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Rain + Public Transit Delay = Photography

August 21st, 2008

4 cheap

This morning, Sarah offered to take me to work when I told her I was riding the bus. I declined, telling her that I was going to the Illini Union to work. (I ended up watching Olympic womens’ soccer and working, but this is an aside.) “You must like riding the bus more than I do, ” she said. I don’t mind riding the bus most of the time. Most of the time, that is. The morning commute was smooth. I didn’t have to wait long for the bus and it whisked me to the doorstep of my office for the day, gratis.

Around 1:00, I got hungry and decided to go home for lunch and finishing my day’s work. The bus comes at 1:21, according to the schedule. I came out at 1:15. Today is freshman move-in day; so, kids and their parents are everywhere. Hence, traffic is a nightmare around campus. I was not disappointed, the StopWatch marquee was displaying a 35-minute wait. After I’d been standing there for a few minutes, it started to rain. Then, it started to downpour. Knowing that the StopWatch often gives you only 5-10 minutes warning when the 13 Silver line is coming, I elected to pull on my Gore-Tex and wait out the rain outside. Gore-Tex is brilliant, except if you aren’t completely sealed in it. After getting thoroughly drenched from the waist down, I went back into the Union hoping the A/C would dry me out a little bit. It did.

The 35-minute wait came and went and the StopWatch reported “DUE” next to 13 Silver for a while before changing again to 15 minutes. Gah! It had stopped raining; so, I jumped at the opportunity to take some pictures of interesting people. No sooner had I pulled out my camera than the gentleman in the photo above arrived at the bus stop. He paced around nervously and it was hard to catch him facing me. But, I was rewarded with an OK shot from the hip. Nevermind that I’d accidentally left the sensor on ISO 1600 from last night. Ooops. At least it was fast.

So, I’m a little annoyed with MTD that the StopWatch can’t provide more accurate information. I would have walked home had I known it was going to take an hour to ride the bus. But, on the other hand, it was good to be out and about…

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Posted in life, photography

Tomatoes

August 14th, 2008

Tomatoes

Last year we collected 40-something tomatoes from our six plants. We were so proud of our little collection when we visited my aunt in Iowa with them. We ended up canning five 5-gallon buckets full of tomatoes with her. She’s on sabbatical this year; so, I don’t think we’re going to impinge on her. But, we have a lot more tomatoes this year and we need to come up with something to do with them. I think maybe I’ll make some salsa soon since we have a variety of peppers. But, at some point, we’ll need to can them.

We picked about a dozen tomatoes last night. The squirrels have probably eaten or spoiled half again that many. It is pretty amazing that no matter where you live, you can almost always grow tomatoes.

» Read more: Tomatoes

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Posted in life

Gathering

July 14th, 2008

Yesterday, we engaged in an activity as old as humanity: friends from church invited us to pick blueberries. They have a two-year-old and a baby. So, it was a long trip without a lot of berry picking. The two-year-old had a difficult time with the notion of saving berries for later. Every time she found a berry (ripe or not), she put it in her mouth. I don’t know why, but teaching a two-year-old to gather blueberries, I felt a strange sense of communion with simpler times. It’s good to be home and moving a little slower.

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Posted in life

Rant: Where did the Simpsons go?

July 12th, 2008

The last iota of intelligence on the local Fox station vaporized. The FCC could easily revoke their license for failing to serve the public interest. When we moved to Champaign-Urbana, the Simpsons were on at 5:00 and 6:00 on weekdays. If I worked later than 5:00, I could always see the 6:00 episode. The 6:00 episode was replaced about two years ago with “Two and a Half Men.” That’s like replacing your trusty Ford Taurus with a Daewoo, sure it’s a little cheaper, but you’re still driving a Daewoo. No, actually worse, because “Two and Half Men” is inane. I was disappointed; but, I did make sure to catch the 5:00 Simpsons a couple of times a week.

In June, the station discontinued the 5:00 episode of the Simpsons for a second half-hour of “King of the Hill,” which also airs at 5:30. Why anyone would want to see an entire hour of “King of the Hill” every day is beyond me. Although, I am grateful that I’ve seen a few episodes of it because the Simpsons did an awesome “King of the Hill” alley scene. So now, we get an hour of “King of the Hill” followed by an hour of “Two and Half Men.” I don’t know who their target audience is; but, they have to be getting dumber watching that. Part of the grand Fox plan of idiocracy, I guess.

