I'm as techie as the next/. reader. But seriously dude, unplug for a while. Spend your time and energy on the experience of the trip. With the possible exception of a decent digital camera to record your memories, leave the toys home.
As to the problem of theft, don't take anything you are not fully prepared to lose. or break. If you MUST take a laptop, get an old junky one, and make sure it has zero personal info on it. I have an old Sony Viao 505fx that I take on motorcycle trips. It's tiny, but powerful enough for uploading photos and surfing the web. All I need, and if it got stolen tomorrow, no great loss.
One time I took a job with such a contract. I simply handed it in to the HR department unsigned, along with the rest of the huge stack of papers I had to sign when joining them.
It took them six months to notice, and one fine day it arrived in inter-office mail with a sticky note asking that I sign it. I tossed it in the round file.
A few months later another copy again showed up in the inter-office mail. Likewise.
After a couple of years my boss called me in and pointed out that HR had their knickers in a bunch over this and demanded I sign it immediately. I apologized, and wondered aloud how such an oversight could possibly occur. I took the copy he gave me back to my office and round-filed it again.
This pattern continued for the entire 12+ years I worked there. When I finally left, I went to work for a direct competitor. I got a letter (presumably a sort of 'cease and desist') from their lawyer demanding I respect the non-compete agreement. I returned the letter to the lawyer with a note stating I knew nothing of such an agreement, and asked if they would simply send me a copy of my signed agreement, and once I read it, discussed it with my lawyer and understood my rights and obligations I would be happy to discuss how to address the issue.
Never heard from them again.
I repeated this process with every company I worked for over a multi-decade career with many silicon valley companies. I never signed a non-compete.
Factors in my favor were that in CA, such agreements are mostly meaningless (this was not the case when I joined the first company) and every company I have ever worked for was so disorganized that simple oversights can go undetected for years. YMMV...
I would never sign such an agreement under any circumstances. But I saw no point in making it an issue. Simply smile, nod and 'forget' to sign it. If I were ever faced with a 'sign it or resign' ultimatum, I would simply have moved to another job in another company.
(1) CFLs are fairly efficient light sources, but their light output per watt is way overstated. Those '60W equivalent' 13 W CFLs are more likely equivalent to a 25 or 40 watt Halogen light. I find that to get equivalent useful light over time I need to use a 42 watt CFL (claimed 150 W output equiv) in place of a 60 W Halogen. Until the latest generation of 40w+ CFLs came along, I could not use a CFL anywhere I really needed any light. Yes I understand the lumen ratings and so on. I'm talking about useful light on a book, kitchen counter or whatever, after the light ages in a few months. The initial light is often good, but by the time they are six months old, they lose brightness. That's why all my kitchen work surfaces are illuminated by 150 W halogens. When I can buy a CFL that puts out the same quality of light, I will gladly change. But none do. Those 42W CFLs which claim 150 W equivalent are less than half as bright, lumen rating notwithstanding.
(2) Their lifespan is *WAY* overstated. I just replaced my third CFL in my gazebo light set in a year. You know, those 'guaranteed' to last 9 years? BAH. If I get a year or so from a CFL I consider myself lucky. At best, they last about 1.5 times as long as an incandescent. And cost 10x as much. The 'cheap' $2 to $3 models at Home Depot tend to fail quickly. I have had fairly good luck with the really expensive ones. I just bought some that cost $16 each for my gazebo. And filed the receipt away because I intend to claim the warranty when they fail. I hope they will last at least a couple of years. But I doubt it. Incidentally, the 150 W Halogens in my kitchen are all 7 years old (installed when the kitchen was remodeled) and still going strong.
(3) The color spectrum sucks. They do not look anywhere near as nice as a halogen. Yes, I know that some claim to do so, but they don't. Plus they flicker.
(4) All of them are broadband RF noise generators, making radio and TV reception impossible as I live in a weak signal area. Also, CFLs disrupt infrared control signals for remote controls.
(5) Most do not start nicely. They blink and flicker, come on dim and then gradually brighten over 30 minutes to an hour. This gets worse as they age. If you enter a dark room and want instant light, forget it. The newest lights are much better, but even the best still brighten up slowly.
(6) You can't dim most of them with a dimmer, and those that you can are even worse flickering noise generators when dimmed.
If this stupid law passes I will buy a truckload of good quality Halogens and make a killing selling them at inflated prices to people smart enough to appreciate the difference.
I have been looking at this for the last few years. I'd like to know who your contractor was, as I'd like to talk to them. I too live in Northern California, and have considerable acreage to play with, and would love to do this.
