I like to mix things, like food.
Try this:
Yum, for about $4 you get a very filling meal quick and easy.
Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.
In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.
You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.
The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.
So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.
That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.
I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.
My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.
But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.
So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.
So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.
Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.
Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”
Let me say up front that there is ample reason to be a global warming skeptic. Especially if one is skeptical about the anthropogenic affects. There is no doubt that earth has undergone huge climate variations in the past. From a “Snowball Earth” to a mostly tropical climate through the Jurassic.
With that said, “What the frak are skeptics thinking?”
Really?
Dogma once held that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Then a guy comes along and says, “You know, I have this model of the solar system that works pretty darn good with the Sun at the center of the solar system.” (*Note: that’s not completely accurate.)
Dogma responds, rather vehemently, that dogma is correct because it’s dogma.
Some might call that a circular argument. But a dogmatist would respond to that by saying, “You’re being inconsistent because you think that it’s okay for planets to go in circles but not arguments.” This is the sort of statement that really stupid people fall for.
Another guy had a fairly simple idea that would explain the wild diversity of nature based entirely on who gets laid. He loosened a shit storm that is still raging despite an overwhelming body of evidence. I mean if evidence had mass then the theory of evolution would collapse into a black hole. Going along with that analogy, skeptics must have some exotic method of reasoning that is not effected by data.
What else? Space travel is not possible; heavier than air machines won’t fly; heart surgery can’t be done not to mention brain surgery; Everest can’t be climbed; continents don’t move; God does not play dice with the Universe . . . I could go on, and on.
Skeptics have such a horrible batting average that if skepticism could be measured it would count as scientific evidence for a theory. I can see the headlines now, “Engineers build space ship capable of faster than light travel powered by skepticism that it can’t be done.”
One might say that skeptics keep people from being overly gullible. But how many gullible people fall for the argument of the skeptic only to eventually end up feeling gullible?
After much thought I have come up with a theory to explain skepticism. Most people don’t want to believe things. And they certainly don’t want to understand things. They want to Know things - with a capital “K”. How do you know something? You listen to an authority figure talk. They tell you what you there is to know.
Where do authority figures get their knowledge from? Simple, they figure out what it is that they need to get people to know so that they can get what they want.
So if you don’t believe in my theory then I’m going to argue that that is evidence to support my theory.
Ha! Take that you skeptic.
*The Copernican model was not as accurate at predicting planetary movements as the ruling Polyatomic model because Copernicus used circles instead of ellipsis. Once Kepler fixed the Copernican model it worked much better than the Ptolemaic.
This is a short tour of my office here in Crestline, CA. I’d love to show more of the house but the webCam cable won’t reach. 
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Weird Al really has his geek on for these two videos:
Weird Al-Star Wars/American Pie
And just for kicks: Amish Paradise
Here is a roughly chronological list of the events of mine and Jill’s moving experience to Crestline, California.
It all starts in late 2007 when Jill and I decide to move to the mountains outside of Los Angeles to be closer to our families. It’s a bit of a rush to move, and what complicates matters is that we don’t have a place to move into. Fortunately, our local real estate agent has a vacation cabin that she is willing to rent to us cheap, because it’s usually unoccupied during the winter months anyway.
We drive down the coast
The final packing begins on December 28th, after my last day at Smilebox.com. I picked up a 6×10 Uhaul trailer and loaded it to the roof. We took off on December 31st and made it just a few miles down I-5 before we stopped to spend the night in a shit-hole town near Long View, Washington.
I was sound asleep when the New Year rolled in. I think Jill was reading a book.
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Day Two comes and the weather is a bit nasty as we make it down US 101 along the Oregon coast. Jill found a great little hotel in Newport, right on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the stormy Pacific. The problem was that the entrance to the hotel was far too steep for me to drive the Pathfinder up while hauling a Uhaul trailer.
Unfortunately, one of the owners suggested we could park at a vacant house next door. I drive down a few hundred feet and turn into the driveway. Problem: there is not enough room for me to turn around and I end up getting stuck in their gravel driveway. (Note: getting Uhauls stuck becomes a theme of this adventure. )
Uhaul fun, part one
So me and this guy work together to get the trailer turned around, and I unhook the Pathfinder and drive back to the hotel. Now I’m a bit edgy because I have no idea how I’m going to get that trailer out of the driveway. But, as fortune would have it, the guy who suggested I park there in the first place goes down early the next morning. He kindly uses his truck to pull the trailer out and down to a nice paved and flat storage area not far away.
