Hate to admit it, but I'm a VP (ie. Manager) of a technical team. I was a programmer for a lot of my life, and have been in management twice now. First time I wanted it SOOOO BAD. Thought being a manager was the best thing that could have happened to me. Then I ended up working for a boss who wouldn't let me run my team. He was the guy everyone is talking about. He had authority, but showed no leadership. At one point, he asked me what a leader meant to me. I told him a leader was someone people follow. He blew a gasket at that one. I was impeaching his authority, and saying, in effect, I'm a leader and you're not. After that I decided that management wasn't what I wanted, and went back to the tech side. Stayed that way for another 10 years.
I got to my current job not because I wanted to be a manager, but because that was what the company I work for needed me to do. I was under no illusions. For those of you who are not managers, you have your own problems. When you are a manager, EVERYONE's problems are your problems. Even so, I took the position and have been largely happy with my decision. I still get to do architecture. And I get to influence a lot of people I could not influence if I was strictly an architect or coder. My coding skills have languished, but my architecture skills have matured.
And for those of you reading this that are going to turn me into a caricature of the Dilbert pointy haired boss, I consistently get outstanding feedback from those that work for me. I've gotten personal letters from consultants who left saying I was the best boss ever. I won't continue to brag about it, but suffice it to say that you CAN move into management, AND add value to your organization, AND treat your reports well, AND keep their respect, all while maximizing you and your team's value to the organization.
A Constitutional Convention has only been held once. It was done to write the Constitution.
The surest way to destroy the Constitution is to hold an Article V Convention. At such a convention, they can rewrite the entire Constitution.
You are the biggest fool in the world if you think it will yield anything better than "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
The 4004 gave rise to the z80, the 8008, 8080, and 8086 chips that before the IBM PC came along were mainstays in the hobbyist community. It was all hobbyist, all the time back then, and heady days. So wouldn't it be fairer to say that Intel is going back to its roots rather than "reaching just a bit" in the DIY and hobbyist arena?
IIRC, there was a show I watched on the sinking that took the premise of counterflooding and tested it. They built a scale model, and they were able to fairly accurately recreate the actual sinking, without counterflooding. They then tested what would have happened if they had counterflooded the ship to maintain its trim. Counterintuitively, the ship actually sank faster with counterflooding. I think they explained it by showing that while the out of trim condition contributed to the "ice cube tray" phenomenon that finally sank the ship, the counterflooding would not stop that. It wouldn't even slow it down. With the flooding in the bow from the strike of the glacier, combined with the negative buoyancy of the counterflooded aft, the ship was so low in the water at that point, it allowed the compartments aft of the comprised compartments to fill the adjacent compartments even faster, while the ship was now that much closer to sinking due to the negative buoyancy of the counterflooded aft. They also explored the stability of the ship in such a condition. They found that the ship became unstable laterally, and thus it would have risked a capsize as well. Overall, it was better not to counterflood.
I also live in CT, and my experience is exactly the opposite from yours. For years, my house NEVER lost power. Hurricanes, thunderstorms, etc. No outages. It was so reliable that while I wanted to need a back up generator (because I'm a nerd and it would be yet another toy to play with), I could not justify one. My town is a major distribution hub - on a grid map, the town name had the same size font as towns with power plants in them. (Saw this at an NU facility in NH) Bottom line: Power was never an issue for me.
Then, 2 years ago, things changed. We had two major incidents - the freak October snow storm, and Hurricane Sandy. I lost power both times, and one of those outages ran for 5 days. Some of my friends in the area were out for 10 days. I didn't have a generator then, nor could I buy one last minute. So I went to Harbor Freight and got an inverter. This was a fairly industrial strength inverter - no cigarette outlet to power it - you have to clamp it to the car battery. Knowing this would kill the car battery, I would idle my car while running the inverter. It was able to power my heating plant (gas furnace, baseboard) which wasn't a huge power draw. It ran my fridge throughout the outage, but the fridge didn't like the modified sine wave output and eventually it broke down. Even ran the TV and a light for some of the time so we could get news.
After a couple of days, I needed gas - I was below half a tank from the idling, and had used up the lawn mower stash. So I went out in search of a gas station that could pump gas. Most of them could not for one of two reasons: Either the power was off, so there were full tanks of gas in the ground, but no way to pump it, or the station had power and they were out of fuel. I managed to find one station near a mall that had power and gas. The line was backed up onto the highway exit ramp. I waited well over an hour, hoping that they wouldn't run out. They didn't. But things were getting pretty hinky. Some cars did U-turns on the road and tried to cut the line. Angry words thrown about. People at the pumps were surly. There was a police car at the station - he was there to provide calm. The whole thing gave me the willies. Thought about bailing, but decided to fill up anyway. They guy in front of me pumped 20 gallons into his Suburban, then he filled up 4 5-Gallon cans. People accused him of hoarding. More angry words and the cop got out of his car and while he didn't draw his weapon, his hand was on it. I filled up my car and got out of dodge.
Remember - this was TWO DAYS in.
Since those two storms, I've lost power at least 3 times. I've also acquired a small generator (3500 Watt - 4k max) and have a home made panel that supplied 4 separate 15 amp circuits on it via a small breaker box. It safely distributes 30 amps to those boxes. I can now power my heating plant or window air conditioner, my fridge, some lights and the TV. I ordered a tri-fuel kit that I have yet to install that will let me run the thing on gas, propane, or nat gas. I will be paying a plumber to give me a connection for the nat gas. In the mean time, I have 2 20lb cans of propane available, which lets me run the thing for over 20 hours. I will be buying and storing more.