However, when I looked at this, I built an elaborate spreadsheet and did some in depth calculations. The best estimate I could come up with for payback was 40 years, assuming the panels and inverters lasted that long.
Perhaps with California's newest laws regarding solar and subsidies, etc. It now makes more sense. If I could get payback down to less than ten years I'd go for it. I would also build a larger installation than I need because today I severely restrict the usage I would like to have (including freezing my butt off in cold weather) to keep the bill down. I use about 18,000 kWh per year, and could easily use 30,000, and would be a lot more comfortable in my home. I would replace some of the 1000+ gallons of Propane I burn trying to keep warm with my electric heat pump too.
But every financial analysis I have done of solar says it is a terrible investment. I sure wish that would change.
I know a fellow who did the same thing with old Chevy Vegas, many years ago. Only the fact that he was his own mechanic and was very familiar with them let him get by at all. And he spent a lot of time fixing the Vegas what should have been spent running his business. He finally went bankrupt as a result. Had he bought a better vehicle, he might still be in business. The Metro is basicly a (slightly) better Vega.
Reliability is a prime criteria, IMHO, with mileage secondary, and Metros are not known for being very reliable. Plus the 25,000 mile disposable motor is kind of a turn off. My MR2 has 10x that many miles on it and is going strong. I expect easily another 100k, or more, and nothing in the drive train has been touched not counting wear items like brakes and clutch, etc. No matter how fuel efficient a vehicle is, if it don't run, it's worthless.
Buy a Toyota of any model, except the jury is still out on Prius, with the idea of driving it until it falls apart, and you will drive it a very very long time. They claim a ten year battery life in the Prius, but that's insufficient, IMHO. The basic drive train of ANY vehicle should be good for 25 years if cared for. Anything less than that and I'm not interested. The only time I expect to get rid of a vehicle in less than ten years, is if I really, really don't like it.
Around here Propane is a lot more expensive than gasoline, especially if you take the reduced mileage into account. When I buy it for my home heat, I avoid paying road taxes, and it's still a lot higher. Add in the road taxes one would have to pay to use it in a vehicle, and it makes $3 gallon gasoline look cheap by comparison. And you CANNOT fill-up anywhere they refill bar-b-que tanks. Not legally. That motor vehicle tax thing again. And getting caught using any fuel (diesel too) for which road taxes are not paid, you will really wish you had stuck to gasoline.
I've looked pretty hard at this question myself. But, sorry to say, electricity to drive a vehicle doesn't make much sense. The problems are two-fold.
(1) The electricity. Here in California, paying PG&E rates, the cost to drive a mile with a given vehicle size/weight is much less for gasoline than electricity. I have seen this argued endlessly, but it is simply true. Even if you are willing to pay the cost, availability isn't there either.
The electricity infrastructure is teetering on the edge of failure now. Adding a bunch of electric cars would collapse the system. If the public would encourage the building of a bunch of new nuke plants (I think the Pebbel-Bed reactors being designed now are very promising) we might be able to meet the demand, but realistically that isn't going to happen. Adding new coal plants to charge electric cars seems just WRONG on several levels.
(2) The vehicles. The technology for electric vehicles simply isn't there for anything more than a glorified golf-cart. The best batteries are nowhere near good enough, are way too expensive, and don't last near long enough. Heck, we can't even build a good reliable battery for a laptop computer yet. And as for avoiding pollution, not only does most current electricity generation use fossil fuel and thus pollute at the generation site, but the manufacture and disposal of large numbers of toxic batteries is not exactly green either. And think those exploding Sony batteries have been a headache to laptop owners, wait until the scenario repeats itself on the scale of an automobile sized battery. Can you say "Car Bomb"?
I honestly think the best solution is to buy an older, small and efficient car from a manufacturer known for producing reliable and efficient cars. I bought a 20 year-old Toyota MR2. Cost, under $500.
Pollution? First, when buying an older car, simply budget putting a new catalytic converter on it right away, even if the one on it is working. Ditto, a good tune-up. I did, and then when I registered it the state mandated a smog test at speed, under load on a dynometer. The numbers returned were so low, the tech was blown away. He actually re-tested it a second time before believing the numbers. He said I could qualify as a "Super Low Emission Vehicle" based on the numbers alone. But since the make and model wasn't endorsed for that category, I couldn't officially do so. But new catalytic converters do work very, very well.
Mileage? Around town, grocery store runs and the like, it gets 37-39 mpg. On the road, between 43 and 48 depending on various factors. Plus, it's fun to drive. Plus, it's been dead-bang reliable.
