Art Table Project

Well, with one of five projects (the house repair project) pretty much knocked out my intention was to start on the play table for my son. Unfortunately, this is sort of turning into a chicken and the egg type problem with some tricky scheduling stuff thrown in.

See, in order to build the play table, I need to have a place to put it and room to build it in the garage, since it is going to be kind of big. I need to move a pool table to the garage and put it on craigslist or take out an ad in the paper or whatever. I don’t want the pool table in the garage for long because space is getting tight in there now as it is with the backup of projects. Besides, the pool table would get covered in sawdust and spiders instantly and it might even get damaged if it sits out there too long, from humidity or paint spills or whatever. I am certainly not going to have complete strangers try and manhandle it down the stairs (did I mention it is on the second story?) so it needs to be moved ahead of the new owners getting to the house. Couple that with “certain people’s” knack for seeing all flat surfaces as “a table I can use to put my soda on just for a minute oops I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I’m really sorry” and I may as well take a saws-all to it right now.

Hey, that’d be kinda fun…

But, since I don’t own a saws-all, the next best and clearly logical thing to do is to start yet another project. This time I am building a table for a friend to use as a staging area for his painting supplies since he fancies himself a bit of an artist (I kid – his non-representational acrylics are pretty fantastic).

His size and style requirements were based on an IKEA work table he saw online. After seeing the picture of it and deciding on a final size (48” wide, 24” deep, 35” tall) I went to Lowe’s to get some wood. Nothing too fancy – this is not designed to be an heirloom piece, after all – but not knocked together from plyboard, reclaimed barnwood, and leftover two-by-fours, either. This art table is going to be utilitarian, but also needs to look nice since it will be the largest piece of furniture in the room it will finally rest in.

There appears to be two kinds of wood at Lowe's: super-nice yet unreasonably expensive pieces and affordable but super low-quality pieces. There doesn't appear to be a lot of choice in the way of middle of the road stuff.

The expensive stuff is so pricy that it would probably be cheaper to build a small oak desk out of pieces taken directly from a larger oak desk. The cheap stuff is sometimes so warped that it might make excellent boomerangs if it weren't for the fact that any Aborigine attempting to use the weapons would have their throwing hand instantly flayed to the bone from cracks and other defects.

But take heart! It is possible, if you are patient, persistent, have a high threshold for pain, carry a sliver removal kit and have a way to staunch the bleeding, you can find some decent pieces in the cheap piles.

[An aside here. I just want to say that I have noticed a huge upswing in customer service at the couple of Lowe's that are in my area. About a year ago the stores used to be staffed by folks that were extremely annoyed that you showed up to buy stuff. Now it is packed with their opposite number. Convenient yet very nearly creepy.]

Now I decided to frame the table using furring strips in the same fashion I did for my 2x4-based workbenches in the garage. Since the workbenches have served me well for years I figure they would be a pretty good starting point.

It was a simple enough thing to throw together two identical shelf frames (one for the tabletop and one for the bottom shelf) using the furring strips, wood screws, and wood glue. The four legs (again, just lengths of furring strip) were screwed and glued to the insides of the shelf frames. The top shelf frame was made flush with the tops of the legs but the bottom frame was mounted five inches from the bottom.

At this point, the structure looks like, and, in fact, is, a flimsy, twisty box. Trust me, it gets more and more solid as we build up. All just part of using imperfect wood and imperfect tools. Also, having a builder who doesn't perform woodworking so as much as he inflicts woodworking upon others doesn't help the project much. Some pundits might even say that it is far, far more likely that the natural actions of wind, rain, and continental drift would spring forth a working art table than any of the skills I bring to the project. To them I say "No, you are".

You heard me.

Obviously, since this is supposed to be a central piece of furniture for an art room, the base structure should be hidden by trimwork for a more professional look. This was easy enough to do by cutting pine 1x4s to the appropriate length with a radial arm saw tilted to 45 degrees.

After the top and bottom were trimmed I added three more "trimming" pieces to the middle of the table. These pieces, like all the others, not only make the table look nicer but they help to make the unit more solid.

When I first started thinking about the project I envisioned using plyboard and ceramic tile for the top but the end user requested that the surface be as smooth as possible so he could slide his materials across it without too much danger of tipping or spilling them. I have made small, smooth tabletops out of component slats before but I really wasn't looking forward to trying to clamp and align something this large.

Luckily, they sell what they call "stain-ready" pieces at Lowe's that are basically for this exact purpose. And, since they are made from many, many smaller pieces they are significantly more affordable than higher quality large pieces. I worked with similar "composite" boards when I built my kid's toybox and I was pleased with the results.

I went with a four foot long by two foot wide by 1 inch thick slab for the top. It is nice and heavy and solid and didn't cost too much. I mounted the table top to the rest of the unit using only wood screws countersunk into the soft pine of the table frame. The top was made flush with the back of the table and centered left and right. This helped with alignment and also helps define the front of the unit.

At this point the structure had become very solid and all that remained was to add the bottom shelf. The tricky part here was to make a shelf that allowed the table legs to pass through without creating too much of a gap. I selected three four-foot by one-foot by ¾-inch stain-ready pieces to do this. After filling in the areas between the legs, I needed to cut notches in the next shelf pieces to allow the legs to pass through.

After aligning the next shelf pieces and cutting them to the right width, I used a pencil to mark the exact location of the table legs and used a hunk of scrap furring strip to trace an outline to use to guide the scroll saw.

I hate using the Craftsman scroll saw – it bounces and jounces all over the place (even when clamped to the workbench) and the blades are hard to change out – but it was the best tool I had to help cut out the notches. A wood chisel further helped size and shape the squarish holes appropriately.

To be honest, I thought I would really mess that part up but the alignment was good and the look was just what I was going for. Plus it helped to further fortify the piece. The main construction is completed! Sweet!

Now all that remains is to countersink the finishing nails, sand off the ink stamps, apply wood filler, sand out defects in the cheap wood, stain, seal, and do about a million other odious things that need to be done before a few hunks of wood can officially be called “furniture”.

[To be continued...]

Recent Reading List: The Gray Man

Ok. I admit it. I was wrong about this book.

When I started it, I thought this was going to be your typical 'big bad spy guy doing big bad spy guy things that only gun nuts would care about' type book. It sort of had that vibe to it a few pages in, but, since I was prepared to hate it when I started, I see now that my initial gut feeling was grossly out of place.

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney turned out to be a really fun and exciting read. The author provides the reader with enough detail to provide interest in the weaponry and tactics hero Court Gentry uses to accomplish his mission without trying to impress the reader with a smorgasbord of unnecessary factoids. The geography and city descriptions follow the same suit – enough to “put you there” without boring you to tears describing each and every cobble in a Paris alleyway, for instance.

The main character is not some god-like and completely unbelievable construct of innate superhuman abilities. As well trained and capable as he is in his craft, it quickly becomes obvious that he is neither flawless nor immortal (which is why I read it to the end instead of instantly dropping it).

That said, there is a little bit of a 'Deus ex Machina' feel to a end-of-the-book, umm, “conflict resolution”, but I do not want to post any more to prevent spoiling any of the action for those of you who might pick this up.

I am notoriously bad for being able to tell what would make a good movie from reading a book. For example, I remember thinking as I was enjoying the book Jurassic Park may years ago that “there is no way they could make a decent movie out of this”. But, for what it's worth, I would be very interested in seeing them turn this into a “Bourne-Identity-slash-Taken” screenplay as soon as possible.

DIY Chevy Keychain Fob Repair

The fob to my wife’s Chevy Malibu began acting oddly – refusing to operate or only performing specific tasks, like opening the trunk but not remote-starting the car, etc. The fob battery was replaced but still no improvement.

