Personal Update

Just a short note on what I've been up to. To start off, I'm still learning stuff in the foundry, although today is the first time that I've molded bells since last Wednesday. Thursday, I had a doctor appointment, so I had to take the day off. Friday, I was on grinder (everyone takes turns; technically I was on grinder Wednesday, but ended up molding instead). Then yesterday, the boss decided that we really needed to take a day to clean the place up. Today I was back on my usual bell, but with several new tools that people had given me, or that I had scavenged out of the tool box of a coworker that left the foundry last week. I seem to be getting faster, so I had some time with my last few boxes to experiment. Some were OK, some were butt-ugly, and one pattern I will definitely develop more. I only had to scrap 2 out the 32 bells I molded, so not too bad.

As a department, we are a bit behind. We had one person leave last week. one that is still out of the country on extended vacation, and one on vacation until Labor Day. Another will be leaving Thursday for ten days or so. In the mean time, Friday was a complete disaster due to furnace problems. The first pour was too hot, so the bronze boiled in the molds, which wrecks the bells. On the second pour, we overshot and the bronze was too cold and hardened before it got to the bottom of the molds. All day, we managed less than 20 bells (typical day is 80 to 100 bells). A couple guys had problems today (some bells just have a high scrap rate due to their shape), and the fifth person was making bronze tiles (something new for us) instead of bells. Bottom line is that the output from Friday and today combined barely makes a day's worth of bells.

But here is the best part of all: it ain't my problem!! I just crank out bells and let the people that make more money than me do the worrying. Sweet. The only direct effect on me will be when I get moved up to five boxes per pour, which I'm sure will be some time soon given how early I got done today even slowing down to work with new tools and patterns.

Things finally worked out today for me to practice being "on tail." I will be doing it for real tomorrow. In order to get low enough for the pour to work, my face will be less than a foot from the bronze. I don't expect that I will be needing to shave as the heat from the bronze burns the hair off my arms from several feet away when I'm doing the shoveling.

Speaking of shoveling, there is a new chunk missing from the concrete deck thanks to me. Besides the boiling problem, when the bronze is too hot, it tends to break out of the molds. One of the shovelers' jobs is to watch for leaks and break them up by mixing wet sand into the bronze. The bronze is so hot, it will literally burn the concrete and leave a hole if you don't move fast enough. Well, during the first pour on Friday, one got away from me. It was all pretty dramatic. When the bronze leaked, it ran under the mold, which sits on a piece of plywood screwed to a couple 2x4 feet. Of course, the wood immediately burst into flame. I threw a bunch of sand around the mold, which smothered the fire. I needed to move the mold so I could get at the puddle of bronze underneath, but I couldn't without getting in the way of the guys doing the pouring. If anyone has seen Backdraft, you know what happened as soon as the mold was moved: the wood flashed back into full flame. Between myself and the second shoveler, we got everything under control, but it was too late for the concrete deck. There is a nice new divot about five inches across and a quarter of an inch deep in the foundry floor.

And just for the record, that was more excitement in about three minutes than I had in 22 years of sitting in a cubicle.

And I am beginning to understand the logic behind the questions I was asked during my job interview for the foundry. There were exactly two:

"Have you ever had a back injury?"

"Have you ever been on fire?"

OK; enough for one post. Tomorrow, I will let everyone know how my first time on tail goes. That second question has me a little nervous....

Lego Car Factory

One from the "far too much time on his hands" file (and you just know that this was done by a male):

We Seem to have Arrived

Hang on to your bippies folks. It seems that the Fed's rescue plan of easing credit to fix a market suffering from too much credit may not work.

Good night and good luck.

Debbie update

Hey All! Sorry I've been so quiet on our blog. I'll try to update those who take the time to read our blog. Work first:
Our last day at the small, hard to find AAA office was June 8th. We then moved/unpacked/organized and counted EVERY inventoried thing on Monday and Tuesday. I helped mostly with the inventory, so I didn't get my desk organized. Oh -- the best thing about the new office is I have my OWN DESK and I am working full time. Anyways, we had our "soft opening" on Wed, June 13th. Lots of problems in the morning with the phones/internet going up and down. It was hard to help a client when the computers and phones were dead. Oh well -- we survived and the clients took it in stride. I had a couple at my desk when we lost power to the whole office -- good thing I am near the front where all the windows are. Our "grand opening" was Friday, July 6th. Boy that was a hectic day. I forgot the estimated total of how many people came thru the door -- I think it was over 400! Before the year is out we are scheduled to have a "red carpet event" and another "ribbon cutting event" (or something like that with area dignitaries. The new office is in a large shopping strip center. Lots of parking and very visible. (Although we need a larger sign outside -- problems with what we could put on the facade and such) Our normal low is about 100 people served in a day. Every person that comes in is signed into our computer -- so we have a good idea of how many we help. Average day is about 120 I believe. That is between travel/insurance/car buying/trip tiks/tour books and maps/ and other things AAA offers. AAA also has mandatory training down in Phoenix. I have had to head down to HOT Phoenix for training. I can't believe how bad it is when we walk out at the end of the day. I'm surprised the blacktop is not bubbling up!

Home: We are slowly arranging our room to use all the space to the best of its ability. We recently bought a slow cooker and that has helped out alot in the cooking department with no real kitchen. Tomorrow is a try with country style ribs -- they were on sale and look awesome. Should be great after slow cooking all day in BBQ sauce! Who wants to join us?! Next day I try my hand at homemade chicken noodle soup in the slow cooker.

We have our name in the housing list for another place that is opening up this weekend. One of the other couples decided to give this place up. I hate to see them leave. Dinah was another kindered spirit -- a hardworker and cared about others and trying to make this place nicer. Anyways -- they had a nice large apartment on the third floor of EC3 -- complete kitchen and all. One drawback is the heat up there during the summer. We might have to invest in a room air conditioner. Oh well -- I would gladly have that expense to have a real kitchen.

Ric, as you know got a new job in the foundry. He likes it so far. Some of his first bells are now in the gallery. I tried to buy one today and he told me to wait til he starts making ones he really likes. These first ones are just basic design with three lines and a dot. He is expirementing with some other tools a couple people gave him. I guess I will find out later when he is happy with his design that we can buy one for ourselves and others. I was going to buy one of his "first bells" for my Mom and his Mom, but guess not.

We finally put a deposit on a BIG TRIP for just us. We are doing a 17night cruise/tour of Italy and the eastern Mediterrean in April/May 2008. Next year will be our 20th anniversary -- so we will be celebrating a little early. We fly into Venice and hope to plan some time to see Andrea who was in our workshop and worked with Ric in maintanence until he left.

After I put deposit on that, I got the news I had been chosen for a couple of AAA FAM trips. Agent only of course. But in September I will be going to Disneyland for 2 nights and then 6 nights in Hawaii -- 3 islands to see -- the Big Island, Oahu, and Maui. I wish we going to Kauai, but that will have to be another time.

Whenever we leave Arcosanti, we will probably be staying in the area. We recently signed up for a private mail box at the UPS store near downtown Prescott. That is the area we will probably try to find a rental. We have been there a couple weekends, but never during the day when all the things are open and happening. Ric got to explore this past week after his dentist appointment and found a bunch of interesting places in downtown Prescott. After the new tour guide schedule gets hammered out, he plans on taking off every other Sat or Sun so we can go visit places around here. We have been here almost 10 months and have not seen diddley squat! We need to go see what is worth it to see, so when my Mom comes to visit in December we know where to take her.

The biggest thing I miss here are my friends. Those that know me know that it takes me awhile to make friends. I haven't found anyone out here yet that I consider a good friend. Maybe I got spoiled by the friends I made in Kalkaska. :-) Yesterday I was looking thru the book that Kim made me with pictures and notes and started crying. I miss you all! I wish I could be there for a fun night of games and talking and foundue. I miss the talking and companionship the most -- being myself with you -- I know the wall was still up, but it was getting chipped away by certain ones. Thank you for that. The wall is back up again, but not as tall or thick in places. Things are much better between Ric and me. I can now say the cliche that what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. I believe our marriage is stronger now then it has ever been. I thank all my family and my friends that stuck be me during that rough time. I could not have made it without all of you.

Well ... sorry to get so mushy and long winded. As I mentioned it has been awhile since I've blogged and things just keep pouring out. Hope all is well with all of you out in ether land.

Quick note from Debbie

Hi All! Yes, I am still alive. Busy since the move to our new office and now working full time. I promise to do another post maybe this weekend or next with news. I have to finish getting ready to go to work today for a few hours. We have a booth at some business showcase center.