Jill and I ended up staying at the hotel for 3 nights, just relaxing. During this time one of the worst Pacific storms in years is coming ashore. We sat by the fireplace and watched the crashing waves.
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After resting up we drive on down the coast a bit further to Bandon and stay in a place for two nights with an even better sea stacks-type view.
After this stop we drive pretty long days to get to LA. This is where the fun really begins.
The Crestline vacation cabin
I unloaded the Uhaul trailer into a storage unit down in San Bernardino and we take just the essentials, computers, desks, and such, up to the cabin we’re staying in up in Crestline.
Remember that storm that I mentioned earlier? Well, it didn’t just hit Oregon. It covered the entire coast and dumped about 2 feet of snow in Crestline. By the time we get there the roads are plowed and clear but no one had been to the cabin yet to clear a path.
Unfortunately, someone had stolen the snow shovel, and the only thing I had to use was a little iron shovel that’s supposed to be for the fireplace. It doesn’t take long to break that flimsy little thing. I end up on my knees shoveling icy snow off the steps with this tiny utensil so that I can carry our electronics into the cabin.
The next day the cable guy comes out and installs cable Internet access so that Jill and I can work. That much goes well and after a few weeks we are just about caught up with work when another big storm comes through. This one dumps more snow and knocks out the power. Not just to our house. Not just to the neighborhood. But to the entire mountain top community.
No power, no heat
We spend the night under every blanket in the cabin as the temperature drops down near freezing. The next day - Friday - we head down to Jill’s parents house in San Diego to relax in a warmer climate while they work on getting the power restored.
By Sunday, I’m pretty sure they have the power back on, so we head back up to the cabin. I was wrong. The power is still out. There’s nothing to do but get back in bed under all the blankets and hope the power comes back on soon.
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Around 10 AM on Monday the power finally comes back on. And then goes out. And then comes back on. And so on. For days.
Now Jill and I are behind on our work again but finally the power is back on for good and the weather is warm. And to top things off, we have found a permanent place to move into starting February 1st. All good news!
Looking for rentals - back and forth at the whims of fate
( Note: it’s a bit stressful to get bounced between choices. )
A stuck truck - Uhaul fun, part two
The week leading up to our move has great weather. The snow is almost all melted. Roads clear. Here we go.
Day one we move everything from the cabin over to our house. One little problem is that the owner hasn’t gotten everything out of the house yet. So we have a mixture of our furniture and his cluttering up the house. The house is also dirty and swimming in spiders. Not a good start.
Day two of the moving and I go down to San Bernardino and rent a Uhaul truck to bring the rest of our stuff up from storage. This is going to be a quick move. I’ll load up the truck, haul it up the mountain with all the big stuff that won’t fit in the Pathfinder, unload real quick and head back down. One day and get it over with.
Once I get the Uhaul truck unloaded I start to drive back up the access road. No go. The tires just spin on the wet asphalt. I should mention that our access road is as steep as a road can be and still get paved. The Uhaul just doesn’t have the traction on the wet asphalt to get up the hill.
Okay, so I’ll just wait till the next day and get down to San Bernardino to pick up the Pathfinder. I’m sure that I can use it to help pull the Uhaul up the road.
Next morning I get up. Look outside and there’s a fresh 8 inches of snow on the ground. I’m not going anywhere!
I start the day by shoveling a path up to the top of the hill. It’s only about 300 feet or so. There’s not much else I can do. It snows some more and I shovel some more. Repeat all day, fall into bed exhausted.
 The path here at the bottom leads beside the Uhaul. The Uhaul truck is just out of frame to the right. |
The next day I get a ride down to San Bernardino to bring the Pathfinder back. At least we will finally have transportation.
It turns out I can only get the Pathfinder about 1/4 of the way down the access road. I’ll have to carry things down the rest of the way. I counted 45 trips - give or take a few. At least it’s good exercise.
Still stuck and now one handed
After shoveling all this snow I’ve injured my right wrist. At first it’s just tender and difficult to grasp and twist things. But after another day it becomes debilitating. But, work must go on so I’m still out there shoveling, carrying and making it worse and worse by the day.
Finally I get a guy to come out with a small tractor with rubber treads to clear away enough snow to get the Uhaul truck out. After he clears away most of the snow we realize that there’s no way he can pull the truck out until the next day when the remainder of the ice/snow melts.
