Sunday, September 07, 2008
Printout homes
What do you get when you cross an inkjet printer with a concrete pump? Something like this.
Friday, September 05, 2008
The Gravina Island Bridge
You've heard of this project. Really. But it's more popularly known as "the bridge to nowhere".
I've heard so much about this I finally decided to look it up to see what all the fuss was about. The most recent inspiration was a conversation I had recently about how Senator John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin, currently Governor of Alaska, had been "for it before she was against it", as if it's realistic to expect executives of any govt level to refuse money for a project like this.
It turns out that "nowhere" is the airport for Ketchikan, Alaska (pop 8000), which is located on Gravina Island (pop 50).
It's funny how the airport never gets mentioned. The Salon article linked above notes that it has "fewer than 10 commercial flights a day". Sounds pretty lame until you consider that Ketchikan has only 8000 residents. How many other towns of comparable size have *any* commercial service, much less 10 a day? Yes, air transportation is more important in Alaska than in most of the rest of the country.
A resident of Gravina Island notes that there is a ferry and that she can get from home to the local hospital in 5 minutes. OK. But it's still a ferry, limited in size and speed, and my guess is that anyone who lives on a place like Gravina Island didn't go there so they could have lots of neighbors. That is, the residents probably prefer the isolation and thus would oppose the bridge even if it were significantly cheaper.
Would Gravina Island ever be developed to the extent that this would make sense as an investment in infrastructure? That's hard to believe. Suppose the population of the island rose to 1000 people, and they paid $4000 per capita in federal taxes (just to have a number, probably right order of magnitude). If every time of those federal taxes went to paying off a $223M bridge to an island with no paved roads.... This is by no means an adequate evaluation, but my guess is that we'll get a lot more bang for the buck elsewhere.
To hear the overheated rhetoric, you might be thinking that this is the worst example of pork ever. In fact it's probably because it was in the budget at the time of Hurricane Katrina, and people were looking for funds that could be diverted to Katrina relief. I don't keep track of these things, but a far better candidate might be the Army Corps of Engineers' Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway that connects the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico via the Tombigbee River. Many more are discussed a WaPo article here.
The article notes that the Corps of Engineers had already spent more in Louisiana in than in any other state, with spectacularly unsuccessful results - "The Corps has eluded the public's outrage -- even though a useless Corps shipping canal intensified Katrina's surge, even though poorly designed Corps floodwalls collapsed just a few feet from an unnecessary $750 million Corps navigation project , even though the Corps had promoted development in dangerously low-lying New Orleans floodplains and had helped destroy the vast marshes that once provided the city's natural flood protection."
That article goes on to note that "Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) are pushing a Corps reform bill that would require independent reviews of large projects, but they aren't getting much traction."
We will continue to have pork as long as the federal govt is empowered to do so. Sheesh, if there are "penumbras and emanations" from the Constitution that guarantee a right to choose to kill fetuses (and even live births, if you vote like Barack Obama), isn't there one to protect us from nonsense like this?
I've heard so much about this I finally decided to look it up to see what all the fuss was about. The most recent inspiration was a conversation I had recently about how Senator John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin, currently Governor of Alaska, had been "for it before she was against it", as if it's realistic to expect executives of any govt level to refuse money for a project like this.
It turns out that "nowhere" is the airport for Ketchikan, Alaska (pop 8000), which is located on Gravina Island (pop 50).
It's funny how the airport never gets mentioned. The Salon article linked above notes that it has "fewer than 10 commercial flights a day". Sounds pretty lame until you consider that Ketchikan has only 8000 residents. How many other towns of comparable size have *any* commercial service, much less 10 a day? Yes, air transportation is more important in Alaska than in most of the rest of the country.
A resident of Gravina Island notes that there is a ferry and that she can get from home to the local hospital in 5 minutes. OK. But it's still a ferry, limited in size and speed, and my guess is that anyone who lives on a place like Gravina Island didn't go there so they could have lots of neighbors. That is, the residents probably prefer the isolation and thus would oppose the bridge even if it were significantly cheaper.
Would Gravina Island ever be developed to the extent that this would make sense as an investment in infrastructure? That's hard to believe. Suppose the population of the island rose to 1000 people, and they paid $4000 per capita in federal taxes (just to have a number, probably right order of magnitude). If every time of those federal taxes went to paying off a $223M bridge to an island with no paved roads.... This is by no means an adequate evaluation, but my guess is that we'll get a lot more bang for the buck elsewhere.
