Shaking our tree.

- 04 Oct 1957 - SPUTNIK!!!

This little dingbat scared the Hell out of many of us then ...

from citizenship typepad.com

Nothing but a polished metal sphere of 585 mm (23 inches) diameter with a mass of 83.6 kilograms (184 lb) and carrying only a radio transmitter, it definitely got our attention.

THEY got there FIRST! Oh, Man!!!

You see, those were the thrilling days of yesteryear when the Soviet Union was ruled by Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev who, just the year before, had sent columns of tanks into Hungary to crush a rebellion there (just his way of stating "THAT is a NO-NO!").

The days of "Duck and cover" drills in public schools (not at all insane; if a nuke hit several miles away instead of on top of you, that could make the difference between surviving versus being shredded by glass blown in by the shock wave if all you did was just stand there and gawk at the explosion. Nukes are powerful, but not infinitely powerful. They can be survived, and have been. See reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for hard evidence. (Although, in an essay on civil defense, Robert A. Heinlein advocated situational awareness (paying attention to what's going on in the world) and summed up surviving the bomb in seven words: "Don't BE there, when it goes off!" ))

That innocent looking thing was placed into orbit by ...

from on6wj-sputnik.blogspot.com

... the R-7 launcher (for a long time referred to as T-3), which evolved from an ICBM whose primary purpose was to transport a thermonuclear bomb from Point A (somewhere in the Soviet Union) to Point B (somewhere in the USA).

The local newspapers ...

San Antonio Light, 05 Oct 1957 - from newspaperarchive.com

... published times of when to see it in the morning or evening, when it would be brightly lit by the sun.

To read or hear about the Soviets (listening to the radio when they were stomping on the rebellion in Hungary was heart-wrenching) while they were on the other side of the world was bad enough, but a bit abstract.

To walk out into your back yard and actually see this bright little silver dot in the sky slowly moving overhead, and realizing there they are;  well, that's a whole 'nother story.

(Originally published  1239 CST,  03 OCT 2012)
-

Serendipity

noun - the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Through all my careers, I have become self-taught on slide-rule, logarithms, computers and programming.

I taught myself how to use the slide-rule while still in the USAF. It wasn't part of my training; someone had discarded one and I salvaged it, just becoming fascinated with what I could do with it.

Same with logarithms; after I became a civilian, with none of my Air Force skills all that useful, the unemployment agency sent me to a local junior college for a drafting course. A book we were given on mathematics for engineering had a chapter on logarithms at the back. Once again, it was NOT part of the curriculum, but I just thought it so cool to be able to perform fractional roots and powers with them.

The early part of my engineering career was in the slide-rule days. Give one of those to modern day engineers, and I'll bet you some would be trying to figure out, "How do you turn it on?"  ("With a really interesting problem.", I would respond. :-)

That particular career (before I moved into IT) was from 1964 to 1984, and during nearly half of it, the most modern tool we had was an electric adding machine.  I truly kid you not; we had one engineer who used an abacus (and was damned good with it).

It was the late 1960's before someone tried to interest us in a four-function electronic calculator, about the size and shape of an IBM Selectric typewriter, using a bank of tubes showing 7-segment numbers for the display and costing about $600.00 (at a time when that was one third the price of a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle).  We passed on the deal, at that time. 

A couple of years later, I bought a Miida calculator (still only four-function) for about $170.00 from Sears, making me the first in the company to have one.  It got popular very quickly.  I even worked out a three-step method of averaging to get very precise square roots from it (we used those a lot in electrical calculations) and felt pretty damned good about that (although slide-rule accuracy was actually more than sufficient for our purposes -- it was an ego thing for me, I suppose).

Of course, another year or so, and the same amount of money bought an 80-function calculator.  Since then, prices and sizes of those things have dropped so much that the only thing keeping them from becoming Cracker Jack prizes is fear of lawsuits if a kid swallows one.

Twice in 1972 and once in 1975 I had made trips to Titusville, Florida (12 miles due West of Cape Canaveral's launch pads on Merritt Island), to watch the launchings of Apollo 16, Apollo 17, and the Apollo-Soyuz missions.  (Be patient;  there IS a reason for THIS item in THIS post.)

I left the Air Force early, but honorably, and had no contact with any of my former buddies there until 1975 (I think) when, in a Sears department store here in Houston, a man stepping off the escalator behind me asked, "Excuse me.  Aren't you Paul Binkley?". 

I was trying to remember if he was an architect client of ours when it hit me that he had addressed me by a last name I hadn't used in nine years (another story, probably never to be revealed). He was one of the bunch I had been with, and was now living just north of Houston and working as an exploration geophysicist for Shell Oil Company.

I got back together with him and his family. That was a bit of a miracle. Have you ever run into someone that you knew from long ago, only to find so much has changed that you no longer have anything in common anymore?

A couple of years later he and his family moved up to Mt. Pleasant, in central Michigan, where he joined a seismic exploration company there. Another couple of years and he's broken off from them and started his own company (also seismic exploration).