Oh yeah - and I'm armed now. Got my pistol permit. And I'm building a pantry of food just in case. Goal is to be able to be off-grid for a year. Doing that over time.
Don't fool yourselves people... when the power goes out, things go south REALLY fast... it starts a day or two in. After a week, I'm guessing essential services are severely impacted. 2 weeks and people are dying. If you have any doubts, read "One Second After". You'll be horrified to see what we become after a year without power.
There is another guy who lives a lot like Ed Begley Jr. in that regard. He ran against Gore for the Presidency and won. While Al lives in a HUGE house in the south, and assuages his conscience with those "carbon credits", George W. Bush lives in a modest ranch house in Texas, that is heated and cooled with geothermal energy.
Actually, you could give the Nobel prize to Gates now, even before the vaccine is finished. Obama got a Nobel Prize before he did ANYTHING. Gates at least has many significant accomplishments to point to in his post Microsoft career, regardless of how you feel about his Microsoft accomplishments.
I'm a Nutmegger (Connecticut) and what the poster above says is technically correct. CT has surpassed MA in taxes. A bit like being the best smelling puckerhole in the outhouse though. Just to the north, as others have pointed out, lies the promised land of New Hampshire. They have no sales tax, no income tax, lower cigarette taxes by a buck or two a pack, State liquor stores with nationally recognized low prices (think duty free) and cheaper gas. Cheap gas, cigarettes and booze! And a firearms friendly state as well. A beautiful state, with wonderful features and vistas. Good roads. No frills schools with high performing students. How do they do it? Well, high property taxes because state aid to towns is low, combined with a hefty "tourist tax" - high taxes on hotel rooms. My job keeps me in CT but I'm retiring to New Hampshire. My wife wants to retire to Cape Cod. I told her that as soon as MA cedes it to NH, I will move there.
I read the article. One of the questions is whether or not it is a good thing to bring them back. Sure, humans brutally hunted them, but prior to that, they were quite the pests... destroying the trees they nested in and leaving "leavings" an inch thick. One of the points made by the guy running this now was that they should go through the exercise of figuring out answers to questions like those, before it gets to the point where DIY folks could do this in an irresponsible way. It might serve as a way to determine what the risks and benefits are for "de-extinction" before deciding to "de-extinct" anything.
Okay Hotshot... how about this scenario... Recent miniaturized nuke test allows NK to fit a small nuke on an ICBM. ICBM is fired and hits Long Beach, CA... What should the US do now? Play out your "MAD" scenario now? Or do we just continue to ignore them? How far does NK get to go before we do the "MAD" scenario if your answer is yes... what if they use their missiles to drop conventional weapons on Japan? What if they sink one of our carrier battle groups with their small nuke? Where exactly do you draw the line, Neville?
It's only a matter of time before a real flu epidemic rages though the world. The trick with flu is the balance between it's virulence and it's morbidity. Flu's that come by that are virulent AND overly morbid will burn out. People will die too fast to spread the disease. This is why there has been no world wide outbreak of Ebola... it kills so fast, it can't spread. A mild flu (low morbidity) can spread far and wide, because it doesn't kill the majority of its hosts, thus allowing them to pass the disease on. But eventually, you'll get another 1918 flu, that is easily transferred AND has high morbidity. When that happens, we'll be better prepared in that we have drugs like Tamiflu now, and also have antibiotics that stop secondary infections like pneumonia. Those will moderate the disease in the first world, but the third world will still have results like 1918. The flu will still only have a year to do its nasty business, as a vaccine will undoubtedly be developed and administered. But that takes a year to do and there is no good way to speed that up. So at some point, we'll get a scenario like the one portrayed in Contagion, which was an excellent film in my estimation, showing what a 1918-like flu epidemic would look like today. If you haven't seen it, you should. It shows how the government won't be there to help us in the short term at the very least, and why it is important to be able to be relatively safe when isolating yourself for a long period of time (up to a year)... Prepping isn't crazy... it's common sense.
The US, and Japan for that matter, have the ability to shoot down NK missiles as they are in the ascent stage. Now that NK has formally stated that it is their intention to create missile technology that can deliver nuclear weapons to the US mainland, the US has the excuse we've needed to formally state that we will shoot down ALL NK missiles whether they are military or civilian in nature.
This leave NK with the next move. They can shoot a missile. We shoot it down. NK's next move?
Well, they might start shelling Seoul, but if they do, they are basically violating the cease fire, and it's the Second Korean war. But will they do that? My guess is no, they won't. Because as bloody as it might end up, the Kim clan knows where this leads, as does their military. They end up dead. Or in prison. Or in prison and then dead. And their country is subsumed by SK and the world is a better place.
Is it a gamble? Sure. But this would send a message to all like minded states, like Iran. Build a weapons capability that threatens the US with nukes and you lose your missiles at the very least. If you escalate after that, you end up dead. Even "madmen" like Kim and I'madinnerjacket will understand that. End result? Bad guys in a worse place, good guys don't have to worry about nukes raining down. Win Win.