She took it to the dealership and they said that there was a bad transistor inside so the whole fob would need to be replaced at a cost of $180. When she told me the story I asked her a couple of times just to make sure that I heard the word “transistor” correctly (and not, say, “transmitter”, which would imply the whole thing was shot). She said yes, that’s what the guy told her.

Since I have some experience in the area of electronics, the “transistor” comment sounded to me like the sort of thing made up to sound exactly technical enough to prevent any follow-up questions except for ones that sound like “Sigh. Do you take VISA?”

So, since the thing is “permanently and completely broken”, there was no harm in me popping it open (after giving my wife my little-used fob as a replacement, of course) to see what I could see.

Close inspection of the solder joints that hold the battery clip in place revealed tiny cracks, and the clip itself was a little loose. Cool. A couple of touch-ups to the battery clip solder joints is all it took. No expert knowledge of electronics or super-specialized equipment was necessary.

Here’s how I fixed my problem and saved $180 in about 5 minutes (Your problem might be different than mine, of course):

You will need the following:

• Small, flat-bladed screwdriver
• Electronic (not plumbing) soldering iron with a pointy (versus rounded or flat) tip
• Electronic (not plumbing) solder
• Flux (I always use flux when soldering instead of relying on flux-core solder. Some people don’t.)
• Cotton swabs
• Rubbing alcohol
• New fob battery (CR2032 for mine – yours might be different)
• Beer or wine

Do the following:

• Carefully pop open the fob using a small flat-bladed screwdriver
• Remove the circuit board from the fob
• Remove the battery from the circuit board
• Using a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol clean the inside of the fob (not the circuit board). Believe it or not, loose junk can work its way inside after a couple of years, and this junk might interfere with the operation of the unit.
• Do the same with the squiggly traces on the back of the circuit board (this is where the buttons contact the circuit board).
• Apply a very small bit (or drop) of flux to the three solder joints indicated in the picture.
• Using a very small amount of solder, gently touch up the three indicated solder joints. The battery clip will act as a heat sink so you don’t have to be too afraid of “burning up” the board during this step (within reason).
• Using the alcohol and swabs, clean any residual flux from the board
• Re-insert the battery
• Re-insert the circuit board into the fob
• Close the fob
• Test your unit (lock/unlock your doors, remote start the car, pop the trunk, etc.)
• If it worked, pour yourself a celebratory glass of beer or wine and enjoy. No, wait. Turn off the soldering iron first, and then have the beer or wine. Safety First, you know.

This has happened on both the fobs for the car, so I thought I would post this in case this is a common failure mode for these things. If this did not work out for you, I hope that something else will – good luck!

House Repair Project

Woo Hoo! I got my new table saw yesterday! It is a 10” Hitachi C10FL, and it is much, much better than my old Craftsman. It weighs about 260 pounds, it is very solid, it has a large work surface, and it is extremely quiet. There were some assembly issues (extremely unclear documentation and poorly threaded bolt holes) but they were minor. No real problems (yet).

Of the five projects I had in my queue the House Repair one was the most important to complete as soon as possible. It turns out the house had old (say 10 years or so) termite damage that affected a small section of my garage. Although the critters had long since vacated the area, the weakened wood siding absorbed rainwater from the too-close wind-blown hedges that scraped up against the normally sealed wood surfaces. This helped to start the rot on its way.

Since this area was in a hidden part of the front of the house it went unnoticed for a while. It wasn't until we hired a crew to re-seal the entire place (we need to do this every 4 or 5 years or so) was the soft wood discovered.

At this point, I would love nothing more than to rail against the people that sealed our house, but I am going to save that for a really long, probably unhealthy, profanity saturated, and booze-fueled “manifesto-esque” post. It suffices to say that 1) I originally had no intention of doing this repair work myself 2) they did a terrible, overpriced job sealing the house and charged us an additional 20% for work they should have covered already and 3) my phone conversation with their salesman ended with me saying “Congratulations. The Golden Goose has finally run out of eggs. I am doing the remaining work myself.”

I called around to the various suppliers of the wood siding, stain, sealant, and chinking and found out how much supplies would cost with shipping. Since I knew that the people that did the house sealing job were one of the closest official vendors of the materials I needed it was worth my time to call them and order through them. Sigh.

I was less than shocked the hear them once again try to rip us off by claiming it costs $100 in gas to drive a Ford Ranger 125 miles to deliver the materials (the salesman said the delivery fee would be “just gas one way” from where they were). So, finally, my materials were delivered two Wednesdays ago (during the big storm). Well, they were stacked in my driveway in the pouring rain, a couple yards from the covered porch. Nice.

I brought the stuff into the garage and toweled everything off the best I could. I stacked the new wood siding so it would dry out for a couple of days without warping.

After the insect inspector came and pronounced the work site wood-eating-critter-free, the next day (Last Sunday) I started digging into the obvious spots of rotted wood. Initially, large chunks came out freely but it quickly became clear the rot was not as extensive as I had feared. All in all, four pieces of siding were affected. Three of them were damaged in areas about 13” wide but the bottom-most piece had a little less than four feet that needed to be replaced. Thousands of benign ants made their home in the bottom piece thanks to the vacated termite tunnels there. Spraying as I went, they died off quickly.

As darkness threatened, I needed to stop in the middle of the wood-removal process and cover the exposed areas in aluminum flashing. It wouldn't be insect-proof but at least it would keep most of the elements out of the exposed areas until I could get back to work this weekend.

A rotary saw and wood chisels were a great help in cleaning up the still-solid bits of wood left from the wood-removal process. I further smoothed out the damaged areas using a drum sander attachment on my cordless drill.

The new table saw cut the new siding like a dream. To be fair, the old Craftsman table saw also cut wood like a dream, but it was the kind of dream where you wake up in a cold sweat repeatedly counting your fingers and limbs to make sure they are all there. Also, you get out of bed to peek into the garage just to make sure the saw is exactly where you left it...

Anyway, I hammered the new pieces into place and chinked the gaps closed. Everything fit perfectly. Sweet. Time for staining.

I was assured by the aforementioned vendors that the stain and sealant were an exact match to the existing siding. Um. No. Not even close. Well, at least the unmarked 1-gallon can of stain they delivered is lighter than the old stuff, not darker, so I can work with it to gradually match the new stuff to the rest of the house. Maybe the stain gets darker as it soaks in. I'm not really worried about it - I am basically done. I spent $200 on materials (and delivery) and I can spend as much time on the job to get it as exactly perfect as I want.

I have never done anything like this job before but I am glad I did it myself. The scumbag contractors wanted $1,000 to repair the area. Even if you add in the cost of the table saw I am still ahead of the game. I didn't have to take time off work, I got to see the type of damage first-hand, I have a lot of left-over material, and I know what to look for in case I need to do this again.

To those of you out there facing similar challenges but are leery of jumping in yourself my advice is just give it a go. I mean, obviously, there are certain things that you might want to get an expert for (electrical stuff, plumbing stuff, and other dangerous or house-critical items) but embrace the opportunity to teach yourself a new skill. If you screw it up, you screw it up – it is not the end of the world.

And who knows? You might surprise yourself and do it exactly right, and that, my friends, is an awesome feeling.

Really Verb Ending in ING Sick

I was sick on Friday.  Spectacularly so, in fact. I was really impressed with myself.  I had no idea I had it in me.

Somach virus.  I wrote a whole big thing on it but it was too gross to post.  Since it was a shame to throw out the article, I will present it in "reverse Mad Libs" mode - that's where I just give you the filled-in blanks and I let your imagination fill in the rest of the story.  Enjoy!

