Train

I left work at noon to catch a 3:00 train. Got home, threw a few last things in a bad, buy nibbles, and off to Union Station. Amtrak says show up half an hour early. I got there closer to an hour and a half early. If you know where you're going and what you're doing they're right, half an hour should do.

As it was Union Station was still in the middle of the lunch rush. High school tours and business people everywhere in addition to the people trying to get to their train. It was worse than navigating from one gate to the next in an airport.

The line at the ticket counter moved pretty fast. They had more agents than most airlines have windows AND automated machines. My info came right up instead of the agent spending 10 minutes working on their novel or whatever they're doing pushing all those buttons. Checking my bag consisted of "here's my bag", "Ok, here's your stub. NEXT!" I went off and got some lunch. Ate at my leisure. Bought new headphones at the music store. Went to the gate. Had half an hour still to go. People started lining up at 15 minutes until departure. At 10 til they let through the elderly and people with kids. The rest followed about a minute later.

We went down an escalator to a filthy platform between to trains. It looks easy enough to clean. A good ladder, a hose, a soapy brush most of the grime should wipe right off. As we moved down the platform it started to look more like what you'd expect a train platform to look like from the movies. Metal beams, lots of rivets, and unpainted wood stopping the rain. It looks like the filth was from diesel engines idling in an enclosed area. Seats were assigned as you actually got on the train.

Seating is like first class on a plane but without the arm rests. There's one arm rest by the window and one on the rather ample aisle. They support elbow to mid-forearm. That is to say they're nigh worthless. I rested my arm on the window sill most of the time instead. The seats are big and have plenty of leg room but are not comfortable. About half the passengers moved to the refreshment car instead.

The train moved very slowly from Union Station to Alexandria where it stopped again. DC and the surrounding area was the only part of the trip where we were actually running on elevated platforms over the city instead of blocking traffic. I'm sure everybody involved appreciated that.

I watched out the window for a long time. This is a great way to see the wide diversity of scrub brush along the east coast. Lots of really tall weed things. Some areas plant bamboo or some ancient tall grass along the tracks to make them look better. Other places plant plants. Chemical plants. Gravel plants. The backs of malls. Stuff like that. And you really can't tell the grafitti in DC from that anywhere else along the coast.

There's really two speeds on a train. A slow creep and too damn fast. You could walk the slow creep. Too damn fast means the train is shaking because it wobbles so much on the rails. I've been on rollercoasters that didn't shake that much. Not many, but a few. To be fair there were some places where we went a speed that shook that weren't scary.

Supper is by reservation in the dining car. The booths are comfortable. The food is reasonably priced and not bad.

And then there was sleep. Or at least an attempt at it. You can lean back 20° or so and put out a leg rest. But that's not nearly enough. That was the most uncomfortable bed I've ever slept on. Remember, the guy saying that slept on his office floor for two months, his couch for a year and a half, and has gone camping on really rocky ground.

I picked up my book about half an hour down the track. Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express". I finished it 15 minutes before pulling into Orlando. I also spent time doing really scribbly crossword puzzles in pen and listening to audio books.

So for $94 I made it from DC to Orlando in 19 hours. For about the same price I could have taken a plane in 3-4 hours. There's really just no reason to take a train other than the experience of having taken one or a fear of flying.

Kennedy Space Center

Kennedy Space Center is Disneyland for nerds. It's located near Orlando, has rides, exhibits, and isn't what you wanted anyway.

When buying tickets for a Shuttle launch the most important thing to do is to know somebody. Whether you want the big air conditioned room or the site with the big clock you need to know somebody who can set you up.

If all you want is to be nearby then Kennedy Space Center is a good place. Even then you should probably buy tickets there and come back later for the show. I bought mine over the internet and got some rather lame tickets. There's yellow, blue, green, and purple tickets. The colors get you on tour buses to show you the rest of the structures on the island. All except the blue ticket. The blue ticket gets you in and that's it. I had a blue ticket.

Shortly after writing this I intend to drive back out and see how many of those roads are publicly accessible when it's not a launch day.

The latest you want to get there is three hours before hand. They start closing the roads two hours before hand. I left my hotel about 10:00 and got parked a little after 11:00. About the time the traffic passed over highway 1 it stopped. We then crept along for another 45 minutes before getting parked.

There are museums, displays, rides, and overpriced vendors everywhere. The museums don't really cover much you won't see at the Air and Space Museum in DC or the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS. But this place has several old rockets standing or lying about outside. There are capsules, modules, and gangplanks you can climb in and walk along. There's a truly awesome kiddie play area. There's a shuttle replica you can walk through and see what they look like inside. There's a large building with a launch simulator ride. I'd suggest doing all this when it's not a launch day. Yes, KSC is open every day but Christmas but on launch days there's lines.

The main show floor has a big, but not really all that big, TV and bleachers you can sit on. You can sit out in the Florida sun and bake for several hours while you protect your spot and watch NASA TV. And when the Shuttle finally launches behind those flag poles off to the left there's a big honking tree in the way.

I picked a different spot. I found a place on the good side of the trees AND in the shade. And I only had to sit there for 3 hours protecting it. Because once people realized I had a good spot everyone else wanted in, too. It was along the sidewalk that runs along their pond. In the pond are several large turtles, softshelled tortoises mostly, and a couple of alligators. But as launch time approached the railing along the pond filled up and I had to join them or lose my view.

You can't see the launch site from KSC. But if you pick a good spot you can see the trees that the Shuttle will launch behind. Then you see a column of smoke with a bit of flame at the top. A good eye can make out the rocket boosters. Kind of anti-climactic. It's really much better on the NASA site or via YouTube.

After the launch I hit one last museum that talks about the nature preserve on the island. Everybody was leaving, traffic would be awful, why not find something better to do? When I finally got back to my car I sat and read for more than an hour before heading out. I waited until the main driveway was clear. But it wasn't long before I hit the car blockage again. I missed the turnoff but didn't really care. That was until 15 minutes and a mile later with 8 more miles to go before the main highway. I turned around to the road I really wanted. I got several miles before that jammed up too. But I only had two miles of jam to sit through.

Anyway, I was there, but I don't feel like I was there. Probably the best thing to do is rent a boat and get as close to shore as you can. You'll get a better view.

Pictures soon.

Saturday extra

Woke up to country music because apparently that's all they play in Florida.
Got a free breakfast up the hall.
It's pushing 10:00.

Launch is scheduled for 5:02 PM. Double checking... yep 7 hours to go. The window sign says I need to be at Kennedy Space Center by 2:00.

There no address on the website or paperwork. I can't just punch it into my GPS system and go. I'll have to resort to...MAPS! Satellite footage and maps don't completely line up.

I guess I'll grab a book and head on out. The brochure make it look like I can kill a day out there.

Phil Plait, the blogger behind the Bad Astronomy website and related books is gonna be there. I couldn't find a copy of his book to get him to sign. No guarantee we'll be at the same place anyway.

No bags, no pretty much everything. I should be able to take my camera, however.

I'm off.

I'm enroute to Orlando.

Washington, DC (METRO)
Alexandria
Richmond
Petersburg
Virginia/North Carolina border
Rocky Mount
Raleigh
Cary
Southern Pines
Hamlet
North Carolina/South Carolina border
Camden
Columbia
Denmark
South Carolina/Georgia border
Savannah
Georgia/Florida border
Jacksonville
Palatka
DeLand
Winter Park
Orlando

Doctor Who's new Executive Producer

Russell T Davies is leaving Doctor Who after this season. He's the one credited with making the new show a hit, as well as the spinoff "Torchwood", and there's been much nail biting over whether the show will survive the new guy. But I just found out that Dr Who writer Steven Moffat will be taking the helm.

Moffat wrote all the good "hide behind the couch" episodes since the show came back. He wrote the two parter "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" with the little boy in the gas mask who keeps calling for his "maaaaaaah-meeeee". He wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace" with the clockwork robots. And he wrote the truly terrifying "Blink" with the statues that move when you're not looking at them. He also wrote the bit where Doctor 10 (David Tennant) and Doctor 5 (Peter Davidson) met. He's probably best known as the creator and sole writer for the British version of "Coupling".

Hearing that Moffat is taking over Doctor Who is kind of like hearing that Joss Whedon was doing Wonder Woman. You just don't need to hear anything else about it. It WILL work. (Yes, I know Joss Whedon is off the project. If that's how the producers are thinking then clearly it has "FAIL" written all over it.)

Business name FAIL

Seen on 14th street on my way to work.