I wish I had mod points... I would mod you up. I too love Disney theme parks. Nobody else comes close (except, maybe, Universal)... I agree that this will be at a cost and one that I will gladly pay. Universal already does this, and it makes the entire park experience SO much better... Universal's is where you buy the plus pass, and you get to bypass the lines on every ride, once. I HATE the current Disney FastPass system... it requires you to RUN to the ride you want a fast pass for, and then, RUN to a popular ride on the other side of the park to get in the standby line, and you may have to RUN back to the ride you have the fast pass for depending on your return window. It sounds like this is much more than just getting a fast pass... this looks like you can create an itinerary... which would be great - no more running from Rock'n Roller Coaster to the Toy Story ride, and then running back. Schedule the park in a logical loop, and ENJOY the park... maybe even have time to shop and spend even more money. Win for us, Win for Disney.
It is the Marriott Grand Marquis at Times Square. Saw a show on it (Nova I think) and was happy when I checked in and found the system I'd seen on TV. The elevator bank is a cylinder, people enter the inside, and there are elevators along the outside of the cylinder. Obviously there is a passageway to get to the inside of the cylinder, as if you are walking through the cylinder wall. There is a touch pad there where you enter your floor. It immediately tells you the letter of the elevator you're supposed to stand in front of. You walk around the circle until you reach that elevator, and in less than 5 seconds the doors open. About half a dozen people get on. The elevator has no buttons on the inside other than the help button... the elevator already knows where it's going. You stop at about 3 or 4 floors and you get off on your floor. I don't know what it does then - I'm guessing that in busy "up" times, it shoots to the ground floor and handles the next group. Going down works exactly the same way. There is often a longer wait for the elevator, but it only stops 3 or 4 times at most before whisking you to the lobby. All in all, a revolutionary system... that little bit of extra info makes all the difference.
I was a Girder and Panel freak... There were two eras for the sets... The first era saw the plastic panels made out of a fairly sturdy plastic... don't know the formula, but it was a more cardboard like plastic. These sets also had red girders, and most notably, small plastic "toppers" for lack of a better word... they were like a really really short girder, but had the nubs that held the panels on, and could also serve to hold down the roof pieces.
The later sets that came out were basically the same, except the panels were made of a thicker, more flexible plastic, the girders were black instead of red, and there were no "toppers" as I'm calling them.
I'm assuming the recall was over those little toppers, which a kid could conceivably choke on. They were not made out of rubber. I don't recall any "rivets" at all, other than the nubs that you attached side panels to.
I used Girder and Panel with my model train sets and my race car sets. It allowed you to quickly and easily have multiple levels of train loops, and simulate a city with an elevated rail transit system. I also incorporated the old Aurora slot car sets for city traffic. Much of what I used was hand-me-down from my brother and sister who were 10 years older than me. But put it all on a 4'x8' plywood sheet and you had days and days of rainy weather activities. Those were halcyon days...
The problem with all electric cars is the charging... until an electric vehicle can be charged in the same time that a gasoline based car can be fueled, they will all be unacceptable to vast majority of drivers.
What IS viable in the next few years is the plug in hybrid, like the Volt or the plug in Prius. The major problem here is getting unit costs down to where the cars become acceptable from a pricing POV. The Volt certainly has work to do here, and I'm guessing the Prius plug in faces the same problem. Incremental improvements in costs of the batteries will slowly bring these cars into the mainstream in the next few years. Cars like the Volt are, by all accounts, just like driving existing gasoline cars, and have the advantage of allowing most daily commutes to be done electrically.
Here's the problem with your logic on capital punishment. I live in Connecticut, which has recently repealed the death penalty. Here is the reality: Before it was repealed, when a heinous crime was committed, the defendant was charged with the capital crime. They would be told by the prosecutor the state would seek the death penalty. In some cases, this was enough to get the defendant to plead to a lower crime, with life in prison without possibility of parole as the agreed punishment. This made sure that the perp never again would terrorize the public. And it was cheaper. In other cases, the state would pursue the death penalty because the crime was so particularly heinous. Google "Cheshire CT Murder" and you'll see the case where two career criminals, with an average of 20 felony convictions each, decided to rape and murder a mother and two teenage daughters because they "liked their car" and followed them home. This crime was so infamous, that even though the state had elected a democrat governor with a democrat legislature, they could not pass the repeal as the political backlash would have been too great. They waited until the next year when the defendants had been sentenced to death before repealing the death penalty for NEW capital crimes.
After it has been repealed, here is what has happened. With the death penalty off the table, the state could only seek life in prison without possibility of parole as it's biggest gun. So defendants now plead out to the lesser crimes with 25 year sentences instead, and are now eligible for parole. As such, there is no really good way of getting someone put away for life without bearing the previous cost of the death penalty cases, with their costly trials and endless appeals. So in reality, the state has saved no money, but now puts murders back on the street at some point. And the biggest irony is that existing death row inmates are now petitioning for their sentences to be reduced to life without parole under the equal treatment clauses under the constitution. This is still outstanding, but it is likely they will prevail. And the two murderers in Cheshire? Well, they are not yet a party to that case, as they are having their cases appealed first. Once that is done, and their appeals are denied, they'll attach themselves to this litigation, and I predict that their sentences will be reduced as well.
The fact of the matter is that none of this will save any money. The fact of the matter is that the old system worked well, since Connecticut never actually executed its death row inmates, except in one case where the murderer essentially committed state suicide by demanding his execution, and even then he had to represent himself, as no lawyer wanted to make that case for him. Other than him, Connecticut hadn't actually killed anyone for decades. But heinous criminals were kept behind bars for life, without the possibility of parole boards, early release programs, etc. releasing these monsters back into society.
But we're all better off now, right? Yeah, I agree. Now lets go gun shopping!