To hear the overheated rhetoric, you might be thinking that this is the worst example of pork ever. In fact it's probably because it was in the budget at the time of Hurricane Katrina, and people were looking for funds that could be diverted to Katrina relief. I don't keep track of these things, but a far better candidate might be the Army Corps of Engineers' Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway that connects the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico via the Tombigbee River. Many more are discussed a WaPo article here.
The article notes that the Corps of Engineers had already spent more in Louisiana in than in any other state, with spectacularly unsuccessful results - "The Corps has eluded the public's outrage -- even though a useless Corps shipping canal intensified Katrina's surge, even though poorly designed Corps floodwalls collapsed just a few feet from an unnecessary $750 million Corps navigation project , even though the Corps had promoted development in dangerously low-lying New Orleans floodplains and had helped destroy the vast marshes that once provided the city's natural flood protection."
That article goes on to note that "Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) are pushing a Corps reform bill that would require independent reviews of large projects, but they aren't getting much traction."
We will continue to have pork as long as the federal govt is empowered to do so. Sheesh, if there are "penumbras and emanations" from the Constitution that guarantee a right to choose to kill fetuses (and even live births, if you vote like Barack Obama), isn't there one to protect us from nonsense like this?
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Women being abused!
I thought maybe I could make it through a political season without blogging, but no. I managed to sit still as the lamest candidate ever managed to game the system to the point where he beat someone who's forgotten more than he'll ever know, but enough about Barack Obama - this time it's about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Good grief, the crap we're hearing already. What is there not to like about this woman?
Yet look at this video - apparently someone is trying to paint her as stupid for asking what the vice president does on a day-to-day basis. It's a fair question, because no two administrations are the same. Does anyone think that, say, Al Gore did the same things from day to day in the 1990s that Lyndon Johnson did in the early 1960's? The Constitution doesn't have much to say about day to day veep work - most of that will be determined by John McCain and Ms. Palin if he wins.
And really, how many veeps can you name who weren't elected in your lifetime? The job isn't a big deal unless you think the Pres is likely to keel over during his turn or you're worried about close votes in the Senate. It's true that McCain is in his 70's and has been treated for cancer. But he kept campaigning while Obama had to stop and rest, and McCain's mother was robust enough to show up at the Republican National Convention. He must have some good genes.
Oh yeah, her daughter is knocked up! Obviously Palin must have failed as a parent! That's arguable, but I would say no (I'm having a hard time imagining what it must be like to be a teenager in small-town Alaska with long cold winters). But it is interesting how parenting talent didn't come up while Al Gore's kid was getting busted for speeding and drugs, and if he knocked up any girls there are always plenty of abortionists willing to kill the baby cheap.
Heavens, she'll be distracted by her family! Maybe. I hope so. Every minute she's worrying about them is one more she won't be spending looking for things to meddle with or laying the groundwork for becoming filthy stinking rich after she leaves office. And I'll bet that lots of parents would like to have free help from the Secret Service in looking after their children.
Then there's her husband, who has a DUI conviction that dates back before they even married!
She wasn't adequately vetted! I have no idea, but then neither do the jackasses who are asserting this. They appear to be making the assumption that if they don't approve of something, McCain wouldn't either, therefore vetting must have been inadequate. Contrast this with Bill "you'd better put some ice on that" Clinton and his "bimbo eruptions", among other things - did he get vetted at all?
It would be nice if in fact the media had decided that *all* candidates' backgrounds should be investigated, not just Republicans', but that's not a change I can believe in.
I could go on, but really, this stuff is absurd. Come on Barack Obama, grow a pair and call off your lickspittles in the media. That doesn't sound like a new kind of politics to me.
Good grief, the crap we're hearing already. What is there not to like about this woman?
Yet look at this video - apparently someone is trying to paint her as stupid for asking what the vice president does on a day-to-day basis. It's a fair question, because no two administrations are the same. Does anyone think that, say, Al Gore did the same things from day to day in the 1990s that Lyndon Johnson did in the early 1960's? The Constitution doesn't have much to say about day to day veep work - most of that will be determined by John McCain and Ms. Palin if he wins.
