...blog of todd...

Considerations...

2010-05-30T23:40:00.000-05:00

I've decided to go to Haiti. Tickets are purchased, along with the in country fees (tuition), insurances, and many items from the list of take alongs. Hoping to visit the Travel Clinic on Tuesday. Need to be packed and ready to go by Wed evening.

Although it has been several months now since the quake, the infrastructure to support the assistance provided by those coming in to help is not really in place yet. We'll believe we'll be working on some piece of that while we are there.

We think we'll be helping to finish space on the 2nd floor of the HQ building, construct part of a bunkhouse, or perhaps work on an orphanage. Or - maybe something else entirely. We've been coached to remain flexible once we get there...

We leave early this Friday morning. We're trying to take along some of the things they need there to leave behind. Here's a page that lists some of those kinds of things - some are mundane - some are pretty specific.

http://www.efca.org/reachglobal/reachglobal-ministries/efca-touchglobal/efca-touchglobal-crisis-response/urgent-needs/-18

The infrastructure problem means it's difficult to get the things they need just to keep things moving and improving. Scroll down the page a bit to see the extensive list of specific needs they have.

- Peace, Todd

Haiti...

2010-05-23T14:19:00.001-05:00

I'm considering going on a missions trip to Haiti for a week to help with some building. In two weeks. Considering.

But - passport is in order - and Laura is supportive. So I'm going to continue looking into it and thinking about it...

Stay tuned to see if this goes forward - or just turns out to be a good idea that doesn't pan out.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Plusses and minuses of going forward with something like this?

- Peace, Todd

Sweet 'Taters v Yams: What's the Story Morning Glory?

2007-11-21T12:59:00.001-06:00

So this is the time of year when traditional holiday food items make their way to the collective front of the national culinary lobe. And - if you are like most people - when the category of sweet potatoes finds its way into conversation for any length of time, there follows a general sense of confusion about what is a yam, what is a sweet potato, whether they are related, and where to get them in the event that you prefer one over the other...

It turns out that - in the United States - actual yams are not that common. Instead, what you ARE likely to see in the produce section of your local grocery store are two varieties of sweet potato - a white or pale yellow variety labeled correctly as sweet potatoes and a second orange, sweeter variety confusingly labeled as yams for obscure historical reasons.

Sweet potatoes, as it happens, are a variety of Morning Glory. Actual yams are the bulb or tuber of a vine that grows natively in more tropical climates such as South America and Africa, and can grow to be quite large (several feet in length and over 100 pounds).

Here's a more scholarly breakdown of the differences, in case you are interested:

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-23-a.html

Lore of Yore - Switchboards and Stacker Teams

2007-10-01T07:09:00.000-05:00

Spent the past week in Chicago working, and then, for a variety of reasons, stayed for part (most) of the weekend before returning home Sunday afternoon/evening.

Before driving back to Ames from Des Moines, though, I stopped to see Mom and Dad and Grandma out at Grandma's place in Pleasant Hill. While there, we had several interesting discussions hearkening back to days of yore...

(insert time travel music and don special effects glasses that make your vision go all wavy and fade from color to black and white)

We were talking about computers (well - Dad and I were) and we kept saying the word Software - and so Grandma asked what that was. I tried explaining that anything you run on your computer - like the programs that we use to show her pictures or videos - is software. "So it isn't really soft then?" To explain why it's called software, it seemed like a good idea to explain what hardware is. And then that software is this flexible, relatively easy to change thing that allows us to get a computer to behave in different ways without swapping out its physical parts or redesigning the way it's put together (like they did in the way olden days - back in the 50's) .

But alas - it just didn't seem like I was getting through. Then I remembered that Grandma used to work as a switchboard operator for the phone company back in Onaga before she got married to Grandpa Falk - back in the days when you had to plug wires into sockets to connect one person with another person. I told her that the switchboard was a kind of hardware that she would "re-assemble" to get it to behave differently (by changing which person's phone line was connected with which other person's phone line). And that today, all that is handled by software (although I'm not entirely certain all switching equipment is solid state as opposed to having something mechanical going on inside, even if it is actually automated).

Grandma looked like she might possibly have made a little headway with that (and maybe she really did) and then she started talking about how she used to earn $30 per month working for the phone company (which I'd heard before - some of you may have too), and - get this - how they used to listen in on people's calls when they were bored (they actually had to check the line periodically to see if it was still in use). Most of the time they'd check and people would still be on the line talking about very uninteresting things. Occasionally they'd be a bit more interesting - talking about money or some guy had called some girl or woman he wasn't supposed to be talking to (cause he had a wife or girlfriend already). I guess it could get a little dull hanging out at the phone company some nights when Grandma was working, and so listening just a little longer when the conversation on the line wasn't completely boring livened things up or perhaps just made the time pass a little faster. They were definitely not supposed to do it, though, and would have been fired if the wrong person found out.

The $30 per month reminded Dad that he and his brother used to make $1 a day driving a stacker team for their uncles. That was how they earned enough money to buy their first bike - for a staggering sum of $40 at that time. This would have been when Dad was about 10 or so. He and Leon (but not Leroy - too young) were so excited when the bike came that they didn't wait for Grandpa to help them put it together - they just did it themselves. And in their excitement, they didn't get all the fasteners on tightly (and maybe even had a few parts left over?). So when they were trying to ride the bike, it was pretty wobbly with the tires flopping and rubbing against the forks and fenders.

They used to take the bike and ride it out to Hwy 16 - all the way around the square mile for a total of four miles - on the sand roads they had at the time. Sand roads, as you might imagine, were challenging to ride a bike on. Plus, they had these big sand ridges along the sides from being graded frequently to even out the traffic induced ruts and ridges in the road. Ridges too big to just ride your bike over to get out of the way when cars came down the road. At least, not without wiping out most of the time. So they would have to stop the bike and pull it off the road when a car or truck came by.

When Dad was 15 or so (Sophomore in High School), they put plumbing in at home there in Duluth. He and Leon were busy digging the pit for a septic tank. This was the same time Hwy 16 was turned into an oiled road. They were pretty excited about riding the bike on a nice smooth oiled road after years of riding on sand roads. In fact, they were so excited about it that when sister Laurel took off on the bike (presumably while they were digging the hole for the septic tank) and got to be the first one to ride it on the oiled road, it made the boys pretty mad!

Going back to the the bit about driving stacker teams - it turns out Grandma used to drive a stacker team for Grandpa and Great Uncle Oscar, too. We had a discussion about "traces" and "trees" and other components of the hardware used to attach the horses to the wagons. The traces hung down pretty close to the ground and sometimes the horses would step outside their traces or get them tangled between their legs and Grandpa or Oscar would have to come deal with that because the horses scared Grandma.