On the bright side, I guess that’s an hour or two of my week I get back. On the other hand, the Simpsons was somewhat educational in the sense that it packed a lifetime of popular culture and historical event references into a half-hour package I could understand without having to sit through all of those other movies and TV shows.

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Posted in communication, life

This is How We Roll: A Life Lesson from Travel

July 11th, 2008

Even though we did a little too much of it this Spring, I enjoy traveling and seeing new people and places. Certainly, I have been an impatient traveller at times. But, some of the best times I’ve had traveling have been the “eh, stuff happens” times, the times when I’ve just “rolled with it.” Taking the wrong bus. Streets closed on the way to the airport. Delayed flights. Traffic jams. Missed flights. They have been adventures, not always stress-free, but I’ve survived. Luck favors the prepared. Are you prepared?

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Posted in hobbies, life, travel

Independent?

May 6th, 2008

My father-in-law is an avid reader of Consumer Reports. He got us a subscription a while back. I frequently let Sarah read and summarize new issues. But, a new issue arrived today touting their latest computer evaluations. I was compelled to read it. By the way, the MacBook and the ThinkPad still top the list of laptops. At least someone agrees with my sentiments there.

As the son of an physicist who used to do performance testing for a major home appliance manufacturer that was not always treated favorably by CR, I have a healthy skepticism for the reviews. (It’s very easy to design experiments that favor certain outcomes.) Although, they frequently tend to bear-out my own recommendations and choices upon things I consider myself an expert about.

But, I digress. In the February 2008 issue, they spent some time on investments. One of the investments they recommended avoiding was an annuity. In the latest (June 2008) issue, an advertisement touts a “Consumer’s Union Annuity.” I didn’t bother to read the details, though. It seems that an investment in CR‘s parent company is fine, despite the earlier discouragement. Ok, so this is a relatively minor inconsistency. But, it never hurts to know what influence a buck has…

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Posted in computing, engineering, life

The Application of Minimum Force

April 28th, 2008

I just finished reading Robert Young Pelton‘s Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror. It’s a pretty well-balanced look at the face of the modern mercenary that should easily let you draw your own conclusions about “the business.” Toward the end of the book, Pelton recounts a meeting he attended between the energetic chairman of one large, infamous, U.S. security contractor and representatives from a British counterpart firm. The British, Pelton reminds the reader, have a long history of counterinsurgency experience (including the birth of the U.S., I might add). At the end of the meeting, after the American has bragged on his weapons R&D, one of the British men parts with the following words, “It’s the application of minimum force.”

The entire book was worth reading for this sentence. It is a brilliant statement that tends to be lost on most of us, not just in terms of military action. A friend in college used to talk about how the school football and wrestling coaches liked farm boys because they were often deceptively strong. I told him that I suspected “farmer strength” tends to come from a lifetime of having to move things. Familiarity with your work environment makes you a better worker. I used to do plenty of framing work, mostly with Habitat for Humanity. One of my favorite parts of home construction is hanging trusses. Walking on walls is like ice skating or walking barefoot on sharp gravel or hunting or conducting a tense meeting or traveling in a foreign country or driving on snow. Make one quick move and you’ll fall. Acceleration, literally the result of an unbalanced force, is perilous.

New personal goal: Practice more finesse and less brute force. Apply minimum force.

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Posted in engineering, life

Possible Earthquake Damage in Urbana, Illinois

April 23rd, 2008

Ok, so this is late news. Twice on Friday and again on Sunday night, Illinois was hit with a magnitude 5.2, and two magnitude 4.0ish earthquakes. I was awake when the big one rattled the house at 4:37 on Friday morning. Sarah slept through it and only half believed me when I told her at 6:00 that there had been an earthquake. “Check CNN,” she said after I produced the evidence. CNN had continuous loop of some bricks that had fallen from a building somewhere in KY.