In the meantime, several things had been going on. I'd been an electrical draftsman, evolved into an electrical designer (almost an engineer, but sans license and seal;  my work required approval from a Registered Engineer) and had been doing the same thing for almost two decades.

Into our engineering world arrived a micro-computer, in 1981, primarily for use by our secretary as a word-processor (A lot of her work was typing up engineering specifications, usually from existing boiler-plates;  this made her job enormously easier.) and an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) program in Basic, that never worked properly.

But, it had a professional grade level of Basic included, and I had found me a new toy. Soon I was teaching myself programming on it, and making programs to handle some of the calculations required in my work.

I had made several trips to Michigan, to visit my friend, and we had talked several times about the possibility of me moving up there to join him. After nearly 20 years of drawing circles and home runs, one gets ready for something new. (Any reader who has done electrical drafting, design and/or engineering knows what I'm speaking of.  As for the rest: Nyah, nan nan nan nyah! :-)

In September of 1983, one of the Space Shuttles was scheduled to go up at night. I could afford it, had plenty of vacation time available, and decided, "Let's do it!".

This time, it didn't go so well. When it was time to get rolling, I was asked to not go; our sometimes crazy work schedules had piled up too much (and this wasn't the first time by a long shot. Their recurrences was one of the reasons I had so much vacation time built up; I'd had several vacations aborted this way). So, I didn't go.

Watching the lift-off, on TV at home instead of the Titusville beach, I'd HAD it! I was feeling "G*D D*MM*T! I'm not the only one there!". After the lift-off, I made a long distance call to my friend in Michigan and told him that if he still thought I could do something up there, I was definitely interested.

As I noted above, he had started his own company. He was farming out the data to a data-processing company, was not real impressed with the results, and decided to set up his own data-processing center.

In early 1984, he called back and asked me if I would come up and manage it for him.

And so, because of what amounts to a hissy fit over not being able to go to that night shuttle launch, I was soon on my way to Michigan, a new career, and a whole new future.

Damn little of my life has ever been carefully planned; most of the time I seem to drift up on whatever shoals the current takes me to and I go on from there. The career change noted above is the closest thing to careful planning, and it resulted from an impulse; the only planning involved was that, when I left the engineering company, at least I knew where I was going and what I would be trying to do. Most of my odyssey has been far more random and capricious. I'm seriously considering a post on the utterly random and unpredictable events that have led me to where I am today.

And HERE it IS! :-)

-

When Worlds Collide ...

... coming soon to the Apocalypse Channel (aka The Weather Channel) .

You know; that place you go to check out what the weather's gonna do.

Where, before (maybe) getting that info, you have to sit through endless replays of "Storm Stories", "It could happen tomorrow" (or maybe not), and, so help me, "Iceberg Hunters" ...

Aim between the eyes, son.  It might charge if it's only wounded.

(Ok. I know! I Know!!! They're shooting off chunks to be recovered and used  for extra pure bottled water.  But, honestly, could you have resisted? :-)

They have a new series, "Forecasting the End!" and it's to include a piece on rogue planets, probably on the scenario envisioned by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer in their 1933 novel, "When Worlds Collide"...

While not the first to venture into this territory (H. G. Wells short story "The Star" (1897) touched on the effects of a close passage), it's easily the most famous (having been adapted into George Pal's 1951 movie).

In 1964, Fritz Leiber published "The Wanderer", also dealing with such a visitor (but he took an approach more metaphysical than scientific. It's been a looong time since I read it, so I could be wrong, but I believe this wandering planet was guided here, in contrast to the random potshots by the others, in which case it's irrelevant to this post.

You see, what I'm concerned with here is the likelihood of such an event involving planetary or stellar size masses colliding or having near misses.

When I was much younger, with much better distance vision, I could take a rifle and put most of my shots (all, if firing from prone or a bench rest) within a 6" (15 cm) bulls eye at 100 yards (or 100 meters), using iron sights. Many people can do better, but that bulls eye is a mighty small target at that range.

It's hard enough to hit with careful aim. If I was to just causally fire the rifle in the general direction, there is an enormous amount of surrounding space into which the bullet is most likely to go. If that bulls eye had thoughts and feelings, I'm sure it would feel pretty safe.

So, just how threatened should a sugar grain (at maybe 0.5 mm diameter) feel about another sugar grain roaming around about 9 miles (15 km) away?

That is the kind of space we are talking about in space.

Trying to get a handle on just how immense the Universe is ain't easy.

The first good attempt I ever came across was ...

Published in 1957, it has been out of print for ages, and the author is no longer with us, so I hold little hope of it ever coming back into print (though it really deserves to be).

It is available for viewing online, at  http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/ and at Caltech.
 ( http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Boeke/frames.html )

The first has larger pictures, but both are only pale shadows of the original. I hope someone with influence sees this and tries to get this wonderful book back in print.

In 1977, the team of Charles and Ray Eames made a short film ...

... that did a wonderful job of presenting it.

