A Random Walk Through Life

Rocky Mountain High...

2011-07-24T22:15:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I was visiting Megan in beautiful Grand Lake, Colorado. She's out there serving as the Technical Director for the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater. In addition to seeing two of the three shows at RMRT (Guys and Dolls and Chess) we spent some time in Rocky Mountain National Park. For those unfamiliar with Colorado geography Grand Lake is the western entrance to the park. (I guess it would also be the western exit of the park.) When we went the full run of road between Grand Lake and Estes Park were treated to the sight of Elk and several junctures. On the way back over the mountain we stopped at a short trail called Rock Cut (elevation something close to 12,000 feet above sea level.) This is in the alpine tundra portion of the park, the portion above the tree line. I mention this because as we were walking the trail last Sunday there were ominous clouds and rumbles of thunder. If you're bigger than a yellow-bellied marmot there isn't much cover if it starts to pour. Speaking of marmots, prior to walk up that trail the only wildlife we had seen were the aforementioned elk. When I made the comment, on seeing a sign about big horn sheep, "I was promised big horn sheep and I haven't seen any." Megan replied, "No, you were promised elk. Moose and sheep were a possibility but they were not promised." Which was true. On the way back down the trail to car at Rock Cut we saw someone focusing his camera on what appeared to be an empty rock. Then we noticed in the dim light of the cloudy mountain top that there was a pika on the rock. After a about a minute (maybe less) the critter scurried away tired of waiting for its picture to be taken. A little further down we saw a pair of marmots chasing around. We ended with my first encounter on the west side of the park with what is I guess a common phenomenon, the elk jam. This was preceded by something I am familiar with from northern Minnesota, the moose jam. If you are unfamiliar with these terms they relate to cars, drivers and stopping when the large wildlife are in view.

That was Sunday, my flight for home was Monday evening so we decided to head to Denver early and find someplace to visit on the way. The place we found was The Colorado Railroad Museum. The museum is in Golden, Colorado more famous as the home of Coors Brewing Co. We've been to a lot of museums over the years and this ranks up there as one of the best. The museum features Colorado's history with narrow gauge railways and standard gauge railways as well. On the grounds of the museum are two excellent model railroad exhibits. The outdoor display by the Denver Garden Railroad Society was active with several generations of operators. Inside the Denver HO model railroad club maintains a large display that reminded me of the one here in St Paul at Bandanna Square. The highlight of the museum is all of the various rolling stock that they have, engines, freight cars, passenger cars, etc. There was a Coors labeled box car and a Coors painted switcher engine. The museum is rightly proud of the working roundhouse they have built for restoration projects. Of all the things we saw there the most interesting were the three Galloping Geese. (or maybe it should be Galloping Gooses. The link takes you to Wikipedia's entry on these interesting machines.) A Galloping Goose was a basically a car retooled to run on narrow gauge rails. This allowed the Rio Grande Southern railway to run small freight or passenger loads up the mountain at a lower cost. The idea of taking what amounted to a passenger car and running on rails was interesting. I like rail travel and would have preferred to take the train (The California Zephyr) to Colorado but our current passenger rail system would have required either a late night bus ride to Chicago and 7-8 hour wait at the station, or an overnight stay in Chicago between the Empire Builder and the Zephyr. (More on the unfortunate weaknesses in our rail system some other time.) So I picked up a Trains magazine to read on the plane coming home. If you find yourself in the Denver area this is well worth the price of admission.

Speaking of "modern" air travel in Post 9/11 America. I'm glad I don't do it much anymore. I have been scanned twice now. The first time I had my ID and boarding pass in my shirt pocket which the agent noticed before the scan. In Denver I forgot to take my wallet out of my back pocket which required some other finger wipe scan. I survived. I flew on Frontier Airlines who has "mascots" on the tail and wing tips of the plane. On the way out I got to fly with Fritz the Mountain Goat and on the way back with the polar bear cubs Klondike and Snow.

Who Says Customer Service is Dead?

2010-11-23T21:49:00.000-06:00

Long time no walk...
This year is the second in a row that Megan and I will be spending Thanksgiving at home in St Paul. This is due to her schedule down at UW-L. Last year we figured to get a turkey breast and that would be that. I was in Trader Joe's and found a turkey breast with a cranberry apple stuffing. It looked good, it was good. So this year we planned on that for Thanksgiving. Getting it was a little more difficult this year.