"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

Read it and weep.

"Somewhere along the line, we stopped rewarding intelligence with success and stopped equating intelligence with success," Olbermann says. We're all in the bar now, where everybody's an expert, where the Gut makes everyone so very sure. All opinions are of equal worth. No voice is more authoritative than any others; some are just louder. Of course, the problem in the bar is that sooner or later, for reasons that nobody will remember in the clear light of the next morning, some noisy asshole picks a fight. And it becomes clear that the rise of Idiot America has consequences.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nobody in the American government knew more than Richard Clarke did on the subject of a shadowy terrorist network called Al Qaeda. He had watched it grow. He had watched it strike--in New York and in Africa and in the harbor in Yemen. That morning, in the Situation Room in the White House, Clarke watched the buildings burn and fall, and he recognized the organization's signature as well as he'd recognize his own. Instead, in the ensuing days a lot of people around him--people who didn't know enough about Al Qaeda to throw to a cat--wanted to talk about Iraq. What they believed trumped what Clarke knew, over and over again. He left the government.

Fed-onomics

Oops.

Uh-oh.

We're saved!!!

I wonder when the Fed will take off its crown and admit that the laws of economics are not subject to the edicts of bureaucrats?

Bells, Bells, Bells

Makin' bells. Makin' bells. Makin' bells.

This week got a little messed up, so I won't be on tail anytime soon. But today I did get to mold a new bell (the 111 for those playing at home) because one of the other foundry people called out sick. That means a bigger box full of wet sand to lug around the foundry, so my back and arms are feeling it big time. I was just getting used to the little box the 135's are molded in.

Other than that, not much going on.

Oh, yea; I was wrong about monsoon season being over. Now it's just hot and humid. By lunch time, I look like Debbie's dad and Uncle Leo at the end of a wedding reception: sweat literally pouring off my entire head, and my whole shirt and my pants about half-way to my knees soaked in sweat. I try not to stand upwind of anybody....

The HOT Is Back

During the monsoons, it was in the 80's, maybe the 90's. Today must mark the end of the monsoon season: it was 103 when I was doing my last tour. According to the local weather, we can pretty much expect 100+ for at least the next 10 days or so. I wasn't in the foundry for the last three-week stretch of 100+ weather, so the next week is my torture test.

A Heretic on Global Warming

Freeman Dyson is always worth listening to. In this article, he discusses what is and isn't science, the need for heretics, and, of course, global warming.

Over on Jerry Pournelle's Mail page, a reader sent in a link to an article on the difficulty in even defining Surface Air Temperature. There is more variation between the different ways of calculating the magic number than the total warming they are supposed to be measuring. Jerry's response pretty much reflects my personal views:

The referenced articles are certainly worth reading for anyone interested in "Human Global Warming", but they don't tell us much. The FAQ at Goddard (responsible official, James Hansen) admits that there is no standard "surface temperature" and gives no formal definition. This alone ought to be enough to cause us to reject the alarm warnings: they can't or won't tell us how they get the numbers they scare us with. They're sure they see Global Warming, but they can't tell us what the temperature is, or what it was on December 31 last year, or what it was three weeks ago. And more to the point, they have no precise -- within a couple of degrees -- measure of the Global Temperature as of 1900, or 2000, so when they tell us how much it has risen since some date certain, we don't really know what they are saying.

The fact is that you can get almost any trend you want from the data, and you can get a "Mean Surface Temperature" from any of a dozen methods -- and those will vary by considerably more than the projected "warming."

Does this mean the Earth is NOT warming? Of course not. We can be darned certain that the mean Earth temperature is higher today than it was in 1776. We can be certain that it was warmer in 1900 than it was in 1776. What we can't be certain of is this: is (Mean Temperature 1900 minus Mean Temperature 1776) greater or less than (Mean Temperature 2000 minus Mean Temperature 1900)? Or to put it another way, when did the obvious rise in temperature between 1776 and 2000 take place? Recently? In the 1800's? Between 1900 and 1950?

Once again, I welcome communication from those who tell us that the Earth is warming and it's human activity that's doing it; but rather than proof by repeated assertion, what I'd like to know is on what data they base their conclusions? And how do they obtain that data? Just what is the formal definition of the "Mean Annual Temperature"? What do we mean when we say that 1938 was warmer (or cooler) than 1998? And by that I mean: what operations were performed to obtain the two numbers? What data did you average and with what weights? Do you take a daily world temperature, add all those up, and divide by 365? And given that you do, how do you get the mean daily temperature? Do you take temperatures of sea surface, air at sea surface, land at surface, air at surface level, air ten meters above surface, weight each by the amount of surface area on the globe it represents (one assumes that there are fewer temperatures taken at the South Pole and McMurdo and the Ross shelf to represent Antarctica than are taken in the continental US), and average all that?

It's odd, but so far I can't find how it's done. Moreover, apparently Hansen doesn't tell people -- which is why McKintire had to reverse engineer the data, and thus discover the Y2K bug.

When I took Philosophy of Science from Gustav Bergmann, I was taught that one definition of science is this: you can write a letter to a colleague, describing how you got a result, and he can, following your description of the experiment, obtain the same results. If you don't tell people how you got your results it isn't science.

Now true, Bergmann was one of the last survivors of the Vienna Circle, and the Weiner Kreiss was deeply committed to what is called "operational philosophy", which is a fairly extreme empiricism; but that doesn't make Bergmann wrong. If Hansen and the Human Global Warming advocates -- who go so far as to group "Global Warming Deniers" with "Holocaust Deniers" and presumably would treat Global Warming Deniers as Holocaust Deniers are treated in Europe, namely jailed -- have a different definition of science that says they don't have to tell people how they got their results, surely they have some obligation to tell the public -- which funds their activities and on whose backs the costs of their "remedies" will fall -- just what they are doing?

How do we get an annual Global Temperature? I still can't find the answer to that. And the Goddard paper http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html says, to me at least, that they don't really have a formal definition, and raises many of the same questions I do.

And I'm fairly certain given the current cover on Newsweek that there is a vocal minority that would love to see "Global Warming Deniers" persecuted... er... prosecuted and imprisoned.

Y2K Bug

As someone that spent a great deal of time swatting Y2K bugs in the years prior to January 1, 2000 (your welcome), I knew that it could be serious. But now is seems to have caused global warming.

Money quote:

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

Does this mean that the world can sue the a-hole James Hansen for damages? Understand, this is a guy who considers himself so smart that his precious algorithm didn't need peer review. In fact, according to him, no one in the world, other than the Great James Hansen could possibly be smart enough understand it. And it has a Y2K bug. Ye flippin' gods.

Details not coming to news media near you.

Whew!

We're saved!!

After all, what better way is there to fix a market made unstable by excessive loans made to people who have no ability or intention of repaying them (code word: "sub-prime lending") than loaning out even more money to people who have no ability or intention of repaying (code word: "adding liquidity").

See? Nothing to worry about.

Health Care

I had started working on a health care mega-post, but I hadn't looked at it in a couple weeks, then got busy with more important things, like watching movies and eating Pop-Tarts. So I deleted what little I had completed. But here is as good of a framing of the issue as any I have read, and likely much better than anything I could do myself.

My concern is this: every last one of the shortcomings of our current health care system is the result of government meddling in the free markets, government regulation of hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, etc., and Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law. Excuse me if I am not enthusiastic about turning the tattered remains of 1/6 of the United States economy over to the very people who screwed it up, with some wild-eyed hope that they will fix it.

In the business world, it is a well-known axiom that the longer you delay a decision, the fewer options you will have until you have just one. And that one will almost always be the least attractive of the options you had at the beginning. That is where we are with health care. This problem has been building for a long time. We had a lot of options 30 years ago. We had fewer, but still several less-than-horrifying options 15 years ago. Now we seem to have only one, and I can't think of a worse alternative. Health care in the US will decline under socialized medicine, just as it has in England and Canada. And Mary Sal Wooten will still be sitting in her "decaying trailer somewhere on 301 South, with her retinas peeling like wallpaper from diabetic retinopathy, ankles swollen and darkening toward gangrene." Only instead of being turned away at the hospital because it isn't an emergency, she will be welcomed with open arms. Onto a two-year waiting list. The gangrene will kill her in 18 months. The doctors at the hospital will be well aware of this. It's called health care rationing. Now if Mary had the potential to make a significant contribution to society as, say, a business person, academic, or politician (especially that), she could get moved up the list far enough to survive until her treatment. Social Darwinism indeed. But she doesn't, so she won't, and it won't matter if she "really, truly no-shit can’t afford it" or not. She won't have any other option because for socialized medicine to have any chance of functioning, purchasing health care in the free market will be made illegal.