Powers of Ten (1977) is available from sellers at Amazon.com (They give a 1968 date, but I believe that is for the initial prototype of the film that was made in 1977) at  http://www.amazon.com/The-Films-Charles-Ray-Eames/dp/6305943877/

In one book about creating the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey", I read that they originally considered a prologue with interviews of various scientists and having a similar "powers of ten" instruction film.  But, they decided it was better to just get straight into the story instead.

One of my all time favorite movies Contact (1997) ...

... opened with a jaw-dropping sequence, right after the title, looking back at our world while accelerating away through our solar system, through the galaxy and beyond to the ends of creation. If you can watch that without being moved, then I don't know what to do with you except perhaps notify the police that "this guy's DEAD!" :(

From here, I'm gonna take my shot at giving perspective to the universe, using grains of sugar.

First ...

From windows2universe.org

That picture should get you started on that perspective (we'll get to the sugar in a bit).

The Sun is not a large star, nor is it very hot. But it is hot with reference to men, hot enough to strike them down dead if they are careless about tropic noonday ninety-two million miles away from it, hot enough that we who are reared under its rays nevertheless dare not look directly at it.
 ~Robert A. Heinlein, "Methuselah's Children" (1958 -- or 1941 if that passage is also in the original shorter story from which the novel was later evolved).

Those dark blotches on the Sun are sunspots, storms on the surface that are dark only by comparison with the rest of the surface by being cooler. Actually, they would be blindingly bright, so you can guess what the rest of that surface is really like. They are also large enough to swallow the entire Earth as you can see by the small dot representing us.

Note also, the Lord of our Solar System, Jupiter. Of the approximately 457 Earth-masses of material making up the planets, moons, asteroids, etc., about 318 make up Jupiter and another 100 or so are in Saturn. Isaac Asimov once noted that, to an impartial observer from out there, "our Solar System would consist of Jupiter plus debris".

Now, on to Paul's Sugar Grain Scale of the Universe ...
(NOTE: In the figures below, while I try to give SI (metric) equivalents), I'm following our practice of using the comma to break up large numbers.  I am not using it as a decimal marker, as many countries do.)

A long time ago, I came upon a factoid that a pound (454 grams) of table sugar contains around 2,260,000 grains.

Now, the specific gravity of sugar ranges from 0.68 (bagged raw sugar) to 1.5862 (sucrose crystal). (From http://www.sugartech.co.za/density/index.php ).

For our purposes, I'm using bagged table sugar (as it's the most likely type you'll have at home) at 0.7 specific gravity, which works out to 43.7 lbs/cubic foot ( 700 kg/cubic meter). Say, 98,762,000 grains per cubic foot ( 3.488 billion grains/cubic meter)

0.5 mm (500 microns) is a ballpark figure for the average diameter of grain of table sugar. Having this represent our Sun gives us a scale of about 2.782 x 10 to the 12th (or 2.782 trillion) to one.

Diameter of Sun - approx 864,327 miles (1,391,000 kilometers)
Diameter of Earth - approx 7,918 miles (12,742 km)
Earth to Sun - approx 92,960,000 miles (149,600,000 km)

Shrink our Sun to a sugar grain, and the Earth becomes a bacterium about 4.8 microns in diameter (literally microscopic), orbiting about 53.8 mm (about 2.1 inches away).

On this scale, a light year works out to 2.11 miles ( 3.4 km).

Distance to Alpha Centauri = 4.367 light years.  The nearest known star (other than the Sun), Proxima Centauri, is about 4.22 light-years away.

So, on this scale, the nearest other sugar grain we might have to worry about a collision with would be about 8.9 miles or 14.32 km away from us. And here, we are speaking of things much larger than planets, making bigger targets.

So, with all due respect to the Global Warming/Climate Change Propaganda Channel (the Weather Channel), of all the things I may lose sleep over, rogue planets just ain't among them.
-

Diphenhydramine HCl + Phenylephrine HCl =

... about one step above a coma.

For my first spell in Houston (1964-1984), I could count on coming down with sinus problems and/or allergies about twice a year, usually following the same predictable pattern of a week or two of self-medication followed by finally giving up and going to a doctor to get a shot or something.

When I returned to Houston in 1994, for several years I didn't have this problem. Later, the old patterns returned.

When my job was outsourced in 2004, having a regular doctor was a luxury I simply could not afford. If things got bad enough, I would go to one of the many walk-in clinics we have down here.

A couple of years ago, on one of those occasions, I was prescribed a very expensive oral liquid containing the two ingredients of the title (The "HCl" is for "hydro-chloride"). It would have been about $80.00 for a four oz bottle. I don't recall what the brand name was, but CVS Pharmacies found a generic version for about $40.00. Still expensive, but Damn! - it was effective.

When you were suffering from a runny nose dripping mucus almost like water and dealing with it dripping down your throat, you'd swallow the dose (5 ml; maybe a couple of tablespoons worth) and begin feeling the mucus spigot turning off while the dose was still in your mouth. That's no exaggeration; I suspect it operates much like a nerve agent, perhaps being absorbed by the tongue.