I'm SOOOO tired of this "customer" vs. "product" false dichotomy. I'm one of Google's customers. They service me and I pay them by using their service and allow them to target me with unobtrusive ads. Apple, OTOH, pays lip service to it's "customers" by hyping the fact that they now offer a phone that can get 4g service, which I've had for almost 2 years now. They still make money off of advertising, making me a "product" in your eyes, but better still, they charge you to buy their hardware, and their software, at exorbitant prices across the board compared to the other alternatives. They innovate by rounding the corners off their devices.
But back to the main point, when did I become the product just because a service is provided to me free of charge via an advertising model? Does this mean that I'm also a Slashdot product? Am I also a Wolfram Alpha product? Am I a product of the landowner who puts up a billboard next to the freeway I drive down?
Jeez louise, get a grip man. You already sold your soul to Google... does it really matter if they know where you go? They'll probably do something really evil, like put up an ad for a BBQ place that you didn't know was there, but that you'd really like to check out.
I have purchased 2 cars through Hertz's Rent 2 Buy program. The first purchase was a very specific minivan that had a tow package installed (suspension but not a hitch). I bought it with about 40k miles on it. It was at least $2000 below KBB, and I've had it for 2 years now. It has given me NO trouble whatsoever. I just purchased a small SUV from their program and it was basically cherry. Again, $2000 below KBB and it too has been wonderful so far.
I've had a lot of people raise their eyebrow at this. They typically recount a story where they treated their rental like crap. But they've rented many cars. Most are rented at the airport by business people who drive to a hotel and an office, and back to the airport to go home. Most rentals are like that minus the horror stories you hear.
The nice thing about the Hertz program is that you rent the vehicle after finding it online near you. You can rent it for 3 days at $50/day. You get to drive it and see if the tire pressure sucks, or the car shimmies, or the tranny doesn't shift right. You bring it to a garage and have them inspect the car for damage and general road worthiness. If you decide to buy, you go to their website, click "Buy" and keep the car. They send you an fedex with all the paperwork, and even do financing through Chase or BoA. After you send them the downpayment, they send you the completed registration and plates for your state. You can even transfer your old plates if you sell your old car separately. I dumped a 100k+ mileage Honda Accord hybrid on CarMax. They paid me 4k for it, and the AC didn't work and there was significant body damage. We now have a 2011 late model SUV with 37k miles, the AC works, and the car has been like a dream in comparison. Gets the same mileage, and is from a reputable Japanese manufacturer.
For all those who are going to reply that the car will be trouble down the road, I'd ask you to tell me how you treated your last lease vehicle. That is what you're going to get on a used car lot. One driver who didn't change the oil, and didn't give a crap about the car because it was just a lease and they will trade up in 3 years anyway. Is there really any appreciable difference? Yes. The rental company had an incentive to make sure the car was in its rental fleet, and so they did the maintenance regularly. It all depends on your POV... if you want to roll the dice that you got a good lease car over a bad one, okay. Or, you can buy the rental for thousands less, with the chance that a small number of drivers abused the car, while most treated it with care lest they end up having to pay the rental company for damage. I'll take the latter.
Driving is best done by being an asshole... For instance, in your example, you merge early and don't use the whole merge lane. What happens? Someone behind you runs up to the end of the lane and merges in front of you. I don't care whether or not he merges in front of you, but I DO care that you wasted the entire merge lane by merging early. You probably had to do it at a steeper angle, and you probably disrupted the highway traffic more that if you had just picked two cars to merge between, and paced with the gap between them until you were at the reasonable end of the merge lane and then merged into traffic. By doing this, you allowed everyone behind you to utilize the whole merge lane, allowing more cars on to the ramp, and smoothed the entire merge for everyone.
Same thing applies to the 4 way stop. Somebody gets there first, but they are "not an asshole" and so waive you through even though it's not your turn. You waive back and say "hey, not an asshole, it's your turn, you should go." Instead of going, "not an asshole" waives at you again and you've both sat there longer than you should have - much longer.
Long story short, exercise safe and expeditious traffic habits, use all of the merge lanes so that true asshats don't get to cut the line, go when it's your turn, and everything works out better.
Updates are worse than just the hassle of them. Many of the updates take away, or fundamentally change, the way the underlying software works. IIRC, iTunes had a great example of this early in their release schedule... At some point, Apple wanted to stop people from doing something with their files...like being able to turn them into MP3's or something like that. They released an "Update" that stopped that ability. (I may be remembering some other similar functionality)... Anyway, I remember consciously NOT upgrading, even though it nagged every time it started up, so that I wouldn't have this functionality removed. At some point, one of my kids clicked "Yes" and the functionality I was trying to preserve disappeared. I abandoned iTunes at that point because Amazon had finally come up with a viable music store that sold MP3's directly. About a year later, after Amazon started eating their lunch, Apple allowed "unprotected" files, but they were still AAC files, not MP3... Like I said, I never went back.
The point is that as long as companies use updates to make things that used to be free cost something now, or otherwise preclude you from doing certain things, the "safe" thing to do from a users point of view is adopt the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, thus opening their systems to unpatched and potentially dangerously out of date software. My main point is that this isn't all the user's fault.
Think about what that means for the people who used to live there. Imagine not knowing when or even if you will be able to go back to your home, and knowing that even if you do half the other people won't be there anyway and your old job is gone. Most of those people are still living in rented accommodation just outside the zone, unemployed and dependent on benefits.
Sounds like the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. Forget about nukes... it's this Dihydrogen Monoxide that keeps screwing things up. I vote we ban it.