From Monty Python
UNDERTAKER: Morning.
MAN: Good morning.
UNDERTAKER: What can I do for you, squire?
MAN: Well, I wonder if you can help me. You see, my mother has just died.
UNDERTAKER: Ah well, we can help you. We deal with stiffs.
MAN: What?
UNDERTAKER: Well, there's three things we can do with your mum. We can bury her, burn her, or dump her.
MAN: (shocked) Dump her?
UNDERTAKER: Dump her in the Thames.
MAN: What?
UNDERTAKER: Oh, did you like her?
MAN: Yes!
UNDERTAKER: oh well, we won't dump her then. Well, what do you think? We can bury her or burn her.
MAN: Well, which do you recommend?
UNDERTAKER: Well, they're both nasty. If we burn her she gets stuffed in the flames... crackle crackle crackle... which is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead, but quick. And then we give you a handful of ashes, which you can pretend were hers.
MAN: Oh.
UNDERTAKER: Or if we bury her, she gets eaten up by lots of weevils and nasty maggots, which as I said before is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead.
MAN: I see. Well, she's definitely dead.
UNDERTAKER: Where is she?
MAN: She's in this sack.
UNDERTAKER: Can I have a look? She looks quite young.
MAN: Yes, yes, she was.
UNDERTAKER (calling): Fred!
FRED'S VOICE: Yeah?
UNDERTAKER: I think we've got an eater.
MAN: What?!?
FRED (peeking head round the door): Right, I'll get the oven on.(goes off)
MAN: Er, excuse me, um.... are you suggesting eating my mother?
UNDERTAKER: Er... yeah, not raw. Cooked.
MAN: What?
UNDERTAKER: Yes, roasted with a few french fries, broccoli, horseradish sauce...
MAN: Well, I do feel a bit peckish.
UNDERTAKER: Great!
MAN: Can we have some parsnips?
UNDERTAKER (calling): Fred... get some parsnips.
MAN: I really don't think I should.
UNDERTAKER: Look, tell you what.... we'll eat her, if you feel a bit guilty about it after, we can dig a grave and you can throw up in it.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

How do you explain to a kid who is too young to have seen an Indiana Jones movie why it should be excited about a new one? It's easy to find those kids. It's almost how kid is defined. It's been 19 years since "Last Crusade". Feeling old yet?

This wasn't the first attempt at Indiana Jones IV. I know of at least three other attempts. One of which I was personally involved with. OK, so the guy writing it leased office space from an old roommate of mine. I still got to meet the man several times and learn a it about what he was writing.

Like "Last Crusade", "Crystal Skull" is very self referential. Marcus Brody is dead but still manages to help Indy out in some small way. Still others return after a long absence. There are reused lines, familiar scenery, traps, and camera work, and even one of the cities on the map is familiar if only you spoke Jovitos. Heck, they even reference one of the Indiana Jones movies that never got made.

I'll try to sum up the movie without giving away anything of value.

Time has passed. It's 1957 Dr. Jones has been busy. Besides archaeology he also fought in the war and spent time working for some intelligence agencies. The movie begins with a military convoy heading to a military base in the desert where some weapons testing is to be done. Soviets manage to infiltrate the base. This is when we first see the hat followed shortly by The Man in the Hat. The Soviets are after something that Indy helped recover 10 years ago and was handed over to "Top. Men." No, not that. Something else. Something that ties the initial adventure into the rest of the movie.

Indy manages to get away, of course, but in doing so manages to get himself in even bigger trouble, of course. He gets out, gets interrogated, returns to school, and is suspended. Then is chases by KGB agents around the streets of wherever he's supposed to be. This whole first half hour or so just doesn't feel very Indiana Jones. Maybe it's just too 1950s. The heavy blue screening certainly doesn't help.

But soon enough we head for South America and the movie flows a bit better. Only a bit. Everything still seems to come a bit too easy.

Skipping a lot, the movie ends with the message that Shia LaBeouf isn't about to pick up the hat for Indiana Jones V if it comes up.

Now the big question. Will I get this movie on DVD? If this were the only Indiana Jones movie I'd probably say no. It's a lot of fun but I don't see myself watching it over and over. But it is Indiana Jones and my copies of the first three are all on VHS. I'll probably buy the inevitable 4-pack when it comes out.

If you've seen the earlier movies you should definitely go see this one.

Movie Review: Superman: Doomsday

Long, long ago, when I was still in high school, Superman died at the hands of a monster called Doomsday. That's when I started collecting comics. Now whenever a superhero dies people joke that the next issue will have four of him until the real one returns a year later.

Last year a straight to video movie came out telling a version of the story. There were a few changes. Much like in Spiderman 3 where it would have been too much of a pain to tell the story about how Spiderman was kidnapped to another dimension to fight a godlike alien with a bunch of other Marvel heroes and returned home with a symbiote that became his new costume so they just had it drop from the sky.

Instead of just having a mysterious box under ground for Doomsday to punch his way out of they had Lex Luthor's people uncover it.
Instead of telling the story of all the other superheroes that tackled him and got their butts kicked before Superman could get there the creature just went straight for Metropolis and they jumped straight into it.
And they wrapped up the title storyline in only 30 minutes.

The aftermath is significantly different for obvious reasons.
The original had a bad clone, a robot, a guy in a suit, and a chunk of Kryptonian tech all pretending to be Superman. The Kryptonian tech kept the body in a crypt that leeched off Superman's powers so he could use it. It was that crypt that brought him back.
This had Luthor steal the body and create an army of Superman clones that he could control or destroy. That is until one of the robots in the Fortress of Solitude realized that Superman was still alive but had heartbeats 17 days apart and recovered him.

Supes gets the black suit from the original story and works on recovering his power instead of putting on a mechanical power suit and teaming up with some of the new Supermen. He then has to go fight one of the clones who has freed himself from Lex's grip and started imposing corporal punishment on the streets of Metropolis.

DC/Warner Brothers has a good team of writers for their cartoons. Whether or not they do for the comics and movies is a discussion for another time. But I am consistently impressed with the writing for their cartoon movies and TV shows.

---

A note: There's one scene where the Superclone fights Toyman and destroys his mechanical spider. A chubby man with a beard who looks and sounds remarkably like writer/director Kevin Smith (because he is) says "Yeah, like we really needed him to bust up the mechanical spider, right? Lame!"
That's because Kevin Smith once wrote a script for Superman V that had a giant robot spider because the producer demanded it.

The whole story. 19 minutes.

Whatever doesn't kill...

list assembled with some help. Forgive a bit of repetition of themes.

...you makes you stronger.
...you makes you stranger.
...you probably hurt like crazy.
...me has just royally pissed me off.
...you can still maim you horribly.
...you should have asked me for help.
...you shows that you can't even kill yourself properly.
...you wasn't what the snake book said it was.
...you shows why you should never trust a cheap hit man.
...me needs to try harder next time.
...you obviously hates me.
...you still might turn you into a lifeless vegetable, unable to communicate with the world yet still able experience every excruciating second of your life [staring up at a 45 deg angle at the same three fluorescent tube light bulbs, the occasional nurse, and the relatives who visit less and less each year preaching to you how they still have hope about your recovery] until they finally decide to pull the life support twenty years later[, but only after a long court battle with people who have never met you think that keeping you alive is better than allowing nature to take its course].

Doctor Who as lesson plan

I've gotten several kids hooked on the new Doctor Who. One is a sharp kid who I can loan my disks and gets most of the references. The other two are waiting for me when I get home so they can come see new episodes. These two went to DC public schools and can't finish reading the opening scroll to Star Wars before it vanishes.

I try to help them understand the references as best I can. It really makes good jumping off points for lesson plans.

One of the first lessons was what a Police Box is and it's historical equivalent here in DC that I mentioned here a couple of weeks back.

One episode features Charles Dickens. The kids knew the name and knew about "A Christmas Carol" but never connected the two.

In one of the early episodes the sun expands and consumes the Earth in about 5 billion years. I was able to give them a brief summary of the life cycles of stars and how in 5-6.5 billion years the sun will expand as the fuel runs out and consume everything out to Mars. This came back later when the Doctor landed on a planet orbiting a black hole. They remembered where black holes come from.

Yesterday they learned about Shakespeare. They knew the name and recognized a couple of quotes. Then they asked if he was dead. I get that a lot from DC kids. No perspective about time and history. When I reminded them that what they were seeing was based 400 years ago in 1599 they knew he was good and dead. They also learned about several words that Shakespeare created.

Another particularly dim local kid can tell me the year that George Washington was born but then asks if I know him. Not "did I know him" but "DO I know him".

Also yesterday was an episode in New York during the Great Depression. I paused several times to explain what points of the story were true. Yes, the economy was so bad in the US that there were Hoovervilles (and what those were) and people were willing to do smelly, filthy work for a dollar a day. Yes, that's when the Empire State Building was built. Luckily they'd seen the Daleks before and I didn't need to explain that they weren't real.

But there were other points that I had to explain weren't real. I can kind of understand why. I mean if black holes are real why aren't sonic screwdrivers. Yes, Earth formed as bits of dust and rock collected and were pulled together into a large mass. No, the space craft of a bunch of giant spider aliens hiding from the Time Lords wasn't what pulled all that dust and rock together in the first place.

They learned about London and the Blitz during WWII. They've learned about Queen Elizabeth and all the attempts on her life. They learned about Madame De Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, King of France.

Plus, I leave the closed captioning on all the time in the hopes that they'll sink in a bit better.

I did the same thing when I loaned them "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" a couple of months ago. They'd heard of a bit more than half the people in the movie but still missed some of the gags like Sigmund Freud and his corndog.
I just realized, I never told them that Bill and Ted's time traveling phone booth was a spoof on Doctor Who's time traveling Police Box.