Of course, because I say that, I must be one of those rich Republican bastards with health care that Fred seems to be bitching at. (I make the minimum wage mandated by Arizona law, I've never voted for a Republican for any office, my parents were happily married when I was conceived, and I have health insurance through Debbie's job. I guess one out of four isn't bad for a pundit.)

(shrug)

When the bottom falls out, this will all be a quaint little tempest in a teacup anyway.

Minor Aberration

Slight blip.

Minor problem.

Bit of a hiccup.

Oopsie!

Nothing to see here. Everything is fine. Go back to sleep.

The US News Media Learn Mathmatics!!!!

Here.

Lets see: White couples with birth rates below replacement + Unchecked Hispanic immigration (legal and illegal) + Tradition for large Hispanic families = Hispanic majority in the United States. The mind boggles that this is considered news. Anybody care to bet that Denver still considers Hispanics to be a minority when it comes to racial quotas and city contracts?

[Note: when I started this post, Drudge Report had three articles related to the growing Hispanic population in the US. They suddenly disappeared and were replaced with an article about how the Feds are stepping up immigration enforcement. I found the above article through Google. I didn't have enough key words from the other two to find them. Is it time to get paranoid yet?]

More Bells

Yesterday, I did six more boxes of bells. Today I did 10 boxes, one of which leaked (it happens; either I didn't line up the top and bottom part of the mold exactly, or the bronze was poured too hard, or the Greek god of hot bronze was having a little fun at my expense, or....), leaving me a net of nine boxes in three pours. I tried out a new design today, although I was less than thrilled with the results. I'll probably dedicate tomorrow to getting used to the new tool I used and experimenting with variations on the design. I don't know if we will be doing three heats tomorrow or not. We have one person going on vacation for a month starting tomorrow, one working in other departments for the rest of the week, and another leaving the site at the end of the week.

Anyway, still having fun. Next week, I start practicing for being on "tail" for the pours, using sand or water in a crucible so I can get used to the weight (total 100-120 pounds) and learning how to move with the person on the other end doing the actual pouring. The person with her back to the camera is on tail:



Her face is about 18 inches from a crucible full of 2200 degree molten bronze. Exciting stuff. Can't wait!!

My First Bell

As I type this, I'm looking at the first bronze bell I have ever molded. OK, technically it isn't the first, but rather one of the first. I molded six boxes today, and each box has four bells. The boxes are all broken out at once, so I have no idea if this is my first, fifth, or 24th bell. I didn't have as many problems as I expected. Of course, as you would expect, I was making very simple designs on one of the smallest bells we make (the 135 bell, for the curious). Here is a picture of mine right out of the mold. Other than brushing the foundry sand off with a wire brush, nothing has been done to this yet.





Tomorrow, the bottom edge will be ground flat, the outside wire-wheeled, the top drilled, the clapper installed, and chain attached to the top. Then it will get dunked in a muriatic acid bath, and left under wet burlap for a day or so until it has a red-green-blue patina finish.

Obviously, I still have more than plenty to learn, but I can say that I know more now than I did 24 hours ago.

The Weather and More Photos

Monsoon season in Arizona is sort of like Michigan would be if it only rained for an hour in the afternoon. The humidity has been running around 30-40% and the temps are in the high 80's to low 90's. Then sometime between lunch and 6pm, clouds roll in, the humidity spikes up to 70% or so, then lightning, thunder, and rain for a half hour or so. Then the clouds leave, the temperature drops 20 degrees, and the humidity goes away.

And still more photos. Last Sunday, we took a little day trip around central Arizona to see Montezuma Castle, Montezuma Well, an attempt to see the V Bar V Petroglyph (the road was washed out), Tuzigoot, and Prescott. The monsoons caught up to us in Prescott, so we only got one photo for now. I'm sure we will be back soon, and we will make sure we get there in the morning before the weather gets bad. Tuesday, Debbie had the day off and came down to the foundry for an hour or so to get some photos of what goes on there. (Nothing scary in these photos, Jen... ;-)

Other than that, not much going on. Just work and sleep.

Another Batch of Photos on Flickr

More photos. Sort of a grab bag this time around. A couple shots of a very faint rainbow in our Monsoon set. Our tarantula came back for a visit, only this time he was right next to our open door and a couple feet above where I keep my work shoes. I guarantee I shook them out the next morning before putting them on. There is also a set from Italian Night, which is Arcosanti's largest event of the year. We served dinner to around 400 people, gave them tours, a concert, and a light show. Debbie got a couple pictures of the foundry and me being a tour guide. There is also a new set for all the critters that keep crawling around this place. I included a couple bad photos of the centipede I had blogged about previously. They aren't very clear, but you get an idea of the size of this thing. There is also a couple photos of a giant black bug that invaded our room, and the tadpoles that have taken over one of the ponds here on site. The others all have gold fish in them that eat all the frog eggs, but this one is fish-less at the moment.

Interesting little story about the big black bug. Not the one in our room; that one came to a quick end at the business end of a shoe. But a couple days after those photos were taken, we were in another family's residence when another one just like the one in our room came out from under the couch. Understand, these things are four or five inches long, so this was no common scurrying little six-legger. This is a huge black bug strolling across the living room floor. It walks over to the door, then just stops and waits. The youngest son walks nonchalantly over to the door and opens it. The bug walks outside. Mom says, "Huh; guess he needed to go outside." I suppose when you are the mother of three boys between 7 and 13, this sort of thing is normal?

Finally!!!

It took over two weeks and not one, but two separate trips to both the physical Best Buy store and BestBuy.com, but the Terabyte Laptop (tm) is a reality. As I type this, Microsoft Computer Management is formating my second 500 GB hard drive (29% complete, it you care). This will be a mirror for my first 500 GB hard drive. Total drive space reported by Computer Management: 1,080.3 MB. It is interesting to note that the total drive spaced attached to my PC is 1,160 MB; the rest just vaporizes due to how Windows handles large drives. Under Linux, the "missing" drive space becomes visible.

But in any case, I now have a laptop with over a full terabyte of formatted disk space. Sweet. My first PC came with an 4.77 MHz CPU, 512 KB RAM, dual 360 KB floppy disk drives, and CGA 4-color graphics rendered in shades of green on a monochrome monitor. There was no sound capability other than some beeps and boops from the PC speakers. Price tag: $3,000+ That was in 1983 or 1984. The laptop I am typing this on is so far beyond that, it seems like violence to the English language to call them both PC's. The cache space alone on one of my new hard drives is over 20 times the total on-line storage on my first PC. And it cost less than $1,000. I love Moore's Law. May it ever reign.

Desegregation

Fred again.

Of course, what he suggests has already been tried. Washington DC has a nearly all-black political leadership, school board, school administration, teaching staff, and student body combined with with one of the highest per-student funding levels in the nation. As noted here previously, all that combines to produce the worst schools in the nation. And we all know it's because us honkies are oppressin' 'em.

Yep.

Speaking of Education....

OK, so I haven't actually posted anything about education in the last few days. But I have been thinking about it a great deal lately as one of the families here have decided to start homeschooling their eldest this fall. Someone else mentioned the Lays of Ancient Rome on Jerry Pournelle's site. I'm in the process of re-reading them for the nth time and still notice connections I hadn't made before. The oddest part of the experience is seeing lines coming out of the hero's mouth that would be right at home in any John Wayne movie. But Roman history is irrelevant to us because they are just a bunch of dead, white men.

Related to that, Scott Adams gives some free career advice. Now here is mine: don't get trapped into the whole "career" crap. I had one. It sucked. Now I don't have one. I'm happy for the first time in decades and the world goes on without me. The US economy hasn't noticed that my income has dropped to one fifth what it was a year ago. Walmart hasn't gone bankrupt and the Dow just stampeded into record territory. Do I have to say it again? Get small, get fast. When the bottom falls out (and it will) the less you have the better off you are.

Security Theater

Sigh.

And yet, I have to strip to my jock to get on a plane because we all know that middle-aged, white, paunchy men blow hundreds of airplanes out of the sky every day.

Anyone want to bet that Phoenix isn't the only airport with holes like this?