The next day the owner of the house we are renting shows up to get his stuff out of here. He’s a retired man and not used to the 5000 + foot altitude here so I help him out - even though it’s killing my wrist.
He realizes that it’s going to take days to get everything out with his small little trailer and get his furniture down the mountain. But then we have an idea. Why not load it all in the Uhaul? The extra weight will help it get better traction going up the hill. When the guy shows up with his tractor we’ll zip right no out of here.
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Well, the guy with the tractor shows up with just his truck. He thinks he can get me out with that so we hook up and give it a try.
The extra weight in the Uhaul definitely helps. I can get much further up the hill than before. The problem: the guy trying to pull me can’t get out himself. Now he’s stuck. His wheelbase is much wider and he’s spinning in the snow.
So I run up the hill, back the Pathfinder down and hook on.
Zip, right up the hill we go. No problem - except that I tied onto his crash bar and ripped the hell out of it. Whoops! He said he has a welder and stuff to fix it, no worries. I feel bad that he’s the one who got his truck stuck.
Now I back down with the Pathfinder and hook up to try and pull the Uhaul out. Mind you that we have to clear a bunch of snow again because the guy with the truck has made a mess out of our clean path up the hill. I take more Ibuprofen and grit my teeth.
 This is the final leg to the house. The Uhaul truck is just out of frame to the right. |
After injuring my wrist even more I start pulling the Uhaul up with the Pathfinder. Zip, up and out, no problem. When I get to the top the guy driving - the guy who owns the house we’re moving into - says, “You know, I had the emergency break on all the way up.”
The Pathfinder is a stud. That much is certain.
Moved in at last and Uhaul-free
Now we have all the stuff that’s supposed to be in the house here. And everything that’s not supposed to be here is finally gone. The Uhaul truck was returned 6 days late but at least it’s done. Now we can get down to organizing, and putting things together. The fun part of the move.
Jill and I both agree: the next time we move we’re paying someone to do it for us.
My idea is to create a sporting cross between Mountaineering and Moving called Movaneering. Here’s how it works:
Just like traditional mountaineering - or whoosy man mountaineering as I like to call it now - this new sport is performed at high altitude, 5000 feet or more.
 Here is an example of the sort of trail you might dig in a movaneering event. Note, the bottom step is exposed in this photo. There is still another 6 inches to go before reaching the ground. |
Mountaineers hike on trails. But a movaneer creates his/her own trail by digging in the snow and ice down to solid earth with a variety of shovels.
A mountaineer carries a backpack. A movaneer carries things like bookshelves and couches. Plus numerous boxes of books. And of course the movaneer always works solo. He carries everything all alone, over icy paths that he clears himself.
When a movaneer takes a rest he won’t just sit back and relax in front of a fire. No, a movaneer sits down at his computer and works.
A movaneer doesn’t slow down when he suffers an injury. Whether it be broken toes or a sprained wrist a movaneer just grits his teeth and mushes on.
The main thing that mountaineering has in common with movaneering is the goal of accomplishment. In mountaineering the goal is to climb to a summit and return. In movaneering the goal is to unload the UHaul truck.
If you’re up to the challenge and would like to become a movaneer, then I suggest doing lots of abdominal exercises to prevent injuring your back. You should train by lifting the furniture in your house, by yourself, and moving it around. Eventually you can work yourself up to where you can carry a couch solo over an icy incline.
I’m talking to ESPN about adding this to the Winter X Games. I’ll keep you posted on how the negotiations go.
How long do you work on a given project? I’m just guessing but I’d say 4-6 months is probably the average. Some projects might take in the ballpark of a year or so but few stretch on past that.
But what would it be like if we could work on the same project for years. Granted we would want it to be a pretty damn cool project but still. Just imagine how your RIA, or application, whatever, might work if you devoted a decade to it.
The work of Theo Jansen is a good example of what you might be able to do if you were able to devote 16 years to a project. Although he is an artist, not an engineer, his art looks like a cross between what Leonardo, Babbage and Darwin might have done had they worked together. The thought and care that has gone into his amazing creations are an inspiration.
It’s too bad that few people get to work on projects like this: open ended, little or no oversight, and suffecent funding. Today it’s about getting to market first with no critical bugs. Or getting a new design out without serious testing. Or publishing with little or no editing.
What do you think the Lord of the Rings trilogy would have been like if Tolken hadn’t taken a few decades to write and rewrite over and over again?