About a year ago, during another bout, I went to CVS to see if I could get a refill, only to learn that neither the original prescribed drug nor its generic equivalent were still available. The girl I talked to looked up the ingredients  and then pointed me towards Delsym Night Time Cough & Cold medicine, for which I would not need a prescription.  Only $9.99 for a four oz bottle.

Every bit as effective as the prescribed version. But, it does pack a wallop. Diphenhydramine hydro-chloride is a key ingredient in many sleep aids.

The top line of this post (about "one step above a coma") is no exaggeration; I'm on it now, and just sitting here in front of the computer, composing this, is a Herculean task.

So, be careful with it. :-)
-

Oxymoron:

- The definition of "Computer Science". :(

This so-called "science" is in fact, a "black art", in which the ritual incantations (aka "programming") are sometimes followed by the Manitous residing within the machines and software doing what you want, and sometimes not.

When I learned, in late 2003, that the entire IT department I was in would be outsourced, I replaced an old Compac computer with a new Hewlett-Packard machine, as I anticipated a very long (and ultimately unsuccessful, because of my age) search for a new position.

For a long while, I just used the Internet Explorer browser that was already on the machine. Over time, the subsequent upgrades only increased the size of the browser, and its insatiable appetite for memory usage, to the point where the browser would almost freeze during use.

Not being able to afford upgrading the machine (still the case today), I eventually downloaded Firefox on the advice of a blogger that found it to be far less of a resource hog. This was back in the days of Version 3.03 (I believe we're up to 15-something now) , and I truly did find it to be a great improvement.

But, it too was cursed with upgrades that grew more and more bloated. Having been warned by others, I stayed with Version 3.03, until Blogger.com (the service I use for my blog) no longer supported it, making it impossible for me to edit posts while using it.

This forced me to give Google's Chrome browser a try (Google being the parent of Blogger.com). This worked extremely well, after I got used to its different layout and I was quite cool with it. But, you gotta admire their respect for tradition; it too grew and grew and grew.

A while back, I downloaded Opera, having heard great things about its low-resource performance, and it's been my browser of choice for most things (I find most of my credit card and payroll accounts appear to be optimized for Internet Explorer, so I use it for them, and Chrome is best for editing my blog).

On Sunday, 09 Sep 2012, I visited my site meter (StatCounter) and found the display had gone to Hell ...

This is the Summary page, at which I've set to open this site.

Scrolling down, I approach what I came here for.

Now, I've gotten there. BUT, all that blue crap preceding shouldn't be there.

Having clicked on "Recent Visitor Activity" (at lower left of screen above), the new page opens with the same blue mess before arriving at this ...

Ok, we've gotten there, but it's in the wrong format, only displaying 

in two columns.  Worse, some of the page links no longer work.

This screen, from the Chrome browser, is what it should look like ...

I emailed StatCounter support about that, attaching the screenprints above, wondering, "WHAT have you DONE?  WHAT has Changed?", and expressed that wonder.

They responded ...

Hi Paul,

Sorry to hear this.

May I suggest updating your opera to most updated version if any and also
deleting browser cookies once, rebooting your machine and then re-logging
at statcounter.com

Let me know how this goes.

Ok. My reply to that ...

  I have done this
  Updated to Opera 12.02
  Deleted all browser cookies.
  Rebooted
  Logged back onto Statcounter.

Same result, Summary page and Recent Visitor Activity page beginning with that dark blue area shown in the pictures I attached to the initial complaint, seeming to say "We need your feedback" (I think; black text on dark blue background not easy to read.

Visitor page shows in two columns (see pictures), instead of the four displayed on other browsers..

About the links that don't work: this begins about halfway through the fifth visitor entry. From there on down, no response to cursor moving over the links.

There used to be a couple of tabs or something along the right edge of the page; one a toggle to revert to the older version of statcounter, the other I don't remember. They're gone now, and it seems the problem started around then.

As far as I can tell, it is only on Opera that this occurs; IE, Firefox, Chrome doing just fine.

As you've not said otherwise, shall I assume you've tested on Opera, and have been unable to duplicate this?

Their reply ...

Hi Paul,

Yes - StatCounter is working perfectly for me in Opera.
No - not able to duplicate the problem which makes things difficult!

Have you tried a full refresh? (press CTRL and the F5 key simultaneously)
One possible explanation would be that you have an out of date CSS file
stored in your browser.

May I ask - are you using extensions or add ons in Opera?
Are you using anti-virus software?
Updates in either of the above cases could cause an issue.
Let us know what(if any) you're using.

Have you tried Opera on a different machine? If it works on another machine
for you then we have narrowed the potential causes down a bit.

I'm sorry about the open-ended questions - but they are necessary to try to
diagnose the problem.

Note: we have lots of Opera users actively using StatCounter as I type so
this would appear to be something of a local issue rather than a widespread
problem.

Please let us know you comments on all the above. Thanks!

At that point, my first reaction was "Life's too short!!!"

I experimented with some other browsers, seeking low-resource alternatives.

I tried Ace Explorer and Avant, which are both stripped versions of Internet Explorer. While there were some things I liked in each of them, they both had problems (not with StatCounter's site) that made me decide to not stay with them.

