Might not have anything to do at all with your IT duties, but very often generates an interesting conversation. Most people assume you're a bit more competent/mature/serious (whether that's the case or not).
I'd say we team with Satan himself if we could just build a Stanford Torus. Or *anything* that spins. I want to look up and see this with my telescope before I die!
Sure there's difficulty and complexity there, but so many of the problems we have (both biological and station operation wise) are fixed or at least minimized with a little artificial gravity. ANY "permanent" outpost needs artificial gravity. Many industrial processes we'd like to do might benefit from some weight/acceleration too. (and of course some stuff works better weightless- with some spin it's easy to have the best of both:) ) We've GOT to do this, let's stop stalling!
And many of the human issues of long duration flights to Mars or asteroid missions are minimized/eliminated with some spin. People bungie-corded to a tread mill is not a clever solution, it's an embarrassing duct-tape patch. People should be coming back from space ready to walk away and live normally.
Unless some clever physics/math/etc. geek comes up with a magical artificial gravity field, our only choice is to spin.
No where near SciFi or Fantasy, which seems to be the bread and butter of most/. folks, but... I think he's an amazing writer. His writing is dense and rich with old terms and phrases that have disappeared. His characters are coarse, gritty and flawed, and they speak and act like real people and not people in books (albeit exceptional people). The stories are sometimes just plain painful (but good).
"Blood Meridian" gives you characters that are just despicable and evil, but fascinating. "The Road" is post-apocalypse, which ought to suit a lot of/. folks. If you liked the movie version of "No Country for Old Men" as is usually the case the book is better. I'm afraid his "Border Trilogy" has made me never want to visit Mexico.
The book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Richard Rhodes) has a lot of interesting information, and different perspectives, on the atomic bombings. There's the traditional "we would have so many causalities" argument that's always made. But there were some other possible motivations that are very interesting, and the cynic in me tends to give them a lot of credence.
(Oh, and the book is fascinating, I think, a very good "geek" read. Things like the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested- there was so little Plutonium available they didn't want to waste any on a test, and they were *that* confident in the design they didn't feel a test was necessary. They just did the math.)
First, the development of "The Bomb" had been horrendously expensive, and mostly a "black" project. It was all going to come to light after the war. People involved in it needed a win- you couldn't have spent all that money for no reason and not expect to be crucified when it became known. So- "Bomb something, do it quick, we have to use it to justify having developed it!" Political CYA.
Also, there was a huge amount of concern about the Soviets. They had developed this huge army, and we didn't like how they thought- they were becoming the enemy. We needed to demonstrate that we had the ultimate big-stick so there wouldn't be any mistaking who the toughest kid on the block really was. Chest-thumping on a massive scale.
And also, there was concern about having to share the control of Japan after they surrendered. Things weren't going so well in Germany and we simply didn't want to have to include the Soviets in the process. If the war went on the Soviets involvement would necessitate including them... if we ended it quickly though, before they were really involved, we could leave them out. Like not sharing these subs:)
Personally I suspect all of these issues (and more) played into it. I think the "too many american lives would be lost" argument isn't really sufficient on it's own. But second-guessing secrets from 60-some years ago... who knows?
Absolutely agree- I've read Zen' 4-5 times, and given copies to several friends.
I had a really hard time understanding some people, how they just didn't see what was important... it was so obvious to me, how could they not? Zen' helped me to understand these other people, how they were wired so differently:)
I think a lot of us on/. are way to the "Classic" side of the bell curve, and have to function in a world full of people who literally don't see what we do (and vice-verse).
I enjoyed the story of their trip too, although I was stunned to learn a while back that his son Chris had died. And it's very insightful in regards to education.
I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.
It's sort of like data retention, in a way- one firm I worked with was very concerned that every scrap of "evidence" from their work be discarded- they tended to do sloppy work and get sued a lot, and were working under the assumption that our own records would generally show how f@#Ked up we were.
The company I'm working for now almost has a totally opposite mindset- they find that their records typically support their assertion that they've done good work, and so keeping records is a good thing.
Big Brother knowing where I've been, assorted points on a map... well, how does that really harm me? Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.
I can see it being part of a "slippery slope" issue, but this is public- there is no assumption of privacy. If you *are* expecting privacy in public, well, that went away as soon as everyone started carrying cameras.
(And, if I'm doin' some crimes, I'll game the system and use it to my advantage!)