It ain't a Prius, but it's darn close in terms of overall pollution and mileage. Cheap to buy, cheap to run, low impact on the environment, and reliable. Downsides? Well, it's getting a little long in tooth, appearance-wize. I probably should budget some paint and trim sometime soon, and because it's so tiny, I keep banging my head when I get in and out.
I keep hoping to put up a bunch of solar panels and charge my own electric car and declare my own personal fuel independance some day. But it isn't practical, and may not be for a long time, if ever. Ask me again in 20 years or so. Like it or not, the old-fashioned gas-buggy is the overall best solution. Just pay attention to what you're buying, buy just what you need and no more, and arrange your life to require as little driving as you can, and you will know you are living a life in harmony with both society and the environment.
I have to laugh when I hear someone refer to a 3 year-old machine as "OLD", or even an 8 year old machine.
One of my primary "Workhorse" machines is a 1994 vintage Pentium 90 class EISA bus machine. Upgraded over time to faster processors and disks, it hums along just fine on NT4. It has a nice high rez display (1600x1200 32 bit color) and it's primary apps are Photoshop and various Audio workstation tools, Sound Forge being the biggest. In 1994, this was a "God-Box" and with all the high-end hardware and memory, etc. it cost over $20k. It has a dual CPU setup (twin 233 MHz MMX's), and 4 SCSI interfaces with five drives spread among them (plus SCSI scanner, SCSI zip drive, HP DAT Tape backup, dual CD burners and separate CD reader. It also runs the Domain server, DHCP server, mail and other similar functions.
I have a shiny new Sony Vaio based system here with Sound Forge and find that for most editing tasks the old machine totally kicks the Sony's behind. Yes, CPU intensive things such as resampling are a bit slower, but not as much as you might think.
Yes, the newer machines around here are faster (in some areas, although the old clunker holds it's own quite well in less CPU intensive tasks) but it still does what it was built to do, and I plan to keep running it as long as the hardware lasts.
200-300 CDs is a big job requiring farming out to a teenager? Sheesh.
I just ripped ~300 CDs to my computer. I offer the following observations.
(1) Use multiple computers. I set up 4 computers, and cycled myself between them as fast as I could load/unload CDs. I ripped everything to a network share on my server, and it went extremely smoothly.
(2) Use DVD drives if you can. My 2 computers with DVD drives ripped 4-5X as fast as the 2 with CD drives only, and I found some CDs that the CD drives couldn't read, the DVDs could.
(3) You can use multiple drives on one computer. I plugged a couple of USB drives into a fast Sony laptop and was able to run multiple instances of my ripping program, each talking to a different drive. The work goes a little slower per drive, but the computer is never idle, and the total job goes much faster. Plus, if a disk is hard to read and the ripping process slows down, only one drive is affected, ripping proceeds at full speed on the other drives.
(4) Set up the computers all in one room. I didn't do this and I got a heck of a workout running back and forth. If I do it again, I will do this differently.
I didn't time myself (I didn't know it was a race) but I think my whole session was around 3 hours, give-or-take. A little more time after the job to tweak/tune MP3 tags will be needed as CDDB didn't have all my music. I put movies on the tube and watched a couple of favorite movies out of the corner of my eye as I shuffled disks, and was done before I knew it.
I have a 106" projection screen, with HDTV Satellite. Widely acknowledged as the highest quality HDTV signal available, Discovery HD Theater looks *AWESOME* on it.
I play my DVD's thru an upconverting video processor, and the DVD's look *AWESOME* as well.
I am in no way in the market for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. I simply fail to believe that anything would significantly improve the quality of the display. Until they can upgrade the human ocular system, further improvements on the video are not warranted.
I *AM* very much in the market decent, good quality movies, which sadly, Hollywood is not producing much of these days.
Note to the Hollywood types. Forget this HD-Blu-DVD nonsense and focus your efforts and money instead on producing good content.
This whole story becomes even more interesting when you understand that vets and farmers have known that ulcers in pigs were caused by the same bacteria since the 1940's. Suggestions that the same mechanism might apply to humans have been made since long before 1982 and were soundly rejected by mainstream medicine until this "breakthru"
Yet this very year, 2005, my mother's GP refused to give her antibiotics for her ulcers. When I asked about it, I was told not to interfere in the dr-patient relationship. When I finally got her to another Dr., she immediately issued antibiotics. I have been heard to wonder aloud how many people have suffered needlessly, or even died because mainstream medicine refused to look at this "discovery".
My hat is off to Dr. Marshall for his tenacity. We need more like him.