Last night, I removed them. A bit later, I pulled up Opera and went to StatCounter.

It's now working just the way it's supposed to.

I suppose it's quite possible the Un-install processes I ran may have cleared out something that was causing the problem (without even attempting to explain how it got there in the first place).

BUT, having spent a generation in IT (as programmer and trouble-shooter - favoring a .45), I can attest that ...
   "When the moon is in the Seventh House
    And Jupiter aligns with Mars"
       ~The 5th Dimension, "Age of Aquarius"

and ...
   "The phase of the moon"

are equally plausible as explanations for the random and capricious behavior of software.

I let them know, giving the opinion on "computer science" I voiced at the top of this post and added ...

I suspect we differ mostly in which entities we pray to; mine sometimes being Native-American to appease the Manitou's within the computer, and yours perhaps being Celtic*. :-)

Bottom line: We're good!

(* - StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland)
-

The Eagle Has Landed ...

Patch from randomramblings-absentmindedprofessor.blogspot.com

... at Heaven's Gate, and so has its pilot ...

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)- From guardian.co.uk

Yesterday, Saturday 25 Aug 2012, a genuine American Hero left us.

There's really not much I can say that hasn't already been said far, far better by people who knew him. The closest I ever got to him was when he passed by about 60 feet away in a parade in downtown Houston, shortly after his return to Earth.

I still envy the young man who did what I never had the nerve to do;  jumping over the retaining line, running over to the car Armstrong was in and shaking his hand.

As I recall, no undue fuss was made over the incident, but even if there had been, how on Earth could they ever take away from you the experience of shaking the hand of the first human to set foot on another world?

Of course, that's not even a pale shadow of actually being the man to set foot there, but as only eleven others qualify for that, you must settle for what you can get.

Rest In Peace, Sir.

-

Apocalypse Not:

A link to a link to a link.

Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That? has just posted
 Apocalypse Not: I love the smell of skepticism in the morning,

which in turn links to an essay by Matt Ridley in WIRED Magazine ...
 Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times

WHO or WHAT will cause the 2012 Apocalyse? This is the question posed by the website 2012apocalypse.net. “super volcanos? pestilence and disease? asteroids? comets? antichrist? global warming? nuclear war?” the site’s authors are impressively open-minded about the cause of the catastrophe that is coming at 11:11 pm on December 21 this year*. but they have no doubt it will happen. after all, not only does the Mayan Long Count calendar end that day, but “the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years.”
Case closed: Sell your possessions and live for today.

That is the prompt for Mr. Ridley's essay and he replies ...
When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. No matter how often apocalyptic predictions fail to come true, another one soon arrives.

The "money quote" is ...
Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring" in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s "The Limits to Growth" in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening predictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us warnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killer bees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.

So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize. To see the full depth of our apocaholism, and to understand why we keep getting it so wrong, we need to consult the past 50 years of history.

Mr. Ridley then proceeds to lay out his case in examples from that history.

My conclusion from reading them?

If your thinking of the "Case closed:" scenario above, and maxing out your credit cards in an orgy (perhaps literally?) of fun and games and whatever, the odds are that on Dec 22, there will be a "morning after" (in all senses of that term). the new bills will still be there and will still be due.

So, you may want to reconsider. :(

(* - at 11:11 pm on December 21 this year)
 "Is that Eastern Standard Time?"
   ~Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jericho Cain in "End of Days",
      when warned about an apocalyptic event predicted for
      the end of the millennium.
-

"The Horror! The Horror!"

... A night without the internet.

(Until mid 2015, I depended on a dial-up connection.)

Yesterday afternoon, I logged on and managed to get a lot done, including making a last-minute just-in-time online payment of my AT&T telephone bill.

That evening (the Perversity Of The Universe at work here? :-) I started getting interruptions and disconnects from my phone connection. When I did manage to get an internet connection (before losing it again) it was painfully slow (maybe around 12 kB/s showing on the connection widget, and only a small fraction of that on the browser).

Attempts to phone anyone usually succeeded, but with a lot of noise and static on the line.

I called one of the '1-800' repair numbers for AT&T and got a guy who could also clearly hear the static. After I confirmed his suspicion that there was heavy rain in my area, he asked me to hang up while he did a test of the line, saying that he would call back in a minute or two.

He did, telling me that he had located the problem in an outside line, and that someone would be on it in the morning. As it was outside, they didn't even need access to my apartment.

A huge chunk of Houston's telephone service network is underground (during Hurricane Ike, in September 2008, the telephone landlines were the most robust of the utilities here, still functioning in areas where cellphone service was dead), but some parts of it are aboveground on utility poles.

Because of the rain, I'm gonna take a wild guess that tree branches come into this somewhere.

This morning (about 0930) I logged on. Back to whatever passes for "normal".

While I had heard of something like this before with communication systems,  I still thought it so cool that he found the location of the problem from whatever center he was operating from.

I'd love to hear from anyone who may know just how he did that (I didn't ask him as I felt he probably had a lot on his plate at that time).

I'm guessing some way of sending a signal on the line and measuring response time and signal strength, or maybe various gadgets on the line to locate signal problems.