I'm really uncomfortable with this, being as the iPad is a consumer-grade device built as cheaply as possible with it's #1 function being generating profit for Apple, and I don't think the device was designed with critical use in mind. It's made to be *just* reliable and durable enough that the warranty return rate isn't too high, and no more. (If I were Apple I'd be really uncomfortable with people using them for anything more than entertainment! for liability purposes!)
From what I've seen using iPhones in a business environment, they're NOWHERE NEAR being what I would consider business class devices- we've had many of them not survive 1 day of use before breaking. Not that they weren't dropped or abused, but that's life of mobile devices and I imagine daily use in a cockpit isn't any cakewalk.
I guess I'm a bit of an Apple-hater at my core, but even considering this I just don't think this is smart at all. Appropriate devices can certainly be built- there are specific military standards for devices durability in the field, lots of devices built to those standards, and that could be a minimal starting point. I would think the FAA should publish (or adopt an existing) standard for non mounted cockpit devices?
I used an old Sanyo "rugged" phone until I upgraded to an Android recently. It had survived too many drops onto concrete to count, being dropped in a lake at least twice, and even flying off the top of my car at 40+mph (took a long time to find the battery!)- it looked like hell but it never failed. Had to reboot it about twice in the 5 years I used it. Lots of other devices are designed to be, and are, that tough. That's the kind of reliability you have to have for a critical device.
So far, Hydrogen is just plain BS. Bush used it as a lame trick to direct our attention away from efficiency or any sort of oil policy changes that would have been correct (albeit always unpopular with someone).
Hydrogen is just storage, not energy. Now if we had an infrastructure of nuclear (ohhh! even better Fusion!) plants pumping out clean inexpensive electricity, and wanted to use that to make hydrogen, it might make sense. Without the magic of electricity being cheap enough that efficiency doesn't matter, it's just stupid.
I think, what we need more than anything, is better batteries. We're really close to having what we need now, perhaps just need to get costs down through volume production... ALL the cool energy sources we all love- wind, solar, tide, geothermal, unicorns on a treadmill, etc.- pump out electricity. I need to put THAT in my tank, not a difficult to store low density gas. I don't even consider it particularly hazardous, just not desirable.
Now, at the same time, I'd love to be able to run natural gas in my diesel, and need a high-density low-pressure tank to do that, probably using some of the new nano-porous schemes. I like natural gas because at least for now it seems abundant, and it burns relatively clean compared to oil. (It "sucks less".) But when it's time has passed I need to move on to electric.
Or platinum, etc.... Then there'd be waaaay more interest. The Chinese would announce they were going to land on it, then everyone else would have to jump on the bandwagon. Silica? yawn......
Maybe if we're lucky we'll see a monolith on it as it passes.
Some of the most fun I had as a child was when I had the raw materials to do something- and conversely often the biggest frustration was a lack of materials.
Wood, rope, large cardboard boxes, tape, etc. Strangely rope seemed to always be in short supply. Hammer and nails. Much learning occurs when idle hands are armed with stuff:)
And actually I think the best gift you can give is time. One of the best times I had with one of my young nephews was building a swing- just your simple board and two ropes off a tree limb swing. We discussed how big the seat needed to be- actually measured some assorted butts!, how big the rope needed to be, we measured and cut, learned about knots, tied the whole thing up, and it got a lot of use for years. The designing, acquiring materials, building, overall a simple but enjoyable project with an immediate return, and a template for many other projects.
Later projects were a potato cannon, tree fort with crows nest, for-real play house (including wiring in outlets, windows, insulating, basically a small guest-house)... we spent an afternoon pulling cat5 to all the rooms in their house and putting in a router... soldered up a pong game and a couple other odd electronics kits. Next up may be firearms if I can get the parents to buy into that:)
Time, encouragement, and patience are incredibly valuable and are remembered. Not easy if they're far away or too busy with all the distractions kids have these days. Maybe my entire comment is out of date in today's world. ?
Something I've wanted to try- mount a speaker at the focal point (or actually a little off from the focal point, ideally you would focus the sound to a "point"), and then use it to torment the neighbors pets. Better yet is some manner of mounting something louder- something like a firecracker- at the focal point. And of course servo controlled X/Y pointing on the dish. And a camera "sight" in the dish connected to your computer so you can aim remotely.
I don't know how tight a focus you could get out of a TV dish, I don't know if quite the right shape.