I’m not even sure what I would want to work on if I had that freedom. But it’s fun to think about.
What would you do?
Passwords used to be something that only kids with a tree house or CIA agents needed. Could you have imagined 10 years ago that you would have so many places where you would need passwords? Doubtful, unless you thought you would grow up to be a spy.
With the need for so many passwords it’s hard to keep them sorted out - of course, everyone tells you not to use something that is too personal that someone might be able to guess. So, here’s a list potential passwords from, mostly, science fiction movies.
Star Trek
The Matrix Trilogy
X-Files
Contact
Terminator
War Games
Sneakers
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
December 6, 2001
If you wondered about all those flights that were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of September 11th, here is an up-close-and-personal story written by a Delta Airlines flight attendant enroute from Frankfurt to Atlanta.
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We were about 5 hours out of Frankfurt flying over the North Atlantic and I was in my crew rest seat taking my scheduled rest break. All of a sudden the curtains parted violently and I was told to go to the cockpit, right now, to see the captain. As soon as I got there I noticed that the crew had one of those All Business” looks on their faces. The captain handed me a printed message. I quickly read the message and realized the importance of it. The message was from Atlanta, addressed to our flight, and simply said, “All airways over the Continental US are closed. Land ASAP at the nearest airport, advise your destination.”
Now, when a dispatcher tells you to land immediately without suggesting which airport, one can assume that the dispatcher has reluctantly given up control of the flight to the captain. We knew it was a serious situation and we needed to find terra firma quickly. It was quickly decided that the nearest airport was 400 miles away, behind our right shoulder, in Gander, on the island of New Foundland. A quick request was made to the Canadian traffic controller and a right turn, directly to Gander, was approved immediately. We found out later why there was no hesitation by the Canadian controller approving our request. We, the in-flight crew, were told to get the airplane ready for an immediate landing.
While this was going on another message arrived from Atlanta telling us about some terrorist activity in the New York area. We briefed the in-flight crew about going to Gander and we went about our business ‘closing down’ the airplane for a landing. A few minutes later I went back to the cockpit to find out that some airplanes had been hijacked and were being flown into buildings all over the US. We decided to make an announcement and LIE to the passengers for the time being. We told them that an instrument problem had arisen on the airplane and that we needed to land at Gander, to have it checked. We promised to give more information after landing in Gander. There were many unhappy passengers but that is par for the course.
We landed in Gander about 40 minutes after the start of this episode. There were already about 20 other airplanes on the ground from all over the world. After we parked on the ramp the captain made the following announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, you must be wondering if all these airplanes around us have the same instrument problem as we have. But the reality is that we are here for a good reason.” Then he went on to explain the little bit we knew about the situation in the US. There were loud gasps and stares of disbelief. Local time at Gander was 12:30 p.m. (11:00 a.m. EST) Gander control told us to stay put. No one was allowed to get off the aircraft. No one on the ground was allowed to come near the aircrafts. Only a car from the airport police would come around once in a while, look us over and go on to the next airplane.
In the next hour or so all the airways over the North Atlantic were vacated and Gander alone ended up with 53 airplanes from all over the world, out of which 27 were flying US flags. We were told that each and every plane was to be offloaded, one at a time, with the foreign carriers given the priority. We were No. 14 in the US category. We were further told that we would be given a tentative time to deplane at 6 p.m.
Meanwhile bits of news started to come in over the aircraft radio and for the first time we learned that airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in DC. People were trying to use their cell phones but were unable to connect due to a different cell system in Canada. Some did get through but were only able to get to the Canadian operator who would tell them that the lines to the US were either blocked or jammed and to try again.
Some time late in the evening the news filtered to us that the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed and that a fourth hijacking had resulted in a crash. Now the passengers were totally bewildered and emotionally exhausted but stayed calm as we kept reminding them to look around to see that we were not the only ones in this predicament. There were 52 other planes with people on them in the same situation. We also told them that the Canadian Government was in charge and we were at their mercy. True to their word, at 6 p.m.,Gander airport told us that our turn to deplane would come at 11 a.m., the next morning. That took the last wind out of the passengers and they simply resigned and accepted this news without much noise and really started to get into a mode of spending the night on the airplane.
Gander had promised us any and all medical attention if needed; medicine, water, and lavatory servicing. And they were true to their word. Fortunately we had no medical situation during the night. We did have a young lady who was 33 weeks into her pregnancy. We took REALLY good care of her.