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Hate to admit it, but I'm a VP (ie. Manager) of a technical team. I was a programmer for a lot of my life, and have been in management twice now. First time I wanted it SOOOO BAD. Thought being a manager was the best thing that could have happened to me. Then I ended up working for a boss who wouldn't let me run my team. He was the guy everyone is talking about. He had authority, but showed no leadership. At one point, he asked me what a leader meant to me. I told him a leader was someone people follow. He blew a gasket at that one. I was impeaching his authority, and saying, in effect, I'm a leader and you're not. After that I decided that management wasn't what I wanted, and went back to the tech side. Stayed that way for another 10 years.
I got to my current job not because I wanted to be a manager, but because that was what the company I work for needed me to do. I was under no illusions. For those of you who are not managers, you have your own problems. When you are a manager, EVERYONE's problems are your problems. Even so, I took the position and have been largely happy with my decision. I still get to do architecture. And I get to influence a lot of people I could not influence if I was strictly an architect or coder. My coding skills have languished, but my architecture skills have matured.
And for those of you reading this that are going to turn me into a caricature of the Dilbert pointy haired boss, I consistently get outstanding feedback from those that work for me. I've gotten personal letters from consultants who left saying I was the best boss ever. I won't continue to brag about it, but suffice it to say that you CAN move into management, AND add value to your organization, AND treat your reports well, AND keep their respect, all while maximizing you and your team's value to the organization.
A Constitutional Convention has only been held once. It was done to write the Constitution.
The surest way to destroy the Constitution is to hold an Article V Convention. At such a convention, they can rewrite the entire Constitution.
You are the biggest fool in the world if you think it will yield anything better than "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
The 4004 gave rise to the z80, the 8008, 8080, and 8086 chips that before the IBM PC came along were mainstays in the hobbyist community. It was all hobbyist, all the time back then, and heady days. So wouldn't it be fairer to say that Intel is going back to its roots rather than "reaching just a bit" in the DIY and hobbyist arena?
IIRC, there was a show I watched on the sinking that took the premise of counterflooding and tested it. They built a scale model, and they were able to fairly accurately recreate the actual sinking, without counterflooding. They then tested what would have happened if they had counterflooded the ship to maintain its trim. Counterintuitively, the ship actually sank faster with counterflooding. I think they explained it by showing that while the out of trim condition contributed to the "ice cube tray" phenomenon that finally sank the ship, the counterflooding would not stop that. It wouldn't even slow it down. With the flooding in the bow from the strike of the glacier, combined with the negative buoyancy of the counterflooded aft, the ship was so low in the water at that point, it allowed the compartments aft of the comprised compartments to fill the adjacent compartments even faster, while the ship was now that much closer to sinking due to the negative buoyancy of the counterflooded aft. They also explored the stability of the ship in such a condition. They found that the ship became unstable laterally, and thus it would have risked a capsize as well. Overall, it was better not to counterflood.
I also live in CT, and my experience is exactly the opposite from yours. For years, my house NEVER lost power. Hurricanes, thunderstorms, etc. No outages. It was so reliable that while I wanted to need a back up generator (because I'm a nerd and it would be yet another toy to play with), I could not justify one. My town is a major distribution hub - on a grid map, the town name had the same size font as towns with power plants in them. (Saw this at an NU facility in NH) Bottom line: Power was never an issue for me.
Then, 2 years ago, things changed. We had two major incidents - the freak October snow storm, and Hurricane Sandy. I lost power both times, and one of those outages ran for 5 days. Some of my friends in the area were out for 10 days. I didn't have a generator then, nor could I buy one last minute. So I went to Harbor Freight and got an inverter. This was a fairly industrial strength inverter - no cigarette outlet to power it - you have to clamp it to the car battery. Knowing this would kill the car battery, I would idle my car while running the inverter. It was able to power my heating plant (gas furnace, baseboard) which wasn't a huge power draw. It ran my fridge throughout the outage, but the fridge didn't like the modified sine wave output and eventually it broke down. Even ran the TV and a light for some of the time so we could get news.
After a couple of days, I needed gas - I was below half a tank from the idling, and had used up the lawn mower stash. So I went out in search of a gas station that could pump gas. Most of them could not for one of two reasons: Either the power was off, so there were full tanks of gas in the ground, but no way to pump it, or the station had power and they were out of fuel. I managed to find one station near a mall that had power and gas. The line was backed up onto the highway exit ramp. I waited well over an hour, hoping that they wouldn't run out. They didn't. But things were getting pretty hinky. Some cars did U-turns on the road and tried to cut the line. Angry words thrown about. People at the pumps were surly. There was a police car at the station - he was there to provide calm. The whole thing gave me the willies. Thought about bailing, but decided to fill up anyway. They guy in front of me pumped 20 gallons into his Suburban, then he filled up 4 5-Gallon cans. People accused him of hoarding. More angry words and the cop got out of his car and while he didn't draw his weapon, his hand was on it. I filled up my car and got out of dodge.
Remember - this was TWO DAYS in.
Since those two storms, I've lost power at least 3 times. I've also acquired a small generator (3500 Watt - 4k max) and have a home made panel that supplied 4 separate 15 amp circuits on it via a small breaker box. It safely distributes 30 amps to those boxes. I can now power my heating plant or window air conditioner, my fridge, some lights and the TV. I ordered a tri-fuel kit that I have yet to install that will let me run the thing on gas, propane, or nat gas. I will be paying a plumber to give me a connection for the nat gas. In the mean time, I have 2 20lb cans of propane available, which lets me run the thing for over 20 hours. I will be buying and storing more.