And really, how many veeps can you name who weren't elected in your lifetime? The job isn't a big deal unless you think the Pres is likely to keel over during his turn or you're worried about close votes in the Senate. It's true that McCain is in his 70's and has been treated for cancer. But he kept campaigning while Obama had to stop and rest, and McCain's mother was robust enough to show up at the Republican National Convention. He must have some good genes.
Oh yeah, her daughter is knocked up! Obviously Palin must have failed as a parent! That's arguable, but I would say no (I'm having a hard time imagining what it must be like to be a teenager in small-town Alaska with long cold winters). But it is interesting how parenting talent didn't come up while Al Gore's kid was getting busted for speeding and drugs, and if he knocked up any girls there are always plenty of abortionists willing to kill the baby cheap.
Heavens, she'll be distracted by her family! Maybe. I hope so. Every minute she's worrying about them is one more she won't be spending looking for things to meddle with or laying the groundwork for becoming filthy stinking rich after she leaves office. And I'll bet that lots of parents would like to have free help from the Secret Service in looking after their children.
Then there's her husband, who has a DUI conviction that dates back before they even married!
She wasn't adequately vetted! I have no idea, but then neither do the jackasses who are asserting this. They appear to be making the assumption that if they don't approve of something, McCain wouldn't either, therefore vetting must have been inadequate. Contrast this with Bill "you'd better put some ice on that" Clinton and his "bimbo eruptions", among other things - did he get vetted at all?
It would be nice if in fact the media had decided that *all* candidates' backgrounds should be investigated, not just Republicans', but that's not a change I can believe in.
I could go on, but really, this stuff is absurd. Come on Barack Obama, grow a pair and call off your lickspittles in the media. That doesn't sound like a new kind of politics to me.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
It's not news, it's Reuters
The headline says Shooting spree leaves six dead in Washington state.
They did note that "Local media reported that the suspect has a history of mental illness and a criminal past." One might suspect that this might account for the man's rampage.
But no, this is Reuters. We must be told that "The incident is the latest in a series of mass shootings over the last few years in the United States, which is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate, leading gun control advocates to push for tighter restrictions."
Do you suppose I'll live long enough to see Reuters report on massacres of civilians in places like Darfur and note that "this is the latest in a series of mass shootings by governments or criminals, leading self defense advocates to push for more arms for civilians"?
They did note that "Local media reported that the suspect has a history of mental illness and a criminal past." One might suspect that this might account for the man's rampage.
But no, this is Reuters. We must be told that "The incident is the latest in a series of mass shootings over the last few years in the United States, which is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate, leading gun control advocates to push for tighter restrictions."
Do you suppose I'll live long enough to see Reuters report on massacres of civilians in places like Darfur and note that "this is the latest in a series of mass shootings by governments or criminals, leading self defense advocates to push for more arms for civilians"?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Conflict of interest?
Margaret Sanger's defenders all have one thing in common - they weren't aborted.
I can't say if they all believe in fantastical moral equivalences too, but one who read Jonah Goldberg's writing clearly does. He reproduces her screed here. She manages to find similarities between Margaret Sanger and Helen Keller and various other historical figures. Thus in her world Justice! demands that if anyone condemns Margaret Sanger as Goldberg has for her views, he must do the same of Helen Keller and the others.
Helen Keller might not be well remembered today, but she was famous for overcoming both deafness and blindness to become a prominent American. She was in fact very liberal, as anyone else might be if they were as limited in their ability to experience the real world as she.
What's interesting is that Mr. Goldberg was demonstrating the historical ties between liberals and eugenicists. Mr. Goldberg's critic apparently did not say where Ms. Keller stood on eugenics. What do you suppose eugenicists would have done with a girl who was both blind and deaf?
I can't say if they all believe in fantastical moral equivalences too, but one who read Jonah Goldberg's writing clearly does. He reproduces her screed here. She manages to find similarities between Margaret Sanger and Helen Keller and various other historical figures. Thus in her world Justice! demands that if anyone condemns Margaret Sanger as Goldberg has for her views, he must do the same of Helen Keller and the others.
Helen Keller might not be well remembered today, but she was famous for overcoming both deafness and blindness to become a prominent American. She was in fact very liberal, as anyone else might be if they were as limited in their ability to experience the real world as she.
What's interesting is that Mr. Goldberg was demonstrating the historical ties between liberals and eugenicists. Mr. Goldberg's critic apparently did not say where Ms. Keller stood on eugenics. What do you suppose eugenicists would have done with a girl who was both blind and deaf?