Pournelle's Lesson for Today

I know I have posted this before, but as Samuel Johnson said, "We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating." I realized I hadn't thought of this in a while myself when I read it on Jerry's site:

Luke 10:38-42:

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

But Martha was cumbered about with much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

The Sons of Martha
Rudyard Kipling

The Sons of Mary seldom bother,
for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother
of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once,
and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons,
world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages
to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages;
it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly;
it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly
the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains ``Be ye removèd.''
They say to the lesser floods ``Be dry.''
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd---
they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit---
then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it,
pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger Death at their gloves' end
where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend:
they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear,
they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer,
and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden;
from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden---
under the earthline their altars are---
The secret fountains to follow up,
waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup,
and pour them again at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them
a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them
to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways,
so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days
that their brethren's ways may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood
to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with the blood
some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven,
not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given
to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd---
they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd,
and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the feet---they hear the Word---
they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and---
the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!

If you are a Son of Mary, snap out of your blessed sleep long enough to thank all the Sons of Martha around you.

Assignment: how does the above relate to this? Hint: Some of the work performed by Sons of Martha reaches across generations.

What To Do With $27 Million

Well, you can provide clean drinking water for 900,000 people for their entire lives. Or you can build a faux natural history museum that espouses a position that is contrary to all evidence or common sense, and let 6,000 people a day, mostly children, die from a lack of clean drinking water.

Now, which do you suppose is the "Christian" thing to do? And which do you suppose those that consider themselves The Only True Christians (tm) actually did?

I hope Ken Ham and his supporters like it hot. If there is a god, they will spend eternity slowly dying of thirst.

"The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds."

Not much I can think to say other than "Wow!" Take thirty seconds to watch this. The artist/engineer has a website here. I think "eccentric" may be a good term, although it's tough getting a handle on the man behind the machine translations into English. ("Hanging at his cord between to high buildings" is one example where the automated translation had a slight hiccup. But I suppose the point isn't that the bear doesn't dance well, but that it dances at all.)

Nearly a Week

Tomorrow will be the end of my first week in the foundry. So far, so good. I'm not having a problem with the heavy lifting and such. I've already been doing that since we arrived here. What is killing me is the assembly work; lots of bending and manipulating various gauges of copper wire to put in the clappers, build the hangers, etc., grinder and wire wheel work, and drill press work. Fingers, wrists, arms, shoulders, back; all sore from unfamiliar work. But every day gets easier and I'm a little less stiff when I get out of bed. I expect the worse is already over, and in a couple weeks, it will all be routine.

I won't be actually molding bells for a couple more weeks at least. In the meantime, I spend all morning on the grinder/wire wheel, then all afternoon on the drill press and putting the bells together. It is still rather easy to spot my bells; they are the ones with the malformed loops on top and crooked clappers. But they are getting better. My first attempt at assembly had everyone rolling on the ground; now it's just a stifled giggle and a "not bad."

I also had some more EWWWW GROSS! pictures. This time it was a giant desert centipede. It was only 6 or 7 inches long, not the foot-long they can get to. Way creepier than the tarantula. But I don't have any good pictures of it, because it had been captured in a clear plastic container. No matter what I did, the pictures only show my camera's reflection in the plastic instead of the centipede. In any case, the picture at the above link looks exactly like it and is approximately the same length.

Oh, and if you are interested, it was found cruising the women's bathroom, not outside like the tarantula. Anyone like to come out for a visit?

First Day in the Foundry

Today was my first day in the foundry. I've learned several important things already:

1. Bronze is heavy.
2. Molten bronze is really hot.
3. The little chunks of bronze that fly off the grinding wheel leave neat little holes in skin.
3. A wire wheel turning at several thousand rpm is an effective way to remove fingerprints.
4. Foundry sand gets everywhere.

So far, so good. Best of all, I don't have to worry about being accosted every time I walk out of our room to fix some problem, which more often than not is the result of either poor design, poor execution, or both. Now I just smile and tell them to call maintenance. Which is not me.

Worst Schools in the Country

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If the moral defectives in Washington DC want me to give any credence to anything they say, then they can clean up their own back yard.

What frightens me is that it seems we are destined to turn 15% of the nation's economy over to these fools in the form of a national health care plan.

Douglas Adams on Intelligent Design

My favorite Douglas Adams quote:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

Not that Intelligent Design will disappear any time soon as long as they have millions pouring in from Christian Reconstructionist Howard Ahmanson, but one can always dream. (You do know about these guys, right? The ones that want to take over our government, execute all the queers, Jews, Commies, and other undesirables? By stoning, of course.)

"It's alive!!! It's alive, it's alive, it's alive!"

I have sound on my laptop. I have no idea why. Of course, I have no idea why it ever stopped, so the symmetry of the universe is intact.

The time I've spent working with the various flavors of Ubuntu linux has been interesting. The Kubuntu installer ignores where you tell it to install and sticks you in an infinite loop until you let it have its way. Xubuntu seems to work the best, but the interface is pretty primitive. Ubuntu I haven't tried, but I've been told that ex-Windows users generally hate it. In any case, the emergency is over so I can take some time to play with all of them. I now have a 50G partition on the main drive of my laptop that is just for linux. None of this has changed my opinion of linux and unix in general; it is a guru full-employment product. I know a lot about systems, but unfortunately, all the wrong ones having spent my formative years on IBM mid-range systems (System 34/36/38/AS-400 for anyone who cares). So I missed to whole unix thing and now I find myself helpless. OS-X is a possibility, and it still may be the best option for me if I don't want to spend the rest of my life on the web trying to figure out what the hell a mount point is or why Xubuntu can't find USB drives or why Kubuntu thinks my Western Digital USB drive is a digital camera and keeps nattering at me to download my photos. But while Apple's DRM is less obnoxious than Microsoft's, it is still telling me what I can and cannot do with my own damn data. And Apple requires a full commitment, heart and soul to The Apple Way and all that implies. But I do have to give it to Apple; they have made a killer OS that is miles beyond anything coming out of Redmond.

Speaking of USB hard drives, I picked up a new toy while we were kicking around in town Wednesday for dentist and doctor appointments. Bob Thompson mentioned that Antec, who makes some of the best computer cases in the industry, recently began shipping an external hard drive enclosure that makes any internal SATA drive into a USB 2.0 drive. Well I now have one with a 500GB Seagate drive spinning away inside it. It is the backup point for my massive xcopy jobs that take a snapshot of my entire Documents and Settings folder on the laptop and my entire Western Digital USB drive, and a home for my movie rips. I mentioned a while back we drank the red Kool-Aid and signed up for Netflix's one-movie-at-a-time, unlimited-movies-a-month option. To speed turn-around, as soon as a movie shows up in the mail, I have been ripping it to the laptop's internal 100GB drive and sending it back the next morning. Then we watch it whenever we get A Round Toit (tm). It didn't take long at 6-7GB per movie to deplete the laptop's hard drive. So I now have a laptop with a total of 660GB of hard drive space (100GB internal, 60GB Western Digital, 500GB Seagate/Antec). This weekend, I'm going back to Best Buy to pick up a second enclosure and 500GB Seagate, so I will have more than one terabyte of online storage for my laptop.

(And in case you think this retched excess, 500GB is only about 70-75 movies, or about one year of movie rentals at our current pace, and the second 500GB drive will be a mirror for the first. I know of nothing else that I can back up that much data to other than another hard drive. I could go to tape backup, but I've never had any luck with PC-connected tape drives.)

Expendable

This is classic geek, all the way.

Gotta get me one of those....

More Windows vs. Linux Issues

I swore many years ago that Win2K would be the last Microsoft product I would own. Then the Big Move came. If Debbie was to continue her employment as an outside agent she had to have a computer with WinXP. No other option was supported by the IS department. So off we go to Best Buy to pick up a cheap laptop with WinXP Pro (Toshiba Satellite). Debbie ended up employed out here and dropped her affiliation with the travel agency back in Michigan, leaving us with a somewhat-unwanted WinXP laptop. But it just worked.

At least until a couple weeks ago.

I have no idea what created the problem, or even if it has only a single cause. But our computer has become increasingly unstable with periodic crashes of Windows Explorer, software refusing to load unless we reboot first, error messages from XP complaining about applications that aren't even running, etc.

But the latest is the killer: we lost all audio. The software runs like there is no problem, but nothing we can think to do will cause a sound to come out of our PC. This is all audio from all applications including Windows system sounds. Neither the internal sound card and integrated speakers nor the USB dongle that allows us to connect the laptop to our stereo will utter the merest of a peep, pop, or click.