Oh yeah - and I'm armed now. Got my pistol permit. And I'm building a pantry of food just in case. Goal is to be able to be off-grid for a year. Doing that over time.
Don't fool yourselves people... when the power goes out, things go south REALLY fast... it starts a day or two in. After a week, I'm guessing essential services are severely impacted. 2 weeks and people are dying. If you have any doubts, read "One Second After". You'll be horrified to see what we become after a year without power.
There is another guy who lives a lot like Ed Begley Jr. in that regard. He ran against Gore for the Presidency and won. While Al lives in a HUGE house in the south, and assuages his conscience with those "carbon credits", George W. Bush lives in a modest ranch house in Texas, that is heated and cooled with geothermal energy.
Actually, you could give the Nobel prize to Gates now, even before the vaccine is finished. Obama got a Nobel Prize before he did ANYTHING. Gates at least has many significant accomplishments to point to in his post Microsoft career, regardless of how you feel about his Microsoft accomplishments.
I'm a Nutmegger (Connecticut) and what the poster above says is technically correct. CT has surpassed MA in taxes. A bit like being the best smelling puckerhole in the outhouse though. Just to the north, as others have pointed out, lies the promised land of New Hampshire. They have no sales tax, no income tax, lower cigarette taxes by a buck or two a pack, State liquor stores with nationally recognized low prices (think duty free) and cheaper gas. Cheap gas, cigarettes and booze! And a firearms friendly state as well. A beautiful state, with wonderful features and vistas. Good roads. No frills schools with high performing students. How do they do it? Well, high property taxes because state aid to towns is low, combined with a hefty "tourist tax" - high taxes on hotel rooms. My job keeps me in CT but I'm retiring to New Hampshire. My wife wants to retire to Cape Cod. I told her that as soon as MA cedes it to NH, I will move there.
I read the article. One of the questions is whether or not it is a good thing to bring them back. Sure, humans brutally hunted them, but prior to that, they were quite the pests... destroying the trees they nested in and leaving "leavings" an inch thick. One of the points made by the guy running this now was that they should go through the exercise of figuring out answers to questions like those, before it gets to the point where DIY folks could do this in an irresponsible way. It might serve as a way to determine what the risks and benefits are for "de-extinction" before deciding to "de-extinct" anything.
Okay Hotshot... how about this scenario... Recent miniaturized nuke test allows NK to fit a small nuke on an ICBM. ICBM is fired and hits Long Beach, CA... What should the US do now? Play out your "MAD" scenario now? Or do we just continue to ignore them? How far does NK get to go before we do the "MAD" scenario if your answer is yes... what if they use their missiles to drop conventional weapons on Japan? What if they sink one of our carrier battle groups with their small nuke? Where exactly do you draw the line, Neville?
It's only a matter of time before a real flu epidemic rages though the world. The trick with flu is the balance between it's virulence and it's morbidity. Flu's that come by that are virulent AND overly morbid will burn out. People will die too fast to spread the disease. This is why there has been no world wide outbreak of Ebola... it kills so fast, it can't spread. A mild flu (low morbidity) can spread far and wide, because it doesn't kill the majority of its hosts, thus allowing them to pass the disease on. But eventually, you'll get another 1918 flu, that is easily transferred AND has high morbidity. When that happens, we'll be better prepared in that we have drugs like Tamiflu now, and also have antibiotics that stop secondary infections like pneumonia. Those will moderate the disease in the first world, but the third world will still have results like 1918. The flu will still only have a year to do its nasty business, as a vaccine will undoubtedly be developed and administered. But that takes a year to do and there is no good way to speed that up. So at some point, we'll get a scenario like the one portrayed in Contagion, which was an excellent film in my estimation, showing what a 1918-like flu epidemic would look like today. If you haven't seen it, you should. It shows how the government won't be there to help us in the short term at the very least, and why it is important to be able to be relatively safe when isolating yourself for a long period of time (up to a year)... Prepping isn't crazy... it's common sense.
The US, and Japan for that matter, have the ability to shoot down NK missiles as they are in the ascent stage. Now that NK has formally stated that it is their intention to create missile technology that can deliver nuclear weapons to the US mainland, the US has the excuse we've needed to formally state that we will shoot down ALL NK missiles whether they are military or civilian in nature.
This leave NK with the next move. They can shoot a missile. We shoot it down. NK's next move?
Well, they might start shelling Seoul, but if they do, they are basically violating the cease fire, and it's the Second Korean war. But will they do that? My guess is no, they won't. Because as bloody as it might end up, the Kim clan knows where this leads, as does their military. They end up dead. Or in prison. Or in prison and then dead. And their country is subsumed by SK and the world is a better place.
Is it a gamble? Sure. But this would send a message to all like minded states, like Iran. Build a weapons capability that threatens the US with nukes and you lose your missiles at the very least. If you escalate after that, you end up dead. Even "madmen" like Kim and I'madinnerjacket will understand that. End result? Bad guys in a worse place, good guys don't have to worry about nukes raining down. Win Win.