These aren't the people in your neighborhood

I've started looking up some people in Orlando I know. After all, gonna be down there for who knows how long without even knowing the good dining facilities.

Really, it's not just people I know but two women I once had long distance relationships with.

Alas, one has moved out of Florida a few months ago. We exchanged e-mails several times a day while I was looking for my first job out of college. Played chess by e-mail. Still in touch from time to time. Married, moved several times.

The other, the love of my life henceforth known as "Soul Crusher", has an incredibly common name. I'm finding a couple of dozen of her in Orlando.
My brother knew her as well. He told me some rumor he heard about her. I just today found out it's true. There's her wedding announcement in some archive. 23 June 2002.

Damn fool woman gave up her dream job and moved back to Podunk, KS. Last time we talked she was cutting off all ties before moving there. Fresh start an' all that. But apparently she was still in touch with one guy. Probably went to Orlando, got lonely, no friends, no family, there's this one old voice in her life, mistakes companionship for love and gives up being where she wanted to be and what she wanted to do for him.

She's sodding brilliant she was! Female engineer. And a good one. Wanted to work for NASA. Got a job at Lockheed Martin. When I was there in 2002 I was terrified and hoping that I'd run into her.

But she blew it! She moved back to Podunk. There's nothing in Podunk for her. Nothing but him.

Not that I thought we'd get back together. No, burn me twice and all that.

Still...

Twice upon a time we were mad for each other albeit over the phone. Twice upon a time she tore my heart from me and casually tossed it under some passing car. I'd still look her up from time to time when I was in a particularly depressed and self destructive funk. Never called her.

Still...

Coulda been me. Shoulda been me. I thought she was deliberately messing with my emotions there at the end. Maybe she was. Maybe she was trying to drive me out of her life. Maybe maybe maybe. If I'd been able to keep a cool head maybe I'd have moved to Florida. Maybe if I'd kept a cool head she'd have moved to DC. But if I'd been able to keep a cool head around her the relationship wouldn't have been one where either of us would even consider moving for the other.

He'd better be making her happy. She gave up enough for him.

Stuff

It's about 1 PM on Sunday and I'm thinking about this weeks blogs. Not a lot to write really.

I didn't go see Prince Caspian and I probably won't. For the high production values of the first Narnia movie, the sets, CGI, music, adherence to source material, etc. I walked out feeling pretty meh about it. If there were a dollar theater around I might go see it after I read that book.

I'm reading real books again, but none really close to done.

I need to go shopping for new jeans but I'm putting it off until next weekend. I figure I'll go out to White Flint to get jeans, a copy of "Stratego" from the "Toys R Us" out there, and see the new Indiana Jones movie.

My Florida stuff is pretty much covered. I've seriously curtailed my dining out in order to pay for my deck and the Florida trip of indeterminate length. I'll probably be able to pull off both but it'll be tight.

Oh, and I found out that an old... well, not girlfriend, certainly not lover, let's say woman-with-whom-I-shared-an-all-consuming-passion-over-the-telephone got married. More on that tomorrow.

A truck is going to show up some day and haul junk from my backyard so they can start installing the deck. My man Eric told me to throw whatever I want rid of back there. So I'm stepping up a couple of projects and some house cleaning so I can complete said projects. The ceiling in my stairwell is coming down. And hopefully the kitchen ceiling, too before they get here. I probably won't push ahead on those projects for some time due to budgetary purposes. Florida, deck, and save up for a furnace in the fall.

Did some lawn work yesterday.

So, you know, rather laid back weekend really.

Dating

There are some people who have the attitude that dating is no big deal. Some even think it's fun. These people are idiots. These people also get people to agree to date them from time to time. Dating is a hyperstressful hell that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Part of the anxiety comes from the time when showing interest in a woman meant suffering even greater than normal abuse by the bulk of society. "Society" at that point being classmates. If I actually liked a girl I had to be sure to never show it not just to protect myself but to protect her from the abuse that she'd suffer over it. Even when I became generally liked the pattern remained. The only way to show interest was to make it such a huge, overblown show that I couldn't be outdone. Like sprinting through the halls doing jumps and rolls and rather impressive athletic feats just to get to her. At least she didn't reject me. She just made up an active social life until I figured out what she was doing and stopped trying.

Then there was college. The people were much nicer but the rejections were still universal until my junior year. I actually had one woman walk up to me on the sidewalk and say "I will never go out with you" and walk away. Several woman turned me down but couldn't say why. They admitted that I was everything they wanted in a man but they just weren't interested.

I'm long out of college now. I've answered a few personal ads but only one woman every wrote back. I've had a couple of women answer my personal ads since I moved to DC. Most didn't understand that "I don't want children" means that I don't want theirs, mine, or ours. Going out to try to meet women is a total failure. I can start the occasional conversation but never a date. To be fair there have been a few times I find myself talking to someone but I'm so habitualized to being single that I don't realize that I was getting hints to ask them out until several minutes after they left.

I bring this up because I recently responded to the personal ad of a seemingly wonderful and beautiful woman. She wrote back and we went on a date or two. There were some issues that I was willing to work around. But there were two real problems. The first is pretty standard in DC. Or maybe it's standard for any working woman who is still single at 30. I don't know. While she works less than most women I've met in DC she still works 6 days a week. And she's already scheduled most of her off time. I'm not sure why she posted a personal ad. Between work, classes, family, and friends she doesn't have time for anybody new in her life. The second problem is either that she's incredibly sensitive about her schedule and gets angry when someone asks for help finding a time when their schedules sync. Or she's just one of those people who is looking for someone to have a problem with them so they can get angry. Just a bit of feedback about when she was free could have helped so much. Instead I got rage just for asking.

Anyway, it's clearly not going to work out. I think she would have gotten along great with my friends when she'd finally meet them. But there's no real possibility of a romantic relationship. It's been a few days since I've worked this out. Luckily things didn't end with her freaking out and saying she didn't want to talk to me. We did IM and we were able to sort out what happened.

But I really put myself out when I approached her. I didn't get smacked down as thoroughly as some other women have done. But only because she was willing to talk about it after. But it's a huge let down to have to give up on this woman.

We may still be able to be friends, but she's gonna have to be the one to get in touch.

State of the Union (by Adam Bomb)

Something I wrote following the 2003 State of the Union address.

State of the Union (by Adam Bomb)

There are brilliant men and there are men of action, but rarely do the two attributes combine in a single person. Our President, George W. Bush Jr., is the very epitome of perfection in an ideal mesh of those attributes. I mean it! The man is a God! How fabulous is George? Zeus came forth from HIS head! I mean WOW! Did you hear that talk last night? HE'S EVERYTHING MAN HAS BEEN BUILDING UP TO! MILlionS of YeaRsof EvolutION WitheGoAL of GEORGE!!!! GEOOOOOOOOOOREGE!!!!!
It's ok, I'mcalmI'mcalm... I'm calm... (big exhale) I. Am. Calm. Really. I just need my meds. A few cadmium tablets. I get excited sometimes.

Anyway, I was watching the State of the Union address last night with a few of the other guys from the silo. They're getting kind of old, but they can still get it up, if you know what I mean.
After that speech we were all primed. MaX, older fella, still remembers the good old Castro days, kept talking about how George may even be a better President than Ron. I mean most people don't like us. They're happy with their Patriots and Smart Missles and refuse to even consider sending us in. It's like they're embarassed of us or something. But George is really into equal opportunities. For too long my people have
been kept down, insulted, feared, and maligned. We deserve the same opportunites as everyone else! Do we not have Feeling!?! If you Shoot Us Do We Not OoZe? WE JUST WANT TO CONTRIBUTE! To Helpe MaKE THIS woRlD A BETTEre PLACE!!!!! NuKEsssssJUssssTWANNAGO BOOOOOM! BOOM, BABY! BOOM!

(twitch)(twitch)

I've been seeing a therapist for this. He's helped a lot really. I'm much calmer these days. (pop a few more pills) Says I'm pent up. I need a release. I knitted this nice sweater. Do you Like iT? Toook Me alL moNth. Do You Like It!?! DO YOU!!!? ANSWER ME!

(pant) (pant) (pant)

Water. I just need some nice cold water.
Anyway, that Saddam guy is a threat. I had a cousin who used to live in Iraq. He said Saddam's totally loony. That's why I agree with George. You should listen to him and send in us big guns. We know how to deal with guys like him.

-Adam Bomb

Book review: When The Tripods Came

Long, long ago I was in Cub Scouts. And as a Cub Scout I got the magazine Boys' Life. Every month they'd have a one page cartoon that was based on a book. To read the whole story could take years. About the time I started getting them they'd started with the illustrated version of "The Tripods". For years I thought I'd missed a lot of it. But I recently saw all four books in the trilogy (the author went back and make a prequel) at the Friends of the Arlington Library book sale and snatched them up. My Krode was with me and it turned out he had digital versions of the Boys' Life series. I'd only missed a couple of pages.

The books are apparently rather popular in England. Popular enough to have a TV show based on them. Not popular enough for them to finish the show. There have been tales about a series of movies based on the books in the works.