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Was Einstein an atheist?
I'm not arrogant enough to be an atheist. Apparently Albert Einstein wasn't either.
Dinesh D'Souza has more, with quotes from the man himself.
Dinesh D'Souza has more, with quotes from the man himself.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Stillborn
Maybe the kinds of lawyers who defend abortionists are too busy representing terrorists nowadays, but this is interesting:In short, they've got nothing, and at last they're outed.
No, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't appreciate the full ramifications of the above. Nor do I appreciate how big a burden has been placed on those who would show that partial birth abortions offer unique medical benefits - maybe that's the real issue.
And no, I'm not a physician either. But just how much medicine do you need to know that creating a situation you would ordinarily avoid (delivering the baby feet first) and stopping delivery of the live baby after all but its head is outside the birth canal would somehow help the health of the mother? If the idea was to avoid labor, just what has she missed?
And how much law do you need to know to condemn someone who, given a choice between moving the baby another few inches outside the womb or choosing to kill it, opts for the latter?
Aside: did anyone ever go to med school intending to become an abortionist?
No, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't appreciate the full ramifications of the above. Nor do I appreciate how big a burden has been placed on those who would show that partial birth abortions offer unique medical benefits - maybe that's the real issue.
And no, I'm not a physician either. But just how much medicine do you need to know that creating a situation you would ordinarily avoid (delivering the baby feet first) and stopping delivery of the live baby after all but its head is outside the birth canal would somehow help the health of the mother? If the idea was to avoid labor, just what has she missed?
And how much law do you need to know to condemn someone who, given a choice between moving the baby another few inches outside the womb or choosing to kill it, opts for the latter?
Aside: did anyone ever go to med school intending to become an abortionist?
UN priorities
U.N. racism investigator to visit U.S. from Monday
I wonder if they investigate anti-Semitism? Being the UN, if they did, they'd only do it in Israel.
I wonder if they investigate anti-Semitism? Being the UN, if they did, they'd only do it in Israel.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Stupid college tricks
Back in college a few lunatics I knew used to have beer chugging contests. Except they'd do it while hanging upside down from the railing of a stair landing.
It was only half a flight up, but it probably would have been enough to break their necks or even kill them if they slipped.
And now we have this -
College Student Dead After Apparent Fall Over Balcony.
It was only half a flight up, but it probably would have been enough to break their necks or even kill them if they slipped.
And now we have this -
College Student Dead After Apparent Fall Over Balcony.
Don't get shook
An earthquake rattled southern IL and environs last night. It won't make the history books so much because it wasn't that strong, but it's still creepy.
People unfamiliar with the area might not associate it with seismic activity. But know that one of the worst earthquakes in the US happened within a couple of hundred miles to the southwest near New Madrid, MO. It was also in the news around 1990 when a prediction of an earthquake by Iben Browning was picked up by the media but did not pan out.
You can see more about the area's seismic history on an episode of A&E Network's Mega Disasters series, which examines consequences of a major earthquake there on Memphis, TN and St. Louis, MO.
Anybody who's thinking "all the nukes there will melt down now!" can relax. No operating commercial nuclear power facilities are particularly close. There are none in IN or KY. In IL the closest is Clinton Power Station, around a couple hundred miles north. Calloway in MO is about that far west. LaSalle County, Dresden and Braidwood are about 80 miles on the far side of the Clinton site in IL, and farther yet are Quad Cities and Byron. The next closest is probably in AR. The closest in MI is DC Cook near Michigan City, or in OH it would be Davis-Besse near Toledo, or in TN it's either Sequoyah or Watts Bar. That's from memory - maps are for wimps.
I was working as an engineer at an operating nuclear power plant back in the late 80's when I felt a small earthquake. The civil engineers and others on staff immediately got to work looking for seismic damage wherever they could onsite. I don't recall any issues arising.
People unfamiliar with the area might not associate it with seismic activity. But know that one of the worst earthquakes in the US happened within a couple of hundred miles to the southwest near New Madrid, MO. It was also in the news around 1990 when a prediction of an earthquake by Iben Browning was picked up by the media but did not pan out.
You can see more about the area's seismic history on an episode of A&E Network's Mega Disasters series, which examines consequences of a major earthquake there on Memphis, TN and St. Louis, MO.