I have mixed feelings about the abolishment of morse. I have been a licensed Ham for over 40 years, but more-or-less lost interest when I discovered computers 25 years ago. Since then I have occasionally operated a station, but not in the last five. I'm starting to get the bug again. Maybe I'll drag out my old Yaesu and get back on the bands.
Morse is an artform, and one that is often useful as well. It requires regular practice and a certain gift, or talent to do well. But low speed Morse can be mastered by anyone who really wants to.
Requiring Morse for Ham operating no longer makes much sense in the real world. But it's advantages and capabilities make keeping a pool of Morse operators around a good thing. To that end, while I would like to see it eliminated as a barrier to entry for the Ham bands, I would like to see it kept as an endorsement for extra privileges and recognition.
I would like to see each class of Ham license require only a written exam to pass, and the licensee have full privileges, except for a tiny sliver of bandwidth on each band reserved for Morse operation. A simple 5 WPM morse test would add the necessary endorsement to gain access to that sub-band. There are already code segments on the bands, so this wouldn't really be much of a change.
I would even support a second code endorsement at 13 WPM purely as a vanity thing. In other words, passing the faster test is something to brag about, but doesn't really add new privileges. Maybe granting access to a couple more code sub-bands, just to give a little incentive, but the "Basic Morse" endorsement and the "Advanced Morse" endorsement would mostly amount to the same thing.
Morse's glory days are past, but that doesn't mean we should completely bury it. It's an efficient and capable tool in the communications armamentarium, and encouraging those already so inclined to maintain and develop those skills is desirable. But keeping it as a requirement for entry to the august world of Ham Radio is ludicrous.
Comparing to audio recordings, I have 78 RPM records from parents and grandparents, over 100 years old, and they still play perfectly. Players are getting rare, but still around and technologically simple enough I could build one with the tools in my garage.
I have 4 Track tapes (NOT 8-Track. Anyone remember 4-tracks?) from the 1960's that might still be playable if I could find a player.
I have 8-Tracks that are still playable, and my mother still has an old player that works. Don't know where to find another.
I have lots of reel-to-reel tapes. Haven't seen a R-to-R system for a while, but bet they're still around and the tapes are still playable, although getting pretty rare. Again they are technologically simple enough I could build one.
I have 100's of cassettes, and a good Denon deck to play them on. The ones from the early 1970's are getting a little iffy though. Don't see any good quality decks available for purchase today, but a few crappy ones are still available.
I have dozens of DAT tapes, and only one working deck left. Haven't seen another DAT in years. Good luck building one of those in a garage.
I have CD's from the 90's that no longer play. I have created hundreds of CD-R to transfer my 78's, cassettes, and so on to. But many of the ones I created five years ago are unreadable.
In short, 78's and even LPs are nearly as good as they ever were, Reel-to-reel still sort of viable, but every other recording I obtained since 1970 or so is in imminent danger of becoming lost.
I am converting them to digital (PCM, not MP3) and storing on multiple working computers, on the theory that I can always copy them in the future to the next computer I buy.
Lesson: Modern media are more convenient, but not reliable.
If I wanted to archive my audio collection for a new generation, I would place it on a good quality reel-to-reel and store it carefully with the best deck I could buy. And keep "live" digital copies on working computers.
This situation really is unacceptable. The CD/DVD form factor has enough critical mass that it should stay around for a very long time. We need optical media that will last for centuries if cared for properly, and we need to place a priority on backwards compatability for each follow-on generation of equipment. Have the ability to record in the latest blue-ray technology, or whatever, but read old CD-R's from the past.
And hams weren't? You need to read some history. In fact there is a pretty good case to be made that if not for the Hams, we would not have won WWII. And the "technology bubble" of the 1920's was largely driven by radio, and that was very much a "dramatic period of economic growth". Well until 1929 anyway. The similarities between then and the late 90's are many.
I agree. I have owned seven motorcycles, and ridden them over 350,000 miles total, in 35 years. Had a few minor accidents but never hurt on one. Modern protective gear is pretty good.
Aerostitch plug goes here..
When weather makes the motorcycle unsuitable, I usually drive a 15 year old two seater Toyota, which is often referred to as the "four wheeled motorcycle" around here.
When I need to carry heavy stuff or a bunch of people, I drag out the Chevy Tahoe SUV. It also works good to trailer the motorcycle when biking isn't practical.
Pet Peeve #32767 - People who are too stupid to understand that yes, sometimes a big heavy-duty vehicle really is necessary.
If you don't like SUV's fine. Don't buy one.
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I'm as techie as the next /. reader. But seriously dude, unplug for a while. Spend your time and energy on the experience of the trip. With the possible exception of a decent digital camera to record your memories, leave the toys home.