The first book "When the Tripods Came" takes place roughly now. It tells the tale of how the Tripods first came to Earth and took over. They're really no match for our military so they create a TV show which latches on to susceptible minds and makes them huge fans of the Tripods and willing to follow orders. The show is translated into all languages and shown in every country. Viewers start to leave their homes and form communes. Then they spread out and start trying to get people to wear caps that have the same effect as the TV show.
The characters that the book focuses on flee England and face the rampant xenophobia the crisis has generated. They end up with the Swiss in the last refuge on Earth. As it falls they move into the mountains.

It's 150 pages and targeted at probably 5th grade readers. But it's not insultingly bad. Just a short, simple story that leads into three more similar books.

Northwest Passage

Last summer I reported that the Northwest Passage has opened. At least during the summer months it has. I find this simultaneously horrific and wonderful. On the one hand there's global warming and all that. On the other hand it opens up shipping routes and you and I can now cruise places that foiled some of history's greatest explorers. And I said that as soon as there's a cruise going through there I'm going.

Guess what?

Alas, I've already committed myself to my Space Shuttle trip this summer. And my deck is killing my bank account. There's only so much time I can take off work. But next summer, NEXT summer...

My favorite trip so far:
http://www.travelvantage.com/fset3.htm?arc_cr_nwp.html
http://www.condorjourneys-adventures.com/arctic_cruise1.asp
You start in Kamchatka, take a helicopter to an ice breaker off the coast and spend 20 days traveling to Resolute Bay.
Between $12K and $20K depending on your berth.

Another trip shaves off a week, is considerably cheaper, and looks more like a cruise.
http://www.quarkexpeditions.com/arctic/northwest-passage-via-simpson-strait/northwest-passage-via-simpson-strait?gclid=CMPEv6rbmZMCFQF1sgodAVZrwg
It goes from Resolute Bay to Cambridge Bay or vice-versa depending on when you go.
$4,200 - $8,400

My First Earthquake: From Hasbro

I didn't even know it was an earthquake until the next morning when I heard about it on NPR. Otherwise it would have just blended into the day's events. But last Tuesday at about 1:30 there was a quake of about 1.8 on the Richter Scale near DC.

Everybody in the office thought it was something different.

I thought someone was pushing a very large and overloaded cart down the hall one floor up.

My boss thought that the landscaping crew was unloading more boulders and had accidentally dumped them all at once.

Some people thought it was the blasting out at Ft. Belvoir.

There was only the slightest tremble in the building and a loudish rumbling sound.

A couple people don't remember noticing anything.

random photo

Some days I can write a week of these in advance. Other times I've got nothing. Case in point, today. I actually have several old posts but I don't want to put them up for various reasons. So here's a picture I took last summer.
Not really what I was going for. I need to work with the aperture more.

Your mental image for the day

I remember when I was a kid, sitting on the fence with my friends, watching the sun setting slowly over the horizon, chewing a bit of beef jerky, chucking rocks into the minefield.

Gas prices and WalMart

Yes, I'm late. Staff meetings and birthday lunches and whatnot

You know why the price of gas is so high? It's because you shop at Walmart.

reason 1:
Walmart is such a monster of a company that they basically own all their suppliers. Walmart is such a huge part of their sales that they have to do what Walmart tells them or give up >50% of their sales. Walmart tells their suppliers to drop their prices and drop their prices until the company has to say "but we've cut everything that can be cut. We can't go any lower." Then Walmart tells them to move production to China. True. The company doesn't (usually) say "well we'll have to move production offshore". Walmart tells them to go to China or they'll switch suppliers. Without Walmart they're out of business.

So Walmart is cheap and everybody shops there. All our money goes to China. American manufacturing fails. The government borrows money from China. We sent that money to China. We borrow more. Eventually the dollar collapses and can't buy what it once could. So the price of gas goes up.

reason 2:
China's economy takes off because they're selling stuff to America. More and more Chinese can afford cars instead of bikes. Industry gears up and needs to run their factories. They need the oil almost as much as we do. So we get into a bidding war and the price goes up.


I like high gas prices. I don't drive. It forces better choices from those who do. Including this one. If you want cheaper gas and a better economy stop sending your money to China by shopping at Walmart.

Book review: Beholder's Eye

I finished "Beholder's Eye" by Julie E Czerneda a week or so back.

I don't quite feel right reviewing this book. I don't know if it's all the oak pollen in the air or the book itself, but I just haven't felt like reading anything too heavy lately. This book just wasn't holding my attention. But then, a few other books I've picked up lately haven't either. Comic books and cartoon books, sure. That's light and easy and not at all taxing.

So, yes, this book. Sci-fi, of course. The central character is the youngest of a species that lives for thousands of years. It's only 300 years old or so. This species exists in an energy state and can share mass and memories. They take a physical form and go to a planet to learn about them. Once they completely understand a being they can take its form. They do this so that the culture and knowledge of a people can last long past when a culture self destructs or is destroyed.

This central character is off on her first mission. She's supposed to watch the people of a rather primitive people for 10 years. She's taken on a form similar to a dog to do this. It's actually an intelligent species that looks doglike except for fingers instead of pads on the paws. She finds out about some invaders and tags along with some military personnel going to deal with it. The invader turns out to be a first contact team from a large federation of planets. In fact, it's the third first contact team. The first two were never heard from again.

Things happen, and the central character manages to save the crew of the ship and get a ride off planet. She gets home and is in big trouble for letting her true identity get discovered.

She's sent back out with a new mission known only to her and the eldest of her people. A creature from a distant galaxy has arrived and is killing and destroying intelligent life. Her job is to gather information and return. Naturally, the mission parameters shift a bit.

The people of the federation have some idea what she is and assume that she's the threat destroying colonies and outposts along the rim. The creature finds out about her people and comes for them.

The book is good. It is. It tells the story well. It establishes the friendship between her and a human that becomes a regular companion through the rest of the story. It covers the adventures she has before the main storyline really gets going.

No science to speak of. Fantasy would be a better description.

My only complaint is that it took me so long to finish because I just couldn't pay attention. And I don't know if it was the writing or the pollen.

Movie review: Iron Man

Holy crap! A summer blockbuster that actually lives up to the hype.

First, a brief history of the Iron Man movie as seen by the public.

When they first said they were making an Iron Man movie I didn't expect much. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Hulk, these are the first string heroes. They're who movie makers start with. If you do well with them, and those movies were pretty hit and miss, then you start trying to make money from the second stringers and even third stringers. Ok, some would argue Iron Man is a first stringer, but this is his first movie so he's a second stringer. Most geeks heard about Iron Man and expected a disaster. But we thought the same thing about Lord of the Rings.

Then they announced that Robert Downey Jr would be playing Tony Stark (the man inside the suit). Suddenly there was hope. The studio was a bit scared of RDj but the geeks knew he was the right man for the job. They're both wealthy, arrogant, womanizing, alcoholics. It's a perfect match.

Then we got the screen shots of the outfit. We were blown away. They got the look right and some great actors.

But it could all still go wrong. The more hype there was the more we dreaded. But we lived in hope. This could still rock.

And it did. Oh, this movie rocked so hard. I'm not a big reader of Iron Man so I can't really compare to the comics. Mostly I know of Iron Man from his recent role in superhero registration and firing The Hulk off to a distant planet. He's a genius who works with Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four a lot. He has a history of alcohol abuse.

What really struck me about this movie is the lack of a villain. There's bad guys, sure, but no classic villain. Tony Stark is his own worst enemy.

The movie starts with Tony returning from a weapons demonstration in a Humvee convoy. Terrorists attack and capture him. They keep the PG13 rating by keeping out the blood, but the blasts and the holes getting ripped in the Humvee and the soldiers dropping left and right were realistic and shocking enough that I might have upped it to R. Tony gets captured and taken to a cave where the terrorists want him to assemble on of his missile launchers for them.

So the weapons he designed and his company built to protect American soldiers is in the hands of terrorists and is why he's been kidnapped.

Flashback a day and a half. We see how much of a playboy, smart ass, care for nothing, party animal he really is. Then back to the cave where Tony has built a mini-reactor to power the electro magnet that is keeping metal fragments from penetrating his heart. Then he builds a prototype power suit that has to be navigated more by counting steps than seeing where he's going. But it still kills a lot of terrorists, sets a lot of stuff on fire, and flies a short distance. But it crashes in the desert and he leaves it behind.

Back home he tries to shut down the weapons division until he can figure out how to make better use of his money and company. He retreats into his lab and starts work on his new suit. This covers a lot of movie but you find you don't really mind. It's just fun to watch Stark interact with his robots and play with his new suit.

Meanwhile, the terrorists have found his old suit. Once more, Tony's creation is falling into the hands of bad people. But when he goes to deal with them in person it's a cake walk. Bip bop boop, done. But still quite entertaining.

The movie comes together at the end with him facing a giant, amped up version of his first suit.

Iron Man is all about cleaning up Tony Starks messes.

The whole thing sets up for a couple of sequels, a spin-off or three, and a crossover.

Really, this takes the best of Batman and Superman with the light heartedness of Spiderman or Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

It may not have the wide appeal that Batman Begins had but it's right up there.

Go see it. Go sit through the credits. Go get it on DVD.