Why don't I just look it up on the internet myself?

I'm trying, but another real horror story is trying to conjure up the correct incantation phrasing of words to get the results I'm after (rather than countless items on using the telephone for remote diagnosis of other systems).

I'm SEVENTY YEARS OLD!!! I'm not sure I have enough years left to find that information through an internet search.

HELP!!! :-)

Addendum - Same day, 1352 CDT - The info I'm after may even be based on some pretty ancient technology. I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that when the trans-Atlantic telegraph cables were laid, they had  already worked out a method of knowing just where to look for a break in the cable.  I'll try to find out some more when I get back from work this evening.

Update - 2340 CDT, Tuesday, 10 Jul 2012 - Commentor Anonymous pretty well answered my question of how it was done (see first comment). My recollection about the trans-Atlantic cables was off; they do use the technique, but the first cables were laid long before it was developed.

You may have gathered that I consider AT&T's techies, charged with helping to solve your problems, first-rate and world class.  But, their others are a different story.

So, for the absolutely perfect cherry with which to top off this experience ...

As I was about to leave for work, I picked up my cellphone and noticed a voice-mail waiting for me. It was from the repair group asking me to call them and let them know if the issue had been satisfactorily taken care off.

Calling that '1-800' number gets you an automated menu that, if you patiently wait out their options, will eventually get you a human being to talk to (as it did last night).

This time, when I thought that was about to happen, what I got instead was
  "Thank you, for calling A-T-&-T."
  "Good Byyyeee!" 
   (click)
   (dialtone).
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1045 CDT, 12 Jul 2012 - I referred above to a comment by Anonymous that answered my question. Most people reading this post are probably viewing it on the main page, in which case they will never see that comment unless they click on the "comment" link. As few ever do, I've removed that comment from the comments section and am here placing it within the body of the post ...
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Anonymous said...

One of the most common ways to do this is called Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR). It works kinda like radar. A pulse is sent down the line and is reflected by changes in the cable. The time it takes for the pulse to reflect back is computed to find distance. The shape (actually phase shift) of the reflection can tell if it is a short, open or change in capacitance (degraded insulation etc). Pretty cool tech and its been around for about 70 years or so. Used to be you needed to be an engineer to figure out the reflections but now it is all computerized and the machine spits out the distance and probable fault.

Comment posted: July 10, 2012 7:44 PM
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Global Warming - A force so powerful ...

... it stunts black holes

This poster was created by Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That ...

... for his post Quote of the Week: ‘global warming stunts black holes’ , in which he was reminded of this line from Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men ...
   “Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid!"

If the bottom line of the poster is difficult to read, it says ...
   "Takamitsu Tanaka - The New Scientist - June 9 2012"

Apparently, Takamitsu Tanaka at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and his colleagues developed an explanation ...

... that a prodigious amount of X-rays emitted as the supermassive black holes gulped gas would have heated up the universe. Black holes need cool gas to grow so this would have slowed down the growth of other black holes in smaller protogalaxies, even as the growth of black holes in the most massive protogalaxies continued apace (arxiv.org/abs/1205.6467v1).

"This global warming process could have basically quenched the latecomers," says Tanaka. "The early ones end up being the monsters and they prevent the overgrowth of the rest."

I suspect that Mr. Watts is having a bit of fun at this (admitting that he hadn't even finished his morning coffee - a very dangerous working condition as I have learned many times :-), noting ...

Tanaka probably should have said the “galactic warming process”, and maybe he did, and this could is a misquote by the unnamed author of the article at TNS. Either way, it shows how global warming on the brain tends to create an environment for such ridiculous comparisons to make it to press.

Update 1415 CDT, Sun, 10 JUN 2010 - I put this up a little over thirty minutes ago, and already Mr. Watts has struck out the likelihood of it being a misquote.

A commenter to Mr. Watts post said ...
To be fair, Tanaka might have made the comparison facetiously and New Scientist, being New Scientist, took it seriously.

That too seems reasonable. As I noted above, Mr. Watts could have been having fun and venting at the same time (the two are not mutually exclusive), and probably wishes he'd found justification for using a much more famous line from Jack Nicholson in that movie.

I, on the other hand, have no shame and require no such justification, but will plead that it really does apply to many of the global warming advocates ...

   "You can't handle the truth!"
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Dawn of the Commercial Space Age (Updated)

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 - Updated below, with more pictures. I love pictures.
Mon, 08 Oct 2012 - Updated at end. The second mission is now underway.

Yesterday (Friday, 25 May 2012) was my 70th birthday and, as an avid believer in our future in space, consider that day's news as the best present imaginable.

A commercial space vehicle has not just taken baby steps into space, but delivered cargo to the International Space Station.

See Dragon Docks and the commercial space era begins, by Jerry Pournelle.

Wordwise, there's nothing I can add to Dr. Pournelle's post, but I'm fond of pictures.

So, I scrounged up a couple ...

SpaceX's Falcon 9 launcher lifts off carrying the Dragon capsule,

early morning 22 May 2012 from Cape Canaveral, Florida,

to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. 

