Friday, August 29, 2003

Hrm.... well I come into work today. And behold! My desk was cleaned again. Kind of reminds me of my days back at school with housekeepers.

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Okay so weirdness in my life:
* Y! Messenger hates me, or the people I talk to, cause as soon as I send a message to somebody they go offline.
* My desktop is missing the file SYSTEMced and won't boot. XP won't see the hard drives so I can't install it. Overall just annoying. Maybe I'll just have to take the computer into work and try to get it working there.

I'm sure that list could very well get longer, but I forget what else now. Hrm... house stuff, well it would need a lot of work, if he goes for a low enough price I might have to go for it. And if I get one or two friends to rent, that'd be good too.

Oh yah... Nate...sorry for almost running ya over.

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Well in my attempts to get the sattelite working in linux I found that there seems to be one small hitch... the usb framework has changed between os kernel version 2.4.18 and 2.4.21. So now I need to figure out how to get a 2.4.18 kernel installed and working on the xbox... which could be a substatially interesting endevour. Or else even more interesting would be update the drivers to work with the new kernel. Blarg...

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Okay so the latest development. The xbox now runs a stripped down version of linux (the one that goes on to mem sticks). Also hubs work on the xbox (even with normal software) you just have to un-plug the controller from the small ps/2-like (ibm not sony like) connector. Next step, burning ed's debian to cd and loading it into the box so have full functionality. And then I can see if I can get the sattelite drivers to work the way they should. Lotsa fun, lotsa fun. I looked at the one house that I had been thinking about today. While its old, its freaky huge, 2200 sq ft. 12 foot celings and steam heat. It needs a lot of work, but could be pretty cool if I wanted to gut it, put an attic and insulation in, re-wire, dry-wall and stuff. It needs a garage too. Maybe I'll post a few pictures if I get them trasfered to a dirrectory online.
Well about the possiblity of presidential aspirations of Arnold, I have a quote from Demolition Man:

Stallone: "Hold it! The Schwarzenegger Library?"
Bullock: "Yes, the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. Wasn't he an actor?"
Stallone: "Stop! He was President?"
Bullock: "Yes. Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st Amendment…"

Hrm... I have heard that Sen. Orrin Hatch has proposed a bill for an amendment to end the constitutional limit against non-native citizens.
I feel the need to bring up a few things in relation to government spending.

* China has purchased submarines and submarine tech from Russia and is now making their own (larger) variant of the Victor III class nuclear submarine (you remember, the one that got caught up in its own towed sonar array and surfaced right off our east coast?) called the 093. Up until this time they only had diesels which of course we liked because our ageing Los Angeles class submarine fleet could pick them up running full steam. Now they nearly have nearly the equivalent of seawolf class subs.
* China has purchased so called rocket torpedos from Russia (as early back as 1998) and was a substantial reason for why Russia did not want us to help them with the Kursk incident, the chinese were observing a test firing of the newest versions. Granted the torpedos are shoot and forget, but they are fast enough that a normal sumarine wouldn't be able to get out of the way (luckily they aren't too heavy and thus its possible a submarine could withstand a hit by one). However, it could punch through the hull of a normal ship (think aircraft carrier) prior to even detonating.
* The US has been starting to observe progressively larger fleet activity from China, in fact the incident involving our EP aircraft was part of this group of observers (it has all but been confirmed by the US government that was looking for one of China's 093 submarines).

There is a very real danger that another cold-war could develop while nobody pays attention to china because of the "terroists". One may damage our way of life for the moment, the other could change the entire world. Numbers from the 2003 DoD budget summary: $7.7 billion for tactical aircraft. $8.6 billion for shipbuilding. 4.1% increase in pay. Decrease in out of pocket expenses for personel from 11.3% to 7.5%.

There is a difference between big government and big executive branch. The military doesn't make laws, it doesn't enforce them.

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

So a friend has posted comments on anothers blog about how republican's spend more money they democrats, especially looking at the bush administration vs to the clinton administration. So in reply here are my thoughts on the mater.