Terry Pratchett

Recently the author Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer's. I don't know what makes his unique, but he says that if you have to have Alzheimer's then this is the kind to have.

He recently gave $1,000,000 for research into a cure. When giving the money he also gave a speech. You can hear it below.

part 1


part 2

Bond Martini

I've been reading some old Ian Flemming James Bond books. Some are spot on for the movies and some are WAY off. James doesn't show up in "The Spy Who Loved Me" until near the end.

In "Casino Royale" Bond orders his classic martini. Alas, I didn't bookmark the page so I can't find it again easily. But that's what Google is for. Alas, 50-some years have passed since that book was written. Formulas have changed. You can't make the same martini. But there are some substitutions that can get you close.

Follow the link and I'll let this person explain.

http://bartendersbaby.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/the-real-james-bond-martini/

Game review: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Video games. It takes a very special game for me to pay full price for it. This wasn't one of them. With the PS3 out the PS2 game prices are falling. Especially the ones that are 6 years old already. I picked up "Sly Cooper" for only $9.99. Not a bad price. I think I did slightly better than the $1 per hour that I expect from a game. Too bad the price had to come down so far to get to that point. But I was only really playing to finish the game and write the review.

The most interesting part of this game was what they did with the graphics. Sure, lots of games lately are playing up the cartoonish angle. This one does it by giving the characters and much of the scenery dark edges like a drawn cartoon would. Makes me wish I had more experience in 3D modeling so I knew how they pulled that off in a dynamically rendered scene.

The game itself is the standard run along and collect all the [ITEMS] in the level so you can get the [BONUS]. Along the way you beat up the [VILLAINS] until you reach the [BOSS] at the end of the level. Still, it's more engaging than some games.

Completely safe for kids to play. The worst that happens when you die is that you get set back a little bit. Not a great deal of frustration. The game is very solvable.

I'll loan it to the neighbor kids who will enjoy it a lot more than me.

Gas tax

I'm gonna skip this post ahead of several others because it's more time sensitive.

Way back in college I was advocating some new gas taxes because, quite frankly, you people aren't gonna cut back on your driving or invest in more fuel efficient vehicles unless you get stabbed in the wallet. And now the gas prices are climbing on their own.

Now McCain is pushing for the temporary lifting of the federal gas taxes (18.4¢ on gasoline, 24.4¢ on diesel) between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Since Obama is taking the opposite position Hillary is siding with McCain.

If that doesn't define this election I don't know what does. Obama is trying to do the right thing and Hillary is trying to do whatever it takes to win votes. Or you can be really cynical and say Obama is trying to win liberal votes while Hillary is trying to win more moderate votes.

But lets see what else is in the news.
GM Cuts Jobs amid Slow Truck, SUV Sales
GM is cutting SUV and truck production at 4 plants. They already made 100,000 SUVs less than expected due to a strike at one of their suppliers plants and much of their remaining inventory is going unsold.
GM will be cutting truck and SUV production by 138,000 (88,000 full-size pickups, 50,000 SUVs).

THANK YOU $120/gal oil prices!!!

Rising gas prices work. This is what must be done.

I thought by now that everyone would have had a chance to poke around inside a Prius. DC is littered with the damn things. But when I rented one and drove it back to Wichita for Thanksgiving it was a great point of interest since many hadn't seen one before. I drove around my grandparents and let other members of my family take it for a spin. Grandma wound up buying one herself. She immediately hated it since it wasn't the same make and model of the last 4 cars she's owned. But just meant Mom inherited a practically new, fully loaded Prius that she's practically giddy about.

Of course, the rising gas prices also effects the truckers. And by extension it impacts the price of milk, fruit... well, everything really. So I would approve of lifting the tax not on diesel, but on truckers and farmers. Yes, that means practically lifting the tax on diesel. But there's still buses, most of which are converting to hybrid and liquid natural gas anyway. Gotta keep encouraging that. And there's still small diesel vehicles who'll still have to pay.

We still need to find a way to move from semis for shipping or change what the semis run on. Higher gas prices should help with that. I can afford to pay more for food. Many of my neighbors will not.

---

Here's more reasons to oppose the gas tax moratorium. Used without permission from Bird Brains: Comics and Commentary.

1. The Highway Trust Fund, which funds highway infrastructure, would lose revenue. Americans apparently have short memories; the I-35W bridge collapse was less than a year ago, but the concern for the state of our bridges and highways that it created seems to have been short-lived.
2. The proposal is unlikely to pass Congress. The states would stand to lose Highway Trust Fund revenue. Representatives from large states with lots of highway miles will oppose it.
3. There's no guarantee the pump price will go down. Oil companies might just end up absorbing the extra profit. We don't have much excess refining capacity in the U.S. The lower price would create additional demand, as people drove more; this would likely cause prices to go up again as more demand chased the same supply of fuel.
4. It will worsen global warming. Lower prices, if they do appear, will discourage conservation and raise carbon emissions.
5. It will discourage the development of alternative fuels. Part of the reason investment in alternative fuels has been slow to appear is because many investors lost their shirts in the 1990s, when oil prices suddenly tanked. High gasoline prices mean these alternatives can compete. If there's uncertainty that prices will stay high, investors will be scared off.

Kindle

I hate Amazon.com.

The way I see it, every dollar I spend is a vote for this company or that company. If I don't like the way a company operates I don't vote for them.
I don't vote for Walmart because they actively send jobs to China. I don't mean that's an end result of their business practices. They tell the companies they buy from to move production to China.
I don't vote for Amazon.com because they make patenting things they didn't create and are in widespread use a standard business practice. Best known is their attempt to patent one-click ordering a decade or more back. They didn't create it and they didn't popularize it. It was the dawn of the internet so it wasn't terribly widespread. They did it to try to kill competition from Barnes and Noble and others. The founder and CEO of Amazon.com says it's immoral and should be illegal, but since it's not illegal he'll keep using it. So I take my business elsewhere.

That's why I'll never buy a Kindle. But I'm still impressed with the technology.

I've been watching the development of this electronic ink technology for years. A regular display uses power as long as it's on. But an electronic ink display only uses a burst of power when the display is changing. In the case of the Kindle it's when you "turn" the page but the suggested apps I usually see are on billboards and even paint for cars and buildings.

While I keep a few books on my PalmPilot the display suffers from glare when I try to read outside. That's the biggest advantage I see on the Kindle. There is no more glare than you'd get with a paper book.

I'm not gonna go on about the formatting of the documents or methods for downloading them or the services they provide or any of that. If you care that's available elsewhere. The only reason I'd get a Kindle is because I think the display is neat. But not neat enough for me to vote for Amazon.com. I'm sure the tech will appear plenty of other places soon enough.

DC's TARDISes... TARDISii... um.

See these things in the picture? You see them scattered all over Washington DC and a number of other cities. They were installed shortly after the Civil War.

Some were fire boxes. There was a mechanism sort of like a music box inside. You smacked a button, tripped the release, a spring started to unwind turning a cylinder with pins on it, the pins made contact with metal strips completing a circuit, this sent a signal to the fire station who came to put out the fire. Each booth had a unique ID that was what the pins on the cylinder sent to the fire station.

Some were Police Boxes. They had telephones inside so that police could report in and people could call for help. They had rings on them so you could handcuff perps to it until the padded wagon came along to take them away. With the advent of personal radios in the 1970's these booths were taken out of service.

The Brits picked up on our Police Boxes and started to develop their own. Instead of phones on posts they made little prisons with a phone on the front. The best known model of these was made of concrete, formed on the spot, and weighed 3 tons. They were also the basis for the time machine used in the BBC television show "Doctor Who". These booths were still common enough when the show started in 1963 but were on the way out. The pilot episode had it parked in a dump.

There are still a few of these left around the greater London area. Like this one outside Earls Court tube station. They remain not because they're useful but because Doctor Who made them popular enough that tourists and locals alike object to their removal.

p.s.

Yeah, I didn't talk about TARDIS origins today. Theres a picture or two I want first.

The Return of Dean Kamen

Dean Kamen is the man. Mostly he invents medical technology. He invented a portable kidney dialysis machine. He invented Dick Cheney's pace maker. He invented a self balancing electric wheelchair that will raise up on two wheels so the rider can look the non-handicapped in the eye. He took that technology and created the Segway which I ride to work almost every day. And for the last several years he, or at least his lab, has been working on a revision of the vapor compression distiller.

From the reports that I've heard he's been trying to make a vapor compression distiller, which is already super efficient, and make it so it can run on almost any energy source. Gas, electric, sun, or wood. The generator would be a Sterling Engine which uses a thermal difference to run. The point being that they can be distributed in third world countries so that everyone can have clean water to drink.

Recently Dean Kamen went on the "Colbert Report" to show off what they have. The video can be viewed on the Comedy Central website by following this link.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=164485

Doctor Who

A new season of Doctor Who has started. In England. So I'm clearly watching it illegally. But I've bought every season when it comes on DVD so they can just lay off.

Memes
In season 1 the common thread tying everything together was the "Bad Wolf" message.
In season 3 it was some character named Saxon.
The disappearing bees have been mentioned in two episodes so I'm guessing that's this season's thread.