I wish I had mod points... I would mod you up. I too love Disney theme parks. Nobody else comes close (except, maybe, Universal)... I agree that this will be at a cost and one that I will gladly pay. Universal already does this, and it makes the entire park experience SO much better... Universal's is where you buy the plus pass, and you get to bypass the lines on every ride, once. I HATE the current Disney FastPass system... it requires you to RUN to the ride you want a fast pass for, and then, RUN to a popular ride on the other side of the park to get in the standby line, and you may have to RUN back to the ride you have the fast pass for depending on your return window. It sounds like this is much more than just getting a fast pass... this looks like you can create an itinerary... which would be great - no more running from Rock'n Roller Coaster to the Toy Story ride, and then running back. Schedule the park in a logical loop, and ENJOY the park... maybe even have time to shop and spend even more money. Win for us, Win for Disney.
It is the Marriott Grand Marquis at Times Square. Saw a show on it (Nova I think) and was happy when I checked in and found the system I'd seen on TV. The elevator bank is a cylinder, people enter the inside, and there are elevators along the outside of the cylinder. Obviously there is a passageway to get to the inside of the cylinder, as if you are walking through the cylinder wall. There is a touch pad there where you enter your floor. It immediately tells you the letter of the elevator you're supposed to stand in front of. You walk around the circle until you reach that elevator, and in less than 5 seconds the doors open. About half a dozen people get on. The elevator has no buttons on the inside other than the help button... the elevator already knows where it's going. You stop at about 3 or 4 floors and you get off on your floor. I don't know what it does then - I'm guessing that in busy "up" times, it shoots to the ground floor and handles the next group. Going down works exactly the same way. There is often a longer wait for the elevator, but it only stops 3 or 4 times at most before whisking you to the lobby. All in all, a revolutionary system... that little bit of extra info makes all the difference.
I was a Girder and Panel freak... There were two eras for the sets... The first era saw the plastic panels made out of a fairly sturdy plastic... don't know the formula, but it was a more cardboard like plastic. These sets also had red girders, and most notably, small plastic "toppers" for lack of a better word... they were like a really really short girder, but had the nubs that held the panels on, and could also serve to hold down the roof pieces.
The later sets that came out were basically the same, except the panels were made of a thicker, more flexible plastic, the girders were black instead of red, and there were no "toppers" as I'm calling them.
I'm assuming the recall was over those little toppers, which a kid could conceivably choke on. They were not made out of rubber. I don't recall any "rivets" at all, other than the nubs that you attached side panels to.
I used Girder and Panel with my model train sets and my race car sets. It allowed you to quickly and easily have multiple levels of train loops, and simulate a city with an elevated rail transit system. I also incorporated the old Aurora slot car sets for city traffic. Much of what I used was hand-me-down from my brother and sister who were 10 years older than me. But put it all on a 4'x8' plywood sheet and you had days and days of rainy weather activities. Those were halcyon days...
The problem with all electric cars is the charging... until an electric vehicle can be charged in the same time that a gasoline based car can be fueled, they will all be unacceptable to vast majority of drivers.
What IS viable in the next few years is the plug in hybrid, like the Volt or the plug in Prius. The major problem here is getting unit costs down to where the cars become acceptable from a pricing POV. The Volt certainly has work to do here, and I'm guessing the Prius plug in faces the same problem. Incremental improvements in costs of the batteries will slowly bring these cars into the mainstream in the next few years. Cars like the Volt are, by all accounts, just like driving existing gasoline cars, and have the advantage of allowing most daily commutes to be done electrically.
Here's the problem with your logic on capital punishment. I live in Connecticut, which has recently repealed the death penalty. Here is the reality: Before it was repealed, when a heinous crime was committed, the defendant was charged with the capital crime. They would be told by the prosecutor the state would seek the death penalty. In some cases, this was enough to get the defendant to plead to a lower crime, with life in prison without possibility of parole as the agreed punishment. This made sure that the perp never again would terrorize the public. And it was cheaper. In other cases, the state would pursue the death penalty because the crime was so particularly heinous. Google "Cheshire CT Murder" and you'll see the case where two career criminals, with an average of 20 felony convictions each, decided to rape and murder a mother and two teenage daughters because they "liked their car" and followed them home. This crime was so infamous, that even though the state had elected a democrat governor with a democrat legislature, they could not pass the repeal as the political backlash would have been too great. They waited until the next year when the defendants had been sentenced to death before repealing the death penalty for NEW capital crimes.
After it has been repealed, here is what has happened. With the death penalty off the table, the state could only seek life in prison without possibility of parole as it's biggest gun. So defendants now plead out to the lesser crimes with 25 year sentences instead, and are now eligible for parole. As such, there is no really good way of getting someone put away for life without bearing the previous cost of the death penalty cases, with their costly trials and endless appeals. So in reality, the state has saved no money, but now puts murders back on the street at some point. And the biggest irony is that existing death row inmates are now petitioning for their sentences to be reduced to life without parole under the equal treatment clauses under the constitution. This is still outstanding, but it is likely they will prevail. And the two murderers in Cheshire? Well, they are not yet a party to that case, as they are having their cases appealed first. Once that is done, and their appeals are denied, they'll attach themselves to this litigation, and I predict that their sentences will be reduced as well.
The fact of the matter is that none of this will save any money. The fact of the matter is that the old system worked well, since Connecticut never actually executed its death row inmates, except in one case where the murderer essentially committed state suicide by demanding his execution, and even then he had to represent himself, as no lawyer wanted to make that case for him. Other than him, Connecticut hadn't actually killed anyone for decades. But heinous criminals were kept behind bars for life, without the possibility of parole boards, early release programs, etc. releasing these monsters back into society.
But we're all better off now, right? Yeah, I agree. Now lets go gun shopping!