Companies are like little children, they will get away with anything they can, and like children they will follow the parent's lead. Do you think that a huge number of companies with cooked books during the clinton era and an administration that "recovered" from a budget deficit along with "huge" surpluses is really a coincidence? I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist but it makes a lot of sense with how the world goes. Given the track record of the clinton administration, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of back scratching going on and companies taking loses so the government would look strong, so in turn they look strong, etc. Well its all fine and dandy until the world collapses like it did not to long ago.

Friday, August 15, 2003

Being the only Power Engineer in my group of friends I will attempt to answer a decent number of questions raised:

Q: Why was the blackout so wide spread?
A: A number of factors could lead to this, most of it was the grid failed fairly quickly, the grid was stressed and the all plants were at peak capacity. When the automated protect circuitry kicked in to protect the system most of the trips would have been over voltage which are substantially faster trips than say over current. The overvoltage in fact would travel as a transient wave on the power lines at the speed of light all the way back to the power plants where the main generator protection would trip to keep from arcing the generator windings. Also power plants tend to be grouped in certain regions, many regions (think urban) don't generate enough to support themselves.

Q: Why are they saying some stations have damage?
A: Sometimes the generator protection isn't fast enough to prevent the transient from making it back to the source. Also if there isn't a place for the energy to go, the generator having a huge amount of inductance and generating in the kilo amp range, will create an open circuit voltage large enough to arc itself. Generator protection is a last resort; it is preferable to take out load in a controlled manner.

Q: Why will it take so long to repower everything?
A: Power in the United States is distributed using AC at 60Hz. Each and every generating station has to be synchronized with the grid at the connection point or else there will be a tremendous amount of harmonics generated and thus huge amounts of power wasted (plus a whole slew of power related problems that I won't get into). So when the whole grid goes down like it has the power companies and ISOs have to energize the main power transmission lines while leaving all consumers and generators off, then bring up generators near the border of the black-out first and gradually move toward the center of the blackout. This is because it takes time for a signal to propagate between point A and point B, thus while the whole grid is in sync at 60Hz there is a phase difference between point A and B associated with the distance between. Granted this could be accomplished with modern technology but power plants don't have any newer technology than what would have been state of the art in about 1970. Also the time it takes depends on the type of plant and type of trip. For Example take a steam (nearly all big ones) power plant: generator protection notices an over-voltage occur on the line, it trips and takes the generator out of the circuit, the generator over-voltages, so the winding energizer shuts down removing load from the steam turbine, the turbine overspeed protect trips and cuts steam pressure, the boiler preasure relief goes and now the plant is totally off-line. It takes about a week to bring a boiler online from cold. So lets hope the big plants didn't have trips going all the way back to the steam system.

Q: Why did some states loose power while their neighbors didn't?
A: Due to de-regulation the grid is segmented by ISOs and they have to buy power from one place and sell it to another until eventually the person buying it is a consumer. Some states at that time were not selling near their peak capacity either because they were charging more than someone else or because the interconnect was too week to supply that much. I would suspect a combination of the two.
Sometimes I wonder about the false sense of security that America has now, and the tremendous degree of stupidity and avoidance of the situation at hand. I could have told you last year (spring in fact, between march-mayish) that the eastern power grid would black out. Everybody wanted to point fingers at California that year; the truth of the mater is everybody in the power industry knows that America is steaming full speed ahead into a major black out. If this summer wasn't so mild it would have happened earlier, but nobody wants to implement rolling black-outs or issue a conservation plea because that would...make you look like California. What probably caused it was, instead of admitting they couldn't handle the load, the ISO and power companies probably had every single engineer on staff in the control centers and being they work 12 hour shifts to begin with they were probably on their 30th hour or something. It is well known you can't push the human body that far without severe degradation on the ability to focus on multiple tasks quickly, thus what may have been noticed on a normal day went until the automated systems kicked in and caused the system to cut it out, which when the grid is loaded down so heavily the stability point has moved so far a single large change such as that would cause amazing problems. Think of a sheet of newspaper. If you were to hang it up, and let it flap around you could punch at it, poke at it, and its going to stay in one piece. Now if you pull it taught and tack down the bottom, and you poke at it now, you'll poke a hole in it. Now if you were to have it tight enough, where there was enough strain on the fibers of the paper, and then poked it, the paper would nearly disintegrate. That is what happened to the eastern power grid on Thursday.