Dad talked about how at the end of the day, the horses, knowing it was time to go home, and very ready to get there, could be a little hard to control once they were free of the thing they'd been hauling around all day. Especially hard to control for a young dad and his even younger brother, attempting to keep the horses from dragging them across fields made slick by the prairie hay leavings that didn't make it into the piles they'd been there "stacking" all day....

(You can turn off that goofy music and remove those cool effects glasses now if you want. Actually - you don't look half bad in the glasses. Very chic.)

It was starting to get late for Mom and Dad and Grandma - and Mom and Dad were about to leave, and I hadn't been home in almost a week. So it seemed like a good time to wrap up the visit and the time traveling discussions and I headed back to Ames...

- Peace, Todd

I, Geo-Cacher

2007-08-08T23:19:00.000-05:00

I finally did it. This morning I figured out where the cache near home is stashed (End of the Road Reincarnated). I had some guidance from an experienced geo-cacher (Kevin Lodge - I guess he'd be my cousin-in-law?) and that definitely helped me zero in on the more likely spots.

So while trekking through the little wooded area on the way to HyVee this morning, armed with the advice of an experienced cacher, I found the cache I've been looking for since January. Ok - honestly, I haven't been searching high and low every day since then. I've only made a concerted effort to find it maybe 5 times since then. But still, it felt good to finally figure it out.

Then, later this afternoon, I went and found another one in the Ann Munn Woods about 4 tenths of a mile from home (Chipmunk Hideaway). This one was not as challenging to locate and, unlike the other one, it's big enough to contain lots of little goodies deposited by past visitors who've stopped and swapped their swag for swag in the cache.

You might notice a little image on the right side of this page now. It indicates my progress as measured by number of caches I've found and number I've placed. Hopefully those numbers will begin go climb steadily and continue to do so on a regular basis.

Almost Geo-caching...

2007-08-05T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've been talking (and talking and talking) about geo-caching for a long time now - at least since last fall when I got a Garmin GPS as a service award from my company (15 years). I've even occasionally hailed it as the key to my new fitness and hiking program. It's a good idea, I say, because it mixes exercising with technology - and there's a mapping and tracking component that I can leverage to show where I've been (or see where I'm going) on google maps or within google earth, all of which appeal to the part of me that wants to sit in front of the computer all day and never go anywhere. Well, finally, today I went and did enough walking around to feel as though I can legitimately say I've given it an honest attempt.

There are maybe a half dozen or so geo-caches within walking distance of my house, mostly concealed within or near the edge of nearby wooded areas. In fact, there is one very close to my house - within 1/10th of a mile - that I tried to find this winter. I don't really count that as getting started because 1) I haven't found it yet and 2) it's so close it would be like having someone hide one in your backyard. My take on geo-caching is that you can't legitimately say you've been geo-caching until two things happen: 1) you need to do some hiking to get to the cache hiding area, and 2) you need to actually find the cache once you get there. By those standards, I have not yet "geo-cached". Not to my way of thinking anyways. But at least I can say I've done the hiking part now with the express purpose of finding a cache. So I'm about halfway there...

Today I tried the one near my house again, and I also tried one about 4/10ths of a mile from my house in the Ann Munn Woods/Emma McCarthy Lee Park Woods (you have to walk farther than .4 miles to get there though). Didn't find either one of them. Yet. The one near my house is a micro cache (not entirely sure what that means yet - but they tell you to take your own pencil to write on the log), and the other one was a multi-stage cache, which means you find the first cache and it leads you to another, and so on and so on. This was a two stage cache, but I didn't even find the first one, so no joy there either.

I'm thinking I should try a few that aren't quite as challenging to find once you get to the location first. Just my dumb luck that the first two I tried don't quite fit that description. I probably didn't pick the best day to start looking, either. Walking through the stifling woods on a 90 degree day with ample humidity, bugs flying around, spider webs getting in my hair and on my skin, nettles poking my legs and making me itch - all that tends to interfere with my threshold of patience for looking around once I get where I think I'm supposed to be.

Anyway, it did get me out of the house walking around - maybe a mile or a mile and a half total - so all in all, I'm going to consider it a successful first outing, since I DID get the walking/hiking exercise and in reality, all the techno-geekery is just a ruse to get me out there walking around in the first place, albeit an effective ruse for a techno-geeker like myself...

Car Shopping 3 - Cost Decisions

2007-07-24T07:05:00.000-05:00

(Note: This was originally part of the first post on Car Shopping - but I decided to break it out as a separate entry)

Making It Into a Cost Decision

The question I really need to answer, then, is "At what point does it make sense to put that money into a new car, instead of using it to extend the life of an older car?" The simple answer goes something like, "Well, at the point where the annual cost of the older car exceeds the annual cost of a new car." But here's the catch: How do you determine the annual cost of a new car? Is it the amount of money you lay out for the car in one year, including loan payments? What if I take out a 3 year loan or a 5 year loan? Or what if I pay cash for the car up front? How do I normalize the annual cost of owning the new car so that comparing it to the annual cost of owning the old car makes sense? It turns out that the simple answer wasn't that helpful until I did a bit more thinking about.

Of course, there are other annual costs that typically increase or decrease for a new vehicle, like insurance (goes up), fuel (goes down), washings (theoretically the same, but I bet I wash a new car more often, so increases), oil changes (same), license renewal (goes up), etc. These can all be quantified and expressed reasonably as annual costs (just go look up your most recent insurance bills and credit card statements). But how do I come up with the annual cost associated with the "value" of the car itself?

I've given this some thought, and I think it goes something like this: A more valid way to get an annual “value cost” for a car would be to take the amount you Pay for the vehicle (P), subtract the amount you get when you Sell the vehicle (S), and divide that by the number of Years you keep the vehicle (Y), or (P-S)/Y. What this tells you is how much of the vehicle's “lost value” you used up each year you owned it, where that “used up value” is the difference between what you pay for it and what you sell it for in the end. If you never sell it and just run it into the ground, then you effectively sell it for zero. But you tend to own a vehicle like that for a LONG time, and we’ll see later why owning a vehicle longer can be a good thing.

Applying that formula, here’s an example based on my ’98 Subaru Forester: it cost me around $20,000 when I bought it in February of '98. I've owned it for 9 years and a little over 5 months (let's just say 10 years to make the math easy, though). If I were to sell it on the open market right now, I might get $4,000 for it. ($20K-$4K)/10years = $1,600/year in "annual value cost" (or “depreciation”). That's pretty straightforward, and for my old car the numbers are relatively easy to come by. How do you compute this for a car you are thinking about buying when you don't know 1) how long you'll be keeping it (Y from the equation above) or 2) how much you'll sell it for if you ever do (S from the equation)?