On the way to the office, I noticed on our street that a garbage can had been tipped over. “Earthquake damage, ” I thought with a chuckle. Later, it occurred to me that I should have snapped a picture of the scene and sent it to CNN’s iReport. Following Sunday night’s aftershock, I snapped a picture of the still horizontal garbage can on my Monday commute. As if the neighbors don’t think I’m weird enough already with all of the antennas!

So, for your pleasure, I’ve included this picture of possible earthquake damage. On the other hand, it could have been procyonidae lotor (somewhat doubtful given that there’s no avalanche of rubbish pouring out of it), a stiff breeze, or intoxicated youth. But, CNN would have never known! On the other hand, the Onion pays good money for stuff like this. Sometimes, the difference is subtle…

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Posted in life

Repairs and junk…

April 13th, 2008

One of the curses of attempting (I say ‘attempting’ because I’m mostly a failure) to be a “sustainable consumer” of electronics and appliances is the inevitable repairs. My venerable desktop PC of 8.5 years (known affectionately by it’s hostname “sakhalin”) is finally showing its age. It has trouble finding the boot drive from time to time. The “A radio” TS-930S doesn’t transmit on SSB anymore (this is a long-standing problem I have yet to diagnose), which is unfortunate because it has the roofing filter and Inrad SSB filters. The power nozzle for our Hoover canister vacuum cleaner needs an agitator belt. I need to find a local vacuum repair shop because none of the big stores carry the right size. I think Sarah would be just as happy to replace it with an upright. But, the canister still works! I wrecked the airplane a couple of weeks ago when the weather was not quite nice enough to be flying it. Fortunately, I have $3 worth of MacGuyver parts and epoxy that should be sufficient to make that repair. The wind broke one of the wires on my open-wire 80-meter dipole. (Finally, I reached the point of “if it stayed up last winter it’s not big enough.” The proof is in the performance, too.)

I’ll probably get the airplane and the antenna fixed yet this afternoon. The other problems are more long-standing. The desktop PC isn’t really necessary, especially since Sarah will be getting a laptop with her new job. So, I really probably could let it go. I still have the Pentium 166 that I bummed off of Dad for a contesting computer. It’s working great. But, do I unload the newer, superior computer that’s flaky? I have been tempted to dump the 166. I should try a new hard drive in sakhalin. Then there’s Sarah’s desktop…I can count on one hand the number of times it’s been turned on since we got married and I was the one using it! I’m holding onto Alan’s PowerBook because it’s the only place I have Adobe CS2. And, I have the ThinkPad “contesting laptop” that Ryan gave me when I got married… I guess if I weren’t such a tightwad and Mac-addict, I wouldn’t have this problem! No more junk!

We have five CRT’s in the house…two Dell 19″ Trinitrons on my desk, Sarah’s 17″ un-Trinitron Dell, my oscilloscope, and the TV. I’m not planning to replace the ‘scope or the TV anytime soon. So, I guess it’s the computers are the ones that will have to go…I just can’t let go of my junk… And, I went out and bought a new camera…sigh.

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Posted in computing, engineering, life, radio

Tags: re-use repair ts930

Performance enhancement for the thinking man

April 11th, 2008

Recently the popular news has picked up a story about a paper in the journal Nature from December 2007. The article invokes a crude online survey of academics and scientists about their use of prescription medications like Ritalin as concentration aids. One of the respondents thought that it was his duty to be as “productive” as possible during his lifetime of “humane service.” My diagnosis is an acute case of self-importance.

Medication is often prescribed or taken as a substitute for lifestyle changes. While lifestyle doesn’t always help, it deserves more credit than it gets. For instance, a friend from college always used to wait until the last possible minute to complete his assignments. Invariably, he did as well or better than the rest of us. He spent most of his time doing whatever it was that interested him at the moment and then blitzed the homework. Brilliant. If what you’re doing isn’t important enough to capture your focus, you’re not doing the right thing.

Case in point: contesting with SO2R. You need contact volume to win a contest. But, pushing F1 isn’t that interesting after the rate slows. You also need multipliers to win a contest. This is hard work; but, it’s more engaging than running. If you do both at the same time, it increases your overall productivity. A fundamental shift in strategy produces a performance gain.