• Working
• Suddenly
• Queasy
• Sprinted
• Technicolor
• Yawn
• Projectile
• Through the eye of a needle
• Explosive
• Driving
• Traffic Jam
• Church parking lot
• Four times
• Wendy's Combo #1
• Home
• Sixteen hours

Boy, I am glad that's over. 

Finally Finished!

I finally finished David Kahn’s 1,200-page work on cryptography and cryptanalysis: The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet.


Overall, I liked it very much. Always enlightening, almost-always entertaining.

It is very thorough but this is both a large positive and a slight negative. Originally published in 1967, at times it gets bogged down with detailed descriptions of interpersonal relationships between now-little-known WWII-era personalities. It gets VERY bogged down with a (nearly) completely valueless chapter devoted mostly to the construction and staffing of various NSA buildings.

If you liked the detail, science, and writing style of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes you will definitely like this book.

There are a lot of math-light descriptions of many different types of historical codes and ciphers and how they were solved using absolutely flabbergasting strokes of genius or luck or both. I was hoping that something in the book would cause me to come up with new avenues for solving the Khan’s Cons puzzle on puzzlemonster.com, but, unfortunately, nothing really inspirational came out of it. It looks like it’s back to the drawing board for me, yet again.

I tend to jump from book to book, so I managed to knock out two others since I started this one. One is a Bill Amend’s latest FoxTrot compilation (Wrapped-Up FoxTrot) and the other is Terry Pratchett’s most recent Discworld book (Unseen Academicals). I liked the FoxTrot book but I could take or leave the Pratchett one (I am withholding detailed judgment until a couple of friends of mine finish reading their copies).

I have now started on The Gray Man by Mark Greaney. I may have gotten tricked into buying it because one of the reviews described it as “The Bourne Identity for the new millennium”. I saw a couple of the Bourne movies (but did not read the books) and thought they were pretty neat. I am fairly sure I am not going to like this book very much, though, since it seems to follow a pattern of one page of tough guy acting tough, 15 pages describing his gun/helicopter/whatever, rinse, repeat. Obviously I am exaggerating here but you get the point.

We'll see how it goes.

H1N1 News Update

At left is a graph I have been updating since a few weeks into the Swine Flu Pandemic. I was going to post it a few days ago but didn't get around to it (laziness, mainly). Recent headlines from MSNBC and other places have galvanized me into posting quick article.

Most of the information I have been getting has been through the European Center for Disease Control. I stopped getting my information from the CDC in the U.S. because I like the daily, more globally-concerned format of the data from the ECDC better.

The headline that caught my attention was “Swine Flu has sickened 22 million in the U.S.”. My numbers show that serious illnesses from this outbreak should be closer to 2 million, and that's world-wide. I thought, okay, this is a typical wild exaggeration by the media designed to capture my attention. After all, to avoid overworking emergency rooms, they stopped general testing for H1N1 months ago (at the recommendation of the CDC) when a patient showed up with flu-like symptoms, so how could they claim these numbers?

The sub-headline read “CDC: 4,000 in U.S. died, including 540 kids, between April and mid-October”.

4,000?! I “knew” that number was way off because my curve fitting shows roughly 1,000 in the U.S. should have died over the past six months, pretty close to today's ECDC published number of 1,004. But sicknesses can be misinterpreted – deaths cannot. So what is the deal?

Apparently the CDC has been under-reporting the numbers for a while. They knew they were wrong, but, in the absence of the correct numbers, they have been publishing gross underestimates for a while. I am looking forward to tomorrow's ECDC update and how they explain the discrepancy.

FWIW: I am not a conspiracy theorist. Sometimes people just make mistakes or do the best they can with the data they have – this is most likely what is going on here. It would have been nice to know that the error bars were so huge. Even knowing that the data were “plus or minus 100%” would have been a vast improvement.

As I wrote in my previous H1N1 posts, it looks like there are a lot of different data out there that can be used to “prove” anything regarding this outbreak. I am genuinely puzzled and concerned here. I plead genuine ignorance on my part – no passive-aggressive shenanigans or accusations of malfeasance are implied.

Any help to make sense of the situation would be appreciated.

Rain, Rain, Go Away. No, Seriously.

It has been raining for about 30 hours now and the November Nor'easter is not going to abate any time soon. Winds have tapered off a bit but they are fairly sustained at 20 mph with higher gusts. The storm is going to get worse before it gets better. I could not get a new table saw to my house in this weather so none of the projects could be pushed forward, which made me pretty furious. Just my luck, right? I mean, I have been waiting forever for a new one and now this.

The septic system is acting up and I am running around looking for leaks in the roof and making sure the garage is not flooding. Luckily they canceled work because, since daycare is closed due to lack of power, at least one of us needed to stay home and neither of us can afford the leave.

There are 10-foot branches dropping off into my neighbor's yard and several of his trees are swaying alarmingly. Many of them have dropped their leaves already so I am pretty sure their waterlogged root balls will stay anchored in the ground for the duration of the storm and not be torqued out of the earth by the hundreds like they were during Hurricane Isabel.

All of these “problems” are disgustingly minor, though, compared to the issue one of my 80-year-old neighbors had this morning.

He went out to get the morning paper (in the wind and the rain and the dark). As he was bending over to fetch it off the ground a gust of wind blew him over into the muddy water, half-in and half-out of his ditch out front. In his dark blue rain slicker and jeans he was not noticed for over an hour as he lay there yelling and trying to power through his joint problems to get enough traction to climb the slippery slope back to the gravel driveway. He says that several cars drove right by him probably on their way to work. They must have passed only feet away from where he was struggling.

After the sun had come up sufficiently to see, my wife looked out the window at the weather and noticed what looked like a figure slowly making their way on hands and knees up his driveway. We are a couple hundred feet from his house so we could not tell who it was or what they were doing (troubleshooting the septic system, digging a trench to guide floodwater away from the house, etc.). I donned my boots and jacket and grabbed my cell phone and went out and help whoever was out there do whatever they thought they were doing that was so damned important to do in this weather.

As I walked out into the street I saw another neighbor who had just gotten off night shift dash across the road to the old man's house. The younger neighbor started yelling “Help! Help!” and I ran over and helped the old man the last few feet into the garage and called 911.

He was more disoriented, embarrassed, and wet than genuinely injured, although he did have a small bump and cut on his forehead from the fall. The paramedic arrived within five minutes which is pretty impressive even when you don't have the extra problems of trees down in the roads and flooding all throughout the region. The old man's wife was awakened (she slept through this whole episode) and the other neighbor and I left so she and the paramedic could get him into some dry clothes.

He will be fine.

I walked back home and told my wife and son how much I love them.

By the way, I am no longer angry about not getting my table saw right away.

Five Projects

When it rains, it pours.


This week I will be going from zero projects to possibly five projects once I get my replacement table saw on Wednesday. I sold my Lego Mindstorms Kit and a dysfunctional Roomba to help subsidize the cost, but more on that later. I will have descriptions for all current projects in the sidebar of this blog and update their status as appropriate. For now here is a brief overview of them all:

1) Pallet Wood End Table – this project has been on hold since my Craftsman table saw died. I am looking forward to picking this project up again this week.

2) Desk Refinishing Project – jimmydunes (a reader and friend) has donated a large wooden desk to this site. He bought it at a used - and now closed - furniture shop in Lockport NY many years ago. He believes it originally came from a local school. There are no markings or metal plaques to identify it any more than that.

It is moderately dinged up but basically it is a nice heavy solid piece in need of some TLC. Personally, I like the way it looks now but I think it will bring in more money for the Puzzle for Charity if I sand and re-finish it.

Technically this project does not need a table saw, but I need to find a work area for it in the garage, and where it goes depends on where the saw ends up.