Depreciation is NOT a 4 Letter Word

What you do is you essentially guess. But thanks to modern science, you can make a fairly educated guess. I’m using what they call a “depreciation calculator”. Depreciation, which I referred to moments ago, is the "used-up" value of the vehicle at any given time (that difference between what you paid for it some years ago and what you could sell it for at some later time. Today, for instance.). It turns out that this idea of "used-up" value comes up quite often in the world of finance, and they forecast depreciation for lots of things all the time (not just cars). But since we are talking about cars specifically, I looked for and found this handy calculator online, which for purposes of the comparison I'm making, seems as valid as any OTHER way of guessing at a car’s future value. (In reality, this is a somewhat better than average guess, since it's based on the way that cars have lost value in the past. Given the number of cars that have already been and gone, this means the guess is based upon a pretty significant sample size, and consequently, this guess ends up being pretty darn good.)

So now we know the value of the new car we are buying (let’s call that $25,000), and we can guess how long we plan to keep the car. If you’re not sure, it’s reasonable to use the length of time you kept your LAST car (10 years in my case). We can plug both of these into the calculator to get an estimate of the depreciated value of the new car 10 years out, which turns out to be around $4,700, a loss in value or depreciation of $20,300 (I’m rounding a bit because I like the math to be as easy as possible). In other words, the calculator is guessing that a $25,000 car purchased today would sell for $4,700 in 10 years, losing $20,300 in value, or, if you divide by the 10 years, at an annual value cost of $2,030. Just to be crystal clear, lets go back and plug the numbers into that formula from above, and you’ll see that you get ($25,000-$4,700)/10Years = $20,300/10Years = $2,030/year of lost value.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping me from checking to see what would happen if I kept the car only 5 years (or any number of years). What you’ll see if you do that is that the estimate of the annualized used up value of the vehicle (or deprecation) is about $2880 for a 5 year old car. You’ll notice that’s quite a bit higher than it was at 10 years. If you calculated this for each year 1-10, and then compared those numbers (by plotting them on a graph as I have above, for example), you would notice an interesting trend: the longer you keep the car, the lower that annualized loss of value gets (the orange line on the graph). What this means is that a newer car bleeds more dollars in value per year (the red line indicates the $'s in value lost per year as computed using the calculator) than an older car, and that as the car gets older, it loses a smaller number of dollars in value each year (pretty much – in actuality, if you look closely at the red line, you'll see that year 4 loses slightly more cash value than year 3. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because this is when most cars outlive their factory warranties?).

Back to Why We Are Here

While all that is riveting, all I really wanted to know was whether it’s more or less expensive for me to keep my ’98 Forester than to buy a new car. And from what we discussed earlier, there are some other annual numbers I’m going to need to make a good comparison.

So lets review. Here’s a table that captures the list of annual costs for my ’98 Forester and some fictionalized $20,000, $25,000 and $30,000 vehicles (you will probably have to click on this image or open it in a new window to make it large enough to read easily):

First, let me tell you exactly what I'm comparing. I'm comparing the annual cost of keeping my Forester for another year to the annual cost of buying and owning a new $20K, $25K or $30K vehicle that I plan on keeping for 5 years.

Note that although there is a line (line 10) for Maintenance (repairs that older cars typically need and that the owner has to pay for, but that newer cars typically don't need or that are at least covered by the warranty), I've set that line to zero for my '98 Forester. This allows me to use the Savings amounts shown on the bottom line of the chart as a guide telling me the maximum maintenance costs I could pay in the next year on my Forester before it's costing me more to keep my old car than it would to own a newer car. IE - look at cell C13. What this tells me is that if I pay more than $1577 in maintenance on the Forester this year, it will have cost me more on an annual basis than it would have cost me to own a new $20,000 vehicle I plan to keep for 5 years. Remember what happens if you keep a car longer, though. If I recomputed this chart assuming that I'd be keeping my new vehicle for 10 years, the "maintenance break point values" would be lower - making it more likely that trading in the Forester for a new vehicle would make sense financially.

That's all for this installment. Apologies if you don't enjoy math or finances and if you felt like this turned into that. But if you DO enjoy that sort of thing, well then - you're welcome!

Car Shopping 2 - Avast the Vastness

2007-07-22T20:48:00.000-05:00

An Exhausting Listing of Possibilities

Sunday I visited all the car dealerships that are located here in Ames and that are clustered around the intersection of Duff and HWY 30. During those visits, I made an exhaustive list of all the replacement possibilities for my '98 Forester based on what they have on their lots. But I didn't have any paper handy (since I spent a good part of the day Saturday detailing my car to get it ready to sell, which included removing all "unnecessary" paper), so I wrote on the bottom of a box of Swiffer Dusters I had just purchased from Sam's Club:

That was just about the right amount of room. As you can see, there are quite a few (here they are listed in typeface - arguably easier to read than my handwriting):

LEFT SIDE

Mercury Mariner (c), Mountaineer (s)
Jeep Compass (c), Patriot (s), Commander (S)
Chrysler Pacifica
Ford Edge, Escape (Hybrid), Freestyle
Mazda Tribute
Saturn Vue
Chevy Tracker
Suzuki XL_7, Grand Vitara
Dodge Caliber, Nitro

RIGHT SIDE

Hyundai Sante Fe
Toyota FJ, Highlander, Rav4
Accura
Scion
Mitsubish Montero Sport
Pontiac Vibe
GMC Envoy, Acadia
Buick Ranier, Rendevouz
Honda Pilot, Element, CR-V
Nissan XTERRA, Murano, Pathfinder
Chevy Avalanche, Tahoe, Equinox (Pontiac Torrent), Trail Blazer

And I keep seeing more all the time that aren't on this list. Have I mentioned that I'd really prefer to just keep my Forester.?I'm taking it in to have it checked-over this week while I am out of town, so we'll have to see what the cost is going to be to get it repaired.

- Peace, Todd

Car Shopping 1 (Catching up Part Deux)

2007-07-21T22:37:00.001-05:00

I've also (in addition to taking a new job) been doing some car shopping the past couple of weekends (including this current one). So far I've driven 5 vehicles: A Jeep Commander (very nice), a Ford Escape Hybrid (it drove like a non-hybrid as far as I could tell), a Toyota FJ (kind of a jaunty, rounded cross between a Jeep and a Hummer), a Toyota Rav4, and then today I drove a 2007 Subaru Forester.