As to the problem of theft, don't take anything you are not fully prepared to lose. or break. If you MUST take a laptop, get an old junky one, and make sure it has zero personal info on it. I have an old Sony Viao 505fx that I take on motorcycle trips. It's tiny, but powerful enough for uploading photos and surfing the web. All I need, and if it got stolen tomorrow, no great loss.
Stony
One time I took a job with such a contract. I simply handed it in to the HR department unsigned, along with the rest of the huge stack of papers I had to sign when joining them.
It took them six months to notice, and one fine day it arrived in inter-office mail with a sticky note asking that I sign it. I tossed it in the round file.
A few months later another copy again showed up in the inter-office mail. Likewise.
After a couple of years my boss called me in and pointed out that HR had their knickers in a bunch over this and demanded I sign it immediately. I apologized, and wondered aloud how such an oversight could possibly occur. I took the copy he gave me back to my office and round-filed it again.
This pattern continued for the entire 12+ years I worked there. When I finally left, I went to work for a direct competitor. I got a letter (presumably a sort of 'cease and desist') from their lawyer demanding I respect the non-compete agreement. I returned the letter to the lawyer with a note stating I knew nothing of such an agreement, and asked if they would simply send me a copy of my signed agreement, and once I read it, discussed it with my lawyer and understood my rights and obligations I would be happy to discuss how to address the issue.
Never heard from them again.
I repeated this process with every company I worked for over a multi-decade career with many silicon valley companies. I never signed a non-compete.
Factors in my favor were that in CA, such agreements are mostly meaningless (this was not the case when I joined the first company) and every company I have ever worked for was so disorganized that simple oversights can go undetected for years. YMMV...
I would never sign such an agreement under any circumstances. But I saw no point in making it an issue. Simply smile, nod and 'forget' to sign it. If I were ever faced with a 'sign it or resign' ultimatum, I would simply have moved to another job in another company.
Stony
But.. But.. If you look at the lumen ratings, LEDs are much less efficient than CFLs.
(1) CFLs are fairly efficient light sources, but their light output per watt is way overstated. Those '60W equivalent' 13 W CFLs are more likely equivalent to a 25 or 40 watt Halogen light. I find that to get equivalent useful light over time I need to use a 42 watt CFL (claimed 150 W output equiv) in place of a 60 W Halogen. Until the latest generation of 40w+ CFLs came along, I could not use a CFL anywhere I really needed any light. Yes I understand the lumen ratings and so on. I'm talking about useful light on a book, kitchen counter or whatever, after the light ages in a few months. The initial light is often good, but by the time they are six months old, they lose brightness. That's why all my kitchen work surfaces are illuminated by 150 W halogens. When I can buy a CFL that puts out the same quality of light, I will gladly change. But none do. Those 42W CFLs which claim 150 W equivalent are less than half as bright, lumen rating notwithstanding.
(2) Their lifespan is *WAY* overstated. I just replaced my third CFL in my gazebo light set in a year. You know, those 'guaranteed' to last 9 years? BAH. If I get a year or so from a CFL I consider myself lucky. At best, they last about 1.5 times as long as an incandescent. And cost 10x as much. The 'cheap' $2 to $3 models at Home Depot tend to fail quickly. I have had fairly good luck with the really expensive ones. I just bought some that cost $16 each for my gazebo. And filed the receipt away because I intend to claim the warranty when they fail. I hope they will last at least a couple of years. But I doubt it. Incidentally, the 150 W Halogens in my kitchen are all 7 years old (installed when the kitchen was remodeled) and still going strong.
(3) The color spectrum sucks. They do not look anywhere near as nice as a halogen. Yes, I know that some claim to do so, but they don't. Plus they flicker.
(4) All of them are broadband RF noise generators, making radio and TV reception impossible as I live in a weak signal area. Also, CFLs disrupt infrared control signals for remote controls.
(5) Most do not start nicely. They blink and flicker, come on dim and then gradually brighten over 30 minutes to an hour. This gets worse as they age. If you enter a dark room and want instant light, forget it. The newest lights are much better, but even the best still brighten up slowly.
(6) You can't dim most of them with a dimmer, and those that you can are even worse flickering noise generators when dimmed.
If this stupid law passes I will buy a truckload of good quality Halogens and make a killing selling them at inflated prices to people smart enough to appreciate the difference.
Stony
I have been looking at this for the last few years. I'd like to know who your contractor was, as I'd like to talk to them. I too live in Northern California, and have considerable acreage to play with, and would love to do this.