Or, you could get two of them and then.... torment two pets at once?
I've found that while my handwriting and spelling abilities haven't suffered too much, I do tend to type sloppily and count on spell checking to clean things up afterward. But this has led to some funny mistakes.
I got an email back from a friend once asking "How did you know I was having problems shitting?!?!?" I was totally stumped and confused, and he finally had to rub my nose in it, told me to actually read my original email. In regards to an issue I was working with him to resolve, I had meant to type "Sorry about the inconvenience", had typo-ed, and Outlook had helpfully corrected it to "Sorry about the incontinence".
This is exactly what I do, other than I use two male-to-male regular plugs, as I don't have a dryer outlet (have a gas dryer).
My procedure is to trip all my 240 breakers- the main (of course!), then the stove and AC breakers. Then I plug the generator into an outlet, this powers roughly half the outlets... then test with a plug in outlet tester until I find a dead outlet and then plug into it as well, so I have both phases. I have a small 1800w generator that runs my furnace blower just fine, along with most everything else. The microwave, at about 1200w, is my biggest load, and I can run it so long as most everything else is off. But I have a gas stove so why bother?
Since I have gas heat I've got it easy. For those folks with electric heat or heat pumps, they've got a much higher load to deal with.
Cheap and simple:)
I think I'll wire a 240v outlet on the outside of my house, though, to simplify things.
So funny, a friend and I were bouncing emails back and forth over the use of small GPS chips after seeing an article on GPS enabled pet collars. The Desire to Profit was in mind... we envisioned a cool web site with all sorts of interesting images of cattle being manipulated by cool technology,etc. Anyway, my joke/rant from 2003:
The Digital Ranch(tm)
"Wireless Ranch(tm)"... (Web site and hardware in development, pricing to be announced)
So, you have your herd of cattle, bison, horses, sheep, whatever- you implant one "Ranchhand(tm)" chip in each, and then you can monitor all your ranch assets via your computer. Each chip monitors all of the animals vital statistics, as well as it's location, and reports them to you via wireless networking. So you can pull up a real-time display of your herd at any time, pick out individual animals and check on their health, see where they've been, set watch points on health and be notified if anything goes out of bounds. Of course, all this ties into "Ranch Database(tm)" that you use to track the health and progress of each animal through it's life cycle.
Each animal can also be fitted with the optional "Drover(tm)" module, which provides audible signals to the animal (backed up with a mild to severe electric shock) to modify the animals behavior. As the animal approaches the perimeter of the area you have defined as available to it, it receives a pleasant "chirp" warning it not to proceed, followed by a mild shock if it doesn't comply. Fences and the cost of their maintenance become a thing of the past! When it's time to move the herd to another pasture, to the barn, etc., the "Wireless Ranch" software module will send the appropriate signals to gather your assets together and herd them to where they need to be. Individual animals can be separated and directed as needed for grooming, health maintenance, harvesting, etc.
Feeding chores become more efficient with the "Smart-Trough(tm)". Using the "Drover(tm)" module, animals can be guided to specific feeding receptacles, so supplements and medications can be automatically dispensed to specific animals. Using the optional pressure mat at each feeding trough allows you to automatically weigh each animal. With the "Ranch Vet(tm)" health monitoring software the need for supplements and medications can be automatically assessed and dispensed!
Docile healthy animals, with less effort than ever before- the "Wireless Ranch(tm)" is your ticket to a more efficient and profitable ranch than ever before!
Maybe I'm off base here, but could this be a good thing? What if, just maybe, you happened to be blessed with a better than average set of genes? Might you negotiate a better rate? OR, for that matter, if you're just average? It seems that everyone's afraid of the dark, dirty secrets that your DNA holds, but it would seem to me that we all have certain risks, and for the most part we're all average.
Already your insurance rates (health, auto, whatever) are adjusted based on what they know about you- do you live in a bad neighborhood, do you have a lot of speeding tickets, do you smoke... to me this seems to be just more info.
I think more info is a good thing- I *want* to know. If testing shows that I have an increased risk of colon cancer, I'll get that checked more often. Or maybe things that I never would have been worried about and never would have checked, the knowledge might allow me to make some changes.
I'm afraid this is probably an unpopular thing to say- but equality is a fantasy. We're all very different and unequal. I don't think you can make us all physically equal via legislation.