3) Antiqued End Table – adding a couple of coats of paint to an old oak end table gets it out of my way and into a guest bedroom or onto craigslist. I feel bad painting it (versus sanding and staining it) but it has a lot of curved surfaces which I do not want to deal with and it has been sitting in my garage generating negative value (collecting dust, cluttering up the joint, etc.) for over a year.

4) Siding Repair – repairing water (and maybe insect) damage to a small portion of my garage will require the table saw to ensure nice straight cuts are made to the replacement siding pieces. Parts, stain, and sealant get delivered Wednesday.

5) Play Table – We are in desperate need of more storage for my son’s toys and it would be great if he had a nice, safe play area to use them in (instead of the nightly ritual of turning the living room into an ankle twisting, trip-hazard mine field). Both of these problems would be solved by removing the no-longer-used rocking chair from his room and replacing it with a 3-foot by 3-foot table with ample storage. Although the need is great, this project is in the “maybe” pile because of the nature of the toys that need to be stored. Again, more on this later.

I hope to really push forward on all of these things starting soon but first I need to clean the garage. I have let it go for a while and I am pretty ashamed of the state of it right now. Blame it on Saints Row 2.

Wish me luck.

Single Point Failure (Part II)

Continued from Part I


When is the last time you did not have to go to a specialist for a seemingly mundane physical condition? When you call tech support, does a local rep answer the phone or is it someone half a globe away? When you send your coffee maker or cell phone or Xbox in for repairs (even if you had the skills, the warranty makes it impossible for you to investigate the problem yourself) , does it go to Tassimo or BlackBerry or Microsoft or does it go to some tiny third party repair shop somewhere? When someone does show up at your house to do something, do they have all the tools and skills they need to do the job, or do they need to come back with the right kind of pipe or drill bit or post-hole digger? Was the original job merely sub-contracted out, possibly multiple times?

We are held hostage by our dependence on people with specialist knowledge we need or want. But we all tolerate it because we all do it. This over-specialization frees us to focus only on the things we like to do or are good at, after all. The outsourcing of "menial" skills saves money and we also get the psychological and legal benefits of not needing to take responsibility for anything outside of our purview.

Everything is (with a nod to the late Douglas Adams) “Somebody Else’s Problem”.

But, ironically, as more and more tasks are seen as “menial” and “not my job” it becomes more and more critical that we all know how to do these supposedly unimportant things. It is the classic “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost” scenario.

As has been already mentioned, lack of intellectual diversity – skill focus at the cost of personal growth – is rewarded. This is dangerous in itself but we have moved even beyond that into an area where we (as a society) appear to actually depend on the fact that nobody actually knows how to do anything.

How so?

If a person were to widen their skillset voluntarily they would reduce their individual dependence on others by a small amount. Not only would they be slightly more able to deal with day-to-day problems but doors open to solve related issues as well – sounds good, right?

Imagine a small town whose inhabitants for years have seen the engine compartment of a car as a giant hands-off mystery. Now one of them (because they are broke, tired of waiting at the very slow or rude auto shop, or whatever) becomes curious or desperate enough to try their hand at changing their own oil. They learn how and discover that it is easy to do, cheaper than paying someone to do it, and quicker than waiting in line. They are no longer tied to the business hours of the place down the road and are not forced spend a weekend morning trapped in a service station.

Maybe pride in accomplishment and the newfound courage to try things outside of their comfort zone allows them to try changing their own wiper blades, brake lights, air filter and replacing their old battery. All the mundane stuff that used to eat up so much time or money or both is now taken care of at home for a fraction of the cost. Great!

What happens to the local service station? Nothing. A little less business. A little less profit. The people that work there aren’t affected all that much. After all, it was just one person reversing their personal tendency to outsource the things they aren’t interested in to someone down the road. But what happens when more and more people start learning those skills that they have avoided picking up? Business starts to dip noticeably and eventually the shop workers can no longer be paid. The service station goes under, and the specialists whose livelihood was 100% dependent on the ignorance of the townsfolk are now out of a job.

Zoom the camera out from the hypothetical service station and really look at the situation where you work, where your friends work, and all across the country, and you might be surprised to see that we are sitting in a Learned Helplessness Bubble.

(To be continued…)

Great Job, Sport!

Congrats, Jesse, on your recent induction into the Neverwinter Nights Hall of Fame for your Bard's Tale module!

Not only have you managed to escape from "the crab bucket of New York State", but you have conclusively proven to naysayers that people from our home town can and do finish what they sta...

Hey, look, a squirrel!

Oh, We're Painting the Drywall White... (Updated)

I like to paint rooms. Actually I like doing any chore that involves making big, obvious changes to my environment. Mowing the lawn, staining a piece of furniture, or planting a garden are good examples of this. Unfortunately, a terrible example of this is the painting job I did this weekend.


Over the years the walls have gotten a bit dingy and I needed to repair a gouge in the drywall anyway so I spent some of Saturday painting the hallway and living room.

There is a lot of exposed wood in the place which makes the house look, well, homey, but this limits the shades that can be used. We went with darkish colors for the bedrooms and light blue for the kid’s room but these areas are isolated and therefore look cozy in those hues. An area the size and shape of the hallway/living room needs something a lot lighter or else you risk turning your whole house into a dark cave (it was like that when we first moved in).

The Valspar eggshell paint we chose was called, according to the card, Pale Ivory (114-2). A light color, but obviously not straight-up white which we felt would have been stark and cold. It looked great on the color card at Lowe’s and on the little paint dot on the can lid. In my opinion, however, Valspar’s fancy-pants name for the paint should be re-named “Dingy Drywall White” for all the effect it had on the place.

Other than a very slight wet look, I really had no visual cue on where I started and where I stopped painting. Oh, there were the occasional scuff marks and dirty areas that cleaned up nice with a fresh coat of paint but other than that I don’t see what the point of my 4-hour task was.

I only ended up putting on one coat. I mean, why would I do anything else? All I would be doing by slapping a second coat on is wasting a paint roller, slightly increasing the odds that I would screw something up (spill the paint, paint the trim, etc.) and greatly increasing the odds that I would be sore from stooping and stretching for several more hours. Plus I had no desire to hear myself do the “fat guy grunt” any more that day. You know what I’m talking about. I’m workin’ on it. Leave me alone.

To say I only put on one coat is probably not accurate. I am sure in some places I put between 2 and 5 coats because I had no idea if I had done that area yet. Maybe there are some ways of determining starting and stopping points but “using reflected light along with the gift of vision” is not one of them.

So I removed the 12.6 miles of painter’s tape from the all the fiddly bits of the doorways and exposed ceiling joists and upstairs railing and called it “done”.

There are some positives that have come out of this ho-hum project: 1) I have an extra gallon of the paint sitting in my garage that a friend of mine might be able to use in his new house 2) I was worried that the new paint / old paint border where the kitchen meets the living room would look weird. No worries there. 3) I got to try a tape-removal technique that a friend recommended (worked out great) and 4) My 15-month-old now knows the words “tape” and “sticky” and is familiar with the phrases “Yes, the tape is blue” and “Hey-hey-hey-stop-stop-don’t-pull-the-tape-awwww-dude-that’s-not-funny”.