So last night, the Monday before Thanksgiving, I went to the local Trader Joe's looking for the stuffed turkey breast and some other things. No luck, there weren't any on the shelf. I found a helpful crew member and they checked whether there were any in the back. No luck but they were supposed to be on the truck, that wasn't there but was due "sometime tonight". Okay I told her I'll try back tomorrow. So this afternoon after work I came home by way of Trader Joe's and still no turkey breasts on the shelf. In fact the shelf that had been turkeys was now back to being other meat items. They were out of turkeys, and it appeared stuff turkey breasts. Enter Russ. I explained to him my discussion with one of his colleagues the night before. He checked on what was there. Well the truck was there, but they weren't scheduled to unload it until 7PM. He was willing to go out to the truck and see if he could find the turkey breasts and bring me one. I thanked him for doing that. When he returned, he apologized but the meat pallet was behind a dozen other pallets stacked 8 feet high with merchandise. He took my name and said he would have one set aside for me. Okay I could live with that. But that wasn't the end of it. Enter Laura. She was prepared to try and work her way back to the meat and find the turkey breasts. After some discussion we all agreed that it would be best if I stopped back later. I was headed to Lord of the Rings Online session with friends from work and stopping there on the way home wasn't a big hassle.

So at 8:30PM I was back at the Trader Joe's and I went to the desk. The gentleman behind the desk, "First Mate" Ignacio, called to the back looking for Russ and/or Laura. After a couple of tries Laura came out. Checked that I was looking for one of the stuffed turkey breasts and retreated to the cooler and returned with one for me, and two for other customers who had obviously been in earlier as well.

Hat's off to the Trader Joe's crew in St Paul. We've been led to believe that customer service is dead. I'm here to tell you that it's not. Well at least it's not at the corner of Lexington and Randolph in St Paul.

A new year, a new blog...

2010-01-17T12:21:00.000-06:00

I've started another blog that promises to be more active than this one for the simple reason it has a focus. The blog is called Playing with Programming. The goal is to introduce people to software "toys" that are designed to help students learn to program, but can be fun on their own for non-students as well. There's a link on the left for the blog if you want to check it out.

What would Sam Adams think?

2009-08-05T23:22:00.004-05:00

Something that has populated a few newscasts this week are stories about protesters or hecklers at various town hall meetings held by members of Congress. One story mentioned that many of the protesters had ties to the Tea Party Patriots movement. From what I can tell, and I haven't delved to deeply into these groups, they are tax protesters. One of there sites refers to "Tea Party 1776". Of course the tea party was in 1773 but who's counting. Also they must believe that the purpose of the Tea Party was to protest taxes, period. This is because they assume that the Bostonians that tossed the tea into the harbor were just like them, Americans. Well they weren't.

They were British subjects living in a remote colony, who felt ill treated by the government. So let's give them a scenario where they can be true "Tea Party Patriots". First off they have to move to Guam or one of the other U.S. Pacific island territories. Once their settled in there is some sort of trouble in that area and the U.S. Military has to expend time and resources to get it under control. The islanders provide personnel and supplies to assist in the operation. Now the Federal government is in a bind. It needs money to pay off the cost of the operation. So they decide to get the money from the islanders. A tax on beer sold to the island is put in place by Congress. The islanders protest to the Congress that the tax is unfair. They are only to be taxed by their local government. Congress replies, "Too bad, we need the money and you have it." Many of the islands send the beer back and don't pay the tax. The residents of Guam attempt to do the same thing but the Governor (local elected in this case but attempting to gain favor with Washington) refuses to allow this to happen. So our "Patriots" take to docks, find the ships with the beer and dump cases of Budweiser, Coors and Miller Light into the harbor. Then they would be like the Sons of Liberty who dumped the tea in the harbor.

I don't think Sam Adams or John Hancock would be members of the Tea Party Patriots. Just as I don't think the Tea Party patriots would not be members of the Sons of Liberty.

On the Money...