Me, I seem to be blessed with good health. I take fairly good care of myself. I'd like to take more of my paycheck home, actually benefit from the effort I make to keep myself healthy. The guy in the cubicle next to me, that's overweight, chain smokes at lunch, drinks to much on the weekend, and uses a lot more sick days than I do... I'm not interested in subsidizing him.
And I think overweight people should pay more for seat on the airplane, I don't enjoy paying for a seat and having to share it with some stranger who's rolls of fat hang over the armrest into my space!
(Ok, I'm sure I've pissed a lot of folks off by now... I almost don't want to see the responses...)
Basically- what's really unfair about someone having to pay more for insurance if they're actually a poorer risk?
I'm sorry, I just don't buy into the whole "Hydrogen is Cool/The Answer/Better" story. It's simply not very convenient, if nothing else; high pressure is energy intensive and has some safety issues, cryo is energy intensive and opens up a whole other can of worms. IF you can get bio-diesel out of algae (or anything for that matter) I think it's a much better use of the little critters.
Bio-diesel is carbon neutral, so it's as green as we can ask for; easy to transport and store (even uses the existing infrastructure) , relatively safe to handle, and requires virtually no new technology to implement. It's dense, to, which I think is worth noting- pressure tanks or cryo need more space, and that can be at a premium in a small vehicle. It doesn't have to obsolete *every* vehicle on the road. If I spill some in my driveway (or even my living room for that matter) it's just No Big Deal. If someone rear-ends you at a stoplight, ruptures your tank, and your bio-diesel runs out on the ground, again it's pretty much NBD. (Happens every day. Sometimes it ends badly, but even with gasoline it's rather rare to have a fire.)
The technology of fuel cells is cool, I'll give you that, but what good does it actually do me or the environment? I can't keep a can of hydrogen in my garage and fill my garden tractor with it!
Now, what I'd really like is a nice mid-size car, a diesel hybrid. Like maybe a Jetta, with a little help in the trunk from some of those spiffy new cells that A123 Systems makes. Just my preference. And I'd like a little smart-car sized electric for my local trips.
I think our easiest and most useful gains can be from hybrid (or pure electric) vehicles with the batteries that are finally becoming available now. Lead acid just wasn't there, NiCad wasn't quite there either; Ni-MH pretty much there for most use, and now these Lithium Ion cells seem to be there. Depending on where you set the bar for energy density, safety, etc., I think most would agree if it hasn't been passed we're *really* close.
And if nothing else, if our President is touting a Hydrogen economy, you know it's gotta be a farce!:)
Actually, the pricing scheme is a bit more evil than what you just described....
In "the good old days" (I've worked with AutoCAD since about '86) you bought the product, and had support for it; when a new release came out you could upgrade for the difference in price- for example if Rel.9 was $1400, and Rel.10 was $1550, your upgrade cost was $150. If you skipped a couple releases no problem, you paid the total difference. If you wanted to transfer your license to someone else, you'd inform AutoDesk and it didn't seem to be a problem.
Now, though, things are a bit different. (Personally I think Autodesk has become evil than Microsoft.) You have to both "buy" and "subscribe". You buy (around $4000 depending on the product), then you either subscribe for around $400/yr (and get support and all upgrades) or you don't (sorry Bud, you're on your own!). If you choose not to subscribe, can still upgrade of course, but if you happen to wait a few releases, you become "Legacy", which means your already owning the software only gets you a 50% discount; if you go a little farther then you're dropped entirely and you have to pay full price to get back in the game. And now you can't sell (or even give away) your software to someone else- say you're a small owner and decide to get out of the game- you can't sell your $4000 investment to anyone. IF someone buys your entire company they'll transfer, but they won't accommodate much less than that.
IF it was subscription, and you paid a monthly/annual fee for support, upgrades, etc., that would seem fair enough to me. I like that model, actually. OR if you really bought it, that would be fine too. To have to both buy and then tithe seems a bit excessive. It's no wonder Autodesk products are pirated so much!
We won't even talk about what an enema Rel.13 was:)
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Might not have anything to do at all with your IT duties, but very often generates an interesting conversation. Most people assume you're a bit more competent/mature/serious (whether that's the case or not).
I'd say we team with Satan himself if we could just build a Stanford Torus. Or *anything* that spins. I want to look up and see this with my telescope before I die!