SnowUrchin Note (11/03/09):  It has come to my attention that some people might think I am unhappy with the actual paint I chose for this project.  That is not true whatsoever.  I am, however, less than proud of my ability to recognize that a paint color card I pick up at Lowe's is the precise shade of the walls of a house I have lived in for the better part of a decade. :)

Single Point Failure (Part I)

I nearly destroyed my cell phone a while ago. Hundreds of irreplaceable pictures, half-written articles, and about an hour of video of my kid were nearly lost because I did not back up the system for a while. One small accident nearly wiped out a lot of precious items and it got me to thinking on how we have all become accustomed to living on a knife edge, merely one seemingly meaningless mishap away from disaster. Where to begin…


Old-school “natural scientists” knew how to do everything – math, science, philosophy, linguistics, art, engineering… you name it. But there are no Renaissance people anymore. It is a rare person indeed that is multi-lingual, plays an instrument, can discuss history and philosophy at length, plays chess, and is an athlete as well as an aesthete. I am not talking about Sir Isaac Newton or Michelangelo, here – those are extreme examples. But today is not unusual to talk with someone who is tops in their field of interest only to discover that they rapidly are out of their depth when the conversation turns even slightly away from their expertise.

It doesn’t matter if it is football or Star Trek or cooking or hunting or opera or whatever. People are more interested in becoming “subject matter experts” in their own field rather than being somewhat knowledgeable over a wide range of topics. There is very little diversity of intellectual portfolios. The subjects people are comfortable with are becoming more and more specialized with very little overlap between them.

As I talked about in my Intelligence is Bliss post, I feel that all people know roughly the same number of facts – all that changes is the type of facts that each person knows. Instead of a broad and smooth curve covering a huge range of topics that lots of people can relate to, people are focusing more and more on less and less. Because the knowledge peak gets higher and higher, the reward (pay, praise, personal satisfaction, etc.) for that knowledge also goes up and this hides a problem.

The area under the “knowledge curve” has not changed so the base becomes narrower and narrower. The overlaps between people’s knowledge begin to disappear. Let use a Jenga analogy. You only have a certain number of blocks. The higher the blocks, the more unstable the structure. Any way you decide to look at it, this is a problem.

But individually, this is behavior to be praised – it is the very definition of success – so people pursue this goal without regard for what is being ignored. This single-dimensionality is rewarded because it is a very, very good short term strategy for success. It allows for no “back-up plan” because that implies that the primary plan could be just a little bit better if those “wasted” resources were used toward the primary goal instead. To further compound the problem, people actually get angry when terms like “cross-training” are brought up because there is friction and disharmony when someone’s personal fiefdom is threatened.

As another example, picture a couple of dozen plate spinners at a circus sideshow, each with their own plate to deal with. If one person gets tired, needs to go to the bathroom, steps out to feed the lions, or whatever it is no big deal because any of the others can pick up the slack. So why have 24 people on the payroll when 23 can do the job just as well? Or 22? Just bump up the pay a little bit for each of the remaining spinners – the saved money can be spent elsewhere, while the remaining people get a few extra bucks and get to become better at what they do. Win-win.

Over time that line of thinking results in the dependence of one or two highly paid specialists that can do nothing but their primary task. They can’t stop without seriously disrupting things, they can’t (or don’t want to) learn a new skill, no one else in the organization is qualified to take their place, and the budget for hiring and training new people has been used for other things. When that person eventually calls in sick, quits, or gets hit by a bus, knowledge is disrupted and the whole system feels the shock as it struggles to recover.

It is not sustainable. As the buttresses that make up the overlap between our skill sets dissolve the structure becomes weaker and weaker. Every single person is now a fragile yet critical load-bearing entity in some form or fashion. It is only a matter of time before the roof collapses from lack of internal support.

This seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Actors and actresses from the 1920s needed to excel at a huge range of skills (acting, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, horseback riding, etc.) just to be considered for a job and they got paid a fraction of what someone today who specializes in just one of those things. Your great-grandfather knew how to do everything from hunting to sewing to building a house, but you are hard pressed to figure out why the mower won’t start or why the fridge is making a funny noise – better call “the guy” and have him come out and look at it. Over the decades, “learned helplessness“ has been nurtured and rewarded by the pursuit of specialization and re-Christened "efficiency".

Expanding the view a bit from a personal or group level we see we are becoming more and more interdependent as a functioning society– not in the way a spider-web becomes stronger with the addition of each new thread, but in the way that the fractures on a thawing pond join just before the ice breaks with a resounding “CRACK”.

(To be continued…)

New Job Quiz

So, despite the floundering economy and your complete lack of tangible abilities you managed to trick some folks into hiring you for what I am sure is a very important position. Congratulations are in order!

Or are they?

Did you miss some danger signs that are often overlooked by overeager new hires? Take this quiz to find out if you should take the job or if you should go back to Johnny Appleseeding your resume around the country and watching The Price is Right. Enjoy!

1) The people who interviewed you were:

A) mostly dressed in suits and ties

B) mostly undressing you with their eyes

C) forcibly undressing you with their hands and teeth

2) Your new workspace could be described by people 100 years from now as:

A) an efficient if Spartan design

B) the primary reason behind The Collapse of the Long Long Ago

C) a den of sinful depravity the likes of which humanity had never seen

3) When you first saw your potential workspace what struck you as most impressive?

A) How shiny and new everything looked.

B) The fact that a CSI team could probably reconstruct a complete sandwich with all the nasty crud that was jammed in the keyboard and mouse.

C) When the light comes through the window just right, you can just make out the words "KILL ME" smeared onto the desk in what seems to be the previous occupant's tears.

4) Describe the bathrooms.

A) Clean and available.

B) 4 toilets for the 4 women that work there, 2 urinals and 2 toilets for the 96 men that work there. Tough but fair.

C) Number of "Wash your Hands" signs are inversely proportional to soap and paper towel availability.

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5) The interviewers told you that meetings where you work will be:

A) A weekly necessary evil for the efficient running of the company.

B) An daily unnecessary evil - more of a diabolical hobby, really.

C) Ten times longer than they need to be because they are dominated by one or two people that won't shut up with the wacky side comments.

6) The breakroom:

A) is a place to get soda or snacks

B) is a place to get soda or snacks assuming you have exact change in nothing but nickels and enjoy two-year-old Munchos and Tab.

C) has a microwave that it so filthy it is technically more "animal" or "vegetable" than "mineral".

7) How did you find out about the position?

A) Internet.

B) Guys in a black van kidnapped you while you were mowing the lawn.

C) Frothing madman on a streetcorner yelling random things at traffic mentioned it.

8) Why is the position open?

A) Company is growing.

B) Something about the volcano god demanding something...

C) Some guys in a black van came and got the other guy.

9) Your future boss appears:

A) smarter than the average bear.

B) angrier than the average bear.

C) smarter than the average chair.

10) On the brief company tour, what most describes the impression you got from seeing management interact with employees?

A) Aloof professionalism.

B) A definite pre-revolutionary France "let them eat cake" vibe.

C) Close relationship enjoyed by Skeksies and Gelflings.
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11) Regardless of how you actually answered the question, how did your gut respond when they asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 years"?

A) "Managing this division."

B) "Drinking wine from the skulls of my vanquished coworkers."

C) "Technology permitting, a little less than 5 light-years away from this awful, awful place."

12) Describe the vacation and sick leave package they offered you.

A) 2 weeks paid vacation 1 week sick leave per year.

B) 2 weeks total per year, but no days can be consecutive or border a weekend or holiday.

C) 2 weeks total per year, but specialized video cameras deduct bathroom breaks, sneezing, blinking, and happy thoughts automatically.

13) When they formally offered you the position, how did they notify you?

A) Letter in the mail.

B) Drunken rant on YouTube.

C) HR rep standing in your yard holding a boombox playing Peter Gabriel.
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If you answered mostly "A", you should be good to go. If you answered mostly "B" or "C" you might want to draw unemployment for a little while longer. Hope this helps.