Anybody who's thinking "all the nukes there will melt down now!" can relax. No operating commercial nuclear power facilities are particularly close. There are none in IN or KY. In IL the closest is Clinton Power Station, around a couple hundred miles north. Calloway in MO is about that far west. LaSalle County, Dresden and Braidwood are about 80 miles on the far side of the Clinton site in IL, and farther yet are Quad Cities and Byron. The next closest is probably in AR. The closest in MI is DC Cook near Michigan City, or in OH it would be Davis-Besse near Toledo, or in TN it's either Sequoyah or Watts Bar. That's from memory - maps are for wimps.
I was working as an engineer at an operating nuclear power plant back in the late 80's when I felt a small earthquake. The civil engineers and others on staff immediately got to work looking for seismic damage wherever they could onsite. I don't recall any issues arising.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Old men on the make
Oh boy, New Kids on the Block are back! You remember them - they were once scheduled as an opening act for Tiffany!
Security personnel sleeping at Turkey Point
Maybe I'm lucky that in my nuclear power days I never caught a security guy sleeping on the job. The first time I might just make some noise, but I doubt it. For while I don't necessarily think it's a huge security compromise (if someone has made it to your reactor building already this isn't your only security issue), it's definitely something that'll get the plant busted bigtime by any NRC inspector who happens upon it.
Fines are the easy part. Then the usual braying idiots would trot out their usual claptrap, and the clueless buffoons who pass for media would publicize it far beyond its significance. So as a minimum I would have been tempted to make a beeline for his supervisor.
OTOH this security person is probably positioned to make your life miserable too. He and whoever might have been covering for him could say that they'd caught you doing something and guess who's in trouble now?
Security is outsourced at many facilities. If that's true at Turkey Point, there definitely ought to be blisters all up and down their local management's backside. They ought to know how to keep their staff awake - this isn't exactly a new problem with security firms.
But they might have fewer options than you think. One obvious one is security cams at strategic areas. This isn't trivial for a number of regulatory and other reasons that I don't have time to discuss now (some of which involve security...), whether the system is wired or wireless. I'd expect newer plants to have such things in the design, but backfitting them to today's fleet would be awfully expensive.
I haven't set foot inside a nuke plant for over a decade now, so maybe things have changed. But while I was there, NRC inspectors didn't exactly swarmed over the facilities. There was no need to really - day to day operation isn't exciting and shouldn't be. So inspectors would show up in the plant once in a while, but mostly they did paperwork and went to meetings. So if they caught someone sleeping it's pretty sad.
I don't want to hear any excuses for the security guys sleeping. But let's not get too excited about this either.
Fines are the easy part. Then the usual braying idiots would trot out their usual claptrap, and the clueless buffoons who pass for media would publicize it far beyond its significance. So as a minimum I would have been tempted to make a beeline for his supervisor.
OTOH this security person is probably positioned to make your life miserable too. He and whoever might have been covering for him could say that they'd caught you doing something and guess who's in trouble now?
Security is outsourced at many facilities. If that's true at Turkey Point, there definitely ought to be blisters all up and down their local management's backside. They ought to know how to keep their staff awake - this isn't exactly a new problem with security firms.
But they might have fewer options than you think. One obvious one is security cams at strategic areas. This isn't trivial for a number of regulatory and other reasons that I don't have time to discuss now (some of which involve security...), whether the system is wired or wireless. I'd expect newer plants to have such things in the design, but backfitting them to today's fleet would be awfully expensive.
I haven't set foot inside a nuke plant for over a decade now, so maybe things have changed. But while I was there, NRC inspectors didn't exactly swarmed over the facilities. There was no need to really - day to day operation isn't exciting and shouldn't be. So inspectors would show up in the plant once in a while, but mostly they did paperwork and went to meetings. So if they caught someone sleeping it's pretty sad.
I don't want to hear any excuses for the security guys sleeping. But let's not get too excited about this either.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Video made simple
About a year and a half ago I went to make a fairly simple video production and failed miserably. It would have helped if I hadn't waited until the last minute, but I didn't expect my software to put up so much of a fight, especially with syncing sound to video.
So lately I've been reading good things about the Flip Video device and thought I might check it out. Then when I happened upon them in stock at a Sam's Club for $140 when I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, I bit.
Wow, it couldn't get much simpler or easier.
It was a bit of a PITA the first time I used a particular computer with it because it needed to load a codec, and the first time I used it at all I had to sit through a firmware upgrade. But since then it's been a real trouper with both XP and Vista.