I'm SOOOO tired of this "customer" vs. "product" false dichotomy. I'm one of Google's customers. They service me and I pay them by using their service and allow them to target me with unobtrusive ads. Apple, OTOH, pays lip service to it's "customers" by hyping the fact that they now offer a phone that can get 4g service, which I've had for almost 2 years now. They still make money off of advertising, making me a "product" in your eyes, but better still, they charge you to buy their hardware, and their software, at exorbitant prices across the board compared to the other alternatives. They innovate by rounding the corners off their devices.
But back to the main point, when did I become the product just because a service is provided to me free of charge via an advertising model? Does this mean that I'm also a Slashdot product? Am I also a Wolfram Alpha product? Am I a product of the landowner who puts up a billboard next to the freeway I drive down?
Jeez louise, get a grip man. You already sold your soul to Google... does it really matter if they know where you go? They'll probably do something really evil, like put up an ad for a BBQ place that you didn't know was there, but that you'd really like to check out.
Caffeine! It's what fish crave!
I have purchased 2 cars through Hertz's Rent 2 Buy program. The first purchase was a very specific minivan that had a tow package installed (suspension but not a hitch). I bought it with about 40k miles on it. It was at least $2000 below KBB, and I've had it for 2 years now. It has given me NO trouble whatsoever. I just purchased a small SUV from their program and it was basically cherry. Again, $2000 below KBB and it too has been wonderful so far.
I've had a lot of people raise their eyebrow at this. They typically recount a story where they treated their rental like crap. But they've rented many cars. Most are rented at the airport by business people who drive to a hotel and an office, and back to the airport to go home. Most rentals are like that minus the horror stories you hear.
The nice thing about the Hertz program is that you rent the vehicle after finding it online near you. You can rent it for 3 days at $50/day. You get to drive it and see if the tire pressure sucks, or the car shimmies, or the tranny doesn't shift right. You bring it to a garage and have them inspect the car for damage and general road worthiness. If you decide to buy, you go to their website, click "Buy" and keep the car. They send you an fedex with all the paperwork, and even do financing through Chase or BoA. After you send them the downpayment, they send you the completed registration and plates for your state. You can even transfer your old plates if you sell your old car separately. I dumped a 100k+ mileage Honda Accord hybrid on CarMax. They paid me 4k for it, and the AC didn't work and there was significant body damage. We now have a 2011 late model SUV with 37k miles, the AC works, and the car has been like a dream in comparison. Gets the same mileage, and is from a reputable Japanese manufacturer.
For all those who are going to reply that the car will be trouble down the road, I'd ask you to tell me how you treated your last lease vehicle. That is what you're going to get on a used car lot. One driver who didn't change the oil, and didn't give a crap about the car because it was just a lease and they will trade up in 3 years anyway. Is there really any appreciable difference? Yes. The rental company had an incentive to make sure the car was in its rental fleet, and so they did the maintenance regularly. It all depends on your POV... if you want to roll the dice that you got a good lease car over a bad one, okay. Or, you can buy the rental for thousands less, with the chance that a small number of drivers abused the car, while most treated it with care lest they end up having to pay the rental company for damage. I'll take the latter.
Driving is best done by being an asshole... For instance, in your example, you merge early and don't use the whole merge lane. What happens? Someone behind you runs up to the end of the lane and merges in front of you. I don't care whether or not he merges in front of you, but I DO care that you wasted the entire merge lane by merging early. You probably had to do it at a steeper angle, and you probably disrupted the highway traffic more that if you had just picked two cars to merge between, and paced with the gap between them until you were at the reasonable end of the merge lane and then merged into traffic. By doing this, you allowed everyone behind you to utilize the whole merge lane, allowing more cars on to the ramp, and smoothed the entire merge for everyone.
Same thing applies to the 4 way stop. Somebody gets there first, but they are "not an asshole" and so waive you through even though it's not your turn. You waive back and say "hey, not an asshole, it's your turn, you should go." Instead of going, "not an asshole" waives at you again and you've both sat there longer than you should have - much longer.
Long story short, exercise safe and expeditious traffic habits, use all of the merge lanes so that true asshats don't get to cut the line, go when it's your turn, and everything works out better.
Updates are worse than just the hassle of them. Many of the updates take away, or fundamentally change, the way the underlying software works. IIRC, iTunes had a great example of this early in their release schedule... At some point, Apple wanted to stop people from doing something with their files...like being able to turn them into MP3's or something like that. They released an "Update" that stopped that ability. (I may be remembering some other similar functionality)... Anyway, I remember consciously NOT upgrading, even though it nagged every time it started up, so that I wouldn't have this functionality removed. At some point, one of my kids clicked "Yes" and the functionality I was trying to preserve disappeared. I abandoned iTunes at that point because Amazon had finally come up with a viable music store that sold MP3's directly. About a year later, after Amazon started eating their lunch, Apple allowed "unprotected" files, but they were still AAC files, not MP3... Like I said, I never went back.
The point is that as long as companies use updates to make things that used to be free cost something now, or otherwise preclude you from doing certain things, the "safe" thing to do from a users point of view is adopt the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, thus opening their systems to unpatched and potentially dangerously out of date software. My main point is that this isn't all the user's fault.
Wish I had mod points for you. Bravo
Sounds like the lower ninth ward in New Orleans. Forget about nukes... it's this Dihydrogen Monoxide that keeps screwing things up. I vote we ban it.
Oh noes! How will wind farms fair during an earthquake/tsunami? 80 foot whirling propellers of death. Why doesn't anyone think of the birds?