Revived villain
In season 1 they brought back the Daleks.
In season 2 they brought back the Cybermen. They also ended the season with the Dalek/Cyberman fight we'd been waiting for since 1963.
In season 3 they brought back The Master.
This coming Saturday they'll bring back the Sontarans. Ok, not one of the better known villains but they recurred quite a few times. Warrior race. Big dome helmet. Only vulnerability is a pipe on the back of the neck. None of this ringing a bell?

Companions
Catherine Tate has been brought back as The Doctor's companion Donna this season. She made an appearance a season back in a Christmas Special.
Martha Jones has moved on. If you watched this past season of Torchwood you know that The Doctor put in a good word and got her a job at UNIT. Well, she's gonna be in at least next weeks episode and probably a couple of others.
And Rose Tyler, lost in a parallel Earth and cut off forever... or not. She made an appearance at the end of the first episode this season. Spoilers indicate that Donna, Martha, and Rose all meet up in one episode.

coming soon
This is the last season for Executive Producer Russell T Davies. He gets most of the credit for making the Doctor Who revival such a wild success.
There's been some foreshadowing that indicates that David Tennent, the tenth and current Doctor, is going to die this season. This jives with spoilers from Catherine Tate but conflicts with what Tennent and the BBC have said.
4 episodes are to air in 2009 with season 5 airing in 2010.

new viewers
I was showing off my new laptop to one of the neighbor kids and queued up this season's pilot episode. He was hooked. So last night we flopped in front of the computer and watched the first two episodes of season 1. I know he'll be waiting for me to get home tonight. Despite never having seen the show before he's asking all the questions that those episodes were meant to have viewers asking.
"What war?"
"Why is she sorry?"
"Why is he crying?"
"Why do the British have such short television seasons?"

I also took him outside and explained what the model for the TARDIS is based off of. But I'll explain that tomorrow.

After four seasons Gandolf has started to get down and dance to the Dr. Who theme. Then the show starts and she flies back to her cage. I think it's the parrot equivalent of hiding behind the couch.

Uwe Boll: The Petition

Uwe Boll is one of the worst movie makers ever. Apparently he's reenacting "The Producers" in reality. By making horrible, horrible movies that cause people to gouge out their eyes and burn movie theaters to cleanse the evil from the site he creates some sort of tax shelter for investors. But he does this by taking popular video games and adapting them for film.

He has:
3 BloodRayne movies (the third to be released in 2009)
2 Alone in the Dark movies (the second due in 2009)
A Far Cry movie due this year
A House of the Dead movie
A Dungeon Siege movie
Sabotage 1943(2009)
Zombie Massacre(2010)

And several cinematographic abortions that you've never heard of because they weren't based on games.

Uwe has the ability to take Oscar quality actors and a great premise and movies that will act as an anchor on the actors careers for the rest of their lives. But someone started a petition asking him to stop. Uwe has agreed that if it gets 1 million signatures he'll stop making movies. Of course, there's bound to be a catch. He may switch to TV or something.

I've heard about this petition in many places but I never saw a link to it until today. So I've signed it and am doing my part to help it propagate.

Follow the link
http://www.petitiononline.com/RRH53888/

Software Review: Delicious Library

Ever since I heard about this software I wanted to try it. For most of you, I regret that this requires a Mac to run and you either need a camera or a barcode scanner.

Those of you who've read the archives clear to the beginning will recall when I ran into an old college friend on an airplane. We just happened to be on the same plane and just happened to be across the aisle from each other. She first told me about this software that allows you to hold up the barcode from a book up to the computer's camera and it'll read the barcode, look up the ISBN number, download all the information on it, and build a database for all your books.

This is a huge improvement on databases I and millions of other young computer nerds have developed over the years for this class or that. They all require you to type in all the information manually. And, quite frankly, data entry sucks.

So now onto functionality. As awesome as it sounds how well does it actually work?
About half the time it works fine. It requires a bit of practice but soon you can stick the book up to the camera, the computer goes "beep", a whirly icon shows up, and it gets information about the book from one of 6 online databases. I think they're Amazon related.
About 1/4 of the time the camera has trouble seeing the barcode. You have to stand there like an idiot moving the book to different distances and angles hoping that the software will take something.
About 1/5 of the time it reads the wrong number. The software relies on the ISBN being in the barcode. Sometimes, particularly in older books, the barcode is something else. Then the lookup fails and you have to punch in the number manually.
Roughly 1 out of 10 fails completely. Wave that barcode around all you like, the camera ain't gonna see it.
I have to assume that a handheld scanner would work better.

The data recovered includes author, publisher, release dates, genre, format, number of pages, retail price, current price, UPC, summary, similar books, cover art, how many stars out of 5 that Amazon readers give it, and a lot more.

You can sell it on Amazon with a click of a button. You can add borrowers and keep track of who has borrowed what. You can setup virtual shelves so you can record where the book should be in your house. It even puts a Widget on your Dashboard for easy lookup. But if you don't have a Mac that last bit was just gibberish.

If you have a Mac I suggest you go out to http://www.delicious-monster.com/ and download the demo. It'll let you setup a library of 25 books without buying it. This way you can see the functionality and features for yourself.

It also does games, movies, and music.

And now, young Skywalker, you will DIE

So we've managed to drive Pope Palpatine from DC. It's kinda hard to believe this is the same Ratzen-whatever that 3 years ago was selected by God, and a super-majority of Cardinals after numerous votes, to become Pope. I mean, Ratzinger was kind of a thug and a bully before. He was the unforgiving arm of the Vatican before becoming Pope. The last remnant of the Spanish Inquisition. It was his job to be strict and stern and come down hard on disbelievers. I guess this was so the Pope didn't have to seem like just a bastard.

But since becoming Pope Ratzie has been a different person. He's admitted that many parts of the Bible aren't actually true, but allegory. He's given Catholics permission to believe in Evolution so long as they believe it was driven by God. But he still says that humanity was not the "accidental product, without meaning, of
evolution". Yesterday he personally apologized to many of the people who were sexual abused by priests. Not that he's actually done anything about it before now.

Of course, in 1950 Pope Pius also says the evidence for evolution shows it's worth considering. And Pope JP said in 1987 that the "evidence for evolution was heavy enough to eliminate any reasonable doubt". Still, they take the attitude that at some point God pointed at a group of primates andsaid "OY! You! 'Ave a soul."

On the down side:
Famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says pope told him not to study beginning of universe.
After the Vatican Astronomers released a statement saying that "Intelligent Design" isn't science and claimed "It's not like [the pope] has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear" they were booted from the Vatican and relocated to a disused convent.

And while I may not be his biggest fan I will defend him from people who claim he was a Nazi I must point out that he was a member of the Hitler Youth. He was 17 when the war ended. And while not all German kids were in the Hitler Youth like some claim, it was a good way to stay out of trouble. Three generations ago he was the German equivalent of a Boy Scout. While he was the head of the Inquisition that might be a much bigger concern.

But I'm still gonna look down on him for his views regarding the roles of women, the status of gays, and the use of birth control

Movie Review: 88 Minutes

Al Pachino is a psychiatrist whose testimony helped put a man on death row nine years ago. As the execution date comes up someone with the exact same MO starts a similar string of murders based around Pachino's students, friends, etc. Then Pachino gets a call that tells him he has 88 minutes to live. He has to solve the murders before he gets killed himself. As events unfold the evidence for the murders indicates Pachino himself may be responsible.

It's standard fare for this kind of movie. The accused has everyone convinced he may be innocent but drops hints to the star to let him know he's not. They do an unusually good job of casting suspicions on anyone and everyone so you don't really know who dunnit until near the very end.

Half the reason for seeing the movie is just to see former Bene Gesserit turned redheaded hottie, Alicia Witt.

I probably wouldn't have paid to see it just because I don't really watch the murder mystery shows. Fans of CSI and similar detective shows should enjoy it. This movie takes that sort of story line and adds a dose of suspense. Not a big one, but one that the average viewer will find palatable.

Laptop

I'd been talking about getting a new portable machine for awhile. Lots of reasons really. My desk bound computer stopped talking to the TV after a Microsoft Update. Computer based DVD players are better than those in regular DVD players and PS2s. I wanted to be able to flop on the couch and develop my next website. I can no longer work on my novel off my PalmPilot and a desk doesn't aid creativity. What finally did it was my desire to see a Space Shuttle launch.

I went to the Apple store... yes, it's a Mac. I do graphics, page layout, audio and video editing. This is the best machine for the job. And if I want to use it play games I can partition the hard drive and install Windows on one. See, a Mac running Windows still runs faster and better than a PC running Windows. Get over it.

So I went to the Apple store and found all the sales people clustered up against a back wall. So I got in line. Nearing the front of the line someone asked me if I needed help. I explained that all the staff seemed to be hiding in the back room or pressed against this wall by the press of customers. She hauled someone out by his ear and forced him to help me. I told him what I wanted, what it cost, and pointed at it. He started talking about getting an AirPort (Apple for wireless hub), wireless printer (I don't print), wireless external drives (unnecessary), now just shuffle off and get me what I asked for. He returns with a disturbingly small box. He's telling me stuff I already know while read the back of the box. I hand it back and repeat my order. He goes in the back and returns with it. I swipe my credit card in his portable reader and try to leave. No, I don't need a bag. This box has a handle. I have what I want. Now go away and stop trying to sell me stuff.