Intelligence is Bliss

There is no such thing as "smart" or "stupid". All people are equally "smart".
　
Think about it. The sheer number of things that a human has to learn in the first couple of years of life completely eclipses any learning that is done later. You only have to look at how a baby learns the things that you take for granted every day to get an idea of the millions of little facts that everyone has to know just to be able to get up in the morning and make it through the day without dying. Gravity makes things fall down. If I hold my cup like this, it spills. The red square does not fit in the round hole. When something has steam coming off of it, it is probably too hot to touch. What makes it even more astounding is that we are all largely self-taught.
　
All our brains are about the same size. We all have about the same number and quality of neurons. It seems like the capacity for storing information doesn't vary from person to person.
　
If it is not necessarily the number of facts that someone knows, is it the quality of those facts? What does that even mean? Who is to say that is it more important to know how long it takes light to travel from the sun to the Earth versus what the best sunscreen is to use for your baby? Is it somehow "smart" to be able to answer the Final Jeopardy question correctly, but "pedestrian" to be able to recite the recipe to grandma’s famous homemade biscuits? Is it better to know the details of Marco Polo’s travels or the directions to a good Italian restaurant?
　
Let's assume the answer depends on money - supply and demand, say. If the demand for a certain intellectual ability is large and the number of people that can supply that ability is small then the cost of that type of knowledge is high. Therefore those particular facts or abilities can be identified as those things that are "smart", right?
　
Well, no, of course not. It would explain why nuclear engineers get paid more than janitors, but so what? Does the knowledge of how thermal neutrons behave in a zirconium matrix somehow prevent the scientist from mixing bleach- and ammonia-based cleaners in his garage when he gets home from work? "Smart" people are killed every day because they lack one piece of information that people that make many times less than them know by heart.
　
Maybe being smart means being able to survive longer because smart people are better at assimilating information quickly. No. I doubt that car accidents are somehow inversely proportional to IQ. If that were the case, insurance companies would be pushing intelligence tests as a way to determine initial premiums or changing rates based on the number of accredited degrees the insuree has accumulated. Longevity may only indicate someone is lucky or risk-adverse. Lucky is not smart. Neither is boring.
　
It seems that the only real meaningful measure is that if the facts that someone knows increase quality of life, not quantity. If someone knows how to make themselves happy (in ways that are not disruptive or criminal, obviously) then these things they know must be considered "smart". Different things make different people happy – making money, watching football, religion, cooking, enjoying social interactions, etc. There is no universal set – we are all different.
　
So we come back to the beginning. There is no such thing as smart or stupid, only happy and unhappy.

Ignorance might be bliss, but being blissful is not ignorant.

We Have Good News and Bad News...

As I ranted in my last post, I switched over to Fox News. Now I see this. Nice.

Done, Done, Done.

Done. Done. Done. Done. Done.

That's it. No more CNN. I quit.

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About 6 months ago they held a poll at my gym to determine what stations should be displayed on the TVs in front of the treadmills and stationary bikes. I was shocked at the results because Fox News beat out CNN by a margin of 3 to 1. ( Both are currently available for the treadmill runners, by the way. Fox on Monitor 2, CNN on Monitor 6).

Prior to that poll I was absolutely certain only lunatics got their news from Fox - at least that's what Jon Stewart implies. I never watched it but brief glimpses of Glenn Beck's unfocused ranting and crying seemed to confirm that something was seriously wrong in the Quality Control department at Fox News.

Maybe this is the case, maybe not.

I don't consider myself a slow learner and I feel I am pretty tuned in to how the world works. But I am very embarrassed to remember thinking "Well, CNN may not be the best source for news, but at least it's dignified and marginally less overtly biased than that clearly deranged network over on Monitor 2". To word it another way, if President Obama caught Osama bin Laden and personally ground him to powder for a functional, free cancer cure of his own invention, Fox News would complain about the color of the container it comes in. On the other hand if Obama wins, say, the Nobel Peace Prize for doing absolutely nothing noteworthy whatsoever, then CNN would praise the awesome if speculative achievements that he will, of course, have in the future... based on iReports, I guess.

I get my news from multiple sources both offline and on. This way I can compare stories from a bunch of different sources, research facts, determine political leanings of the articles, etc. In addition I can go at my own pace which is about 50 times faster than the way the information dribbles out of the speakers of the TV or radio.

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I always avoid clicking on any links that have sensational sounding headlines that are tied to video links - I won't watch commercials if I don't have to. I have already mentioned that the best way to get me to change the channel is to tell me to wait until after the commercial break for an important update. In the rare cases the "pay attention to me" styled headline is too good to be ignored I still don't click on it - I go to Google News, do a keyword search, and scan the dozens of article headlines that come up until I either a) find a link that goes to a mainstream source that does not require me to watch a commercial or b) get all the info I need from piecing the headlines together without needing to actually read the articles or visit the sites.

I will also no longer be listening to CNN (or CNNHN) on XM Radio in the morning any more for two reasons, both ad related. The first reason is the Nancy Grace commercials where she demands that you watch her by saying "Don't make me issue a warrant". The second is Robin Meade's assertion that you would be somehow abnormal if you would rather listen to an alarm beeping than wake up to the sound of her voice.

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I guarantee you that I would cheerfully endure the most raucous buzzer imaginable than to be forced to listen to her awkwardly metered, lilting, permanently fake incredulous presentations of the "news". For those of you that watch HLN on TV, try listening to it with your eyes shut and focus on the transitions between the news articles. You can almost envision the words "OK, be sad" or "OK, now be wacky" at the top of the teleprompter before each article is read. And the fact that large numbers are expressed in unnecessarily dramatic holy-cow-can-you-believe-it tones is also grating (...the crisis could affect (dramatic pause) uh MILLION people!?!).

On a related note, the poll in the sidebar has been updated. I am extremely interested in your opinion.

The last straw was Lou Dobbs sarcastic, uneducated rant Thursday October 8th about NASA's LCROSS mission impacting the moon the next morning. The specifics of what he said are not important (you can probably find it on YouTube or similar) as the fact he was harshly throwing light on the fact he had no idea what he was talking about, but he was "agin it, dagburn it". I was disgusted. There was simply no place for that level of smarmy, insulting anger on a virtually 100% neutral-interest topic. Sure, spending millions on space missions might not be the nation's highest priority right now, but, Jeez, take it down six or seven notches, would you? And the fact that I know for sure he was out to lunch here puts a lot of other stuff he said in the "questionable" column.

I will be deleting CNN from my quick access buttons on DirecTV and on XM Radio. I will still hit the website as part of my morning routine just in case they start to get their act back together.

I will sort of miss Wolf Blitzer and especially miss Jack Cafferty (I love that guy... So angry!).

In the meantime, you can catch me on the treadmill in front of Monitor Two. At least I know for a fact that stuff is all garbage... They don't pretend to be anything else.

Besides, they might be right after all.

Barack Obama Is Probably Not the Devil

I recently read that 8 percent of all people living in New Jersey think that Barack Obama is the Antichrist as described in the Book of Revelations, and a further 13 percent are “not sure”. Sure the poll was not very scientific, but that's not the point. Start to type in “Book of Revelation” into Google. Look what comes up as the third suggested completion choice - lot of people are looking this stuff up.

Last week Congressman Trent Franks called the President of the United States “an enemy of humanity”. Many people interpreted this out-of-context statement as the honorable gentleman from Arizona calling Mr. Obama the devil (or at least the devil's personal assistant).