Everybody in the power business knew it was only a mater of time. But when it comes to the one thing everybody takes for granted nobody ever thinks about where it comes from. Environmentalists lobby for protection of every little cesspool, the government agrees because it makes them look good, and then nobody can build power plants anymore. Americans don't like nuclear because of Three-mile island (which never released any radiation), or Chernobyl. If you want the little mosquito infested pond in the middle of nowhere then go live in it, but don't make the rest of us suffer because you can't live without your air-conditioning.

Next year it'll be the midwest, somewhere. And there's nothing anybody can do about it.
I'm gonna guess illinois, minnesota, and wisconsin
Oh and before I forget, Texas will be fine because they aren't connected to the rest of the US.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Okay so there are terms for guys that get around and girls that get around...but what term do you use for a computer? I started to think about this after seeing a picture on Dave's blog. My work computer and I have a fairly exclusive relationship, but there is this one laptop at work that seems rather indiscriminate in its choice of users. Do you think it may need some counseling?
Something inside hadron borked itself. Started by critical error in ie, continued by nothing working in windows, restarted, no ntoskerl.exe, followed the next restart by blank screen. (bonzai voice)Is it the hard drive, is it the hard drive controller, or is it a virus? Who will stay and who will go?


Bryan David Hunt is at this moment a very very very unhappy guy.
There has been a rather lengthy thread on a friend's blog about homeschool vs publics, socialization, stay at home moms, etc. As this blog is kind of a flushing of ideas for me, I decided to post some of my reflections on the mater without adding fuel to a raging fire.

One of the most difficult aspects of the homeschooling vs public school issue is that people have had radically different experiances. I think given the circumstances the sample from which my friends come from is severely limited by the fact that we all attended Rose, thus each and every persons education had to be fairly good. This rules out the vast majority of public schools if one is to take the population of Rose and split up the groups: private, public, and home. Naturally the private and home are of significantly larger percentage then if you were to look at a public university. Most of those from public schools are from high ranked public schools, which leads me into what I think the greatest problem with the whole thing is: the public school system is not homogenous. There are no two schools even a county appart that are the same. There is hardly any regulation at all. Here I will make a small digression into my own personal life. I went to a public school in southern california for two years (never did kindergarden) I could count up to 5 in 6 different languages, but didn't know my ABCs, got sent to the principle's office for informing my teacher that kids were setting of fire crackers in the bathroom. Obviously the school had some priority issues. I was then homeschooled by my uncle till I was 16. But of course at that time the whole homeschooling thing was facing significant resistance in southern california, so my cousin and I took many standardized tests (of our own volition, for us they were kind of fun), including when I was about 12 or so the high school teachers certification exams. Needless to say we passed in the 90th percentile range. Because of the number of teachers needed, the government has reduced the requirements so low that anybody really can get into a teaching position which is why it is so difficult to judge the entire system. Of course it is a well known fact that the government spends more money on a child in a public school than a parent does sending their child to a private school. Something doesn't jive.

Socialization. All I have is a story about a guy that talked to my uncle about the importance of socialization. This guy told a story of the dog he had, naturally it had started to get possesive of its yard and wouldn't let other dogs or people onto the property. So the dude decided to take the puppy to doggy socialization classes (remember its southern california). Eventually the puppy/dog had no problems at all with other dogs or people, in fact loved to be around them. Granted there was a much greater detail in the story which time has made me forget. But my Uncle suspected a truely different ending asked what had happened to the dog. The guy wasn't too happy about answer but did anyways and said that the dog couldn't be alone anymore, in fact it would bark and howl all day long and piss all over the inside of the house, so they had to take it to the pound.