2009-07-15T23:36:00.002-05:00

Sometimes you know you've made a good purchase. This week I had that feeling. We were at the Mall on Monday. Megan needed to go to Barnes and Noble for a few things. While we were there I went to the "Music and Video" department. I don't remember exactly what triggered the desire to get a Jim Croce collection but I went looking. In the rack I found Jim Croce:Bad Bad Leroy Brown-The Definitive Collection. The last couple of days have found me in the car a lot. With MPR doing "wall to wall" coverage of the Sotomayor hearings I've had a chance to check out the 2 CDs in the collection. I knew even before the first CD was finished that this was probably the best 15 bucks I'd spent on music in a long time.

aRWTL's Guide to Random Walking

2009-07-12T23:29:00.003-05:00

The title of this blog was chosen to represent the fact that I didn't really know where it was going when I started. The frequency of posts shows that I haven't figured it out yet. But today we provide for you a guide to taking a random walk.

Its summer in Minnesota and we are more High Plains than Upper Great Lakes this year. (Think great grass desert and you'll get the idea.) But the lack of rainfall makes it a good time to take a walk. Its my belief that planning a route often leads to going the same way all the time. The result, nothings ever different. You never see the things you don't know are there. To encourage exploration here is a guide to randomizing your walk. (Note: that I tested this concept this morning while walking around the Mall of America.)

1. Get a Randomizer
In order to take a random walk you need a randomizer. The easiest is a coin. Coins are very good for making random binary decisions. If you are in a location where coin tossing might attract too much attention, like a mall, two coins of the same type that can easily be identified on site but not on touch make a good "pocket" randomizer. When you need to make a decision pull one out of your pocket and proceed.

Here's a simple electronic randomizer.

Once you have a randomizer...

2. Set decision rules
If you have a binary randomizer (the simplest) every decision will be one or more yes/no questions. Here is an example. You're out for a walk and you reach an intersection. There are three possibly options: Go straight, turn left, turn right. If you only have two answers on your randomizer how do you decide. It's really very simple. This decision requires two answers. The questions are:
A. Do I turn? Yes or No
B. If Yes, Left or Right. (or If Yes, so I turn right?)

You also have to decide if every opportunity for a decision requires one. If you are trying to get some where then you'll need to make sure your decisions don't push you to far out of the way. So in some cases you'll opt not to randomize the decision.

That's pretty much it. So next time you walk around your neighborhood, mix it up a little. You might discover things you didn't know were there.

Book Notes: Corrupted Science

2008-02-10T23:10:00.000-06:00

I don't remember if I said something or Megan told her brother and his family that "Books about science are always good." But this year I received a few books that are science related. One of these is a book entitled Corrupted Science by John Grant (2007 Facts Figures and Fun. The link will take you to the Sterling Publishing page for the book. They are the North American distributors.) The book is a follow-up to one entitled Discarded Science that was published in 2006. The focus of this book is how science has been misused and abused through out the years for a variety of purposes. There are basically three major sections to the book, corruption by scientists themselves, corruption for ideological reasons and corruption for political reasons. The last chapter is divided into three sub-chapters on specific political regimes that Grant views as having twisted science to their own ends. These are Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union and George W. Bush's America. While the first two of these would certainly be on any list of governments misusing science to promote a political agenda, the inclusion of the Bush Administration might be seen as a bit ham-handed considering they are still in office.

That said, I found the book to be engaging an informative. Grant provides a thorough investigation of many interesting cases in fraud, out right or by scientists "seeing what they want to see". While I was familiar with the "usual suspects" in these chapters I was surprised at some of the stories. It's obvious that in each of the areas treated Grant tends to focus on a particular branch of science and often on one area of study. Showing in each of these sections how fraud in one study might seep into other work in the subject area. In the ideology chapters he looks at military interference with certain areas of research. He also devotes one chapter to the battle between science and the literal interpretation of the bible.

That discussion has led me to want to learn a little more about the Creationist/Intelligent Design movement. In fact I'm now reading History of Modern Creationism by Henry Morris. More on that in a later post.

Finally the closing chapter on political influences is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand how science can be brought to serve a particular political ideology. I was of course interested in the Bush discussion, but I was also interested in the Nazi discussion since the Science Museum will play host to the exhibit Deadly Medicine from the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The Stalin sub-chapter was disturbing if only because of some of the absurdity that passed for science during the period.

I've seen the book for sale in Barnes & Noble and it should be available from Amazon.com. It's worth the read if you have an interest in this area.

Adventures in Holiday Travel

2007-11-27T20:33:00.000-06:00

Or Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

When we went to New York to spend Thanksgiving with my family we decided to do what we did last year, take the train there and fly back. The trip out went without a hitch. We were a little late into Chicago on the first leg. That was caused by track maintenance in central Wisconsin. The train from Chicago to New York had a few miscellaneous delays and was about 30-45 minutes behind when we hit the Albany-Rennselear station. The schedule allows for over an hour at that station because they need to get people and baggage to a split off train to Boston. I think they even took one of the coaches. We got out of there quickly enough to be back on time and with only a few slight delays in the 100 miles further south we needed to go we got in as close to on time as we ever have on that train. So far so good.