It's about as self-contained as you can get. You don't need to install any software with DVDs or downloads - everything you need is already loaded on the device. Plug it in to an available USB port, wait for the system to recognize the device and go!
Likewise there are no cables to lose on the run. The USB male connector is built in rigidly - you just extend it from the case, plug it in, let the system recognize it and you're in business. I did have trouble trying to plug it into the USB ports on a couple of different machines because of funny geometry in one case and an EVDO card in another. But for most it will work fine, and for the rest there's A-A USB extension cords (which shouldn't cost more than $10 no matter what Radio Shack or Best Buy say).
So when someone of longish tenure left the company recently, I wound up going around shooting quickie goodbye videos. The picture and sound quality were far better than I expected, and loading the videos onto the PCs was more or less idiot simple. So with nothing but miserable past experience, no talent, a device I'd had for 2 days, and a newish Vista laptop with a DVD burner, I produced some tolerable output from a bunch of people in no more than a couple of hours, and most of that time was probably data transfer time while I multitasked.
It's not perfect, and it certainly doesn't have advanced features. But it's $140, for crying out loud. It's self-contained, small, runs on AA batteries so there's no wall wart (I don't want to know how many of those blasted things I have), and the learning curve is nearly nonexistent (with the caveat that I'm a gadget geek with an engineering background). It's roughly the size of a candy bar, so it can go anywhere. You can take still pictures. The model I bought at Sam's has 2GB of RAM which allegedly will hold an hour's worth of video (haven't really challenged it yet). And I've only had it since Sunday, so I probably don't know a lot of things it can do yet.
Bottom line - I'll be buying more of them.
So lately I've been reading good things about the Flip Video device and thought I might check it out. Then when I happened upon them in stock at a Sam's Club for $140 when I had some money burning a hole in my pocket, I bit.
Wow, it couldn't get much simpler or easier.
It was a bit of a PITA the first time I used a particular computer with it because it needed to load a codec, and the first time I used it at all I had to sit through a firmware upgrade. But since then it's been a real trouper with both XP and Vista.
It's about as self-contained as you can get. You don't need to install any software with DVDs or downloads - everything you need is already loaded on the device. Plug it in to an available USB port, wait for the system to recognize the device and go!
Likewise there are no cables to lose on the run. The USB male connector is built in rigidly - you just extend it from the case, plug it in, let the system recognize it and you're in business. I did have trouble trying to plug it into the USB ports on a couple of different machines because of funny geometry in one case and an EVDO card in another. But for most it will work fine, and for the rest there's A-A USB extension cords (which shouldn't cost more than $10 no matter what Radio Shack or Best Buy say).
So when someone of longish tenure left the company recently, I wound up going around shooting quickie goodbye videos. The picture and sound quality were far better than I expected, and loading the videos onto the PCs was more or less idiot simple. So with nothing but miserable past experience, no talent, a device I'd had for 2 days, and a newish Vista laptop with a DVD burner, I produced some tolerable output from a bunch of people in no more than a couple of hours, and most of that time was probably data transfer time while I multitasked.
It's not perfect, and it certainly doesn't have advanced features. But it's $140, for crying out loud. It's self-contained, small, runs on AA batteries so there's no wall wart (I don't want to know how many of those blasted things I have), and the learning curve is nearly nonexistent (with the caveat that I'm a gadget geek with an engineering background). It's roughly the size of a candy bar, so it can go anywhere. You can take still pictures. The model I bought at Sam's has 2GB of RAM which allegedly will hold an hour's worth of video (haven't really challenged it yet). And I've only had it since Sunday, so I probably don't know a lot of things it can do yet.
Bottom line - I'll be buying more of them.
Suckers?
More than once I've heard companies described as "the best first and third job you'll ever have". The idea was that if you stuck around nothing would happen, but if you left and came back you could jump a couple of grades ahead.
Today just happens to have been the last day for someone who had been with the company for several years. The joke is that they'll be back in a couple years in a much better job. At least two people in my org chart have done that that I know of.
And now today Glenn Reynolds links to this. Hmmm.
Today just happens to have been the last day for someone who had been with the company for several years. The joke is that they'll be back in a couple years in a much better job. At least two people in my org chart have done that that I know of.
And now today Glenn Reynolds links to this. Hmmm.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
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