The systems are broken, and each person needs to decide for themselves what they believe the correct path for their children is to be. Sometimes there will be a good public school around, sometimes not. Socialization too early could create a dependence on others that will lead later in life to who knows what kind of mental illness such as depression. None at all will create somebody with no ability to function in society. Parents have personalities that can wear off on their kids, children naturally have personalities that will make them more or less susceptible to the ills of comunity in which they reside.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Tonight would appear to be self awareness night (after reading Nates blog that is halfway though writing this one, yes I do actually, believe it or not, take time in writing posts). What I'm doing is not all that challanging, pretty much as long as I am in a quasi state of concousness I can perform the tasks at hand without trouble. Sometimes things are interesting when deadlines to a whole slew of things come up because its like Tetris and you have to juggle all the pieces so they fall into place correctly.

At this moment in time I shall take a short break to chase the mouse that while signficantly faster than the last one I caught has been getting progressively braver

Okay so back to the self awareness bit. I have nearly paid off all my credit card debt I had accumilated during college (something about being stubborn enough never to ask parents for money when it was needed), I have more that enough to live off per month, so now the choices present themselves. What should I do with it, naturally a decent chunk goes to college loans, but after consolidation thats only about a grand each month so I know saving its a good idea, but would investments be a better idea? After all the next true goal of mine would be to make money. I mean you set for yourself these little goals: make it into college, make it through college, get a job, etc. So after getting the job the next big one would then be making sure you have enough for retirement or for that mater whatever it is that you want to do. Since I passed the FE, in four years I should be able to take the PE, further advancing my professional development. Do I want to be doing what I doing for the next say 30 years of my life? No. Do I think I'll be able to make it through the next 2 or 3 years without being bored out of my mind? Maybe.

Okay that was just really weird, the mouse ran behind the sub (which is right next to the wall and in plain sight with nothing around it), I lunge to smush the sub against the wall. I hear nothing, no squashing noise, no squealing, nothing. I pull the sub away, there is no mouse, nada. I didn't see it run from either end. This is getting a little weird, especially after watching something like Donnie Darko a few days ago. So I guess I'll let you know if I either get the mouse, or it starts telling me to do acts of vandalism :)

Okay so if I don't want to do the things I've been doing for the last 6 months or so, I've been thinking about what I would rather be doing, and I have realized that I have always thought abut it but never really pursued the Nuclear officer thing (today's lunch kind of reminded me of the lingering thought). I found out that the end of my eligibility would be at the age of 29. So I have approximately 6 more years before I really need to make a decision.

I am reminded of a post I made before, in which one of the points I make is about changing the world. I basically stated that what good are one's views unless one is willing to undertake measures to somehow affect the world. I have a certain number of a views, granted most of them having to do with being left alone, but I can't help thinking about how one actually goes about affecting the world. Without daddy senator and momy lawyer how does one into that sort of influence?

Well if there is one thing that does seem to affect everything it would be money. All those that affect things now, have money, had parents with money, and consquently breed another generation with it. Dont' take me wrong here I'm not saying that money is evil, I'm just saying that it really takes a while to build it up, and by that time one is probably too old to be able to affect change, but through that base can influence the future generation that can build off of that to really make things happen.

So really starting this low in the game means the theoretical maximum one can obtain would be not to enact change, but to inspire it. Ultimately then one needs to not only have a base to pass on, but one needs to be a great leader (military seems a pretty good start for most), but above all needs to be a good teacher as well. Ironically this reminds me of Plato's concept of the Philosopher-Kings. Wow what an idea to have at this time. When at one time the great thinkers (whom were beyond their time then) would be now considered conservative. LOL I guess conservative is by defintion a classical approch to problems.

Well my thoughts have wandered this evening as would a stream, having not come from anywhere nor ended anywhere, I believe I shall call this end for tonight and perhaps find my way to a real ending in the future.

Monday, August 11, 2003

Okay so ran across something somewhat ironic. For a while an ad was at the top of my blog that was for another blog service (I was informed of this tid-bit from a friend). The ironic aspect in this is that google owns blogger and google runs the banner ad system at the top.