The adventure started yesterday. We specifically chose to fly on the Monday, not the Sunday, after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately for us it turned out to be a very foggy day at the Westchester County Airport. My brother dropped us off in time to check in with some time to spare. When we checked in the nice gentleman (and I really mean this, he helped us a lot later on) at the US Airways Express counter mentioned that the flight was "currently running about a half hour late but that shouldn't impact your connection." By the time Orbitz called with an update it was an hour late. Not long after that the airline posted the change and asked anyone with connections to check in with the agent inside the security area. By the time I got to the counter the flight had been canceled. Not the first flight canceled that day and certainly not the last. Since we checked our bags we needed to retrieve those and go back and stand in line to find out what our options were.

So for the second time in about an hour we are standing in the US Airways Express check in line. When we get to the front of the line the same agent helps us again. US Airways Express is right next to Northwest Airlines at the Westchester Airport. So our guy leans back and asks the Northwest guy if he has anything to Minneapolis. He does, we get booked on a flight leaving at 4:59PM direct to Minneapolis. With US Airways we would have gone through Philadelphia. So we get into the NWA line and try to check in. The NWA counter agent was very good at his job but he had no backup. So when we got to the front of the line he told us "we were really early and he needed to check in people for a flight to Detroit that was scheduled to leave soon." So we stood to the side. Basically it took three tries to recheck the bags with NWA. So we go to get lunch and watch flight after flight get delayed or canceled. After lunch we are finding someplace to "camp out" until closer to departure time. The area inside security at White Planes isn't very big and it was already crowded in there. The next thing you know NWA is paging Megan. We figure its because the agent didn't want to attempt Ungerleider. Cancellation number 2. We're back to US Airways.

Now the thing you need to know is that Megan got stuck for 3 days at that airport back in 2000. They had a possible flight to Minneapolis by way of Charlotte. The flight left a 6:20PM. Departure was iffy because the Airport was closed until at least 6PM because of the fog. While we're waiting for things to happen I'm working the BlackBerry. I had checked earlier and it looked like there were still seats on the train to Chicago, but none on the leg to St Paul. So this is where the adventure kicks into high gear. I tell the desk agent for US Airways to cash the ticket. I want a refund. She does what she can. Kudos to the US Airways folks at White Plains they did everything they could to get people where they needed to go.

I'm still working the BlackBerry and Megan gets us a van ride to the Croton-Harmon Amtrak station. In the van I get through to the automated telephone reservation system and get two coach seats, there are no sleepers available. I get the reservation number and as am about to purchase the tickets with my credit card the call drops. But I have the reservation number. We get to the Croton Amtrak station and I purchase the tickets from the machine they have there. At 4:45 we get on a packed train headed for Chicago.

When we stop at Albany to pick up the Boston part of the train I call Hertz Rental Car and reserve a car at Union Station in Chicago one-way to Minneapolis-St Paul with return at the Humphrey Terminal by 10:00PM. The train gets to Chicago about an hour late. Why you might ask??? Well around 11:30PM we stop at Rochester NY. A squad of at least 4 US Border Patrol agents board the train looking for someone or something. By the time it was all done we were over an hour late, we were about a half hour late getting to Rochester in the first place because the activity in Albany took longer than expected. Back to the roundup. At least three people, one in handcuffs, were removed from our coach along with several baggage items. Its possible others were removed from the other coaches. We don't know what the issue was. Someone said that the guy they handcuffed had outstanding warrants. I'll keep an eye on the Border Patrol's web site for a few days and see if anything shows up.

When we got to Chicago we went straight to Hertz where the agent was working "below desk" fixing her printer. Because they had no Economy cars we got a mid-size (Mazda 6 if you're keeping score) at the same price. Because we were going 400 miles on highways we hadn't been on for a while and didn't know what was out there, I took the insurance for $10.50, we didn't need it. About 6:30 this evening we pulled up in front of the house, we were home.

As it turns out Tuesday was a lovely day in New York and we might have made it out on the flights we were originally scheduled for. But that would have entailed playing the game Megan calls "airport roulette" with everybody else who got stranded on Monday and all those people who wanted to fly on Tuesday.