Sure there's difficulty and complexity there, but so many of the problems we have (both biological and station operation wise) are fixed or at least minimized with a little artificial gravity. ANY "permanent" outpost needs artificial gravity. Many industrial processes we'd like to do might benefit from some weight/acceleration too. (and of course some stuff works better weightless- with some spin it's easy to have the best of both :) ) We've GOT to do this, let's stop stalling!
And many of the human issues of long duration flights to Mars or asteroid missions are minimized/eliminated with some spin. People bungie-corded to a tread mill is not a clever solution, it's an embarrassing duct-tape patch. People should be coming back from space ready to walk away and live normally.
Unless some clever physics/math/etc. geek comes up with a magical artificial gravity field, our only choice is to spin.
No where near SciFi or Fantasy, which seems to be the bread and butter of most /. folks, but... I think he's an amazing writer. His writing is dense and rich with old terms and phrases that have disappeared. His characters are coarse, gritty and flawed, and they speak and act like real people and not people in books (albeit exceptional people). The stories are sometimes just plain painful (but good).
"Blood Meridian" gives you characters that are just despicable and evil, but fascinating. "The Road" is post-apocalypse, which ought to suit a lot of /. folks. If you liked the movie version of "No Country for Old Men" as is usually the case the book is better. I'm afraid his "Border Trilogy" has made me never want to visit Mexico.
The book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Richard Rhodes) has a lot of interesting information, and different perspectives, on the atomic bombings. There's the traditional "we would have so many causalities" argument that's always made. But there were some other possible motivations that are very interesting, and the cynic in me tends to give them a lot of credence.
(Oh, and the book is fascinating, I think, a very good "geek" read. Things like the Nagasaki bomb having never been tested- there was so little Plutonium available they didn't want to waste any on a test, and they were *that* confident in the design they didn't feel a test was necessary. They just did the math.)
First, the development of "The Bomb" had been horrendously expensive, and mostly a "black" project. It was all going to come to light after the war. People involved in it needed a win- you couldn't have spent all that money for no reason and not expect to be crucified when it became known. So- "Bomb something, do it quick, we have to use it to justify having developed it!" Political CYA.
Also, there was a huge amount of concern about the Soviets. They had developed this huge army, and we didn't like how they thought- they were becoming the enemy. We needed to demonstrate that we had the ultimate big-stick so there wouldn't be any mistaking who the toughest kid on the block really was. Chest-thumping on a massive scale.
And also, there was concern about having to share the control of Japan after they surrendered. Things weren't going so well in Germany and we simply didn't want to have to include the Soviets in the process. If the war went on the Soviets involvement would necessitate including them... if we ended it quickly though, before they were really involved, we could leave them out. Like not sharing these subs :)
Personally I suspect all of these issues (and more) played into it. I think the "too many american lives would be lost" argument isn't really sufficient on it's own. But second-guessing secrets from 60-some years ago... who knows?
Absolutely agree- I've read Zen' 4-5 times, and given copies to several friends.
I had a really hard time understanding some people, how they just didn't see what was important... it was so obvious to me, how could they not? Zen' helped me to understand these other people, how they were wired so differently :)
I think a lot of us on /. are way to the "Classic" side of the bell curve, and have to function in a world full of people who literally don't see what we do (and vice-verse).
I enjoyed the story of their trip too, although I was stunned to learn a while back that his son Chris had died. And it's very insightful in regards to education.
I don't think it's really been a good day if someone hasn't seized my gun.
Better still firmly seized it several times.
I prefer to leave other guys guns be though. I ain't wired that way.
Ok, maybe they have to be internal bays, but surely there's a way we can mount guns/etc. on it!
THEN it's pure AirForce! :)
If only you'd gotten IR vision instead of UV. Then you'd be able to see through womens clothing!
Sounds like you got the wrong end of the spectrum :(
I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.
It's sort of like data retention, in a way- one firm I worked with was very concerned that every scrap of "evidence" from their work be discarded- they tended to do sloppy work and get sued a lot, and were working under the assumption that our own records would generally show how f@#Ked up we were.
The company I'm working for now almost has a totally opposite mindset- they find that their records typically support their assertion that they've done good work, and so keeping records is a good thing.
Big Brother knowing where I've been, assorted points on a map... well, how does that really harm me? Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.
I can see it being part of a "slippery slope" issue, but this is public- there is no assumption of privacy. If you *are* expecting privacy in public, well, that went away as soon as everyone started carrying cameras.