This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to covering the selection of vehicles I’m interested in, by which I mean the small SUVs (your Rav4s, your Escapes, your Mazda Tributes, etc) and Crossover vehicles, which are smaller yet and tend to drive more like a car (like the Forester, Toyota Highlander, Honda CRV, etc). The vast array of choices is both dizzying and - well, it's just vast. (See the next installment for an incomplete but still quite large sampling.) There are literally dozens of them to choose from. And the Crossover market, which is the one I’m most interested in, turns out to be the fastest growing market in the industry right now. So if I buy a Crossover vehicle today, the increase in the available options a year from now will be significant, both because of new vehicles entering the market, and due to changes in current vehicles to help them stay competitive.

So what do I REALLY want? Honestly - I like the vehicle I have right now, which is a '98 Forester. The reason I'm looking is that it's on the old side (9+ years I've had it now) and seems to require repairs costing a bit more each year. Last year was about $1600. This year is looking to be somewhere between $2000 and $3000. Right now, in order to be entirely ship-shape, the Forester needs a new Airbag Sensor Unit ($850), probably a new clutch ($?), one or both of the front axles replaced ($500 each), a new cruise control system ($100) and two rear tires ($?).

So to answer that last question, what I really want is for my current vehicle to keep working without needing costly fixes. That would be ideal...

Catching Up - Part 1 - New Job

2007-07-14T19:27:00.002-05:00

I realized today that I've had some blog-worthy stuff happen in my life of late, and that I really need to get in here and commit a bit of public bloggery about these events.

The first item of note is my recent job change. And by that I mean, I quit one job at one company and started a completely different job working at a completely different company with completely different people, most of whom I've never met before now. I bother to make that point so specifically for the sake of those who've been trying to keep track of what company I work for over the past 7-8 years or so, which has changed on a fairly regular basis every 2-3 years without me changing jobs at all.

A Little History

If you HAVEN'T been tracking my employment that diligently, but suddenly find yourself wishing you had, not to worry. Here's a run down of some recent employment history and some justification for my pedantic way of talking about changing jobs above.

The company I started working for on a full time basis in 1992 after graduating from Iowa State (Engineering Animation, Inc or EAI as we affectionately refer to it) was purchased by another company in 2000 (UGS). But then, a year or two later, UGS was purchased by EDS (which it turned out already owned something like 87% of UGS). Then a few years after THAT, EDS sold that part of the company off to a group of private investors (and we became UGS once again). Finally, earlier this year, Siemens bought UGS from that group of private investors to make us (well, ok, "them". I guess I have to get used referring to UGS as "them" now...) - to make THEM part of the Siemens Automation & Drives group. This last move took UGS from being a privately held company of roughly 6000 people, with about $1.1 Billion in annual revenue, to being a relatively small part of a much larger public company of about 450,000 people, with an annual revenue of around $100 Billion. The sudden change in fiduciary perspective has caused me to think some very profound thoughts. Things such as, "I remember when a billion dollars used to be a lot of money."

The NEW Gig

So now, at long last, I've left the world of planes, trains and automobiles, where I enjoyed a 15 1/2 year run (I received a nifty 15 year recognition gift of a hand held GPS unit last fall), and I've moved on to apply my experiences to the fast paced world of pharmaceuticals.

Officially, I'm now the Senior Director of Client Software Services at Scientific Voice, which is a company based out of Chicago that helps Pharma companies with the various aspects of managing and coordinating training sessions designed to educate Health Care Professionals about the Pharma Company's Medical Products. What this typically means is a dinner meeting attended by a group of doctors who are there to hear a respected physician lecture on a new drug, allowing them to prescribe the drug on an informed basis when it's indicated (meaning when a patient's symptoms indicate a condition the drug is approved to treat). Other times, these are lab or office sessions where a doctor trains another doctor how to use a new device for a surgical procedure.

In order to educate the medical community about a given drug, it may take thousands or even tens of thousands of these Speaker Programs (which is what we typically call the training sessinos) in a given year. Because there are so many of them, the planning and tracking of all these training and lecture sessions is managed by software, and that's where I come in. There's one group that develops and maintains the software, and then there's a supporting group that prepares our internal people, our customers and their trainers to use that software. This latter supporting group is what we call "Client Software Services", and that's the group I've been hired to run.

It's been interesting so far. It's a completely different world than the one I've been used to, more akin to ad agencies than to product & manufacturing engineering. Instead of the male dominated world I'm use to, I'm a definite minority as a man in this world.

But I'm really enjoying it so far. The people are smart and motivated (and many of them are quite young!) and they really know their business inside and out. So while I'm here to help them manage the IT end of this evolving business, I'm actually learning a lot from people who are completely intimate with the whole process and business of medical product training for health care professionals.

Be sure to tune in for "Catching Up - Part 2 - Shopping for a Car" in the next exciting installment...

The Invention of LSD

2007-04-16T08:47:00.000-05:00

LSD was invented in 1943 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann - more or less by accident. You can read about it here:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/04/dayintech_0416

Interesting tidbits I gleaned from this, in case you are too lazy to go and read it for yourself:

The inventor of LSD turned 100 in 2006.
The first acid trip was taken (accidentally by it's inventor) 32 years to the day before my youngest brother Tyler was born. I'm assuming no OTHER relationships exist between Tyler and LSD, however.
The inventor believes LSD is a misunderstood but useful tool that gets a bad rap in general.
He is critical of the casual underground use that sprouted up in the 60's, however.

What would Timothy Leary or The Beatles have to say I wonder?

The Legend of Ernie Kilowatt

2007-04-09T00:16:00.000-05:00

I spent the day with the folks today (Easter Sunday) and it was a pretty good, fairly mellow one as Easter Sundays go. Mom made us a very fine afternoon meal of Ham Balls, Yams, Broccoli, Rolls and Deviled Eggs, which we all ate just a little bit too much of, after which we took a leftover plate and our dessert (apple crisp) over to Grandma Falk's apartment, where we played about 5 rounds of Mexican Train before coming back to Mom & Dad's to clean up the dishes and play a couple rounds of Rummi-Cube.

That evening, while playing Rummi-Cube, we still weren't all that hungry, so we were snacking on this and that. And as I was washing it down with a can of Dr Pepper, I noticed the part of the recently updated label that proclaims Dr Pepper is a blend of 23 different flavors. That reminded Dad of this guy from Onaga they called Ernie Kilowatt, and the ensuing story contained a whole bunch of "remember how things USED to be"-type details, which I will now try to recall and capture here for posterity and, frankly, just because I thought it was interesting.

Some Ernie Related Errata

Ernie's REAL last name was Frezieres, but people called him Ernie Kilowatt because he built the first electrical plant there in Onaga.