Moral: We'll take the train from now on - both ways.

Rant for a Monday Morning

2007-10-29T07:41:00.000-05:00

A brief rant for a Monday morning. First of all I think the City of Boston and her beloved Red Sox should thank Fox Television and Major League Baseball for assisting in their World Series win. It used to be if you went 7 games in a League championship series you had 1 maybe 2 days off before the World Series. This schedule made sense. There should be some benefit to ending the LCS early. The last two years have shown that this idea is now backwards. You are better off taking 7 games to win your LCS, particularly if your eventual opponent sweeps their LCS. Enough of baseball, it is now officially the "off-season".

On to politics. Listening to Morning Edition on the way to work I heard that both parties in Iowa have now officially moved their caucuses to January 3rd. Is it me or have things gotten really silly. The Republican nominating process will be almost exactly 8 months long. Other democracies will run an entire election in less than 8 weeks. If the delegate selection process is starting so early why is the convention so late? Granted the Democrats aren't much better holding their convention the week before. Does anybody really believe there will be any mystery to the outcome of either convention? So for almost 6 months we will be in what amounts to the general election campaign but it won't be official until September 4th. If there is any mystery about the outcomes of the conventions I promise to link back to this post and say I
was a complete idiot.

Morning Rant Revisited

2007-10-03T21:09:00.000-05:00

This morning I made a quick entry as much a reminder to me about the story on Morning Edition as anything else. So here I am 13 hours later with a little more detail.

The story that is linked in the previous post focuses on the fact that some schools have been rated as not making Adequate Yearly Progress in part due to the fact that students and tests could not be matched up. As a result the tests that couldn't be connected to students don't count. Most of the schools in the report received the rating due to insufficient participation. In one case the school was certain it had 96% participation, 95% is the threshold, but after all the dust settled they were told they didn't have enough students. One of the people quoted in the story mentioned that they received the list of errors earlier this summer. Corrected the errors. When the final report came it cited errors that had not previously been reported that the school had no chance to correct. Go read/listen to the story for all the details. So why did this trigger a need to rant?

The whole testing, AYP, NCLB thing smells like the work of a mediocre MBA. Trust me I've worked with/for several. They always want something that can be measured even when quantitative analysis is not really viable. But I promised the reason in the previous post and here it is. Vouchers. There is a cadre on the right that thinks all the woes of education can be solved by the market system. I mean look what its done for health care! Parents should have the right to take their money and spend where they want. Sounds good doesn't it. But the problem is if all the money that goes to a school for a given student is put into a voucher, then those parents are spending my money too. And I don't want them to! If we really want to provide the option of not having families pay twice for education then provide a tax credit. Then they can get their money back and not get my money. You see I pay taxes, state and property, that help fund the schools. We have no kids, so we have never been users of the school system. I don't demand a credit because I know its part of the public good that we as a society need to provide. But if you don't like the school system you pass laws and rules that make it look like the schools are failing, mostly because the paperwork has been screwed up and not necessarily by the schools.

Okay rant over. If you have something to say comment on it.

Morning Rant

2007-10-03T08:10:00.000-05:00

During the next election cycle if one politician says "Things will be better if we just run government like a business" I might throw something.

This morning rant brought to you be the people who created No Child Left Behind. There was a story on Morning Edition today that makes you wonder what they are trying to accomplish. (Okay, I actually know the answer to this but I don't have time to deal with that now.)

Riding the Rails

2007-09-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

I bought our tickets for NY yesterday at amtrak.com this will be the fourth time of taking the train to New York. Last year we flew back and we'll do that again. The decision for me is do blog here during the trip, via email and the BlackBerry or do I look at something like Jaiku and microblog the trip. I may end up doing a little of both.

Shout out for good customer service
In this day and age finding good customer service can be a chore. But today I had a good experience. The battery in the laptop stopped taking a charge a while ago and earlier this month I finally decided to replace it. After checking prices online I decided to go to a local BatteriesPlus and see if they had any in stock. They didn't but the price at the store was better than their website price and good enough compared to purely online shops. I like to buy hardware locally if I can, so I ordered the battery. They said "5 to 7 business days." Well I hadn't heard anything by the end of last week so I stopped in on Sunday, 2 weeks after the order had been placed, no information. But a suggestion that I call during the week and speak to Kevin. Well today I went over at lunch time and spoke to Kevin who found out that even though he had placed the order and his clearing house had pushed it to the vendor it fell through a crack somewhere and hadn't made it into the vendor's system. Kevin made three phone calls while I was standing there, updating me in between calls. He got the information to the vendor and even got them to drop ship it to the house. So hopefully I have it in a few days. It's nice sometimes to go in expecting the worst and walk away having had a good experience. Bravo, Kevin!