(And, if I'm doin' some crimes, I'll game the system and use it to my advantage!)
Uhhh... that makes me HARD ! :)
I'm really uncomfortable with this, being as the iPad is a consumer-grade device built as cheaply as possible with it's #1 function being generating profit for Apple, and I don't think the device was designed with critical use in mind. It's made to be *just* reliable and durable enough that the warranty return rate isn't too high, and no more. (If I were Apple I'd be really uncomfortable with people using them for anything more than entertainment! for liability purposes!)
From what I've seen using iPhones in a business environment, they're NOWHERE NEAR being what I would consider business class devices- we've had many of them not survive 1 day of use before breaking. Not that they weren't dropped or abused, but that's life of mobile devices and I imagine daily use in a cockpit isn't any cakewalk.
I guess I'm a bit of an Apple-hater at my core, but even considering this I just don't think this is smart at all. Appropriate devices can certainly be built- there are specific military standards for devices durability in the field, lots of devices built to those standards, and that could be a minimal starting point. I would think the FAA should publish (or adopt an existing) standard for non mounted cockpit devices?
I used an old Sanyo "rugged" phone until I upgraded to an Android recently. It had survived too many drops onto concrete to count, being dropped in a lake at least twice, and even flying off the top of my car at 40+mph (took a long time to find the battery!)- it looked like hell but it never failed. Had to reboot it about twice in the 5 years I used it. Lots of other devices are designed to be, and are, that tough. That's the kind of reliability you have to have for a critical device.
So far, Hydrogen is just plain BS. Bush used it as a lame trick to direct our attention away from efficiency or any sort of oil policy changes that would have been correct (albeit always unpopular with someone).
Hydrogen is just storage, not energy. Now if we had an infrastructure of nuclear (ohhh! even better Fusion!) plants pumping out clean inexpensive electricity, and wanted to use that to make hydrogen, it might make sense. Without the magic of electricity being cheap enough that efficiency doesn't matter, it's just stupid.
I think, what we need more than anything, is better batteries. We're really close to having what we need now, perhaps just need to get costs down through volume production... ALL the cool energy sources we all love- wind, solar, tide, geothermal, unicorns on a treadmill, etc.- pump out electricity. I need to put THAT in my tank, not a difficult to store low density gas. I don't even consider it particularly hazardous, just not desirable.
Now, at the same time, I'd love to be able to run natural gas in my diesel, and need a high-density low-pressure tank to do that, probably using some of the new nano-porous schemes. I like natural gas because at least for now it seems abundant, and it burns relatively clean compared to oil. (It "sucks less".) But when it's time has passed I need to move on to electric.
Otherwise you can't have lawsuits and everyone receive lottery-like settlements!
Engineering and science must take a back seat on this one, driver error isn't an interesting enough answer.
Or platinum, etc.... Then there'd be waaaay more interest. The Chinese would announce they were going to land on it, then everyone else would have to jump on the bandwagon. Silica? yawn......
Maybe if we're lucky we'll see a monolith on it as it passes.
Some of the most fun I had as a child was when I had the raw materials to do something- and conversely often the biggest frustration was a lack of materials.
Wood, rope, large cardboard boxes, tape, etc. Strangely rope seemed to always be in short supply. Hammer and nails. Much learning occurs when idle hands are armed with stuff :)
And actually I think the best gift you can give is time. One of the best times I had with one of my young nephews was building a swing- just your simple board and two ropes off a tree limb swing. We discussed how big the seat needed to be- actually measured some assorted butts!, how big the rope needed to be, we measured and cut, learned about knots, tied the whole thing up, and it got a lot of use for years. The designing, acquiring materials, building, overall a simple but enjoyable project with an immediate return, and a template for many other projects.
Later projects were a potato cannon, tree fort with crows nest, for-real play house (including wiring in outlets, windows, insulating, basically a small guest-house)... we spent an afternoon pulling cat5 to all the rooms in their house and putting in a router... soldered up a pong game and a couple other odd electronics kits. Next up may be firearms if I can get the parents to buy into that :)
Time, encouragement, and patience are incredibly valuable and are remembered. Not easy if they're far away or too busy with all the distractions kids have these days. Maybe my entire comment is out of date in today's world. ?