I am not a theologian but I have seen a lot of movies and I can honestly say that if the president is the Prince of Darkness, well... they just don't make Princes of Darkness like they used to. Here is my list of reasons why our current President is not Ol' Scratch:

1. Super Dull Beginnings: His birth certificate says he's he was uneventfully born in a Hawaiian hospital. The devil's birth would have been a complicated affair involving a jackal mother and the violent/suspicious deaths of all involved. When everyone on a maternity ward decides to hang themselves simultaneously or just go mad, then you can be more sure of supernatural shenanigans.
2. No Cloven Anything: If he was not whelped here on the material plane, he might not have a belly button (silly Antichrists are always forgetting details like that). We have all seen the pictures of the Commander-in-Chief without his shirt on. No anomalies other than he is in way better shape than 99.9% of the people under his charge. Annoying, yes. Evil, no.
3. Can't Do Attitude: Say what you will about his methods, the Antichrist, traditionally, is known for his ability to get things done. Barack Obama does not appear to have this trait. Look, if Satan wants to have Death Panels whack grandma when she gets the sniffles, then, by gum, he is going to have Death Panels. He is not going to bother to try to sneak them through via an excruciatingly long and boring legislative process.
4. Open Opposition: If someone dared to yell out “You lie!” in the middle of one of Beelzebub's speeches that person would have been instantly immolated in a burst of hellfire, or at least killed in an interesting but extremely unlikely accident within a few days of his outburst. For the same reason people would be much better behaved at town hall meetings. Don't even get me started about the tortures that await Glen Beck.
5. Pleasant Odor: Speaking of smoke, the devil should smell like it, shouldn't he? The President of Venezuela himself made a point of saying could not detect that tell-tale hint of brimstone after Obama spoke at the U.N, and that guy is probably an expert.
6. No Theme Music: Barack Obama is not followed around by creepy pseudo-Latin choral chanting. Dead giveaway, that.
7. Joe Biden: All literature on the subject would seem to strongly indicate that the Antichrist does not, I repeat, not have a wacky, bumbling sidekick.
8. No Male Heir: He has two kids, both girls. The Antichrist has one male child to pass the reins to... I guess for when His Immortal Badness gets tired of full time genocide and takes up golf and genocides only on a strictly part-time basis, you know, just until the boy comes up to speed and then he's out of there... Once the boy gets the hang of the earthquakes... Always wanting to do things his own way... And the locusts can be tricky to handle... Maybe in a few more weeks he'll be ready... (Some old guys never retire, I tell ya. Sad, really.)
9. He's Unfashionably Early. According to the Book of Revelation, by now we should have seen whole bunches of terrifyingly cool stuff happen like stars falling from the sky and oceans of blood and the certain believers disappearing with a smug little POOF before he finally makes his appearance somewhere toward the middle of the second act.
10. No Lame Tattoos: During his reign people should only be able to buy and trade if they have a special sign visible on their hand or forehead (Rev 13:17). I have not had any trouble buying beer at 7-11 and I have not seen ads for “Mark of the Beast Double Coupon Thursdays” at the local Food Lion so I am guessing cash is fine for now.

No... Barack Obama might be a lot of things: a Kenyan, a communist, a terrorist, a socialist, and a lawyer, but I am at least 80% sure he is not the Prince of Darkness.

Unless that's just what he wants us to think...

Oh, he's good...

Congratulations!

At 11 this morning a friend of mine officially became a homeowner for the first time. Congrats, kudos, Bravo Zulu, etc, etc. Also woo hoo!

He took the day off of work to start prepping the new place for the move in. Since it takes a while to get a house up to livability I suggested using a 1980's montage song to speed up the process. There are so many great ones to choose from.

I was going to go with John Cafferty's “Hearts on Fire” but I didn't want him to get the idea that he should beat up his new house out of vengeance. He doesn't need to “Push It To the Limit” as he rises to power in the local Home Owner's Association. And he probably isn't going to need to build-the-laser/study-for-exams, ski the K-12, win the regatta, or stand up to the Cobra-Kai.

No... the only song that will do at all when you need to clean/restore a house is Bone Symphony's “One Foot in Front of the Other”.

Nice. The perfect thing to help calm you down after agreeing to owe someone sufficient money to have you whacked, like, 50 times... easily. It is also somehow creepy to sign a piece of paper with the actual year 2039 on it. I mean, 2039, for crying out loud! Two-zero-three-nine. Think about it!

For some perspective, here are some things that are scheduled to happen over the next three decades. All references from Wikipedia. Me so lazy :).

• 2010 – International Space Station completed.
• 2011 – Tesla Model S electric sedan comes out
• 2012 – Mayan calendar runs out – world ends (*sigh* Again.)
• 2015 – New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto
• 2016 – ITER fusion reactor begins testing
• 2017 – China lands people on the moon/JFK documents are unsealed
• 2019 – Blade Runner dystopia takes place
• 2020 – the Aral Sea is completely gone
• 2021 – attack of the Brood X cicadas / Moore's Law limit reached
• 2022 – Soylent Green false Utopia takes place (Yum!)
• 2025 – Voyagers I and II shut down forever (aww...)
• 2026 – USA's 250th birthday
• 2029 – A T-800 and a T-1000 get sent back in time to protect/kill John Connor
• 2030 – JAXA begins lunar base construction
• 2032 – John Connor assassinated (I guess the T-1000 could have just hung out a while)
• 2033 – ESA lands humans on Mars
• 2035 – Artificial intelligence predicted to be created.
• 2038 – 32-bit clocks overflow (maybe this will shut down the AI...)
• 2039 – House finally paid off.
  

Congrats again, buddy!

C'mon... Are We All Doomed Or Not? (Update)

For those of you following the H1N1 pandemic news, here is some more information for you regarding the "crisis" (also see previous H1N1 post if you are interested).

My (admittedly very basic) analysis shows that the number of daily worldwide deaths due to swine flu has plateaued at 50 or so. As a matter of fact, the 7-day moving average may actually be trending downward, but that is not real clear yet. A huge majority (90%) of the world's population lives north of the equator and this might just be the calm before the flu-season storm. Who knows?

The US has 4.6% of the world population, but accounts for 14.7% of the reported H1N1 deaths. This is most likely due to better identification and reporting than due to population densities. Assuming things stay steady, this seems to imply about 2,700 Americans can expect to die from this each year for the next 3 years (the expected duration of the pandemic). This is about 20 times less than administration’s mid-range estimate, and will bump up the overall death rate in the US by 0.1%. The overall death rate from flu alone will increase by 4.8%.

Run-of-the-mill flu and pneumonia kills about 60,000 Americans every year.

As a comparison to the 2,700 estimate, 4,000 die per year in the USA in house fires and 600 die per year in lightning strikes. So my day-to-day concern is somewhere between those two things. Mind you, I am not a statistician or a medical doctor. I only can look at the information presented by official, unbiased sources and try and figure out how to interpret the numbers in a way that is meaningful to me.

Of course, if millions of people call in sick to work all at the same time our already wounded economy might be temporarily affected a tiny bit. But this might be offset by the huge amount of money being pumped into the works for vaccines, cold and flu remedies, face masks, advertising, etc, etc.

Maybe there is something to worry about, but maybe not. Any thoughts?

Site Update

Some site news:

The Poll has been updated. You can find it in the sidebar on the right.

I am currently 450 pages into the The Codebreakers. Absolutely fantastic so far! If you are a fan of history and have a little math in your background you will love this book.

Going back to the gym this past week has been great. My Wii tells me I am still a disgusting fatbody but also mentions that am headed in the right direction at a good pace. My current BMI has been posted in the sidebar on the right.

Puzzle News: No guesses so far, which is just fine since we still need a 501c charity for the Puzzle for Charity. Remember, the prize will remain at "Braggin' Rights" until a reader suggests a good 501c charity that will receive the Charity Pool money. At that point I will start bumping up the Prize Pool on a non-periodic basis based on donations and money I get from building and selling stuff on craigslist.