Photo from a.scpr.org

From www.SPACE.com

I truly believe we are on the right path, and on our way.

Update - Friday, 01 Jun 2012 - It's back. Here's some more pictures.
Yesterday (Thursday, 31 May 2012), the Dragon capsule successfully returned to earth.

So, I found these to add to the post:

It was launched Tuesday AM, 22 May 2012.  On Friday, 25 May 2012 ...

Photo from redorbit.com

... here it is closing in the the ISS (International Space Station). Three days to match orbits?  Well, it can be done faster (and has), but when it's just cargo that ain't whining, "Are we there yet?", you're apt to go for a more leisurely and energy-efficient path. Also, some of that time was used for various tests in orbit.

In space ...

From news.nationalgeographic.com

... there ain't no "up" or "down". It's all relative. At the bottom of this photo is part of the ISS. Rising up from it is one of the specialized robotic manipulator arms the Canadians appear to have a lock on. It's used to grab this (or any other) spacecraft and pull it down to the docking hatch.

After docking ...

From gizmag.com

... two of the ISS astronauts went inside to check things out (later followed by others).  The protective masks and goggles are routine when entering any spacecraft that has arrived (I'm guessing because of the combination of zero gravity and possible exposure to vacuum resulting in particulate matter, from cargo and God knows what else, being suspended in the air when it is opened up. That's a pure guess on my part. I've got a lot of things on my plate right now, and haven't had a chance to research that yet.).

I had to do a double check of the diagram of the capsule, as that appeared to be a big damned door, but it really is the docking hatch that you are looking at there, with the capsule interior behind them. We've come a looong way since the Mercury capsule. :-)

On Thursday, 31 May 2012 ...

Photo from mashable,com

... after its nine-day odyssey, Dragon returns, to land in the Pacific about 500 miles west of Baja California.  The photo is supposed to be from a video provided by NASA. I say "supposed" because I'm not at all sure what I'm seeing in the background. But, they could have caught it very high up, using a very long lens - they have some dandies!

From cheapcurts.com

From parabolicarc.com

Recovered, and by now probably on its way to the Port of Los Angeles, from whence it will be sent to a processing plant SpaceX has in McGregor, Texas (between Waco and Ft. Hood), for a final inspection.

Future missions are planned to come down on land, using retro rockets to soften the landing, and (hopefully) will be able to do it with "helicopter-like" precision.

So far, so good.

Addendum - Saturday, 02 Jun 2012 - The Astronomy Picture of the Day site put up a video the day after launch.  It's a Flash video, just under two minutes, and might take awhile to load on a slow connection (like mine).  As there's a delay of five or six seconds between ignition and hearing the sound, the video was shot around a mile from the pad.

See SpaceX's Falcon 9 Launches to the Space Station .

Update, 0115 CDT, Mon, 08 Oct 2012 - The second of these missions is now underway. About six hours ago, it lifted off at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 2035 EDT (1935 CDT), Sunday, 07 Oct 2012 in what was described on NASA TV as a picture perfect launch. It is now in low Earth orbit.

Once again, so far, so good. :-)
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"It will take a long battle ...

... to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important."

DUH!  You think?!!!

If you've read some of my posts on this (including my very first), you probably already have a clue as to where I stand.

So, I'm going to give you a bit of practice at clicking on links ...

MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2012
Are We About To See The Death Of The Global Warming Scam?
The article in today's Daily Mail

   Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to 
   worry about (and if NASA scientists are right 
   the Thames will be freezing over again)

There's absolutely nothing I can add to this.
 (Although the answer to the question posed by the title is "Probably not".)

He pretty well says it all.
 (Although, in truth, it's never really all said;  any more than "the science is settled!")

Check it out for yourself. Ok?
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Give this site a visit ...

,,, Astronomy Picture of the Day ... and bookmark it (or set it as one of your "favorites" (or however your particular browser lets you do it)).  Far more rewarding than most websites you'll visit.

Today's (Thu, 08 Sep 2011) entry is a low altitude pass over the site of Apollo 17's landing on the moon on  11 Dec 1972.  See Apollo 17 Site: A Sharper View  and click on the picture for an even larger one.  Rather than steal the pictures for my own use, I'm giving you that link instead. Enjoy.

To Houston residents.  Our downtown city streets appear to have been laid out 16 to the mile, making their center-to-center spacing very close to 100 meters. At the upper right of the picture is a 100 meter bar, which you can visualize as a downtown city block to give you a sense of scale.

I have a special fondness for Apollo 17, as it eventually launched me into an entirely new career trajectory and a complete change in my life, as breathtakingly chronicled in
  Adventure of a Lifetime
followed by
  The Adventure - Continued


Having lost all shame of promoting myself, I'm hoping you will take a look, and not find them too boring.

Thanks. :-)
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A True Professional's Perspective on Climate Change Data...

-
In my very first post on this blog ( A Perspective on Man-Made Global Warming (Excuse me: "Climate Change") ) I argued how microscopic a timeline of recorded data was being used to make really long-range predictions on climate behavior, and that it was irresponsible and dangerous to mandate actions based on those predictions.