It used to be that all the streetlights in Onaga were wired in series. This is the same way that a lot of Christmas Tree lights tend to be wired. With Christmas Tree lights wired in series, you know what happens if one light goes out: the circuit is broken and NONE of the lights goes on (and then you get to try and figure out WHICH of the 5000 bulbs in that string is the burnt out one). So to prevent the entire town from going dark whenever a street light bulb burnt out, the street lights in Onaga had an ingenious system built into them. When one of the lights went out, that would cause a metal disc inserted into the light fixture to close the circuit and bypass the burnt out bulb. This kept the other lights lit and useful. But it also sent a higher electrical load to the rest of the lights, making them more likely to burn out. Consequently, someone had to get any burnt out lights replaced quickly to avoid a cascade of burnt out streetlights caused by the power overload going to every light on the circuit.

At some point, Ernie opened up an all-night gas station (is that right, Dad?) near the Co-op elevator at the bottom of the hill on the main street (Leonard) in Onaga, not far from the railroad tracks, where you could get pop and candy and refrigerated and even frozen items in addition to fuel for your ride. This was at a time when refrigeration was often powered by natural gas or kerosene (which sounds strange today because we mainly use these fuels for heating now) rather than by electricity. Ernie's gas station - which was really just his house with a gas pump outside - was painted a kind of odd yellowish pink color according to Dad, and Mom simply described it as "not quite orange". Who knows where he got such funky paint or how he chose the strange color.

The gas pump at Ernie's gas station-home was the old hand cranked variety that had a glass chamber at the top with gallon markings on it. You would crank the hand crank until you had pumped the volume of gas you wanted to purchase into the chamber atop the pump, and then just let gravity do the rest - draining the chamber into your gas tank through the hose and nozzle. Apparently, high school kids weren't always that nice to Ernie, and some of them took advantage of him by exploiting the pump's method of measuring out and dispensing gas. What they would do is, while Ernie was draining some volume of already measured gasoline from the the pump chamber into their cars, they would sneak behind him and crank some extra gas into the chamber while he wasn't looking. Basically stealing gas from poor Ernie.

Is This a Story with, like, a Point?

At this point, you should be saying something to yourself like, "Self - that's all real interesting - but from a story telling standpoint, I'm not seeing how all this ties together. Is there a point and do you suppose Todd is going to get to it sometime soon?" That's where reading all the way to this particular paragraph really pays off for you, the dedicated reader. You see - although Ernie sold many different kinds of soda pop at his gas station, he was a big supporter of what he believed to be the beneficial (perhaps even medicinal) properties of Dr Pepper. So when you wanted a bottle of Mountain Dew or an Orange Crush or Coca-Cola, Ernie would sell it to you, but not without reminding you how much better it would be for you to drink Dr Pepper instead. This is what my comment about the 23 flavors on the Dr Pepper can reminded Dad of - and that was the impetus for this entire foray into yesteryear.

And that is the legend of Ernie Kilowatt...

[happy, merry, blessed, joyous] [plausibly notable holiday]

2007-03-02T20:59:00.000-06:00

Dear [friend, relative, valued customer] -

Merry Christmas! (?)

Happy New Year...? (?)

er - Happy Val..en...????

Oh bother...

Well - I didn't manage to get any kind of Christmas greetings or Year in Review mailings sent out at the end of 2006, so this will have to suffice as my late entry for the past year. This is coming out SO late, in fact, that it brings some other questions to mind. Like - "Is this late enough to be considered EARLY for 2007?"

And so I've been looking through my stash of pictures from 2006 (which has become my barometer and catalog of noteworthy events) and it looks like I had a pretty decent year. In fact, 2007 better get on the stick if it expects to compete in any serious way. So far, all that's made it onto the camera this year are some false starts at a Christmas card (never to be sent) and the big snowstorm we had the last weekend in February (you can check that out here). Oh - I coulda had a Chicago weekend on there - but the camera didn't make the trip for some reason...

To further webify this oh-so-personal greeting, I've posted sample pictures from 2006 online, which you should feel free to view or ignore based on how interested you are and how much patience you have for that sort of thing. Note that you may be IN some of those pictures, though - so you might want to check and make sure I'm not telling lies about you in any of the captions and such, which I've included to further enhance your enjoyment of the 2006 that was.

http://picasaweb.google.com/todd.teske/2006InReview

Here's a brief rundown of happenings from 2006:

LA/La Brea - Business trip to our office in Cypress (Los Angeles Area) followed by a weekend visit with an old friend and some sightseeing
SiSi's 2nd Birthday - it was during the Super Bowl. Who won that one? Heck - who was even in it?
Grandma's 90th Birthday - With her friends at Red Bud in Onaga, Kansas.
Chicago Trip - Around St Paddy's day - to see some friends.
Montana - Visiting the Troms and seeing and experiencing Bozeman, Montana and some awesome nature.
Easter Weekend Hike w/Ben and Si - a little hiking, a little eating, a little running to the car at the end to avoid a thunderstorm
Veisha Weekend / Blooming Dogwoods - Spring was in full bloom
Omaha Zoo Weekend (end of April) - Visiting my sister Kari and her deformed husband Dave (the only conclusion you can draw from all the pictures I have of him) - visited the fantastic Doorly Zoo (wow)
Summer

Lake Weekend on Charlevoix - helping install boat lifts just after Memorial Day - cold water - nice weekend - hanging out with the guys

Bike Riding - around Ames with Kevin and the boys

Moving Grandma to Des Moines - the big move!
DM Arts Festival - some nice evening photos - went to Blues on Grand afterwards
Okoboji Weekend - Went for the wedding of a friend (Jennifer) and visited Arnold's Park and the beach
Fair Time

Nadas - becoming an annual tradition
Falk's visit - Chuck and Jo came to Iowa to see us and Grandma

Pub Crawl - Inaugural potentially annual event? I missed most of it - but it looked like fun (for most anyway)

Labor Day Weekend Life Light Fest - Again, with my sister Kari and her still deformed husband David
Fall

New Computer (first since 98) - Media Center! I love Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) (no explicit pictures of this either - just thought I'd mention it...)
Taught ME 419 at ISU - as an Adjunct Professor (I only have a Masters). It was fun - enjoyed it quite a bit - lots of work
Trees around Campus and Ames - Pretty fall colors.
Dad n Deck at Kevin and Lisa's
Football - Nebraska beat us in Ames :(
Birthday - the now annual smoky meats barbeque - this year using my new smoker
Weekend trip to Denver - no pics - but it was a good time (although ISU lost miserably to Colorado) - not a good year for the 'Clones.