The specs:
It's got a 17" widescreen monitor with 1920x1200 resolution. 200GB HD. 2GB RAM. 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. OS 10.5.2. There's a camera above the monitor so I can video conference with others with the capability.

So one of the new computers that are supposed to show any day also has a camera. Instead of hiking to my office she can just bring me up on her screen. We should even be able to share screens so I can see what she's messing with. Actually, I should be able to share screens with all the new machines.

Probably the best new feature is Time Machine. It's basically backup software. I'm just bad about getting work stuff backed up on a regular basis.

Mission is a go

They call it a "Bucket List" these days because of the movie by the same name. It's supposed to be a list you make of all the stuff you want to do before you die. My list includes

1) See a Space Shuttle launch
2) See a proper Aurora Borealis
3) Visit the Devil's Racetrack in Death Valley

I should have gone to see the Devil's Racetrack while a friend of mine was living in the American southwest. I didn't.

I tried to go see a Shuttle launch back in 2002. I even flew the previously mentioned friend to Florida so I wouldn't have to go alone. But you know NASA and their flight schedule. It ranks right up there with Santa Claus, the Weather Man, and the DC Bus Schedule in the realm of pure fiction. There were delays and we didn't see the shuttle go up.

But now... now I'm going back. There's a launch scheduled for May 31. I'm going down there and I'm going to stay until I see 4.5 million pounds of steel, explosives, and people fire off into the sky on trail of barely controlled flaming accelerant. This could take a few days or it could take a few weeks.

I bought a new laptop Friday. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow. This laptop is to travel to Florida with me loaded with work. I'll get a hotel with a good internet connection and telecommute from Orlando.

The big hurtle was getting the office to work with me. I was planning to go regardless of what they thought. But we do have a few books that I'm working on at the moment and more on the way. Bruise has proven he gets a little stupider each day and we're just trying to keep him from doing damage until he retires. My manager picked up layout pretty quick but she's really an editor and has paperwork eating her time. Some damn fool wants to modify his contract so he can telecommute for a few weeks. It's all me, baby.

The breakthrough came yesterday when we did enough rules lawyering with the contracting company to allow us to follow the letter of the contract if not the spirit.

Now to arrange a hotel and rental car.

A very DC day

Sunday was a very DC day.

Sunday morning I wake to a ringing sound. Is it the telephone or the parrot? I wait. The ringing repeats. I fly down stairs. I'm reminded that a friend's fiance is in town and needs some showing around.

I go to the nearest Metro stop. As I go down the escalator I hear someone following me. Apparently he thinks he's William Hung (bad singer from American Idle whose horrid caterwauling has reached such legendary proportions that even I know who he is). When we get to the platform I find that he is a she. I exchange glances with one of the few other people on the platform. We roll our eyes at each other and sit. The singer flops down next to us and starts talking at the other guy very loudly. She's clearly on some sort of drug. He tries to be polite but he can't keep a straight face as she offers to show him her new Brazilian wax job. I'm sure that my silent laughs behind her back weren't helping him keep his calm demeanor either. She gives him her phone number and insists he call her right then. She shows him her tits. We escape onto the train. During the trip she starts going from car to car looking for him. I don't mean she steps out onto the platform and switches cars. While moving she opens the doors at the end and walks between cars.

I hop out and go hit Starbucks for a bit of breakfast. Outside there's some people desperately trying to ignore a screaming street preacher. All decked out in a suit that some people think automatically makes one respectable. He sounds a lot like the demented preacher who used to live next door and liked to launch into screaming tirades against demonic fireflies at three in the morning.

And then the 70° weather of the day before was gone. The visitor and I hit the Hirshhorn and strolled around the Tidal Basin in the wind and the cold.

Stoners, subways, Starbucks, street preachers, and showing around visitors. It was a very DC day.

Dark side of the moon

I've had to explain this to a lot of people lately and so I'm going to explain it to you, too.

There is no dark side of the moon.

Look, the implication of that phrase is that there's one side of the moon that never gets daylight. That's simply not true. The moon is tidal locked with Earth. That means that the rotation and the orbit are the same length so that one side always faces the body it's orbiting. It's orbiting the Earth, not the sun. The fact that the moon has phases means that at some point it all gets lit. Full moon means the side facing Earth is lit. New moon means the side facing the sun gets lit. There is no dark side of the moon.

Mercury was once thought to have a dark side. But closer observation reveals that it rotates 1.5 times for each orbit. This means that a Mercurial day is two Mercurial years long.

Earth's rotation is slowly slowing. Given enough time Earth will slow it's spin, but not it's orbit, until one side always faces the cold red lump that will be all that's left of the sun by then.

Movie Review: The Forbidden Kingdom

Selling point 1:
Starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li

Selling point 2:
Jackie Chan plays Drunken Immortal

Really, if these two points don't sell you then this isn't your kind of movie. With what I've already said you'll either go see it or you won't.

I don't watch a lot of Kung Fu movies. Then again, I guess "a lot" is relative. I watch a lot more than grandma. Not as many as the central character in this movie. I see the really good ones like "Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon" and the silly ones like "Shaolin Soccer". Everything I knew about this movie going in is what I said in those first two selling points. Having now seen it I have a third selling point.

Selling point 3:
It's a Kung Fu version of The Wizard of Oz.

I won't get it on DVD, but it was still a great movie.

Perfect woman

Apparently the thing for bloggers to do this week is write about the perfect woman (or man). [link] [link] [link] So here goes.

Long red hair,
former Playboy bunny,
worked as a masseuse to pay for her education as an electronics engineer,
loves to cook,
and is crazy about me.

I used to have a better list than that.

But that's the fantasy list. My real list is a bit different.
Physically:
Height doesn't matter. There's something to be said for amazons but you can't scoop one of them up in your arms.
I'm all for a large chest, but the important thing is that her waist is narrower than her chest and her hips.
There's nothing wrong with being a bit overweight. It can make her cuddly. It's more where the fat is carried on her frame than how much she has. There is a point where there's just too much. Her circumference should not exceed her height.
I like long hair in color extremes. Very blond, very dark, very red, very purple, etc.

Mentally:
I want a geek.
She should have been in the gifted program in school.

Personality:
T-shirt and blue jeans.
Steak and potatoes.
Hates sports. I really miss the days when women hated football and baseball. I don't want to watch that crap and would rather she doesn't either.
She should read. Anything is good, but sci-fi, fantasy, and science texts are better.
Doesn't find getting drunk to be an entertainment in and of itself.
Likes to snuggle. And by snuggle I mean snuggle. We should be able to sleep a curled up together.
Has the attention span to play a long game of Risk or Monopoly even if she hates those specific games.
Would rather find a new use for something than just throw it out.
Notices that my ears lifting a bit IS a smile.
Knows more than me in some worthwhile area. Reality shows and what famous person is dating who are not a worthwhile areas.
We can feed off of each other's jokes.
Can get me to open up without months of dating.
Understands that just because I'm not trying to maneuver her into bed doesn't mean I don't like her.
Doesn't want to raise kids.
And she should be able to give and appreciate a good back rub.

The fishing expedition

This was written some time ago.

EXT. PIER - LOW TIDE

Three young boys sit along a wooden sidewalk, their legs hanging in space, fishing poles in hand. They face out towards the open ocean, the sun hanging over the horizon. They sit quietly.

BOBBY: So that's it, huh? It's over?
TOMMY: Yep.
(silence)
RALPH: You know which of your parents you're gonna live with?
TOMMY: Not really. Penny Smithers says it doesn't matter. The judge'll axe me but he's only being polite. They'll put me with whoever they feel like.
BOBBY: Penny Smithers is a jerk. She's just tryin' tuh scare you. She don't know anything about it anyway.
(silence)
TOMMY: Yeah.
(silence)
RALPH: What if you have to move away?
BOBBY: Why would he do somethin' like that?
RALPH: Both his mom and dad can't both live in the same house. Someone's gonna have to move. Lil' Henry Jenkins? His mom moved to Chicago and took him with him.
(silence)
BOBBY: Then why's he still hangin' around here?
(silence)
RALPH: Dunno. 's just what I herd.
(silence)
TOMMY: Don' wanna move. All my stuff is here.
RALPH: Dummy, yuh git to take your stuff ...
(Tommy's pole twitches for a moment and starts to jerk violently)
TOMMY: I GOT ONE! I got one!
(The boys jump to their feet. Tommy waves the pole up and down while reeling in the string.)
BOBBY: Look at the size of that it's huge!
RALPH: WOW! Look at it thrash! I've never seen one fight like that!
TOMMY: Get the net! Someone get the net!
BOBBY: I got it! Bring it up!
RALPH: Don't lose it! Don't lose it!
TOMMY: NOW! NOW! NETNETNET!
(Bobby reaches down with the net and brings up a huge, wet, brown, rat.)
RALPH: Quick! Get it in the box! Oh, man, they're never going to believe this at school.
TOMMY(awed): I've never seen one this big before!
(Bobby drops the net on the ground and smacks it with a frying pan. He dumps the unconscious rat in a box.)
ALL(awed): Wow.
(silence)
TOMMY: Where'd you put that bologna? I want catch another.
(the boys procede to hook another slice of bologna on Tommy's fishing pole.)