In his latest post ( How Not To Create A Historic Global Temp Index ) AJStrata goes into painful (his word; I call it "exquisite") detail about the absolute criminal stupidity of the demonstrated adjusting of temperature data to fit the desired conclusions of the alarmists.

All emphasis below is mine.

The momentum that build up behind the man-made global warming fad (and it is nothing more than an unproven hypothesis surrounded by a silly fan club) has not allowed the basic approach to be tested or challenged. You had a movement build up around an idea, which launched the idea into ‘established fact’ before the idea was validated. It probably will never be validated because the methodology is flawed to its core – as I will explain in painful detail.

To create a global temperature index for the past 30 years – and then project that back to the 1880’s (when global temp records were began) and then project it back centuries before that – is not trivial. And in my opinion the current approach is just plain wrong.

I take this position as someone who works ‘in space’ – where we have complex and interrelated models of all sorts of physical processes. And yet we have to keep refining the models to fit the data to do what we do. Climate science naively (and ignorantly in my mind) does just the opposite; it keeps adjusting the data (for no good reason) until they get the result they want!

He goes on at length, and despite his "painful" description, I think you'll find it a fascinating read. His main point is...

You DON'T adjust the data!

PLEASE, give it a look.

He makes my points with a professionalism and eloquence of which I can only dream.

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"The Dog Ate my Data"...

...is the name of a very good site devoted to AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), and especially to the cynical manipulation of data in order to further the cause of alarmists.

Many thanks to a commenter at The Strata-Sphere for this link: The Dog Ate my Data: RAW v ADJUSTED GHCN Data showing a very nifty animated graph of raw versus adjusted temperature data for Brisbane, Australia.

I could expend thousands of words without making the point any clearer than that graph.

PLEASE, give it a look.

I'm adding this site to my Blogroll.

(Truth in advertising: From this, and other post and comments by myself, you might infer that I'm a little skeptical of the Global Warming/Climate Change agenda. Well,.. You've got me! Guilty as charged. :-)

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"Don't forget the money angle, Paul"

-
Richard Mullins, in a reply to a comment of mine on Redstate (that used the "Pure naked power" quote from my previous post), is the source of the title to this one.

He noted correctly that money and power go together, and singled out Al Gore as a prime example. I have no argument whatsoever with his observation.

BUT...

With the High Priests of this new religion, money is incidental.

Simple greed can be reasoned with, bargained with, and/or bought off.

Messianism cannot.

With power, you can get the money. The reverse doesn't always hold true. With real power comes control, to a degree of which money can only daydream.

I have often joked that a liberal's worst nightmare is that somebody somewhere is doing something without his permission.

I believe, to the very depths of my soul, that The Won falls into this catagory.

Just look at all of the pictures of him out there, in that head-back pose so he's looking down at you even when he's seated, with a smug all-knowing expression that almost screams, "Humility is not even in my vocabulary; What have I got to be humble about?!"

Those pictures are out there (you don't need Photoshop to produce them) because he provides countless opportunities for people to catch the true him (he is a "wysiwyg" president), and I doubt he even cares if some people see him for what he is.

This Ayatollah wannabe probably believes that the USA has been on the wrong track ever since it discarded its' fealty to the King and adopted the attitude that mere people could manage their own affairs without someone telling them what to do.

This attitude of "I was born to bring enlightenment to you" has been explored in detail in this analysis ( Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer ) that appeared months before the election.

What makes him so dangerous is this attitude makes it extremely difficult for him to compromise in the face of reality. Bill Clinton could see the writing on the wall and adapt to changing circumstances as easily as breathing. Obama simply cannot.

So, if you figure on him seeing the light anytime soon; well... don't hold your breath.

UPDATE 07 JUN 2010 - That link above no longer goes to the article.
Try this one instead: Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer"
UPDATE 14 JUN 2010 - The original link works again (YMMV).
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What's this "Climategate" fuss all about?

-
A Link Worth Saving...

Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline ...

I've mostly said my piece on Climate Change in various comments, and in my very first post here, but that was mainly about the sheer arrogance of predicting long term climate trends from the microscopic recorded history we have on the subject.

Whatever the suspicions I may have had of some of the researchers and advocates of man-made global warming, I never went so far as to accuse them of making up data out of nothing and throwing out (I mean literally "THROWING OUT") data that didn't fit the conclusions they were after.  I really was not that cynical.  From what I'm seeing lately (for really good coverage of this, check out AJStrata's  The Strata Sphere ); apparently I'm far too naive.

Almost as bad is the almost complete absence of coverage of this from any of the major networks, and only grudging mention in a few U.S. newspapers (the Brits are doing a much better job of this).

This is NOT just a scandal of a few purloined emails;  it is the perversion of science to cold-bloodily create propaganda, to justify putting the government in complete totalitarian control of our industries, our economy, nearly every detail of how we live.

This will be (and is being) fought for at the highest levels as literally BILLIONS of dollars are at stake.

What's at the bottom of all this?

Pure naked power.

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