Speaking of building stuff, I troubleshot the table saw to the circuitry associated with the switch assembly. It will cost more money, time, and effort to fix it than the table saw is worth. This means the Current Project in the sidebar may be on hold for a long while. Bummer.

Pat. No. 2259691 : Automatic Grownup Sickener

I owe my brother a dollar.

You see, I bet him that the carnies at the local County Fair would have noticeably fewer teeth, on average, than the Niagara County Fair in New York. That wasn't the case at all, although it was a close-run thing. Oh, the arcade boardwalk attendants were creepy enough in their own way, I guess, but not nearly to the level I had hoped. And the ride operators seemed polite yet professionally aloof, not "obviously crazy" or "strung out on meth". Pretty disappointing if you ask me - the carny folk in my day were much more colorful.

After taking Ethan to ride the pony and see the clown and tour the 4H tents my wife convinced me to go on a ride called "The Sizzler".

According to Wikipedia, it goes by various names like Scrambler and Twist. What Wikipedia does not mention, however, is that if the time since you were last on one can be measured in decades (like me), you need to stay the hell away from it at all costs.

I won't bother describing the ride to you since you either 1) looked up the Wikipedia reference 2) already know what I am talking about or 3) don't care what I am talking about and went on to see if there are any hints yet regarding the Puzzle for Charity (sidebar on the right).

[For those who are interested Patent Number 2259691 is actually named "Merry-Go-Round". My only guess is that in 1941 they had a vastly different definition of the word "merry" than I understand it now. For the technically inclined, read the third paragraph of the patent for a good chuckle.]

My wife and I sit down and the carny comes over and recommends we switch places, which was cool of him because during a lot of this ride you are pulling over 2 gees and the person on the outside seat really takes the brunt of the forces. We switch and the ride starts up.

Lots of fun. For about 30 seconds.

At that point my wife starts laughing hysterically and treating everyone around us to a non-stop, heavily Doppler-shifted stream of swear words. I became nauseous and lost the ability to focus my eyes on objects outside the ride so I just focused instead on wishing I was dead.

Sometime between 1 minute and 6 hours later the ride gently glided to a halt. As I was nursing my ribs and trying to keep down my breakfast and small instestines my wife hops off and immediately demands money for a candy apple. I guess I should just be happy she didn't jump around and giggle "Again! Again!"

Hey, don't look at me like that. I distinctly remember enjoying this ride in the past, but I am not looking forward to the day that Ethan is tall enough to go on. Hopefully my brother can parlay the dollar I owe him into enough cash by then (stock market, lottery, whatever) so he can hire me a stunt double.

Wii Guilt

Lately (the past two months, say) I have been eating whatever I want in enormous quantities while sitting at a desk all day. Now, for some mysterious reason, my pants are a little tight.

I'm not sure why I am putting on weight, but it's probably genetic. Either that, or it is society's fault for making everything so darn delicious. Wait.. wait... if the lawmakers would get off their backsides and implement a mandatory 5-day waiting period for a can of Pringles I wouldn't be in this mess. That's who's to blame! The gub'ment!

Banning trans-fats is a good first step, but it doesn't go nearly far enough in protecting us from ourselves. Congress should mandate that waiters and waitresses describe appetizers in such colorful and artery-clogging terms that you actually experience chest pains half-way though their speech. If you proceed to place an order for unhealthy things anyway then the servers should at that time look you up and down in disgust and say “Are you sure?” If you still place your order they are allowed to hurl direct insults for the entire time you are there: “Are you enjoying devouring your grease-laden cheese blobs, there, fatty? Good. Should I hook you the defibrillator now or do you just want a feather and a bucket to puke into before your probable six or seven desserts, you disgusting, disgusting person?”

The servers might comment that this would result in a drop-off of tips but they should know that helping a fellow human being has rewards far beyond the measure of mere money. If the cash turns out to be important after all, maybe some Stimulus Money could be used to subsidize the restaurant industry to make up for the slight decrease in pay and huge increase in civil cases... call it Cash for Chunkers.

Speaking of which, I heard that Obama's Health Care Plan has free, quarterly, and (for some bio-diesel related reason), compulsory liposuction sessions so I am really looking forward to that. After voluntarily treating myself like a veal calf for so long I barely have the energy required to wake myself up after falling asleep mid-way through my fourth lunch-time Big Mac. Something had to be done and I am glad that someone in charge stood up to take care of me because, let's face it, I am in absolutely no condition to be standing up under my own power.

Okay, Okay... Fine. I'm going back to the gym starting tomorrow, but hear me out.

Actually I have a pretty decent reason for not going to the gym for so long. It's not a great excuse, but at least it's plausible. I needed to work late a lot over the last several months to cover some projects at the office. This pushed the time that I would have eventually gotten home after my workout to about 8 or 8:30 or so, which is near bath-time/bed-time for my one-year-old. I see little enough of my son as it is so that was not going to happen. He comes first.

Those of you that know me know that the above paragraph is 100% true while being only about 10% convincing. Friends and family should be muttering: First, even if you don't have time to go to the gym at night how do you justify your abrupt change in diet from mostly low-carb to almost entirely drive-thru? Second, couldn't you just get up a little earlier and go to the gym in the morning, or at least walk around the neighborhood? Third, you can tell when you have had enough pizza way, way before the shooting pains you get from distending your stomach force you to stop. Fourth, don't you own a Wii Fit?

Ah, yes, the Wii Fit. Bought in a moment of misguided ambition to augment my gym workouts and help me spend more time with the wife doing something competitive and healthy without having to worry about the baby. Unfortunately, even if you were the type to want to ignore your child completely, you cannot do anything remotely non-toddler-related other than sit very, very still while he is playing and hope he doesn't notice you blatantly not paying attention to him. If he does, he is coming over to see just what the hell could be more important that watching him put together and take apart the same two Duplo blocks 1,200 times in a row.

Jumping around on the Wii board is completely out of the question with him underfoot – he would never in a million years be content with merely watching when daddy is “dancing” or doing other crazy stuff. And we can't use it while he is napping because of the noise it would make.

Yes, this is, again, 100% true without being 100% straightforward. There are plenty of activities on the Wii Fit that aren't hazards to curious toddlers. There are even more that are nice and quiet, like the yoga and leg lifts. So what, really, is the real reason, really, for not using it, really?

It's that smug little Wii Fit icon. It's so damn cute that I initially found myself anthropomorphizing it and actually wanting to please it. I felt just crummy when I didn't. As a matter of fact I felt guilty as hell whenever I didn't meet its (admittedly perfectly reasonable) goals that I avoided using the Wii Fit for long stretches of time. That only made things worse because whenever the unit was fired up (like if I wanted to play Mario Carts or something) I could see a slow passive-aggressive scroll across the Wii Fit channel icon that said “Last Workout: over one week ago”.

So now I don't turn the Wii on at all now if I can help it. I just know that as soon as I log into Wii Fit it will ask me where I have been and ask me to weigh myself and inform me in that adorable little voice it has that I am overweight. And then I will feel sad and probably cry and eat Doritos. Man, I feel like I am in the lamest made-for-TV movie about abusive relationships ever.

But my son and wife deserve a father and husband that at least tries to look like he isn't constructed entirely out of Chicken McNuggets, so I am going to suck it up and get back in the game. Tonight I am getting on the damn board, checking my BMI, and posting it weekly in the sidebar of this blog. As time goes on I might put up little graphs to show how well or poorly I am doing. We'll see.

Like I said, I am going back to the gym as well. It's is something I really enjoy doing so hopefully nothing will get in the way of that. And who knows, maybe if I work hard enough the little Wii Fit icon will finally stop calling me fatso and love me again. Like in the old days...