Book sale

The Friends of the Arlington Library book sale is coming. It starts Tuesday and runs through the weekend. It's located in the first level of the parking deck under the central library (1015 North Quincy Street). You have to be a member to get in but you can become a member at the entrance for $15. Or, at least that's what I paid last year.

That may seem like a lot of money to get into a used book store. But the selection is pretty impressive even if you don't get in on the first day. Last year I walked out with $101 in books at an average cost of ~$1.75 each. My Krode came away with several times that and needed several trips to get all the books to his car. His daughter had a good selection of her own and made a good sherpa for hauling his books. (That's a joke Mrs. Krode)

Book Review: The World Without Us

There's a couple of subjects that I stop and ponder from time to time.
1) What would happen if every human just vanished one day.
2) What did this place look like before people came.
3) How would you introduce Abe Lincoln to the world if he showed up one day.
4) Whatever happened to women hating sports? I liked those women better than the football fans.

One day I got a link to this site.
http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html
Move your mouse over the squares to find out how the artifacts of civilization would break down in those time spans.

Later I got a link to this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvDhNZNSBk

These both address the first question. I was pretty much sold on the book right there.

"The World Without Us" poses the question of what would happen if everyone vanished one day. Maybe aliens kidnap us all, maybe there's a 100% fatal plague, who knows. The point is we're gone.

Most of the book covers how things were before people and then addresses how well we'd return to that.

Chapter 1 talks about a forest in eastern Europe that was protected by one dictator or tyrant for centuries and how the introduction of democracy means that this forest primeval is now getting raided for corporate interests.

Chapter 2 talks about your house, it's vulnerabilities, and how it will crumble over 200 years with nobody to tend to it.

Chapter 3 talks about New York City and how it'll fall apart

Chapter 4 talks about ice ages.

Chapter 5 talks about Thomas Jefferson's fascination with fossils and how he sent Lewis and Clark to look for Mammoths. It goes on to talk about all the mega-fauna that once inhabited North America until they were killed off by the Native Americans. Turns out they didn't live in tune with nature as much as grade school taught us.

Chapter 6 tries to explain why the African mega-fauna lived while it was wiped out everywhere else humans expanded.

Chapter 7 talks about a part of Cyprus where a peace deal keeps people from going and how the hotels and homes there fell apart.

Chapter 8 goes on about artifacts of older times that survived until now.

Chapter 9: It's all plastics these days... and will be until the end of time.

Chapter 10 talks about all the oil refineries in Texas and the big kablooie they're gonna make. It also talks about the different ways that oil is refined into different products.

Chapter 11 talk about what'll happen to the farmland. It pays attention to some research done long ago into what helps and what hinders crops. That researcher also set aside land just to see what happens when fields treated different ways are left alone. That experiment has been running since 1882.

Chapter 12 talks about great wonders. Pyramids, the Great Wall, and the Panama Canal.

Chapter 13 talks about the developments inside the Korean DMZ.

Chapter 14 talks about how birds respond to our presence and our technology.

Chapter 15 talks about our radioactive "nature preserves".

Chapter 16 talks about our impact on geography.

Chapter 17 talks about how we preserve our bodies.

Chapter 18 talks about what we've sent into space.

Chapter 19 talks about life in the ocean, our impact on it, and how it might recover.

The Coda talks about population control.

The fun chapters are 2, 3, and 10. The book is worth it just for those chapters. But the rest of the book is interesting and readable, too.

This goes on my highly recommended list. I just wish I'd found it a few months earlier when the author was in town signing them.

Event Review: Electricity –Use it or Lose it?

On the first Tuesday of every month The Ballston Science and Technology Alliance hosts Café Scientifique. It's a talk about some scientific point of interest. This week they had Dr. Imre Gyuk from the Department of Energy talk about energy storage systems.

The talk started with a history of energy storage and generation systems. Starting with a pot to hold grain through today. There was an interesting battery of sorts found in Baghdad dating from between 200BC and 250AD. The best anyone can figure is that they used it for electro plating.

Things got more interesting when he started talking about huge batteries for storing energy.
In electronics you can use capacitors to smooth out irregularities.
For smoothing out quick rapid spikes in power consumption the cycles of the electrical system can be slowed from 60 cycles per second to something less. A cycle refers to how often the power reverses directions in an Alternating Current (AC) supply.
For larger spikes, like a clumsy squirrel on the power lines, you can get a UPC for your computer or a massive battery in the case of a whole building. This is used more in factories where that hiccup can cause the system to gum up and require several hours to clean and restart.
For whole towns there's hefty multi-megawatt batteries that are sometimes installed along side the older power relay stations. This is for when the town is growing faster than transmission capacity. You don't want to wait through 3 years of brownouts while another relay station gets built.
In huge cases, like Fairbanks, Alaska, the power is all sent several hundred miles from Anchorage. With all the towns and the distance between points A and B power in Fairbanks is pretty iffy. So they installed the world's biggest battery (40 MW I think) to keep things on more of an even keel.

What the speaker was proposing was that more of these sort of systems get built. As demand in the mornings and evenings is greater than the middle of the night these batteries could be charged at night, during the 25% lowest demand, and used during the day, during the 25% greatest demand. Individual factories could save money by storing the night power for use during the peak hours. But whole cities could also benefit. And, of course, this would solve the common complaint that solar power doesn't work at night and wind power doesn't work when it's still.

For $1 million dollars I can get a 1MW wind turbine at the farm. For $1 million more I can get a 1 MW battery so that it generates electricity at a constant rate all day long. Do you have $2 million I can borrow?

Then there's other storage systems. We can use extra power to pump water behind a dam and then use it to run turbines when the demand is greater. Or pump air into an underground reservoir and then let the pressure drive turbines.

The purpose for all this is to make renewable energy more useful as well as make our power grid more reliable. In the age of computers power flow can't take even little twinges.

Me? I want to build a 20 story dippy bird drinking from a lake. Just harness the power of the liquid running up and down the neck and put a generator on the pivot point.

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If you want to get on the mailing list for future Cafe events I'd suggest e-mailing kbreen at arlingtonva dot us. I don't think that's how I did it, but it's the best idea I can find at the moment.

Movie Review: Run Fatboy Run

"Shawn of the Dead" was a really good movie. The British TV show "Spaced" was also pretty awesome. I'm really looking forward to the next Star Trek movie. In fact, I think I can say I'm a fan of Simon Pegg as writer and an actor. Enough so that I went to see "Hot Fuzz" and "Run, Fatboy, Run" based just on his involvement.

Much to my surprise, "Run, Fatboy, Run" is a romantic comedy. I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise. He did a zombie flick and a buddy cop movie. What's next in line? But the trailers I saw didn't include that part of the film. They focused on Simon Pegg trying to work out.

Several years ago Dennis left his pregnant fiance at the alter. He's still in her life as her kid's father. He'd like more but women have trouble forgetting that kind of thing. Now she's dating Hank Azaria. Rich, handsome, runs marathons for charity, all that good stuff. So Dennis decides to run the marathon, too, just to prove that he can change from the irresponsible bum he is. He's trained by his best buddy and his landlord.

The ending is the predictable one where he finishes the race despite an injury and wins the girl.

It's a funny movie. I liked it more than "Hot Fuzz" but not as much as "Shawn...". But there wasn't much in the way of laughing out loud and I won't be getting it on DVD.

Still, I'll be going to see him play young Scotty in "Star Trek 11". Pegg's enough of a geek that he must have flipped when he got that role.

Movie Review: 21

Back in 2002 I read an article in "Wired" about a long running card counting jag in Las Vegas. Apparently some MIT students had worked out a multi person card counting system that the casinos couldn't catch. I read the article and thought it would make a great movie.

That article is available at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vegas.html.

Apparently somebody wrote a book that was a fictionalized account of this story. That book was made into the movie "21". For the movie they simplified the con run in the article. They added a Kevin Spacey character as the professor and ringleader. But some of the fake names were kept from the "Wired" article.

The movie focuses on a kid at MIT who has been accepted to Harvard Med but lacks the money to attend. He's recruited for the team and agrees to join, but only until he makes the $300,000 he needs. That and the fact that there's a girl on the team that he likes. From then on the movie is rather predictable, but no less entertaining for that.

Naturally, the thrill and the money change things a bit. Parties, nice clothes, limos, etc. Eventually our main character screws up and loses a lot of money. There's a falling out. He gets busted by security. Things fall apart. Things come back together. There's an obvious and predictable twist. Another twist. And things work out for our hero in the end.

My attitude toward this movie is kind of like my attitude toward "Hitman". I wanted this to be a good movie and it is. But my desire for it to be a good movie isn't enough to make it good enough to get on DVD.

Read the article I posted above. That's the best sales pitch for the movie. If that doesn't make you say "that'd be a good movie" then don't see it.

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Correction: The Wired article was also based on the book. It was embellished for the movie.