Saturday
- I didn't do a lot - I twisted my ankle the other day, to the point
where it was walkable but sore, and wanted to lay up and let it heal
this weekend. The cats were grateful for a warm place person to curl up on.
Phoebe's claws need trimming again.
So I spent most of the day with a book, Book #41, By Schism Rent Asunder.
It's another David Weber SciFi book, long, with overly noble good guys
and a fairly predictable plot. In the evening I went over to my friends
place and had some delicious home made pizza, unsuccessfully tried to
talk their daughter through connecting a MacBook to a 2Wire wireless
router via phone, and watched Part II of Pirates of the Carribean, until I started to fall asleep...
Still fooling about with the Ubuntu/Nvidia upgrade thing.
When I was up at my fathers place last week I discovered that he had
replaced his standard cable & TIVO with some sort of digital system
from Comcast. One of the things it had was a Movies on Demand option
(I'm not sure it was called that, but it was similar). Essentially you
can use the remote to scroll through a list of movies, select one, and
start playing it immediately. There were some older free movies, and
newer stuff for $4.99, so we watched National Treasure: Book of
Secrets. Pretty neat! I've never been one for going to the video store,
and this makes it a lot easier. Apparently you have 24 hrs to watch the
download, then it goes away. You can pause it, and maybe even replay
it, I'm not sure. But it was a fairly painless piece of 21st century
tech.
Friday
- back in Lancaster. Got off work about 3:00pm and took the 118 to the
405, and crawled from there to the I-14. Then things picked to a normal
speed. Friday afternoon...
Turned on the telly and saw that Oakland was
playing Tennessee and called Dad to place a bet. There was a bit of
confusion, until we resolved that he was watching the Oakland Athletics
and I was watching the Oakland Raiders - different teams and different
sports. Heh.
Quantum strangeness - how fast is the collapse of a wave function? Somebody
did an experiment, and it's at least 10,000c. I thought of
this experiment (in principle) years ago, using the mountains on either side of the Owens Valley. Never
actually did the experiment of course. My guess as to the speed: either
instantaneous or c-squared, that being about 200,000c. The experiment
apparently hasn't quite ruled that out, by a factor of 20.
They refer to it as entanglement, but that 'ends' when the measurement
is taken, when the wave function 'collapses'. I think. I'm not a
physicist.
But, as the article suggests, our notion of 'speed' is probably
not that of quantum mechanics. Indeed, the 'collapse' is probably
something very different than we currently view it as.
Sixty-Second Science
looks like a pretty interesting site. They also have an article on some
planned solar energy plants. I'm puzzled as to the location - San Luis
Obispo. Near the coast sounds like a bad location for this sort of
thing - the deserts of California would be better. It may be that they
are using it as a 'peaking plant', trying to get a little more sun in
the later afternoon in a slightly more westerly location, when Los
Angeles is sucking up the most power.
Though the near coastal plains can be pretty dry. I can recall seeing the solar array on the Carrizo plain, many years ago.
As somebody pointed out, they are going to cover 12 square miles
with solar cells, to get the output of a single coal plant, but it the
solar plant will only work during daylight on sunny days - call it 1/3
of the time. And at a greater (subsidized) cost.
I wish them well, but it's a stunt, and one done with taxpayer money.
Cat on a Glen Cove dock (not Riley).
Thursday 14 August
2008
Thursday
- about 12 hrs of work. One more day, then I'm back up to Lancaster. I
think the cats are lonely - Phoebe, who hates
my friend S,
actually came up to her to be petted, this week. Time to share quality
time, on the couch in front of a ball game.
Does football start this weekend? I think the Dodger's are tied with
Arizona for first in the west, so there might be a good game there.
It's odd though, Dad and I watched four or five games, without sound
mostly, last weekend. We've given up, by mutual unspoken consent, on
the announcers.
Wednesday 13 August 2008
Wednesday
- more work. Nearly 12 hours. I find, as usual, that I'm a tough boss
on myself. And then an evening meeting about the project report layout,
which went to almost 11:00 pm. I'm kind of a 9:00pm kind of guy these
days, so that's hard to do.
I finished Bill Bryson's In
a Sunburned Country*, his book about a tour of Australia, for
Book #40.
I thought it very interesting, and funny. It is clearly a land - a
continent really - of firsts and exceptions and weirdnesses. Some
people don't like his humor, but I enjoy the self-deprecating doofus
approach.
Bryson is clearly not fond of venomous snakes - Australia has ten
of the most venomous in existence, or of man eating salt water
alligators. His description of the victim of a 'box jellyfish' will
give you chills, paraphrasing here:
"...and
then here's the thing - the paramedics applied ointments, and morphine
to put him out, and took him away. And he was still screaming, while unconscious,
in the ambulance..."
Tuesday 12 August 2008
Tuesday
- on the road early, down to work in Simi Valley.
Monday 11 August 2008
Monday
- back on the road, down to Lancaster.
Sunday 10 August 2008
Sunday
- not a lot to say. Took the dog for a walk, watched some baseball. Dad
and I are about even, money wise, at this point.