Something I've wanted to try- mount a speaker at the focal point (or actually a little off from the focal point, ideally you would focus the sound to a "point"), and then use it to torment the neighbors pets. Better yet is some manner of mounting something louder- something like a firecracker- at the focal point. And of course servo controlled X/Y pointing on the dish. And a camera "sight" in the dish connected to your computer so you can aim remotely.
I don't know how tight a focus you could get out of a TV dish, I don't know if quite the right shape.
Or, you could get two of them and then.... torment two pets at once?
I've found that while my handwriting and spelling abilities haven't suffered too much, I do tend to type sloppily and count on spell checking to clean things up afterward. But this has led to some funny mistakes.
I got an email back from a friend once asking "How did you know I was having problems shitting?!?!?" I was totally stumped and confused, and he finally had to rub my nose in it, told me to actually read my original email. In regards to an issue I was working with him to resolve, I had meant to type "Sorry about the inconvenience", had typo-ed, and Outlook had helpfully corrected it to "Sorry about the incontinence".
Totally changed the tone of the email.
This is exactly what I do, other than I use two male-to-male regular plugs, as I don't have a dryer outlet (have a gas dryer).
My procedure is to trip all my 240 breakers- the main (of course!), then the stove and AC breakers. Then I plug the generator into an outlet, this powers roughly half the outlets... then test with a plug in outlet tester until I find a dead outlet and then plug into it as well, so I have both phases. I have a small 1800w generator that runs my furnace blower just fine, along with most everything else. The microwave, at about 1200w, is my biggest load, and I can run it so long as most everything else is off. But I have a gas stove so why bother?
Since I have gas heat I've got it easy. For those folks with electric heat or heat pumps, they've got a much higher load to deal with.
Cheap and simple :)
I think I'll wire a 240v outlet on the outside of my house, though, to simplify things.
So funny, a friend and I were bouncing emails back and forth over the use of small GPS chips after seeing an article on GPS enabled pet collars. The Desire to Profit was in mind... we envisioned a cool web site with all sorts of interesting images of cattle being manipulated by cool technology,etc. Anyway, my joke/rant from 2003:
The Digital Ranch(tm)
"Wireless Ranch(tm)"... (Web site and hardware in development, pricing to be announced)
So, you have your herd of cattle, bison, horses, sheep, whatever- you implant one "Ranchhand(tm)" chip in each, and then you can monitor all your ranch assets via your computer. Each chip monitors all of the animals vital statistics, as well as it's location, and reports them to you via wireless networking. So you can pull up a real-time display of your herd at any time, pick out individual animals and check on their health, see where they've been, set watch points on health and be notified if anything goes out of bounds. Of course, all this ties into "Ranch Database(tm)" that you use to track the health and progress of each animal through it's life cycle.
Each animal can also be fitted with the optional "Drover(tm)" module, which provides audible signals to the animal (backed up with a mild to severe electric shock) to modify the animals behavior. As the animal approaches the perimeter of the area you have defined as available to it, it receives a pleasant "chirp" warning it not to proceed, followed by a mild shock if it doesn't comply. Fences and the cost of their maintenance become a thing of the past! When it's time to move the herd to another pasture, to the barn, etc., the "Wireless Ranch" software module will send the appropriate signals to gather your assets together and herd them to where they need to be. Individual animals can be separated and directed as needed for grooming, health maintenance, harvesting, etc.
Feeding chores become more efficient with the "Smart-Trough(tm)". Using the "Drover(tm)" module, animals can be guided to specific feeding receptacles, so supplements and medications can be automatically dispensed to specific animals. Using the optional pressure mat at each feeding trough allows you to automatically weigh each animal. With the "Ranch Vet(tm)" health monitoring software the need for supplements and medications can be automatically assessed and dispensed!
Docile healthy animals, with less effort than ever before- the "Wireless Ranch(tm)" is your ticket to a more efficient and profitable ranch than ever before!
Maybe I'm off base here, but could this be a good thing? What if, just maybe, you happened to be blessed with a better than average set of genes? Might you negotiate a better rate? OR, for that matter, if you're just average? It seems that everyone's afraid of the dark, dirty secrets that your DNA holds, but it would seem to me that we all have certain risks, and for the most part we're all average.
Already your insurance rates (health, auto, whatever) are adjusted based on what they know about you- do you live in a bad neighborhood, do you have a lot of speeding tickets, do you smoke... to me this seems to be just more info.