However, when I looked at this, I built an elaborate spreadsheet and did some in depth calculations. The best estimate I could come up with for payback was 40 years, assuming the panels and inverters lasted that long.
Perhaps with California's newest laws regarding solar and subsidies, etc. It now makes more sense. If I could get payback down to less than ten years I'd go for it. I would also build a larger installation than I need because today I severely restrict the usage I would like to have (including freezing my butt off in cold weather) to keep the bill down. I use about 18,000 kWh per year, and could easily use 30,000, and would be a lot more comfortable in my home. I would replace some of the 1000+ gallons of Propane I burn trying to keep warm with my electric heat pump too.
But every financial analysis I have done of solar says it is a terrible investment. I sure wish that would change.
Stony
Yes, I considered the Metro.
I know a fellow who did the same thing with old Chevy Vegas, many years ago. Only the fact that he was his own mechanic and was very familiar with them let him get by at all. And he spent a lot of time fixing the Vegas what should have been spent running his business. He finally went bankrupt as a result. Had he bought a better vehicle, he might still be in business. The Metro is basicly a (slightly) better Vega.
Reliability is a prime criteria, IMHO, with mileage secondary, and Metros are not known for being very reliable. Plus the 25,000 mile disposable motor is kind of a turn off. My MR2 has 10x that many miles on it and is going strong. I expect easily another 100k, or more, and nothing in the drive train has been touched not counting wear items like brakes and clutch, etc. No matter how fuel efficient a vehicle is, if it don't run, it's worthless.
Buy a Toyota of any model, except the jury is still out on Prius, with the idea of driving it until it falls apart, and you will drive it a very very long time. They claim a ten year battery life in the Prius, but that's insufficient, IMHO. The basic drive train of ANY vehicle should be good for 25 years if cared for. Anything less than that and I'm not interested. The only time I expect to get rid of a vehicle in less than ten years, is if I really, really don't like it.
Around here Propane is a lot more expensive than gasoline, especially if you take the reduced mileage into account. When I buy it for my home heat, I avoid paying road taxes, and it's still a lot higher. Add in the road taxes one would have to pay to use it in a vehicle, and it makes $3 gallon gasoline look cheap by comparison. And you CANNOT fill-up anywhere they refill bar-b-que tanks. Not legally. That motor vehicle tax thing again. And getting caught using any fuel (diesel too) for which road taxes are not paid, you will really wish you had stuck to gasoline.
I've looked pretty hard at this question myself. But, sorry to say, electricity to drive a vehicle doesn't make much sense. The problems are two-fold.
(1) The electricity. Here in California, paying PG&E rates, the cost to drive a mile with a given vehicle size/weight is much less for gasoline than electricity. I have seen this argued endlessly, but it is simply true. Even if you are willing to pay the cost, availability isn't there either.
The electricity infrastructure is teetering on the edge of failure now. Adding a bunch of electric cars would collapse the system. If the public would encourage the building of a bunch of new nuke plants (I think the Pebbel-Bed reactors being designed now are very promising) we might be able to meet the demand, but realistically that isn't going to happen. Adding new coal plants to charge electric cars seems just WRONG on several levels.
(2) The vehicles. The technology for electric vehicles simply isn't there for anything more than a glorified golf-cart. The best batteries are nowhere near good enough, are way too expensive, and don't last near long enough. Heck, we can't even build a good reliable battery for a laptop computer yet. And as for avoiding pollution, not only does most current electricity generation use fossil fuel and thus pollute at the generation site, but the manufacture and disposal of large numbers of toxic batteries is not exactly green either. And think those exploding Sony batteries have been a headache to laptop owners, wait until the scenario repeats itself on the scale of an automobile sized battery. Can you say "Car Bomb"?
I honestly think the best solution is to buy an older, small and efficient car from a manufacturer known for producing reliable and efficient cars. I bought a 20 year-old Toyota MR2. Cost, under $500.
Pollution? First, when buying an older car, simply budget putting a new catalytic converter on it right away, even if the one on it is working. Ditto, a good tune-up. I did, and then when I registered it the state mandated a smog test at speed, under load on a dynometer. The numbers returned were so low, the tech was blown away. He actually re-tested it a second time before believing the numbers. He said I could qualify as a "Super Low Emission Vehicle" based on the numbers alone. But since the make and model wasn't endorsed for that category, I couldn't officially do so. But new catalytic converters do work very, very well.
Mileage? Around town, grocery store runs and the like, it gets 37-39 mpg. On the road, between 43 and 48 depending on various factors. Plus, it's fun to drive. Plus, it's been dead-bang reliable.
