WEEK 29 2008
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First Post,
17 March 2002
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Six Years
Ago, This Week, 2002 |
Five Years
Ago, This Week, 2003 |
Four
Years Ago, this
week, 2004 |
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Two Years
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A Year Ago,
This Week, 2007
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Saturday
- a long day, eleven hours in the field. I got my help to buy breakfast, so that's OK.
I'd assumed that the rental in Ventura would be busy, but the house was empty and quiet when I got home. No complaints.
Not too much happening here.
Friday 18 July
2008
Friday
- another long day. I'll be working tomorrow as well, since I missed
Monday. Nice weather, and I was out of the houses and into the
(farming) country. It's more peaceful, but the darn farmers are always
watering, spraying or plowing. And that gets all over you. Today it was
a good dusting from one of the huge leveler/plow gizmos - they must be
50 or 60 feet across and stir up quite a dust cloud. On the bright
side, I was in the shade of a Eucalyptus tree windbreak. I suppose you
could call it 'the shady side'...
Ducklings!
Thursday 17 July
2008
Thursday
- another productive day.
Another 'found CD' - I can't quite make out the title or artist, it's a
fancy font and the disk is too corroded:
Found CD
When I arrived home this evening I saw a lady carrying her dog down the
sidewalk. It seems that the dog, an American Eskimo, has some leg
issue. It gives the phrase 'taking the dog for a walk' a whole new
meaning...
I finished Book #34,
America's
Victory*,
by David Shaw. It was a book on tape (Blackstone) and I've been working
through it, in the car, since visiting my Dad. Very interesting, though
as Dad mentioned, the race proper only occurs in the last hour or so of
the recording. The history of the people making up the owners syndicate
was interesting, though later they are portrayed in a rather negative light
(probably justifiably), in particular 'Commodore' John Cox Stevens. In contrast
Dick Brown, the schooner's captain, acting as the pivot for the history, and
designer George Steers as a secondary focus, both get a favorable depiction.
In any case, very interesting, though I've never seen the difference
between a 'cutter' and a 'schooner' used in the way the book
uses
it.
Wednesday 16 July 2008
Wednesday
- a good day, got a lot of inspection done.
I saw the six ducklings again this morning. They were paddling about,
eating whatever little ducklings eat, making little piping sounds and
only a little nervous at my presence. Ma Duck was nowhere to be seen,
and I was worried. I needn't have been: after a few minutes I heard an
angry SQAWK!
from behind.
After berating me for a bit she gathered up the clan and headed off.
They are pretty cute, but I wish she wouldn't bring them into house cat
territory :-(
I'm down near Channel Islands Harbor, so there is a tide. I needed a
dry, or nearly dry channel at low tide, but the flood tide chased me
out by 9:00. Oddly it came up in surges. The water would be still,
then a little 4" high tidal bore
would come up the channel. A bit strange, but perhaps there is some
sort of flap gate or mechanical structure that only opens at intervals.
It's not exactly the Bay of Fundy, but mildly interesting.
From this week, in 2002:
I note that the list
of items that you are not allowed to bring into the stadium due to
"increased security" looks remarkably like a list of items that might
cut into the concession revenues.
Yes, I'm quoting from myself, on my own blog. Shameless, I am...
I tried to watch the All-Stars game last night, but it just went on too
long. Sadly the NL lost, again. This is because the AL is full of
cheaters
Apparently Microsoft has issued a security patch that breaks your
Internet connectivity, if you are running Zone Alarm. A friend of mine
was having connectivity problems, after 'updating' some systems, so
he's checking into whether that was the issue (KB951748, if you
really want to know - LavaSoft sent me an email about it).
Tuesday 15 July 2008
Tuesday
- on the road, back to work...
Monday 14 July 2008
Monday
- I eventually ran into parts of Iron
Sunrise that I hadn't read, so I finished is, as Book #33. Yeah, a
lot of reading. But a lot of it I started earlier, and just finished.
Did some errands, got ready for work tomorrow.
Sunday 13 July 2008
Sunday
- another hot and humid day. Not much to say about that.
One of the things that annoyed me about Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, was the
boosterism of robotic exploration versus manned. Examples:
- Sagan suggests in PBD that 'virtual reality' be used, in
which one can explore, with feedback, the surface of Mars.
Telepresence, it's called. This is deceptive by him. The problem is:
Mars is at best a good half hour away at the speed of radio, so it's
impossible
to act in any sort of real time. The best we can get is (1) send a
command, (2) wait for a response on how it worked out, and (3) think
about the next command for a day or so. This is what is
presently going on with Mars Phoenix. If you divide the average human
response time - 1/10th to 1.0 second, by the average telepresence
command/act/evaluate time, 24 hours, you get a slowdown of at best
86,400, and possibly as much as 864,000. It's workable, we're doing it,
but it is really horrible.
- He mocks "Nazi scientist Werner von Braun's" 1950ish plan
(Collier's magazine) for a planning trio of redundant spaceships to
Mars, but then complains bitterly when only a single copy of a certain
Mars probe was
built by NASA in the 1980's because of money constraints (no funds for
a
backup).
Sagan rarely lies, but his bias is sometimes obvious, and it's
irritating.
Finished Book #32,
Charles Stross's Halting
State. Pretty decent. It's a hacker book, set well before the
pre- and post- singularity type of novels he has done. Synopsis:
a one-time-keypad for securing the network infrastructure
in Britain
Scotland is stolen, and sold to a foreign state, and out intrepid
hero's must get
it back. Various future police procedural elements, spy-vs-spy
stuff, bank robbery in a virtual world, and so on.
Started on his Iron
Sunrise.
It seems familiar - I've read at least the first couple of chapters, so
it's going fairly fast. It's a post-singularity novel, in his Eschaton
series. Singularity Sky
was
something I've read in that series, fairly recently, but I don't see it
in my list of books. Well, not everything makes it into the blog...