I think more info is a good thing- I *want* to know. If testing shows that I have an increased risk of colon cancer, I'll get that checked more often. Or maybe things that I never would have been worried about and never would have checked, the knowledge might allow me to make some changes.
I'm afraid this is probably an unpopular thing to say- but equality is a fantasy. We're all very different and unequal. I don't think you can make us all physically equal via legislation.
Me, I seem to be blessed with good health. I take fairly good care of myself. I'd like to take more of my paycheck home, actually benefit from the effort I make to keep myself healthy. The guy in the cubicle next to me, that's overweight, chain smokes at lunch, drinks to much on the weekend, and uses a lot more sick days than I do... I'm not interested in subsidizing him.
And I think overweight people should pay more for seat on the airplane, I don't enjoy paying for a seat and having to share it with some stranger who's rolls of fat hang over the armrest into my space!
(Ok, I'm sure I've pissed a lot of folks off by now... I almost don't want to see the responses...)
Basically- what's really unfair about someone having to pay more for insurance if they're actually a poorer risk?
I'm sorry, I just don't buy into the whole "Hydrogen is Cool/The Answer/Better" story. It's simply not very convenient, if nothing else; high pressure is energy intensive and has some safety issues, cryo is energy intensive and opens up a whole other can of worms. IF you can get bio-diesel out of algae (or anything for that matter) I think it's a much better use of the little critters.
:)
Bio-diesel is carbon neutral, so it's as green as we can ask for; easy to transport and store (even uses the existing infrastructure) , relatively safe to handle, and requires virtually no new technology to implement. It's dense, to, which I think is worth noting- pressure tanks or cryo need more space, and that can be at a premium in a small vehicle. It doesn't have to obsolete *every* vehicle on the road. If I spill some in my driveway (or even my living room for that matter) it's just No Big Deal. If someone rear-ends you at a stoplight, ruptures your tank, and your bio-diesel runs out on the ground, again it's pretty much NBD. (Happens every day. Sometimes it ends badly, but even with gasoline it's rather rare to have a fire.)
The technology of fuel cells is cool, I'll give you that, but what good does it actually do me or the environment? I can't keep a can of hydrogen in my garage and fill my garden tractor with it!
Now, what I'd really like is a nice mid-size car, a diesel hybrid. Like maybe a Jetta, with a little help in the trunk from some of those spiffy new cells that A123 Systems makes. Just my preference. And I'd like a little smart-car sized electric for my local trips.
I think our easiest and most useful gains can be from hybrid (or pure electric) vehicles with the batteries that are finally becoming available now. Lead acid just wasn't there, NiCad wasn't quite there either; Ni-MH pretty much there for most use, and now these Lithium Ion cells seem to be there. Depending on where you set the bar for energy density, safety, etc., I think most would agree if it hasn't been passed we're *really* close.
And if nothing else, if our President is touting a Hydrogen economy, you know it's gotta be a farce!
Actually, the pricing scheme is a bit more evil than what you just described....
:)
In "the good old days" (I've worked with AutoCAD since about '86) you bought the product, and had support for it; when a new release came out you could upgrade for the difference in price- for example if Rel.9 was $1400, and Rel.10 was $1550, your upgrade cost was $150. If you skipped a couple releases no problem, you paid the total difference. If you wanted to transfer your license to someone else, you'd inform AutoDesk and it didn't seem to be a problem.
Now, though, things are a bit different. (Personally I think Autodesk has become evil than Microsoft.) You have to both "buy" and "subscribe". You buy (around $4000 depending on the product), then you either subscribe for around $400/yr (and get support and all upgrades) or you don't (sorry Bud, you're on your own!). If you choose not to subscribe, can still upgrade of course, but if you happen to wait a few releases, you become "Legacy", which means your already owning the software only gets you a 50% discount; if you go a little farther then you're dropped entirely and you have to pay full price to get back in the game. And now you can't sell (or even give away) your software to someone else- say you're a small owner and decide to get out of the game- you can't sell your $4000 investment to anyone. IF someone buys your entire company they'll transfer, but they won't accommodate much less than that.
IF it was subscription, and you paid a monthly/annual fee for support, upgrades, etc., that would seem fair enough to me. I like that model, actually. OR if you really bought it, that would be fine too. To have to both buy and then tithe seems a bit excessive. It's no wonder Autodesk products are pirated so much!
We won't even talk about what an enema Rel.13 was