On Burn Out...

2007-09-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

No not mine. This past week saw two high profile retirement announcements. One is in sports, the other is in politics. Last Thursday, Twins General Manager Terry Ryan announced he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Ryan isn't leaving the Twins just stepping away from being the top dog. He'll remain with the club doing talent evaluation. Basically he joins former manager Tom Kelly as one of the team's super scouts. Ryan's main reason, its just not fun anymore.

Tonight's news included the announcement of Rep. Jim Ramstad. When I first moved here the 3rd District seat was held by Bill Frenzel. I remember the billboards at election time. Simply the name Frenzel in sloping letters. The Congressman's first name squeezed in at the top and the words "for Congress" or similar at the bottom. When Frenzel retired Jim Ramstad ran for the seat, cut from the same moderate Republican cloth as Frenzel, he was an easy choice for that district for 9 terms. He even adopted Frenzel's billboard style. His announcement included mention of burnout.

So good luck gentleman. You'll be missed. Minnesota is a better place because of your work.

Thank you.

Accepting the Obvious

2007-09-14T08:08:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I didn't listen to the President's speech last night or the Democratic response by Senator Jack Reed. I'm reacting to how it was reported on "liberally biased" NPR this morning.

The lead on the President's speech was, "I have decided to accept the recommendation of General Petraeus..." Most reports earlier this week, during analysis and "wait time" for the Petraeus/Crocker testimony before Congress noted that the troops that will be pulled out next year aren't being replaced because they can't be. The only way to keep the troop levels up is to have them stay in Iraq longer, or institute a draft. Which of course they'd have to do now in order to have soldiers drafted and trained in time. Between that and "the more successful we are the more troops we can bring home." The speech sounds like not much more than hot air and wasted time.

What I would have hoped to be the lead off the Democratic response was what you see in the above paragraph. The fact that more troops aren't coming home isn't what's important. They knew that going in. Reed should have simply left it at there was nothing new here and this isn't really a force reduction. Its the result of the tour extensions running their course.

So instead of anything enlightening the airtime was wasted stating the obvious and beating injured if not dead political horses. And people wonder why American elections have some of the lowest turnout levels in the world.

Crying Wolf?

2007-09-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

When I find myself heading to Bloomington my route almost always takes me past the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport. Since 2002 I have been greeted with these messages on a flashing electronic sign:

Suspicious Activity? Call 9-1-1
Threat Level: Orange

I've often wondered if a sign asking me to call and report suspicious activity was itself a suspicious activity. In a sort of Orwellian way. But thing that gets me is that I don't remember the threat level ever being anything but orange. So either they don't know and want everyone to expect the worst or they do know but they don't want us to know. I just wonder what it would be like if the National Weather Service took the same approach.

In Minnesota we can get severe thunderstorms and/or tornadoes from Mid-May to Mid September. Imagine if they decided that every year on June 1st they would issue a Severe Weather Watch for all of Minnesota. It would stay in effect until August 31st no matter what the actual weather and threat was. For the Winter we would run from November 1st to March 31st with a standing winter weather warning. After all we've gotten lots of snow in early November and March used to be our snowiest month.

If NOAA did that people would never know when to be really concerned about a weather event. Isn't it the same with terror threats? If we don't have a specific threat should the level be Blue, A general risk of terror attacks? But what do I know? Only what they tell me.

Symbiotic Computing

2007-09-04T23:47:00.000-05:00

Or how an old project comes back to life...

A couple of years ago I was approached by a gentleman with an idea. That idea was to come up with some way to get "personal computing" into the hands of kids who wouldn't otherwise have anything. (Rich if you see this send me an email.)

One idea we tossed around was loading up portable apps or something like that on a flash drive. At the time the U3 technology was new and the flash drives that support it expensive. Well that's not true anymore. This weekend I picked up a 2GB flash drive, with U3 support, for less than $20. It now is the home of a QEMU-Puppy installation. Once I figure out how to get it to autorun under Windows I'll have a "computer" that runs Linux that only needs Windows system as a "host". Its a little slow depending on the host configuration but its better than nothing.