It ain't a Prius, but it's darn close in terms of overall pollution and mileage. Cheap to buy, cheap to run, low impact on the environment, and reliable. Downsides? Well, it's getting a little long in tooth, appearance-wize. I probably should budget some paint and trim sometime soon, and because it's so tiny, I keep banging my head when I get in and out.
I keep hoping to put up a bunch of solar panels and charge my own electric car and declare my own personal fuel independance some day. But it isn't practical, and may not be for a long time, if ever. Ask me again in 20 years or so. Like it or not, the old-fashioned gas-buggy is the overall best solution. Just pay attention to what you're buying, buy just what you need and no more, and arrange your life to require as little driving as you can, and you will know you are living a life in harmony with both society and the environment.
Stony
I have to laugh when I hear someone refer to a 3 year-old machine as "OLD", or even an 8 year old machine.
;)
One of my primary "Workhorse" machines is a 1994 vintage Pentium 90 class EISA bus machine. Upgraded over time to faster processors and disks, it hums along just fine on NT4. It has a nice high rez display (1600x1200 32 bit color) and it's primary apps are Photoshop and various Audio workstation tools, Sound Forge being the biggest. In 1994, this was a "God-Box" and with all the high-end hardware and memory, etc. it cost over $20k. It has a dual CPU setup (twin 233 MHz MMX's), and 4 SCSI interfaces with five drives spread among them (plus SCSI scanner, SCSI zip drive, HP DAT Tape backup, dual CD burners and separate CD reader. It also runs the Domain server, DHCP server, mail and other similar functions.
I have a shiny new Sony Vaio based system here with Sound Forge and find that for most editing tasks the old machine totally kicks the Sony's behind. Yes, CPU intensive things such as resampling are a bit slower, but not as much as you might think.
Yes, the newer machines around here are faster (in some areas, although the old clunker holds it's own quite well in less CPU intensive tasks) but it still does what it was built to do, and I plan to keep running it as long as the hardware lasts.
Old machines indeed!
Check back in 2010.
Stony
200-300 CDs is a big job requiring farming out to a teenager? Sheesh.
I just ripped ~300 CDs to my computer. I offer the following observations.
(1) Use multiple computers. I set up 4 computers, and cycled myself between them as fast as I could load/unload CDs. I ripped everything to a network share on my server, and it went extremely smoothly.
(2) Use DVD drives if you can. My 2 computers with DVD drives ripped 4-5X as fast as the 2 with CD drives only, and I found some CDs that the CD drives couldn't read, the DVDs could.
(3) You can use multiple drives on one computer. I plugged a couple of USB drives into a fast Sony laptop and was able to run multiple instances of my ripping program, each talking to a different drive. The work goes a little slower per drive, but the computer is never idle, and the total job goes much faster. Plus, if a disk is hard to read and the ripping process slows down, only one drive is affected, ripping proceeds at full speed on the other drives.
(4) Set up the computers all in one room. I didn't do this and I got a heck of a workout running back and forth. If I do it again, I will do this differently.
I didn't time myself (I didn't know it was a race) but I think my whole session was around 3 hours, give-or-take. A little more time after the job to tweak/tune MP3 tags will be needed as CDDB didn't have all my music. I put movies on the tube and watched a couple of favorite movies out of the corner of my eye as I shuffled disks, and was done before I knew it.
Stony
I have a 106" projection screen, with HDTV Satellite. Widely acknowledged as the highest quality HDTV signal available, Discovery HD Theater looks *AWESOME* on it.
I play my DVD's thru an upconverting video processor, and the DVD's look *AWESOME* as well.
I am in no way in the market for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. I simply fail to believe that anything would significantly improve the quality of the display. Until they can upgrade the human ocular system, further improvements on the video are not warranted.
I *AM* very much in the market decent, good quality movies, which sadly, Hollywood is not producing much of these days.
Note to the Hollywood types. Forget this HD-Blu-DVD nonsense and focus your efforts and money instead on producing good content.
Stony
This whole story becomes even more interesting when you understand that vets and farmers have known that ulcers in pigs were caused by the same bacteria since the 1940's. Suggestions that the same mechanism might apply to humans have been made since long before 1982 and were soundly rejected by mainstream medicine until this "breakthru"
Yet this very year, 2005, my mother's GP refused to give her antibiotics for her ulcers. When I asked about it, I was told not to interfere in the dr-patient relationship. When I finally got her to another Dr., she immediately issued antibiotics. I have been heard to wonder aloud how many people have suffered needlessly, or even died because mainstream medicine refused to look at this "discovery".