So I'm back shopping around the Linux world. Again. Everyone swears that Ubuntu is Just Like Windows and while the setup requires some technical skill, the day-to-day operation is as easy or easier than Windows. Of course these same people swore the same thing about Xandros, which was about 90% true. The problem is that last 10%; it contained two of the five functions I use a PC for (watching/ripping DVD's and listening to/ripping CD's; the other functions are web use with full support for AJAX and other Web 2.0 content, pulling photos from my digital camera, editing them, and posting them on Flickr). Then Xandros seems to have gone to the dark side.

So now I'm looking at the different flavors of Ubuntu. Xubuntu is very lightweight but seems to have a primitive interface. I'm also concerned about what is left out. Kubuntu is supposed to be the preferred home for ex-Windows users. The nice thing is that I can download ISO images for the Live CD of each version, boot my laptop from the CD, and poke around a bit without committing to a full install. I've already tried Xubuntu, and will take a look at Kubuntu tonight assuming the IS gods cast a smile my way.

Anyway, more when I know more.

Meanwhile, over at Redmond, Microsoft seems to not be doing well without Bill at the controls. Vista was years late, shipped stripped of its most-touted features, and now even the most die-hard Microsoft users are telling people to wait for SP-1, which will be out sometime next year. If the Linux camp can improve as much in the next 12 months as it has in the last 12, will anyone bother?

First Post from the New Me

Like most people on the internet, I accumulate identities the way a Louisiana windshield accumulates bug guts. Through some accident of history (or, more likely my increasing forgetfulness) I wound up with two Google ID's; one that owns this site, and a different one that contains pretty much the rest of my life. As Google takes over more and more of the universe, this split personality has been getting progressively more irritating until I finally decided to take action. I have now invited myself to be a contributor to my own blog. No one should notice any difference, which is certainly no guarantee there won't be. But the process was somewhat disturbing in retrospect:

1. Log into Google/Blogger as me.
2. Invite my other me to be a contributor.
3. Log into Yahoo! Mail as my other-other me to acknowledge my invitation to myself.
4. Realize I'm still logged into Google as me.
5. Log me out of Google.
6. Log my other me into Google.
7. Acknowledge my invitation to myself to post on my own blog.
8. Log back out of Google as my other me and back into Google as me.
9. Go into the Blogger administrative tools to give my other me admin rights to my own blog.
10. Sit quietly for 10 minutes so my head doesn't explode.

Am I the only one having these issues?

EEEEEEEEK!!!!!

A friend came to visit last night while we were sitting outside. The monsoon had knocked out the power, so a group of residents were hanging around behind our residence trying to cool off. Someone happened to look up the wall we were leaning against and noticed something hairy. Given that we have a lot of Italians around here, that wasn't too surprising, but it had too many legs.




This is the third tarantula we've seen here, but it was also the largest one. It still isn't a big one, but big enough. Debbie also got to see her first scorpion last night. I run across them every day handling building materials and such at work, but before last night, all Debbie has seen was a couple smashed ones on the sidewalks.

I See Stupid People

When a stupid person is doing something he knows is stupid, he will always, always, insist that he is just following orders.

I've been saying for years that moral defectives and morons run our public schools. This is just one more example. Why would any parent with any concern about the well-being of their children put them in the charge of people like this? And if you tell me your public school doesn't subscribe to such stupidity, my response is that you are simply uninformed.

Freaking Out

I just read on Wil Wheaton's blog that he was in Stand by Me. I never knew that. I've seen that movie about a dozen times, as well as every episode of ST-TNG at least as many times, and never connected geeky little Wesley Crusher with geeky little Gordie.

And according to his mini-bio on IMDB, he was in one of those Bill Cosby Jell-O Pudding Pops commercials. And his parents names' are Rick and Debbie.

OK, now all the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. Too weird.

A Fourth of July Message

OK, so I'm 24 hours late. Sue me.



Good luck and good night, indeed.

Publishing in 2007

I just stumbled across lulu.com. I'm sure this is old news to a lot of people, but I found it very interesting in two senses. First, it is interesting as in exciting. A cheap way for anyone to self-publish most anything without a sizable investment in potential paperweights (everything is print-on-demand). I see this site and others like it as a huge benefit to schools publishing yearbooks, for example. I was on the yearbook staff my junior and senior years in high school. Something like this would have saved untold hours of work, saved the school hundreds of dollars, and resulted in a far better product.

I also find it interesting as in the Chinese curse. Editors and publishers serve a valuable filtering function. If you want to see what the world of the written word looks like without that filter, spend some time on Blogger. I think it is safe to say that the quality of the writing is somewhat... er... uneven. But all I waste on Blogger is my time. On lulu.com, I'd be wasting my time and my money to find out that a really interesting-sounding author is a worse writer than the typical middle-school blogger. Yes, it is true that the publishing industry misuses its filter function to suppress dissenting viewpoints, without which a republic cannot survive. But a lot of what lands on an editors desk just plain sucks. I suspect some time on lulu.com would easily confirm that statement.

Having said all that, I just bought a book from lulu.com. I know the author and his work from other sources (Flickr), so I feel reasonably safe that I didn't just throw $25 down a rat hole.

May we live in interesting times.

From Pool Boy to Bell Boy

On July 16, I start working in the foundry making bronze bells. And just in time. I expect the next seven work days to be the longest I have ever endured. Either it's just the heat, or there is a small group of people here that are just trying to piss me off. I was going to work in bakery tonight doing some painting so it wouldn't have to be closed tomorrow, but the manager pissed me off so bad that I'm not going to bother. Tomorrow I only work a half-day in maintenance because I do tours in the afternoon, and Friday I'll be in the foundry for my orientation day (basically wandering around in the foundry watching other people work). So maybe I'll get to it before I leave maintenance, maybe I won't. Right now I could care less if it ever gets done. I have other projects that are more important anyway, so I will be spending my time in maintenance working on those.

Once I'm in the foundry, I will be going to work, then going straight to my apartment. I am now here for one reason and one reason only; learn how to do stuff I would never have a chance to learn any other way. Once I have milked this place for all I can, we leave.

Jerry Pournelle invented what he calls Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

The stated goal of Arcosanti is to build a test arcology for 5,000 residents. Those who share that goal, assuming they ever existed, seem to be very thin on the ground and are completely missing from the ranks of anyone who makes decisions. This place is a lot like a certain Baptist church in northern Michigan I could name, including the group of key participants who publicly state that they will leave if the organization ever grows much above 100.

"'Bout Time, Ya Bum"

I finally got it into gear and got Tristan's open house pictures on our Flickr page.

Hey; I might be slow, but I'm... er... OK, fine. I'm just slow.

Addressing the Hard Questions

Here is a basic outline of a 25-sermon series. No tilting at straw men. No circular logic. No arguments from authority. No argumentum ad hominem. Honestly engage those you disagree with rather than dismissing them out of hand because their conclusions make you or your congregation uncomfortable. If anyone wants to take this on, be prepared for a couple year's worth of reading just to cover the sources used by the author.

Any takers?



The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

— Mark Twain

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

Happy 4th to everyone!

We are going to try to find the place where they do fireworks tonite in Prescott Valley -- it will be interesting to see fireworks out here -- not over water and with the mountains/mesas in the background. We are hoping they don't cancel them due to very high fire danger. We haven't had any rain to speak of for a very long time.

Beware of Red Shirts

Every Trekkie knows that a red shirt is the kiss of death. Wil Wheaton pulls some red shirt stats from Wikipedia. I agree with one of Wil's commentors; 74 red-shirt deaths feels too low. It seems like red shirts dropped like flies. Of course the most popular reruns are probably the episodes with one or more red-shirt deaths.

(And just to point out the obvious: if you know what I'm talking about, you are dangerously close to being a geek. If you can quote the entire scene the quote in Wil's blog post title comes from, you are a geek.)

(And yes, I can.)

What We Know, What We Don't Know.

Uncle Al has called for the end of distorting and making up facts to supports ones position. Tell you what, Al; you go first.

And yet another example of how vast our ignorance of the climate is. But we must Do Something, even if Something is financially ruinous and does little or nothing to fix a problem that may not even exist.

It's for the children, you know.

The Plague of Diversity

Fred notices it. So does at least one black woman.

But diversity is a great thing, at least according to our over-lords. For some reason, I'm not entirely convinced, but saying so would earn me the dreaded "racist" label.

Human Stupidity Causes Global Warming

Not in the way Uncle Al would like us to believe, but because of this. Compare the temperature graphs of these sites with the Orland, CA site on the home page. Notice anything odd? Which of these two categories do you suppose the majority of weather stations in the third world fall into?