Thanksgiving VerMontreal visit to Maria's - Flew out to Burlington, VT to visit Maria (Thanksgiving was the only week I could leave during the semester without missing class). We made a day trip to Montreal one of the days I was there. Nice city, Montreal. Very old. Attended numerous Thanksgiving meals - which was a nice bonus.
My first niece was born - Tyler and Sarah had their first little girl - Eliza - just before Christmas
Christmas at Todd's - it was a great day at Todd's full of food and family and visits to Tyler and Sarah's by the healthy to see baby Eliza.

As you can see by the above list and the photographic evidence on picasaweb, I have no reason to complain about 2006. And I'm not. It was a great year!

And so, to conclude this review of 2006, I'd just like to extend the warmest of generic holiday greetings to you and yours, and wish you a joyous string of appropriately noteworthy annual events throughout the rest of whatever year it happens to be when you find yourself reading this belated annual message....

- Peace to you from your [friend, relative, loyal servant] Todd

Todd Teske

Vinter Vonderland

2007-02-26T19:36:00.000-06:00

We had a pretty healthy storm over the weekend, starting off with some rain and ice mixed with sleet and hail at times, and turning into a snowstorm that topped off around 9 inches. Broken trees, power outages, etc. But some beautiful pictures did come of it. A few samples:

Vinter Vonderland

Symantec Customer (dis)Satisfaction Survey

2007-02-11T22:33:00.000-06:00

The following is a text form of a survey that Symantec asked me to take (automated request from their online systems no doubt) after bludgeoning me nearly senseless during an experience that started out badly, and spiraled downward from there. I've put the text from the survey in red, and added commentary of my own in italics in case you haven't or don't care to read the related posts...

Possible Answers:

A. Very Satisfied

B. Satisfied

C. Neutral

D. Dissatisfied

F. Very Dissatisfied

1. Responsiveness to your issue - F

- The closest thing your support people could offer me to a satisfying response was a refund for the unused days on my subscription. $50 x 283 / 365

2. Professionalism of support personnel - C

- "John", who was obviously working a support desk from India, was, for the most part, courteous. When I explained just how ridiculous sounding his offer to add my remaining 283 days to another subscription to their products when I renewed was, he started off his response with something to the effect of "Sir - you're not listening to me". Can steam literally come out of one's ears?

3. Technical & troubleshooting skill of support personnel - F

- There was nothing technically helpful about John's responses. And the response for my problem was VERY slow. I waited an additional 10-15 minutes on the line for John to come up with a response for me. This was AFTER waiting about 30 minutes on their so called "Priority" call in line after entering the priority number I obtained from their website. I blame their computer network as I think he was waiting for screen refreshes much of the time. I further suspect he was navigating the very same unhelpful online information that I had already gone through before calling him - that SUGGESTED I contact technical support, actually.

4. Communication & status of issues - C

- We didn't waste any MORE time by trying to wade through any technical solutions - so at least John realized that there were none to be had and we got right to the shouting...

5. Time to resolve issue - F

- Spending over an hour on the phone waiting on hold and having my problem "resolved" in this manner? This should have been discernible online - and should have taken 5 minutes tops.

6. Overall satisfaction with our performance - F

- yeah, right...

7. Additional Comments:

When your software corrupts my startup file and causes a crash requiring a rebuild of my computer, along with a reinstall of Norton, and I am unable to re-apply the product code I paid you $50 for, and the only options I am offered are "to purchase an additional year of subscription" or "to get a refund"... there is NOTHING satisfying about that customer experience. I'm taking my refund and I'm uninstalling Norton and going with AVG. All my knowledgeable computer friends consider it superior anyway (not to mention that it's free for home use).

8. Quality of product - F

- Crashing and then corrupting my windows installation in the process is a flat out failure as a product. Not doing ANYTHING remotely helpful to solve it aside from issuing a refund is a flat our failure to recognize your failure and shows that your company has no intention of remedying the horrifying enedmic problems with your software products. This is a failure as a company.

9. How has this experience influenced you to recommend or repurchase Symantec products - F

- I am now Symantec/Norton's number one anti-evangelist. As evidenced by the fact that you the reader are seeing this. Where ever you are seeing it.

10. Additional comments on quality of the product:

Crashing during an update, corrupting my startup file in the process, advising me to restart, and only then finding out that you've corrupted my windows install such that I must now spend the next several hours recovering my machine was only the beginning of a very dissatisfied experience for me. I assumed that given the circumstances you would want to do something to make it right. Instead, the customer support I received only made my experience worse - and created an anti-customer for life. I'm sharing my experiences with everyone I know and asking them to stay away from your products for their own sake. It's not worth the aggravation. Might as well use AVG - which is free - and avoid customer support all together rather than expose themselves to your sad excuse for products and services. Also - being told that I should call back and verify that my refund was honored, while perhaps an effort on the part of the phone support person to insure that I received it, was, at that point, only icing on an already awful cake for me - and only served to further erode my opinion of your company and it's products and services. Do you guys do ANYTHING right?

11. How many times did you contact Symantec support to resolve this issue? - 2

- Once to be told that the best they could do to make me happy was give me a refund, and a second time to insure that I actually GOT the refund (on the advice of the phone support person).

Note that after entering my information, I was taken to a screen saying the following:

Symantec Survey

Your survey has now been completed and saved. Thank you for your feedback and for choosing Symantec.

Pretty durn presumptuous of them, don't you think? We're gonna need a new definition for the word "choosing" to make this statement even remotely appropriate.

Symantec Chat-Rant with Kevin...

2007-02-11T21:31:00.000-06:00

The following is a transcript of a chat session I had with my brother Kevin shortly after having a negative experience with Symatec related to their Norton Internet Security 2006 product:

NOTE: It is a chat, so beware the occasional non-linear nature of the conversation as we ask and answer questions across each other...

12:45 PM me: AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH

12:46 PM Symantec is the worst company in the freekin world!

9 minutes

12:55 PM Kevin: I'm not so much on their software theses days. Kind of a gut thing, but seems like they're severely bloated and really bog down performance. I was sorry to see Google team with them for the AV component of the Google Pack.

12:56 PM

me: From what I can tell - they are severely screwed up in every facet of being a software company

and believe me - I know from whence I speak...

12:57 PM Software, installation, online help, technical support, customer care, user interface, attention to customer satisfaction

12:58 PM those are just the things they have screwed up for me - thinking off the top of my head without really trying

Kevin: whoof - they probably have a crappy spam filter too ;0

me: I lack any faith in them at all at this point

actually - I'm glad it happened

12:59 PM Kevin: 'cause you have somebody to vent yer vinegar at no?

now?

me: if this is any indication of how well their software protects me from threats, I'm better off switching anyway

Kevin: Good point. Actually, I think they get decent marks for that.

me: It sounds made up

how?!

they can't do anything else right?