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Okay... two pints of B&J ice cream comes in 20 calories shy of a 2500 calorie daily allowance. I think I'll try to remember that for next time...if ya haven't yet, try Brownie Batter, its as they say "to die for!" :) Also Donnie Darko is a really good movie surprisingly enough, but really really freaky. Also the main character reminds me of a dude from school (people from rose remember him as the neon pink hat dude). And thats all I have to say for today.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

In rememberance of my home, California: ARNOLD, ARNOLD, ARNOLD!!!!
Okay so there apeared a random comment on my blog from somebody named Charisa....I have no idea who this person is, nor how they ended up on my blog....though it is interesting to note that the two ads at the top of her blog are for Sensa pens...which if one were to glance at my desk at work one would instantly realize my preference for writing utensils (a new chrome pen, an old chrome pencil, and an old black pen). So this person didn't actually write anything on her blog about Sensa pens...so it was just a random occurance but facinating enough to write a blog post. I think it must just be slow day...I think I need to go to the grocery store, but I'll do that tomorrow.
Quiz time:

You are staring at the world
You are Cartoon. You're often lighthearted or
funny, which is both an asset and a curse. On
one hand, people enjoy your fun and hyper
personality. On the other hand, you find it's
hard for them to take you seriously when you're
BEING serious. And you do have a serious side:
a side that's often deep, bleak and twisted,
but that's less well known to the general
public. Your closest friends, if anyone, are
the only ones who know about it.


Art Thou? -Your Art Style Personality
brought to you by Quizilla
Okay for many years now I have accepted banner ads, they've been the same size since who knows how long. I've accepted the annoying flashing ads, the hit the monkey java ads, the eat your cursor ads, and any other annoying marketing trick. But I would have to say I'm starting to get fed up with a new trend: ASSES!...Okay so maybe the first Atkins ad wasn't so bad, but after a few months of the only banner ads I see are butt; its starting to get to me. I am fed up, I want to see a non-ass ad from time to time, I desire a chance to open a webpage and not be instantly faced with some random rear end.
Okay so this morning I walk into work, set my lunch on my desk, go clock in, and when I come back I notice something amazingly different. My desk was cleaned, I mean like seriously organized, definately not the way I left it...everything is in neat piles (as opposed to the un-neat piles it was before), everything that was in disarray seems to have its place now. Neither of the cubes beside me had this attention. I wonder if this is a hint that I am to keep my desk nicer in the future (since it is normally the worse).

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

Psalm 94

Monday, August 04, 2003

In honor of crazyness (and mondays that desperately need a good laugh) I present to you: The All-Natural Prank.
Okay so I read something really strange and fairly disturbing: Episcopal Body Approves First Openly Gay Bishop. I will not go into the whole debate on whether homosexuality is immoral or whatnot, what gets to me is that is Christianity is fairly explicit in it being immoral, thus to waver on the point would hurt the reputation more then being anti-gay. A friend told me once that befriending those in sin, but not to befriend them to hell. If you believe in the bible, and believe it was written with divine influence, then you should adhere to what it says is right and wrong. This isn't a mater of what I think is right, or what anybody thinks is right, it’s about living in accordance with your beliefs. Hypocrisy is I believe worse then any sin in any belief system, to believe and willing go against your own beliefs is despicable. Actually it kind of reminds me a version of Faust (I don't know if it was Goethe's version or another) where at the end where Hades is about to take Faust's soul, God comes down and intercedes and says something along the lines of Faust having lived his life to the fullest and justly and therefore even though he had made a pact with the devil he didn't merit hell. In other words live life the way you believe (whatever beliefs they may be) is right and you'll be respected, and those who live a life differently then they believe will seal their own fate, and will have no respect from anybody.

Friday, August 01, 2003

A good laugh is always important, many people post humor columnists. I have chosen to post this: 5 Dumbest Things on Wallstreet this Week. Yes big companies are still plagued by mortals.