More as I get a chance to play with it.

Hosting History

2007-09-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

I promise that I'm going to do more blogging in the next year. Its Labor Day weekend, and in Minnesota that means the end of summer with the end of the State Fair. But next year it will be something all together different. Next year September 1-4 will be the Republican National Convention, right here in the Twin Cities. The Main Event will take place about 2 miles from the house at the Xcel Energy Center.

This convention will be historic for several reasons. First, it is one of the few times in the nation's history that neither the sitting President nor Vice President is seeking the nomination. (The last time was probably 1928.) Second, regardless of your political views, it is safe to say that the current administration will go down as one of the most controversial in history. The convention will signal the changing of the guard with respect to Republican leadership.

My personal goal is learn more about the history of my adopted state and home town. I want to be able to answer people's questions if they ask me. So don't be surprised to see comments on what I've learned. It doesn't hurt that 2008 is also the State of Minnesota's sesquicentennial. That should make state history a popular topic next year.

Zero to Website

2007-03-13T18:36:00.000-05:00

When I was teaching Web Development students to use Zope and then Plone I used to have a lab called The Zero to Website Challenge. Students were given a weeks worth of class time minus enough time for them to present the site to me and the rest class, this was usually 4 and 5 hours of design and build time. They worked in teams of 2 to 4 students that I usually chose for them. In most cases the first hour was spent organizing the team and picking a topic. Invariably the good students made really good sites and the slackers made sites that were good enough. I often said that I was willing to take on any comer at that time (2003 - 2005) in a challenge match where they picked the theme, the operating system and most of the rules and still make a better site in less time. I'm not so sure I'd be willing to make that dare now.

That's the impetus for this entry. Tonight at the TCPC Web SIG meeting Curt built a new Drupal site in about an hour for his Word Boot Camp event at the end of March. Drupal and Joomla are as easy to setup as Zope/Plone and easier for people who are proficient in PHP and MySQL but not Zope.

And then there were...

2007-03-08T21:16:00.000-06:00

While I'd like to end this with "one" there are at least two electronics chains left in the Twin Cities and that doesn't count Target and Wal-Mart. But let me back up and explain what I'm talking about.

Last week CompUSA announced it was closing all 4 of its Minnesota stores. While I wasn't surprised by this announcement, it is still disappointing. With CompUSA out that leaves Best Buy (more on them later) and Circuit City as the major electronics stores in the Twin Cities. While we have one MicroCenter store I'm not sure how much longer they'll be around. (This is of course unfounded speculation, for all I know they are doing very well.) There are a variety of local shops that also support the needs of the computer geek so its not like we now have to go online or go the Best Buy. Which might be a good thing.

First look at this cartoon. Then read this news article. Then read this commentary from the Head Lemur. Of course my opinion is that if you are going to the store to get a price you saw on the website then print out the page from the website to make sure you have the right product and price. But that's just me. If Best Buy is trying to get people to pay a "store price" vs. an "online price" just publish it that way. On the website have big disclaimers that say "The in-store price for any and all items may be different from the online price." (They might in fact have such a disclaimer for all I know.) Then when somebody comes into the store and complains that the price is not what they saw online the guy or gal in the blue/yellow/black shirt can simply point to a sign in the Customer Service area that says the same thing. But that would make sense. Having an intranet site with different prices must have been easier.

Will it keep me from shopping at Best Buy? Probably not. (see the above discussion about CompUSA) Its like vowing to not fly Northwest Airlines when living in the Twin Cities. Its a nice idea but it doesn't work. Also they might be a retail bully but they are our retail bully.

That's it for now.

If at first...

2007-03-07T21:46:00.000-06:00

Once again this blog is starting over. I've removed all old, somewhat crusty posts to start like new in March of 2007. Why you might ask will it be different this time? I don't know that it will. But the incentive to use Blogger over the COREBlog2 blog I was running on my plone site is that I can email into blogger to add posts. You see I swapped my regular phone for a shiny new BlackBerry this week which means I can email from almost anywhere. In fact I've added the mobile Gmail client so I'll probably use that to email entries into the blog. I'd love to use some sort of quickie blog Firefox add-on but it doesn't look like there are to many out there that work at this point. I'll keep searching and if I find something you'll hear about it that's for sure.