The night passed without any further complications on our airplane despite the uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. About 10:30 on the morning of the 12th we were told to get ready to leave the aircraft. A convoy of school buses showed up at the side of the airplane, the stairway was hooked up and the passengers were taken to the terminal for processing. We, the crew, were taken to the same terminal but were told to go to a different section, where we were processed through Immigration and customs and then had to register with the Red Cross.
After that we were isolated from our passengers and were taken in a caravan of vans to a very small hotel in the town of Gander. We had no idea where our passengers were going. The town of Gander has a population of 10,400 people. Red Cross told us that they were going to process about 10,500 passengers from all the airplanes that were forced into Gander. We were told to just relax at the hotel and wait for a call to go back to the airport, but not to expect that call for a while.
We found out the total scope of the terror back home only after getting to our hotel and turning on the TV, 24 hours after it all started. Meanwhile we enjoyed ourselves going around town discovering things and enjoying the hospitality. The people were so friendly and they just knew that we were the “Plane People.” We all had a great time until we got that call, 2 days later, on the 14th at 7 a.m. We made it to the airport by 8:30 a.m. and left for Atlanta at 12:30 p.m. arriving in Atlanta at about 4:30 p.m. (Gander is 1 hour and 30 minutes ahead of EST, yes!, 1 hour and 30 minutes.)
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. What passengers told us was so uplifting and incredible and the timing couldn’t have been better. We found out that Gander and the surrounding small communities, within a 75 Kilometer radius, had closed all the high schools, meeting halls, lodges, and any other large gathering places. They converted all these facilities to a mass lodging area. Some had cots set up, some had mats with sleeping bags and pillows set up. ALL the high school students HAD to volunteer taking care of the “GUESTS.” Our 218 passengers ended up in a town called Lewisporte, about 45 Kilometers from Gander. There they were put in a high school. If any women wanted to be in a women-only facility, that was arranged. Families were kept together. All the elderly passengers were given no choice and were taken to private homes.
Remember that young pregnant lady, she was put up in a private home right across the street from a 24 hour Urgent Care type facility. There were DDS on call and they had both male and female nurses available and stayed with the crowd for the duration. Phone calls and emails to US and Europe were available for everyone once a day. During the days the passengers were given a choice of “Excursion” trips. Some people went on boat cruises of the lakes and harbors. Some went to see the local forests. Local bakeries stayed open to make fresh bread for the guests. Food was prepared by all the residents and brought to the school for those who elected to stay put. Others were driven to the eatery of their choice and fed. They were give tokens to go to the local Laundromat to wash their clothes, since their luggage was still on the aircraft. In other words every single need was met for those unfortunate travelers. Passengers were crying while telling us these stories.
After all that, they were delivered to the airport right on time and without a single one missing or late. All because the local Red Cross had all the information about the goings on back at Gander and knew which group needed to leave for the airport at what time. Absolutely incredible.
When passengers came on board, it was like they had been on a cruise. Everybody knew everybody else by their name. They were swapping stories of their stay, impressing each other with who had the better time. It was mind-boggling. Our flight back to Atlanta looked like a party flight. We simply stayed out of their way. The passengers had totally bonded and they
were calling each other by their first names, exchanging phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses.
And then a strange thing happened. One of our business class passengers approached me and asked if he could speak over the PA to his fellow passengers. We never, never, allow that. But something told me to get out of his way. I said “of course.” The gentleman picked up the PA and reminded everyone about what they had just gone through in the last few days. He reminded them of the hospitality they had received at the hands of total strangers. He further stated that he would like to do something in return for the good folks of the town of Lewisporte. He said he was going to set up a Trust Fund under the name of DELTA 15 (our flight number). The purpose of the trust fund is to provide a scholarship for high school student(s) of Lewisporte to help them go to college. He asked for donations of any amount from his fellow travelers.
When the paper with donations got back to us with the amounts, names, phone numbers and addresses, it totaled to $14.5K or about $20K Canadian. The gentleman who started all this turned out to be an MD from Virginia. He promised to match the donations and to start the administrative work on the scholarship. He also said that he would forward this proposal to Delta Corporate and ask them to donate as well.
Why, all of this? Just because some people in far away places were kind to some strangers, who happened to literally drop in among them? WHY NOT?
I wish we could get more of this kind of news.