1:00 PM my sob story, I mean - sounds made up

Kevin: AVG free is a decent AV package.

Oh - so there's a fun story to go along with all of this?

me: absolutely....

Ahem.

It all started about a month ago...

1:01 PM it was late one night and Norton was busy doing an update (unbeknownst to me).

Suddenly, a message pops up informing me that Norton needs to shut down for unexplained reasons

I'm advised to restart my machine

which I attempt to do...

1:02 PM but the startup file has been corrupted (almost definitely by whatever Norton left unfinished when it crashed during it's update)

So I have to spend hours partially rebuilding/recovering my machine to get it back near the state it was in when Norton exacted it's last "protective" act on my computer.

1:03 PM I essentially went through a lot of the outof the box startup first time the customer boots the machine stuff all over again

including the Norton AV stuff

1:04 PM It went into it's60 day trial

so I let it ride thinjking I'd figure out how to apply the Product Key I have to it later

a few days ago the 30 day nag warning starts coming up

so I think to myself - lets jump on this and get er done

1:05 PM Kevin: YEAH! Get 'er DUN!

me: so I take a look and eventually find a dialog that looks like the place to re-enter my product code

5 fields

Kevin: D - U - N DUN

me: I have a 25 character product key

I start to enter it

BUT!

1:06 PM each field only accepts 4 characters before booting me to the next field

Kevin: oops - no HTML allowed. (still reading/listening)

heh heh heh

symatec sux!

me: so that by the time I've entered 19 of the 25 characters, I'm three characters into the last field

it won't let me enter character 20

but never mind cause I'd still have 5 more to enter anyway

1:07 PM I check the website - the faq - nothing useful or even remotely pertinent to my problem

I finally go down a route that recommends that I contact technical support

1:08 PM Kevin: 'cause you hadn't really entered Hell Proper yet, just the ancillary rings of despair.

me: I get a so called "priority code" from the website, which asks me for some information, including a description of my problem, and presumably will get me right through to someone who can help me

1:09 PM It claims that using the priority code I should have my problem resolved in 15 minutes

I smirk - but go ahead and dial the number anyway

THIRTY MINUTES LATER...

a guy named John from a call center in Bangalore India answers my call

1:10 PM I tell him my situation, hoping he can direct me to some dialog that will allow me to re-enter my product code (that I payed $50 for).

1:11 PM I give him my code - I give him several other numbers and codes from the e-mail I got back when I made the purchase...

I have been pleasant, docile and humble up to this point...

now I wait as he fumbles around trying to figure out what's up

1:12 PM I can hear other "Indian Johns" in the background dealing with people over the phone

sometimes I hear him turn on the mute (probably plotting just how to best wind me up with this next round of interactions...)

Finally he comes back to me with the good news.

1:13 PM I'm sorry sir - but what you have is a renewal code. You cannot use that to activate a downloaded installation.

1:14 PM Ok - what do I do then." I ask politely, still naively thinking there's going to be some customer pleasing way around this

1:15 PM And this is what he says - "you will not lose the 283 days you have remaining on your subscription"

when you purchase another product, you will get these days added onto your subscription"

1:16 PM so when you purchase another year of subscription for one of our products - you will actually get 1 year 283 days of subscription for that product

Kevin: so, for an additional $50 you can pick up a new subscription of our God-forsaken software and make it last for the better part of an additional year, that your sojourn in Hell can be fully and completely realized by yourself.

me: Remember how I talked about being polite and stuff before?

Yeah... that pretty much ended right here

Kevin: Did you create an International Incident?

1:17 PM India does have a pretty comprehensive military machine you know.

me: I started off with "That's not acceptable"

Kevin: reasonable, if naive :)

me: and "why would I pay you money to fix a problem that your software caused?

1:18 PM you can tell me how to activate my software for the remainder of the year and IF things work out, MAYBE then I will renew my subscription

Kevin: "Why Would You Pay?!"

me: But I have to tell you - right now, it's not looking too good

1:19 PM so he pauses a bit...

Kevin: (sing it brotha!)

me: probably updating the scripted screen on his computer from - "Normal Response" to "Now we've really pissed him off!""

1:20 PM First he asks me to listen to him (indicating hes NOT listening to me)

then he says - you have two options

you can purchase more software or get a refund for the 283 days

I say - That's it? That's all you can do for me?

1:21 PM I go off on a tirade about how badly they treat customers, how much their product sucks, how may places I'm going to go and tell others about how badly their software sucks, and....

1:22 PM (really meaning their company sucks)

but I forgot to tell him he should get work at another company if he doesn't want to field rants from irate customers forced to put up with their crap...

1:23 PM But wait. There's more...

Kevin: "ahem - If you could just listen to me sir you would realize that you have two options."

me: Naturally I take the refund option at this point as I plot how to best use that money to expose them for the villainous cowards and deletante's they are

1:24 PM so he takes my info so he can send me a check which will arrive in 20-25 days.

Kevin: what's the refund amount to?

me: 283/365 x $49.99

whatever that works out to

Kevin: Ah, so a linear amoritzation.

1:25 PM me: BUT here's the final kicker

He tells me that I'll need to call back in a day or two to insure that my refund get's processed properly

because sometimes they fall through the cracks

or something to that effect

1:26 PM Kevin: A refund might fall through the cracks? You're requesting a refund because you are dissatisfied and they care about as much about getting it processed as they do about... I dunno - something insignificant?

1:27 PM me: so just in case I'm not mad enough at them yet to really disengage me and turn me into a non-customer and anti-evangelist for their rotten company...

for life...

1:28 PM I'm now expected to prove I really want a refund by calling back, sitting through the 30 minute "priority caller" wait period, and talk to "anyone here will be able to help you with that"

1:29 PM probably to give them a chance to try again to persuade me to spend some money on the products their shitty company peddles in their pursuit of greed and evil

1:30 PM And - which means this isn't really the end of the story yet since they get one more chance to make the experience even worse than it already is

1:31 PM Now - to go back, grab this rant. clean it up, edit it a bit

and post it in as many places as I can find that it makes sense to do so

1:32 PM Kevin: Todd - that sounds crappy. No wonder you're ticked off.

1:37 PM me: Yeah - guess this isn't just me getting immersed in my tendency to go off

51 minutes

2:28 PM Kevin: hey stirred one?

2:29 PM me: yo

Kevin: nuttin' - haven't nuked Bangladesh have you?

2:30 PM me: I don't think Symantec is an Indian company.

I'm coherent enough not to direct the full force of my wrath at the call center

2:31 PM Kevin: glad that you're distinguishing between Symantec and the outsourced support team... actually, you were clear about that throughout your rant.