Do you suppose that before we Just Do Something, we should figure out exactly what is happening and what it is that we think we are preventing?

Nah. Uncle Al is right. Better to jump all over Kyoto which will destroy the Western economy while exempting the 1/4 of the world's population that lives in China.

Someone at the RIAA Needs to be Kneecapped

I don't care how much is being lost by music "piracy," this is simply unacceptable.

This is another one of those tests I keep yapping about. Due to the fact that stupidity like this has been going on for years, I don't hold out much hope of our passing it.

Updates on Several Pending Items

We've had a lot of loose ends sort of hanging out there that we have managed to clean up in the last week. The biggest one was the house. Monday, June 25, we signed the final papers and got our check. No more $2,000/month payments on a house we don't live in. No more worrying about snow on the roof, frozen pipes, dead batteries, cranky generators, or if the angle on the solar panels was supposed to be changed this week or next week. We are done with the whole mess.

Life lesson: if you would like to lose seven years of your life and convert $100,000 in savings into $200,000 in debt, build a house.

But it's over now. We did hang onto the cabin and 17 acres so we still have some real estate in case we make any long-term visits to the area, but we are completely and totally out of debt at this point and even have a little cash left over to re-fund our sad little savings account.

While we were in Traverse City, we (very quickly) cashed the check from the house before anyone could change their mind. We also hit the office for the people that handle the gas royalty checks and got everything straight with them for the change in ownership. We needed to contact the township people about a couple miscellaneous items, but those loose ends are still dangling. And while we were in the same state as all our financial records, I got the last of the numbers I needed to be able to do the form for the sale of a residence on our 2007 taxes.

While we were in Michigan, we hit Tristan's open house. I have a bunch of photos, but I don't have them on Flickr yet. Mostly due to sloth; I find I'm pretty lazy when it comes to my time in the evenings. Probably because I was outside working all day today and it was around 100 degrees for most of the day. But it's a dry heat.

We also spent some time with Deb's mom. She is way ahead of the game recovering from her knee replacement surgery, so we didn't have much to do other than some shopping and being taxi drivers Friday and Saturday, which really wasn't much of a chore. We drove her to a restaurant on Friday where she bought both of us dinner, then drove her to Tristan's open house on Saturday, which we were going to anyway. We got off pretty easy all around. They really do things different these days. I remember people getting knee replacements back in the 1990's that were helpless for weeks, even months. Now they have you walking on the thing the day of the surgery. I'm not sure what they do different, but it certainly is different.

Another loose end was what department I was going to be working in. I started the process of moving to the foundry, but then a position opened up in ceramics. I had never really considered ceramic until the manager came to me and asked if I was interested. I put the foundry manager on hold and threw my name into the hat. I found out today that the position went to someone else, so I'm back on for moving to the foundry. I'll probably move on July 16 or July 23, depending on when I hear that I'm officially moving. There is a manager meeting tomorrow where is will be made official.

Well, that's enough for one post.

More Photos

More photos on our Flickr account. They are mostly documentation of all the digging I've been doing over the last couple months down in camp. It was a simple leach bed repair, but some rocket scientist put the bed over five feet in the ground.

As a matter of fact, I am paid by the hour.

I didn't do all the digging; A backhoe did about half the trench about three feet down. I also had some assistance from others in the maintenance department and some of the June workshop participants. But all the stuff you see in the photos, laying and leveling the perf pipe, dumping in the stone, laying down the filter fabric, setting the inspection and clean-out pipes, and starting to back-fill the trench was done by yours truly in two days. I had to constantly do finger-stretching exercises over the entire weekend before my hands stopped looking like I was still holding a shovel. The good news is that next week, we will be renting a frontloader for another project, and I will get to use it for an hour or so to finish up the project.

Unsettlingly Settled?

Or unsettled settlingly? (Not sure that is an English word; Blogger doesn't think so.) Our "leaders" keep harping on how every "credible" (meaning "agrees with my preconceived and baseless notions") climatologist agrees that driving SUV's will enable us to grow date palms in Siberia.

And yet....

I recently heard a quote from one of the dissenting ICCP climatologists that all human activity amounts to "a fart in a hurricane."

Another Mom update

I finally got to talk to my Mom this morning. She seems to be doing good. Yesterday the "pain management" problem was because the nurse and the aide both dropped her leg -- twice in one day! No wonder she had to have morphine shots before her therapy. She has been up walking with some help -- she was able to wash her hair yesterday (or this morning) herself. Her sugar is still too high, but the Dr isn't too worried about it. It isn't being caused by what she eats -- it is the stress from the surgery to her body. The Dr did not release her home today -- he would have if Mom would have insisted, but they both agreed to another night in the hospital. Mom knows the pain meds are much better while in the hospital and after the set back of having her leg dropped twice, she wasn't up to going home on regular pain meds. She should be released tomorrow sometime. The therapy will be set up to come directly to her home, so she won't have to deal with trying to get in/out of the car right away.

One Busy week

Well, we have finally moved! AAA office (not us again!) We had to have everything packed up and off the phones/computer last Friday at 4p. Of course, at 4p, I was still working on some tickets for a client. Oh well....we got finished up with what us employees were responsible for and got out of our old office around 6p or so. Had the weekend to rest, then hit the new office raring to go at 8am Monday.

First problem, the manager's key did not work in the back door locks. Luckily the facility guys from headquarters were already there and she got in the front door. Next thing noticed .... I did not have a desk where we thought it was suppose to be. Connie (my boss) got on the phone and found out from the higher ups that they decided not to authorize the extra desk --- WITHOUT notifying her. Great! I still got my own desk, just not near the back by myself. I share a cubicle area with the NATS (North American Travel Specialist) That did not go as planned either -- we decided the new full time girl (Alexa) would be next to me so I could help her out when needed with cars/hotels/Apollo system. Next thing I know, when Bill (a part time person) comes in around 11am, he decides he wants that desk (set up is good for him?!) He is a bit bothersome, but I hope to be able to tune him out when needed.

We spent Monday and Tuesday trying to unpack and arrange things. Who would have thought so many people would have so many ideas about where to put the envelopes?! Monday we called it quits at 5p, but Tuesday some of us worked until 7p. We had to have the complete inventory done and in the system before we could open to the public on Wed. Each and every map, tour book, camp book and retail item that was there had to be counted and entered into the system. We found old things that weren't even listed on the inventory sheets. (Mostly old stuff from 03-05) And like most companies, AAA can't be consistent with what number they have entered in their inventory system. The 6 digit number at the top, the upc on the front or the upc on the back ---- oh no, the two upc did NOT match.

Since I spent most of Tues helping with inventory, I didn't get a chance to get my desk in order. And as of tonite, it still is not done. We have hit with clients as soon as we opened on Wed. We had 127 people in on Wed, 116 on Thurs and only 97 today. One of the other travel agents was off sick Mon/Tues and came in late on Wed. She was still pretty week and coughed alot -- she ended up leaving early each day (she is the other full time agent) and I got to close each night this week. Lots of overtime for my official first week of full time!

Since we are so busy, I told my boss, I may have my desk organized by the "grand opening" (which will be Friday, July 6th) Even though we officially close at 5p, I still had two phone calls to return. One I reached and ticketed two tickets and a car (flying to Michigan for a wedding) and the other had to wait. One thing I may not like here is AAA's policy about always two people in the office at a time. I can not stay past 530p unless the cashier will stay (and apparently it better be an emergency!) I hate to go home and not have stuff done, or organized for the next morning. Tonite I had to gather up all my quotes and notepad and basically throw them in a cabinet and lock it all up for the weekend.

I haven't been able to connect with my Mom yet in the hospital. When I try calling she is out of her room -- usually for therapy or joint class. I have talked to a couple of the nurses so far. It sounds like the surgery went well, but she is having problems with pain management. (Whatever the nurse meant by that!) Mom can tolerate alot of pain, so to have problems with pain makes me wonder what is happening. I hope to catch her in her room tomorrow morning. The nurse said she wasn't sure if she would be released Sat or not. If she is having "pain management" problems, I think they may be keeping her longer. We fly back to Michigan Thursday night. We will be with her most of the weekend....she is hoping to be well enough to go to Tristan's (grandson) open house on Sat. We then have the BIG CLOSING scheduled for Monday at noon. It sounds like the lawyer does not have any more surprises for us. That will be one big burden off us.