My hat is off to Dr. Marshall for his tenacity. We need more like him.
I have mixed feelings about the abolishment of morse. I have been a licensed Ham for over 40 years, but more-or-less lost interest when I discovered computers 25 years ago. Since then I have occasionally operated a station, but not in the last five. I'm starting to get the bug again. Maybe I'll drag out my old Yaesu and get back on the bands.
Morse is an artform, and one that is often useful as well. It requires regular practice and a certain gift, or talent to do well. But low speed Morse can be mastered by anyone who really wants to.
Requiring Morse for Ham operating no longer makes much sense in the real world. But it's advantages and capabilities make keeping a pool of Morse operators around a good thing. To that end, while I would like to see it eliminated as a barrier to entry for the Ham bands, I would like to see it kept as an endorsement for extra privileges and recognition.
I would like to see each class of Ham license require only a written exam to pass, and the licensee have full privileges, except for a tiny sliver of bandwidth on each band reserved for Morse operation. A simple 5 WPM morse test would add the necessary endorsement to gain access to that sub-band. There are already code segments on the bands, so this wouldn't really be much of a change.
I would even support a second code endorsement at 13 WPM purely as a vanity thing. In other words, passing the faster test is something to brag about, but doesn't really add new privileges. Maybe granting access to a couple more code sub-bands, just to give a little incentive, but the "Basic Morse" endorsement and the "Advanced Morse" endorsement would mostly amount to the same thing.
Morse's glory days are past, but that doesn't mean we should completely bury it. It's an efficient and capable tool in the communications armamentarium, and encouraging those already so inclined to maintain and develop those skills is desirable. But keeping it as a requirement for entry to the august world of Ham Radio is ludicrous.
Nat
Comparing to audio recordings, I have 78 RPM records from parents and grandparents, over 100 years old, and they still play perfectly. Players are getting rare, but still around and technologically simple enough I could build one with the tools in my garage.
I have 4 Track tapes (NOT 8-Track. Anyone remember 4-tracks?) from the 1960's that might still be playable if I could find a player.
I have 8-Tracks that are still playable, and my mother still has an old player that works. Don't know where to find another.
I have lots of reel-to-reel tapes. Haven't seen a R-to-R system for a while, but bet they're still around and the tapes are still playable, although getting pretty rare. Again they are technologically simple enough I could build one.
I have 100's of cassettes, and a good Denon deck to play them on. The ones from the early 1970's are getting a little iffy though. Don't see any good quality decks available for purchase today, but a few crappy ones are still available.
I have dozens of DAT tapes, and only one working deck left. Haven't seen another DAT in years. Good luck building one of those in a garage.
I have CD's from the 90's that no longer play. I have created hundreds of CD-R to transfer my 78's, cassettes, and so on to. But many of the ones I created five years ago are unreadable.
In short, 78's and even LPs are nearly as good as they ever were, Reel-to-reel still sort of viable, but every other recording I obtained since 1970 or so is in imminent danger of becoming lost.
I am converting them to digital (PCM, not MP3) and storing on multiple working computers, on the theory that I can always copy them in the future to the next computer I buy.
Lesson: Modern media are more convenient, but not reliable.
If I wanted to archive my audio collection for a new generation, I would place it on a good quality reel-to-reel and store it carefully with the best deck I could buy. And keep "live" digital copies on working computers.
This situation really is unacceptable. The CD/DVD form factor has enough critical mass that it should stay around for a very long time. We need optical media that will last for centuries if cared for properly, and we need to place a priority on backwards compatability for each follow-on generation of equipment. Have the ability to record in the latest blue-ray technology, or whatever, but read old CD-R's from the past.
And hams weren't? You need to read some history. In fact there is a pretty good case to be made that if not for the Hams, we would not have won WWII. And the "technology bubble" of the 1920's was largely driven by radio, and that was very much a "dramatic period of economic growth". Well until 1929 anyway. The similarities between then and the late 90's are many.
I agree. I have owned seven motorcycles, and ridden them over 350,000 miles total, in 35 years. Had a few minor accidents but never hurt on one. Modern protective gear is pretty good. Aerostitch plug goes here.. When weather makes the motorcycle unsuitable, I usually drive a 15 year old two seater Toyota, which is often referred to as the "four wheeled motorcycle" around here. When I need to carry heavy stuff or a bunch of people, I drag out the Chevy Tahoe SUV. It also works good to trailer the motorcycle when biking isn't practical. Pet Peeve #32767 - People who are too stupid to understand that yes, sometimes a big heavy-duty vehicle really is necessary. If you don't like SUV's fine. Don't buy one.