2:33 PM me: Hey - did you see Brian's e-mail about getting together tonight?

trails off into unrelated discussion...

Symantec & Norton Tools - Tops in sucking...

2007-02-11T20:42:00.000-06:00

A few days ago, I had probably the most completely dissatisfying customer experience I think I have ever survived. I'll provide a summary of said experience in a minute. But in order to provide you with the opportunity to enjoy the same completely ungratifyingly crappy software and service experience I got to have, but without going through the inconvenience of becoming an actual Symantec (Norton software) customer, I've posted the chat exchange I had with my brother following the first interaction with their technical support, and a little write up containing the survey Symantec sent me to fill out, complete with my answers and some additional commentary.

For those unfamiliar with Symantec, they own, develop, distribute, and support Norton Anti-Virus tools. Or at least that's what one imagines they attempt to do based on the business they claim to be in. At any rate, I became a customer of theirs last fall after purchasing a brand new HP computer that came with a 60 day trial copy of Norton Internet Security 2006.

At the time that I originally purchased and set up the computer (an HP Pavilion Media Center system with a TV tuner and a nice 21 inch flat screen), I happened to be on staff at the local university lecturing for a class on software for engineers offered during fall semesters. So I had a choice of installing the freely available university anti-virus (AV) software, or of trying out the 60 days of free Norton AV software. Since I already had the university supplied software installed on a different computer, I decided to give the Norton suite a try so as to make some kind of comparison and see if I could tell which one was the better product. Since it was November by the time the 60 days passed without incident and I wouldn't be on staff at the university after the first of the year, I went ahead and laid out 50 bucks to upgrade to a 1 year subscription.

So without further ado, here is a short sweet summary of my misadventures, which does nothing to communicate the gross malfeasance perpetrated by Symantec, to say nothing of the frustration they caused me, but which goes something like this:

Norton crashed during an update in early January 2007 and had to shut down. Upon shutdown it advised me to restart my computer. Norton's aborted update attempt left my startup file corrupted, which I didn't find out until attempting to restart my computer. At which point I entered into a Windows XP recovery process lasting several hours - into the early morning. As part of the recovery, I got to reinstall Norton, which returned to it's original 60 day trial period. I left upgrading it until later. After 30 days, it started nagging me to renew, so I dug up the product code I had received when I originally purchased the upgrade. But I could not figure out how to get the designated screen to accept the 25 character product code as it seemed to be expecting a 20 character code. After digging through the online support information I was eventually advised to contact technical support, which I did, spending over an hour to get about 5 minutes worth of information. The only option I was offered initially was to purchase an additional year of support to which my remaining 283 days of remaining subscription time would be added. Upon losing my temper, I was offered a refund option, which I took. But was then told I'd need to call back in 1-2 days in order to confirm that my refund was processed properly.

So that's the SHORT version - but as promised, here are some links to such documentation as I have available to assist you in sharing my level of ire with Symantec, their products (Norton), and their customer service:

Chat-rant with my brother later the same afternoon after my first interaction with live technical support: Chat-rant-against-symantec...

Text version of the survey Symantec sent me to fill out online after my customer service experience (with commentary added by me): Survey in text form...

Snakes on a Plane

2006-08-26T15:52:00.000-05:00

No, I haven't seen it. But we had a conversation during an after hours last night about it and I came to the conclusion that this is a movie that you could not possibly go and see and be disappointed. I mean - what could you possibly be expecting from a movie with this title? If it delivers absolutely ANYthing beyond Sam, a plane and a few snakes, you'd have to be ecstatic. Wouldn't you?

Well, maybe I'm not all wet. According to IMDB, 16,000 plus viewers give it an average rating of 8.0 on a 10 point scale. Unlike your average movie critic, I believe that people rate movies pretty much based on how well they meet or exceed their expectations. And if you are in the habit of using IMDB to gauge the worthiness of movies you have not yet seen, you know that, in spite of the 10 point scale, most movies (well over 90%) fall into the 5 to 8 point range. In fact, it's a rare movie that hits 8.0 or higher.

So I'd guess many of us will end up seeing SoaP at some point. Because we like guy movies or because Sam is the lead or because of the odd pairing of snakes with a plane or just out of morbid curiosity (how could a movie like SoaP get an 8.0 rating anyway?). And from the looks of things, it appears that a lot of us will enjoy it.

VEISHEA Weekend...

2006-04-25T10:10:00.000-05:00

The VEISHEA parade Saturday morning, complete with balloon cartoon characters. Underdog - a perrenial favorite among old and young alike...
The Marching band had just passed.....
A couple of photos of my Peeps. Family and friends attending the parade.
Peeps.

Biofuels Are the Future...

2006-01-31T17:35:00.000-06:00

Seen several articles today on Biofuels and their potential to reduce our current dependence on Hydrocarbons (gas, oil, coal, etc). E85 hasn't really taken off yet here - but in places like Brazil where the difference in price between Biofuels and Gasoline is very pronounced, it is already having a big impact.

How to Beat the High Cost of Gasoline. Forever!

Stop dreaming about hydrogen. Ethanol is the answer to the energy dilemma. It's clean and green and runs in today's cars. And in a generation, it could replace gas.

Now some scientists are re-examining the ROI on biofuels. Seems previous studies claiming that the production of Biofuels results in a net loss of energy are based on some old and vaguely supported assumptions.

Biofuels Better Than Thought

I hadn't really intended for this to become the alternative energy greenhouse - but as I'm 2 for 2 so far, I guess we'll just see how it goes and roll with the flow.

Energy Just Wants to be Free...

2006-01-30T23:07:00.000-06:00

Read an article today on Free Energy. I'm not qualified to explain the details - but essentially, there are people who have created rotors driven by magnets that put out more energy than is actively put in to start them up and to keep the things rotating. Faraday discovered this phenomenon back in the 1800's and others have dabbled in applying it to practical devices off and on since the 1970's, but without anyone coming up with a generally accepted explanation of why it works (or proving that it doesn't).

Here's the article: Scientists Claim To Tap The Free Energy Of Space

It's controversial in that it appears to violate this physical law that says energy can't be created from nothing. Assuming it's not some hoax, possible rationalizations point to some here-to-fore unidentified energy that lies hidden in the space that surrounds us all the time, and conjecture that magnets can somehow access and tap into this hidden energy.

Addng to the intrigue are the obvious implications such a discovery would have for Big Energy. If low cost Free Energy generators were to become common and viable, demand for oil and coal and other fossil fuels would inevitably drop, perhaps significantly. Conspiratorial theories accusing the government of colluding with Big Energy to keep the discovery as unidiscovered as possible are almost expected as an explanation of why this technology has yet to poke it's way into the mainstream.