It was over 100 again today (104.4) and no relief in sight. We have three fans going in our room. One in the kitchen window blowing in, one upstairs in the loft blowing out and a big industrial one near the door pulling from the kitchen towards the loft area. We tried to keep the door closed the past couple nights, but it got so stifling in here, I had to open it last night to cool it down some. The bugs have been getting in -- our screen we bought does not fit the door good. The small things don't bother us, it is the large "cone bugs" that are apparently not too nice and bite you. I might have to google the cone bug and see what it has to say about it. I don't think they are poisonous, but bothersome and the bite hurts since they are so big.

Well it is after 11pm here and I am tired. Ric spent the whole day down at camp working one the septic project there. I picked him up around 7p when I got home and we ate the pizza I picked up after he showered. He laid down to take a nap when he was done eating and hasn't budged since. All the hard/heavy physical work in the direct sun and over 100 degree heat is taking its toll. The camp thermometer registered 110 down in camp today. He misplaced his water bottle (or somebody took it) so he has been using his camelback. Having that strapped on your body probably isn't helping too much. He probably doesn't keep it on all the time, but still.... We may have to buy another big water bottle for him if his one from Brick Wheels doesn't show up this weekend. (at least it will be easy to spot if somebody has it in their hands!)

Mom Update

Debbie's mom had her knee replacement surgery today. Her therapy has already started, and she is doing well and not in too much pain. The only real problem so far is that she is in a shared room, and the AC doesn't really work in the room. The fact that she is worrying about those sorts of things is probably a good sign.

More when we know more.

Smokin'!!

Today it was 105 and 6% humidity. I feel an inexplicable urge to dump barbecue sauce on myself.

And Yet Another Blog

This one is by Russell Steitz. Good stuff.

One of his latest columns talks about the unintended consequences of turning food into fuel. This is one of the beefs I have with the bio-diesel industry. Instead of using vegetable oil from soybeans, they should be using vegetable oil from non-edible sources like switch grass or algae. It would be cheaper, and it could be grown on land unsuitable for farming. But that's too logical; lets cut down the Brazilian rain forest to grow soybeans and starve the poor people of the world by using up all the corn to make ethanol to burn in our cars and save the planet!

Never forget that the true agenda of the eco-tards is to reduce the world population. Whether by malaria or starvation really doesn't matter. What matters is getting the numbers down by any means. Everything else is theater.

Before You Plan Your Retirement....

... take a good hard look at this page.

Bottom line: The US dollar is being inflated at 11-12% per year. What that means for your retirement planning is that something that costs $100 today will cost $310 in ten years, $965 in twenty years, and $28,900 in fifty. Is it any wonder the US savings rate is negative? Why save when the absolute best return you can reasonably expect is just keeping even with inflation? May as well have fun with your money while you still can!

If you are a twenty-something, don't bother to save or invest. You're just making other people rich with your money while depriving yourself of its short-term pleasure for no reason.

(And yes, I realize that 12% inflation is unsustainable for fifty years. But the economic tsunami that will hit the US when the current 30-year party ends will wipe out all those mythical savings just as effectively as 12% inflation. Damned it you do, damned if you don't.)

But We Mean Well!

From The Belmont Club:

Kenyan economist James Shikwati is interviewed in Der Spiegel. And he says what many people think about the development assistance and international NGO racket but are quite afraid to say.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

Great. My tax dollars are being used to spread Half-Assedness all over the African continent like butter on toast. Ye flippin' gods.

Camille is Back!

Actually, she never left. But about five or six years ago, Salon decided to charge for reading her essays, so I stopped reading them. Today, I was browsing around elsewhere and followed a link to her latest piece. It seems Salon has moved to the PBS model (asking for money, but not hampering access to popular content if you don't cough it up). So for now, I have added her column page on Salon to the blog list (Yea, yea, yea; it ain't a blog. But neither is about half the stuff already there. Don't like it, get your own blog.)

Does It Make Me a Liberal....

...if I agree with Camille Paglia?

As I have argued for years, we desperately need a return to vocational training. The virtually universal conversion of American high schools to a pre-college track over the past half-century has watered down the curriculum to its present deadening uselessness. Lower-middle-class and working-class families who pay taxes have a right to expect that primary schools will prepare their children for a productive life.

My platform calls for a revalorization of the trades (which are related by craftsmanship to the art schools where I have taught for most of my career). Upper-middle-class families should be ready to support their children's unorthodox choice for a career in carpentry, masonry or landscaping. We need to strip the elite aura from the claustrophobic "prestige" jobs in sterile corporate offices, where high salaries drug the worker clones from recognition of their own imprisonment and castration.

(You will find this on page two of the linked article.)

Froo Froo Menu Generator

This is a hoot. And dishes with names like these are why I only eat at chain restaurants that serve steaks and burgers, or foreign restaurants where I won't know that I'm eating Fried Rhinoceros with a Vodka Pasta because I can't read Mandarin.

[Ric's Friendly Tip for eating in foreign restaurants: buy a lot of a la cart items, and don't look at them too closely or try to figure out what the strange little lumps are; just shovel it in with your eyes mostly closed. If it tastes good, just keep shoveling until it's gone. If it tastes nasty, spit it back into the bowl/plate, take a couple healthy gulps of water or soda, then move on to the next thing quickly before your mind has time to register that you just tried to ingest ostrich anuses.]

Arcosanti and Half-Assedness

Fred has a few good points on what makes a rich vs. poor country. One of his key indicators of poverty is the prevalence of Half-Assedness. Fred defines Half-Assedness as "... a curious mixture of just not giving a damn, lack of ambition, little interest in academics, and sometimes something that looks like lethargy." I'd say the same thing is true of organizations. Actual quotes heard here on property:

Guest-with-baby-in-tow: Excuse me; there is bat shit on your high chair.
Arco Cafe Employee: Yea. It happens.

"Would you just stop working so we can talk?" (Said repeatedly to me by various managers; also heard said by same various managers to a couple other people who still have a work ethic.)

"Would you stop getting projects done so fast? This is Arcosanti!" (Said to me this morning in jest, but telling none the less.)

"So, I guess you're just his/her boy." (Said to me by my manager whenever I do a quick repair for someone without giving them a 45-minute lecture about how they should do it themselves or making them wait six months to do a five-minute job.)

"You'll stop that nonsense after you've been here a while." (Said to me by a manager when I starting picking up trash blowing around the site. Oddly, he was right. I have stopped.)

Yep. Half-Assedness. Goes a long way towards explaining why it has taken 36 years to build 5% of the place.

(shrug)

In a couple weeks, I'll be making bells. Once I learn how to do that, I won't care if the place falls off the mesa. I'll have learned how to do something that I would be very unlikely to learn anyplace else. Not that skill in Bronze-Age metalworking methods is likely to be a marketable skill, but it will look a lot cooler than "toilet snake technician" and "pool boy" on a resume.

Wil Wheaton Has a Blog

Remember the geeky kid on Star Trek: The Next Generation that everyone wanted to slap? Well, he has a blog. And two kids. And he is (by his own admission) still a geek.

(sigh)

Another blog to add to the list. I may have to thin the ranks if I plan to ever do anything other than read blogs.

Another Smart Guy on Global Warming

Freeman Dyson gives his views on global warming.

It's nice to see that he agrees with me on the whole "too much CO2" thing. If CO2 is such a problem, then instead of bankrupting Western Civilization (while simultaneously exempting China with 1/4 of the world's population) with Kyoto, just remove the CO2 with vegetation. In other words, plant a tree. Then if it turns out that the extra CO2 was holding off the next ice age (which is over-due), burn the wood to put the CO2 back in the atmosphere. But if there is one thing that Uncle Al and his global warming hysterics like better than cherry-picking the data to fit their hypothesis, it's making a lot of noise about the problem without offering any solutions.

Just Some Random Blah, Blah, Blah.

Last weekend, we saw the third of The Three's of the Summer '07. Mostly they reinforce the old adage to quit while you're ahead. Shrek III was the most disappointing of the lot. Definitely wait for the DVD. Pirates III didn't seem to make a lot of sense, but we wrote it off to being the late show (10pm - nearly 1am) and the second movie we had watched that night. However since we saw it, I've heard a lot of similar complaints from others. We'll try it again when the DVD comes out. Spiderman III was the best of the three even if it did rely on alien black goo from a meteorite as the primary plot device. I realize that Marvel comics probably created that particular cliche, but I'm sure five minutes of thought would have resulted in a more satisfying replacement in the 21st century.

It's still hot in Arizona, in case anyone is wondering (90's for the last week).

