is a certain amount of uncertainty in each comparison, which increases for each step away from the prototype. If your weights change beyond that uncertainty, then you throw the work you've been doing into question. That's bad.


To put the precision into context, I have Class 1 weights (the best available) ranging from 20 kilograms (about 45 lb.) down to 1 milligram (a tiny piece of foil you would overlook if you didn't know about it). For the smaller of these weights, say below about 200 grams, I know the exact weight down 8 digits beyond the decimal point, with the uncertainty (different for each one) showing up in the 5th or 6th place. This means that I know the values of my weights to at least 7 significant figures. This is important since the best balance (precision scale) I work with has 20,000,000 divisions (2 grams to 0.1 micrograms, or 0.0000001 grams). For reference, the main prototype is known to about 10 significant figures.

The problem with all this is that the prototype kilograms are suffering the same fate as the sticks, despite all the care put into their handling. The main prototype has lost approximately 30 micrograms over the last century. That means that if you assume that it was once 1.000000000 kilogram when it was made, it is now 0.999999970 kilogram. Seems pretty insignificant doesn't it? It is, for now at least. There are almost no instruments in the world good enough to see that difference. However, the kilograms will get worse and instruments will get better, especially as we continue to try and probe further into the atom and deeper into space. Eventually, this definition will fail to be good enough.

So what to do about it? There are two options that scientists are pursuing right now.

The first is basically making a better kilogram prototype. A group of Australian scientists is working on just that. They are trying to make a perfect sphere of silicon (pictured below) that is exactly one kilogram. The atomic weight of silicon is known quite well as is it's crystalline structure. It's quite possible to grow a very large perfect crystal of silicon. That's how computer chips are made. Then you apply a little math. You can figure out how many atoms of silicon you need to make a kilogram based on its atomic weight, and knowing the crystalline structure, you can figure out how big a sphere needs to be to contain the proper number of atoms. The hard part is now to make a perfectly round sphere of exactly the right diameter (using length, which is known very well). By the time they are done with this thing, it will essentially be the roundest thing ever made. This is basically just making another prototype, which will have the same issues as the current one. Unlike the current one, however, someone in the future can do the same thing again and come up with an identical, or maybe even better version, limited only by measurement and machining capability.


The second option is the watt balance. It is designed to use electrical properties, which are known very well, to determine the mass of an oscillating body. The math is very intensive. This type of device exists. NIST is working very hard on this method of mass determination. In the long run, something like this will likely take the place of having an artifact that must be compared back to. However, for the moment the uncertainty of doing it this way is still higher than using the current shrinking French kilogram.

Most of this is mainly academic. We are many centuries away from these variations causing the common man any trouble. A half a pound of deli ham and a gallon of gas will still be the same things as far as you will be able to tell. This becomes a problem only at the edge of research and possibly into some VERY exacting manufacturing, although I can't think of an example. Nothing you could afford anyway.

There. I obviously find this interesting, and I assume that if you made it this far, it must at least hold passing amusement for you. Let me know if I left anything too muddy or if something doesn't make sense.

Fun Bottled Water Fact

I happened to be working at an environmental lab today. This place performs all sorts of analytical tests on all kinds of things -- mainly soil and water samples. They look for basics like sediments and microbes and more obscure things like dissolved organics and metals. They have a very extensive lab and one of their most basic necessities is very pure water for testing purposes. It wouldn't do much good to use water with dissolved iron or whatever in it during a test for trace amounts of iron. To that end, they have a very nice, and very expensive, water deionization (DI) system.

Knowing all this, I was completely taken aback when I saw one of the technicians filling sample containers from an Evian water bottle. She saw my look and explained that their DI system was down, but that for most of their tests, Evian was the purest thing they could buy. "It doesn't have anything in it. Nothing we'd be looking for anyway."

This would seems like a glowing recommendation for Evian. "It's so pure, you can use it for lab tests." But you have to understand that the dissolved metals that the lab would be concerned about are the same "minerals" that are touted in bottled water marketing, including Evian's website. That means that you are basically getting very clean water, or the same thing that you would get by extensive filtering or distilling. The fact that it's filtered through an Alpine glacier field in France doesn't really matter.

Personally, I've never been a fan of Evian; I've always considered it pretty bland. It turns out I might have been right. The same minerals that apparently aren't in it are the same ones that give water it's taste, and are even added by many other brands specifically for that taste. I've always felt somewhat morally superior to Evian drinkers ("naive" spelled backwards and all that), mostly because I just like to be difficult. This just serves to embolden my holier-than-thou attitude. Just what I needed. I should be a real joy at parties now.

Welcome Home Mama

Franny got back last night. I was happy to see her, but it was late, she was jet lagged, and I pretty much got, "Hi Dave. I'm happy to see you, but I'm going to bed now. I'll talk to you in the morning?" No big deal. I was still happy to have her home.