It's still dry in Arizona, in case anyone is wondering (less than 10% humidity).

I will be leaving the maintenance department sometime in the next month or so. I'm not entirely sure where I will end up. I had originally talked to the manager in the foundry last Thursday and he was going to start things from his end. Then over the weekend, the manager of the ceramics department mentioned that he may be getting a new position the first part of July and would I be interested in making ceramic bells. Perfect timing, as usual. In any case, I will be leaving maintenance to make bells around the first part of July. I just don't know if I will be making bronze or ceramic bells.

I've spent the last several days digging a really big hole. The leach field for the showers and wash machine down in camp plugged up over two years ago. My crack boss has ignored the problem while sewage has been backing up into the showers, so I forced the issue by starting a bunch of digging to find the problem. Over a month later, I'm still digging.

Did I mention that it is hot and dry in Arizona? I'm blogging wearing nothing...

...but a pair of shorts. (Ha! Had you going there for a second!!)

I downloaded some software for ripping DVD's. My problem is storage space. A clean rip (no compression, full screen, surround sound intact, etc.) takes somewhere around 6.5 gigs. The only way to store a decent number is to get one of the new terabyte external hard drives. The problem is that they run over $350. And yes I realize that is less than .40/gig, but it is still $350 for something to store movies on. It's hard to think of anything more frivolous than that. The other option is to store them is some sort of compressed format, but, unlike MP3's, I can definitely see the degradation in both the video and sound, which will drive me nuts.

My fancy straw hat died a while back. The wind blew the top out of it while I was doing a tour, so I walked around the site leading a group of giggling tourists with a hat that looked like an opened tin can. Now I'm looking for a replacement, but I can buy a decent used car for what a hat costs. In the meantime, I'm wearing a black baseball cap.

Did I mention I've been spending all day in the sun digging holes? And that it is hot and dry here?

Not much else.

New Blog

I realize that the last thing I need is yet-another blog to read every day, but this guy is really good. Check out his thoughts on creationism and the flood for two examples.

Quote of the Day (and Week, Month, Year, and Maybe Century)

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.

Albert Einstein

Wow. Someone Needs a Hobby

This is incredible. The commentary asks, "Does anyone know at what point does passion and patience becomes Asperger's?" I'd say this definitely falls over the line into at least mild Asperger's.

Let me guess; these guys are single.

Cindy Sheehan Figures it Out

I don't agree with her politics or her methods. But more importantly, I didn't like the Democratic Party using her as a tool to beat Republicans over the head. It seems she finally figured out the truth of the American political system: there isn't two cent's difference between a Democrat and a Republican. Both are nothing more than loose aggregations of moral defectives.

Key quote:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing... Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives.

I know how I felt when it became public knowledge that the political party I supported (Libertarian) was riddled top-to-bottom with the same sort of cronyism and under-the-table deals that define the other two political parties. I understand that power corrupts, but you have to be completely devoid of moral character to be corrupted by the insignificant power held by a third party that struggles to capture 2% of the vote. But in the end, all I lost was maybe a couple acquaintances, about a year's-worth of time and a few thousands of dollars. Ms. Sheehan lost her son to the moral bankruptcy of the Republicans, then lost her marriage and health to the moral bankruptcy of the Democrats. I can't even imagine what that feels like.

Homework assignment: read the Declaration of Independence. Make a list of the reasons given in that document for our separation from The Crown that mirror current headlines. Write a 500-word essay justifying your continued support for our current political system. (Hint: if your justification can be summarized as "it's the only system we have," please write "I will read with comprehension." 100 times on the board, then go back and re-read the Declaration.)

The storm clouds continue to gather. Get small. Get fast. "When people are saying, 'Everything is peaceful and secure,' then disaster will fall on them as suddenly as a pregnant woman’s labor pains begin. And there will be no escape." (1 Thessalonians 5:3, NLT)

Politics or Orphans?

Ken Ham just opened The Creationist Museum. This is not science. This is not even theology. (OK, maybe it's poor theology....) This is politics to the tune of $27 million. Now imagine a $27 million donation to these guys.

I don't see any verses in the Bible instructing believers to build faux natural history museums. I have read a great deal about believers' responsibility to widows, orphans, etc. I must have one of those ultra-liberal translations.

I hope for the sake of Ken Ham and his supporters that there isn't a god after all, because if there is, I'm betting he's pissed.

Arcosanti...

...and pretty much every other job I've worked:

Angst at Arco

This weekend, we hosted the annual Spoken Word Festival here on the site. Some of it was pretty good. We listened to a couple spoken word acts that were impressive, although one was so depressing everyone wanted to throw themselves off the mesa. There was also a bluegrass band called The Family, and a pyrotechnic performance group called Flam Chen. But the rest of the weekend was a poetry slam (team poetry competition with audience judging). We can hear every word that is said in the amphitheater from our room, so even though we weren't really interested, we got to listen to it anyway. Maybe we missed the more intelligent parts, but it seemed to consist mostly of edgy, hip post-adolescents (and you just knew they were edgy and hip because they dressed in weird and, in the case of the female participants, barely legal clothing and screamed "fuck" into the microphone every three seconds or so) venting spleen and boo-ing any judge that dared to score them based on their actual ability. (As Kip notes, "The reason there are so many starving artists is because most artists suck.")

Anyway, it is mostly over at this point and we seem to have survived. The rest of the holiday weekend will be tours and, most likely, site cleanup.

Hogzilla II

An eleven-year-old kid recently shot a world-record hog. With a .50 caliber revolver, no less. The hog weighs 1,051 (or maybe 1060; the owner of the scale used wasn't present at the weigh-in) and is 9' 4" from the tip of the snout to the base of the tail.

Only in Alabama.

The Official Language at the First Lunar Base will be...

probably not English.

But don't worry! The GAO is all over it....

Do I need to say it again?

Stickin' It to the Man

Want to buy music, but not support the RIAA? Here is a list of the 100 top-selling albums on Amazon that are not controlled by The Man.

And Another Concert

Friday late in the work day, one of my coworkers asked if I wanted to not go home right after work. Hmmm...with a lead in like that, how could I refuse to find out what was up?! Her daughter decided she had too much to do and backed out of going to a concert with her. It wasn't a "real concert" -- it was a special event -- a mother/daughter "women" event -- (I believe it was called a SHE event) The special guest was Rebecca St James. I called to make sure Ric didn't mind me going out with Bunni at the last minute. I had to get some directions from another coworker since this was someplace else I hadn't been to before. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't get lost trying to find my way home by myself. It looked pretty harmless after Alexa (another coworker) gave me better directions than the AAA TripTik did! I gave Bunni the thumbs up -- she had to leave early since we was volunteering at the event.

It was a good concert and night with alot of women. Rebecca St James's mentor Evie was also there, along with a couple other singers. Evie was the oldest (51yrs) and her best comment about getting older was about your eyebrows thinning/falling out and THEN appearing on your CHIN! She had a few other good zingers -- especially embarrasing to the guys in the band. It was a good message about friends and forgiveness. It made me miss my friends from Michigan. I didn't want to call and wake anyone up at 1am, so I left a message for one at the church. (I hope she got it) The message on forgiveness hung on my heart also. I wanted to talk about it when I got home, but nobody was there was I got in. The opportunity was lost -- maybe I wasn't really ready to "put it to bed yet."

Other news: I finally finished up my training and other requirements for my ACC. (Acredited Cruise Counselor) I mailed in my logbook and other paperwork on Friday. I should get things back in 3-4 weeks and be able to add ACC after my name now in the travel business. Our AAA office move is pushed back again -- now they are telling us June 13th is the big move date. Again -- I won't be holding my breath. I hope we are in by the end of summer!

Still working on closing of the house auction. It is turning out to be a big pain that the lawyer won the bid. We may have to push back the closing date of June 15th if we don't have all the new reports and things in yet. That might work well for us, if we tell them we want to close the Friday or Monday around Tristan's open house. We will have to see. We had to ask favors again of Ric's parents and nephew to take care of some things in Michigan for us. Hopefully this next step is simple and cheap.

Ric finished up the round window --- painted circles on most of it. Looks cool....pics later. Next, maybe squares on the small squae kitchen window that gets sun in the late afternoon? He is working on sanding and painting a bookshelf. We will have someplace to store the DVDs we brought home from MIchigan last trip and the three knick knacks we brought out with us.

"Higher" Education

Another data point in favor of my thesis that sending your child to a university is worse than a waste of time and money.

Once again: Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.