The Mizz took her return in stride. This morning, when I came downstairs after my shower, he was playing with Franny and looked up at me long enough to smile and say, "Bye bye Daddy," before returning to his toys. I was fine when I was the only option, I guess, but Mama's back now, so see ya later.

The Mizz and I survived our four days just fine. I figured we would. I'm very happy to have Franny back though, not the least for the adult conversation. The Mizz is fun and cute and all, but not exactly intellectually stimulating. I can only build so many Lego towers, make so many Play-Doh snakes, and force feed so many toddlers before I have to challenge my brain at least a little bit now and then.

Plus I like having Franny around. Chicago (Si-ca-do according to Mizz) is too far away.

Happy Birthday Dad

Today Dad turns something old. What? 60? 70? Something like that. Go Dad.

Seriously, I should watch out. I've been calling him old for quite awhile now. Old and out of touch, and certainly not cool. As best I can remember, it started when he was about my age. That means that either I'm now getting old or I'm a bad judge of what old means. I don't actually feel all that old. No, I take that back; the Mizz can make me feel ancient even though he's not even trying, but from what I hear, it's the kids that make you old anyway.

Most of the time I feel a lot younger than people who are clearly my age, but act, um...what's the word? ... Mature. Yeah, that's it. On the other hand, I feel pretty old when I work at a college, or, God forbid, a high school. Wow. Just wow. They're such...kids. They don't have a clue. Not like when we were in high school. We had a pretty good handle on things, but these kids these days really don't have any idea about the world. I pity the future. Now get the hell off my lawn.

But seriously, I mainly feel like I have more in common with people younger than me than older, at least in general outlook, although that's becoming less true as time goes on. Most likely it's happening to all of us, so plenty of people older than me are sitting around thinking the same thing. To (probably mis)quote a caller I heard on a radio show about aging gracefully, "I usually feel the same way I did when I was in my early 20's. The trouble is I still look at young women the same way I used to, but then I realize that they aren't looking at me the same way." Not that I'm trying to pick up high school girls, but you get the idea.

For another take on the idea that probably doesn't reflect well on me, I'll quote David Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) from Dazed and Confused, "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."

Not that I'm... Oh, never mind.

Anyway, that brings me back to the idea that I might not be a very good judge of what it means to be old. I do hope that's the case. I'm not really ready to feel old yet, and if my attitude is any indication, I don't think I'll be ready anytime soon. I'll leave it to the Mizz to imagine that I'm old and out of it and follow Dad's example instead. I'll continue to enjoy life and do what I damn well please, which as it turns out, I now see as pretty cool.

Well, how egotistic is that? A happy birthday message that's mostly about me. What a wonderful child I am. Anyway, Happy Birthday Dad. I'm sure you're doing just fine. When I checked earlier today, you were enjoying a book and a beer on your back porch on a sunny afternoon overlooking the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Sounds like a fine way to celebrate to me.

Not here. It was raining on me all day. You should have seen the drive down I-5. I could hardly see... Whoa. There I go again about me. Happy Birthday!

Peaberry Coffee

The last time we were at Trader Joe's, I needed some more coffee beans. Joe's has a pretty interesting selection, and I found something new: peaberry coffee. I don't suppose it's actually new, but I've never seen it before. It sounded interesting, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Plus it was on sale.

Peaberry coffee is an oddity of coffee growing. The half-oval beans you're used to grow in pairs. They are actually two separate fruits that grow together in the same "cherry." However, about 5% of the time, only one of the fruits is fertilized, and the other doesn't develop. The fertilized one fills the whole cherry, resulting in the shape shown above. Here's a page with more detail from some Canadian coffee company.

This stuff was marketed as "smoother" or "more complex" or some such thing. It was fine coffee, but no better than other good coffees I've had in the past. From what I can tell, these beans used to be discarded as less desirable. However, I think some coffee marketer looked at the beans and his gears started turning. "Hey," he thought, rubbing his hands together as an evil leer wormed its way across his face, "Instead of throwing these beans away as 'defective,' we could package them as 'special' and market them to coffee snobs, thereby making 5% more money off the backs of these poor tropical people and thus allowing us to buy 5% larger private jets and 5% more attractive servants." At least that's how I picture it. Maybe they just woke up and realized it's silly to throw away a perfectly good 5% of your crop just because it looks a little different.

I just found it a little odd that, after all these years of drinking coffee, I just now heard about these wonderful new defective beans. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I spend too much time at Starbucks and therefore miss out on the more gourmet coffee options out there. Whatever. It's fine coffee, but I'm not sure it's as special as Trader Joe's tried to make me believe.