Sauve qui peut
Am slowly recovering my blogroll goodies since the template files were getting damaged---this includes, with humble apologies, restoring the ring code for the Colorado Bloggers' webring. Reconstruction should continue this evening if I can sled my way up I25.
13SEP16805769 thru 13TER14935702
20030203
20030130
Guy's gotta eat
I can manage to pay the bills without starring in bondage videos.
My full-time boss at my Guard unit is very ill, cannot work. I am temping in his place since my civilian job dried up. Please keep Jim in your thoughts.
13TER14935702
I can manage to pay the bills without starring in bondage videos.
My full-time boss at my Guard unit is very ill, cannot work. I am temping in his place since my civilian job dried up. Please keep Jim in your thoughts.
13TER14935702
Woo hoo!
I passed the second exam of Course 6.
This is the correspondence course that satisfies Professional Military Education requirements for one to advance from E6 to E7.
Imagine a correspondence course on leadership, management, protocol, and international affairs written by the United States Air Force. In fact, you don't have to imagine it. That's what Course 6 is, a poke-yourself-in-the-eye-with-dull-stick pain.
Then consider that the materials are about 12 years out of date. The AF regulation regarding uniform and personal appearance is still listed as AFR 35-10. That number changed long ago to the 36 series.
An errata list included with the course materials instructs the student to delete entire passages in the international affairs section describing the Soviet Threat---or simply inserting the word "former" at certain points. There is no mention of the decisive successes of Airpower! in Desert Storm and Shield. Missed opportunities that should be rued.
Still, I passed it, it's behind me, and I'm in a slot in the org chart that allows me to proceed to that grade.
13TER14935702
I passed the second exam of Course 6.
This is the correspondence course that satisfies Professional Military Education requirements for one to advance from E6 to E7.
Imagine a correspondence course on leadership, management, protocol, and international affairs written by the United States Air Force. In fact, you don't have to imagine it. That's what Course 6 is, a poke-yourself-in-the-eye-with-dull-stick pain.
Then consider that the materials are about 12 years out of date. The AF regulation regarding uniform and personal appearance is still listed as AFR 35-10. That number changed long ago to the 36 series.
An errata list included with the course materials instructs the student to delete entire passages in the international affairs section describing the Soviet Threat---or simply inserting the word "former" at certain points. There is no mention of the decisive successes of Airpower! in Desert Storm and Shield. Missed opportunities that should be rued.
Still, I passed it, it's behind me, and I'm in a slot in the org chart that allows me to proceed to that grade.
13TER14935702
20030125
Idea number 354
Military airfields are big s**t magnets. They cannot be hidden, they cannot be moved. One of the biggest threats to our airfields in Southwest Asia, in the coming conflict, will be chemical attacks. To mitigate the threat, we need the ability to detect when and where a chemical has been released, to know which areas are contaminated and to what concentration. With this information we can predict when an area will be usable or even traversible again.
US and NATO forces already possess a very effective and inexpensive (expendable!) device to detect contamination, a detector paper that changes color when it is contacted with suspected chemical agents. Each country has its own model or designation of the paper, some adhesive-backed. It's a throw-away item, everybody carries a little pack of it.
Measuring droplet size is key to determining a few important parameters. Measuring change of droplet size over time also helps to predict how long the agent sticks around---"persistence"---which the base commander must know so he can balance the threat of the chemical against the loss of personnel to heat injuries caused by the clothing that protects them.
Idea number 354 would use a long ribbon of this paper, say 10cm wide in a 50 meter cassette just like an oversized VHS videocassette. It loads in a machine that exposes a 10x10cm window of this ribbon at any moment, horizontally facing the sky, advancing the ribbon about 20mm a minute. As the ribbon passes out of the window and back into the machine, it comes under a color scanner, just like the scanning head of a flatbed scanner you probably have connected to your home computer. The scanner notes change of color, from the olive drab of the paper as it is manufactured, to the red or yellow or blue-green that indicates contamination. A color change trips an alarm. A date/time stamp, including temperature, is imprinted on the paper at the trailing edge of the window exposed to the sky. An optional windcock attachment includes windspeed and direction (really useful information) in the stamp.
This device is networked through a narrowband connection on standard field wire to a PC in some command post, which polls as many devices as you've positioned. When the flag flies, the PC starts drawing all of the inputs in, and depicts the areas of the base with the highest concentrations of contamination, with a time resolution that does not overload (air quotes here) the Boss who Needs the Info.
The PC can also hold the devices in non-scroll mode until an attack is expected, can speed up the ribbon movement to catch more-precise measurements of droplet size (timestamps continue every minute while the detection is active), slow it back down, stop the scroll if it's a false alarm, and so forth.
If no chemicals land in the window, the machine scrolls the ribbon to the end, then reverses direction and scrolls back. The cassette doesn't have to be replaced unless it has detected something, and then it will be retrieved and shipped off to a lab for verification (and evidence) anyway.
The active dyes in this paper could be masked in a pattern that helps the scanner to measure droplet size with usable precision.
Anybody want to guess what this box would cost? Remember, it needs to be painted in sand color, powered by either battery or AC mains, and handled by high-school graduates. Over-engineer it a bit.
13SEP16805769
Military airfields are big s**t magnets. They cannot be hidden, they cannot be moved. One of the biggest threats to our airfields in Southwest Asia, in the coming conflict, will be chemical attacks. To mitigate the threat, we need the ability to detect when and where a chemical has been released, to know which areas are contaminated and to what concentration. With this information we can predict when an area will be usable or even traversible again.
US and NATO forces already possess a very effective and inexpensive (expendable!) device to detect contamination, a detector paper that changes color when it is contacted with suspected chemical agents. Each country has its own model or designation of the paper, some adhesive-backed. It's a throw-away item, everybody carries a little pack of it.
Measuring droplet size is key to determining a few important parameters. Measuring change of droplet size over time also helps to predict how long the agent sticks around---"persistence"---which the base commander must know so he can balance the threat of the chemical against the loss of personnel to heat injuries caused by the clothing that protects them.
Idea number 354 would use a long ribbon of this paper, say 10cm wide in a 50 meter cassette just like an oversized VHS videocassette. It loads in a machine that exposes a 10x10cm window of this ribbon at any moment, horizontally facing the sky, advancing the ribbon about 20mm a minute. As the ribbon passes out of the window and back into the machine, it comes under a color scanner, just like the scanning head of a flatbed scanner you probably have connected to your home computer. The scanner notes change of color, from the olive drab of the paper as it is manufactured, to the red or yellow or blue-green that indicates contamination. A color change trips an alarm. A date/time stamp, including temperature, is imprinted on the paper at the trailing edge of the window exposed to the sky. An optional windcock attachment includes windspeed and direction (really useful information) in the stamp.
This device is networked through a narrowband connection on standard field wire to a PC in some command post, which polls as many devices as you've positioned. When the flag flies, the PC starts drawing all of the inputs in, and depicts the areas of the base with the highest concentrations of contamination, with a time resolution that does not overload (air quotes here) the Boss who Needs the Info.
The PC can also hold the devices in non-scroll mode until an attack is expected, can speed up the ribbon movement to catch more-precise measurements of droplet size (timestamps continue every minute while the detection is active), slow it back down, stop the scroll if it's a false alarm, and so forth.
If no chemicals land in the window, the machine scrolls the ribbon to the end, then reverses direction and scrolls back. The cassette doesn't have to be replaced unless it has detected something, and then it will be retrieved and shipped off to a lab for verification (and evidence) anyway.
The active dyes in this paper could be masked in a pattern that helps the scanner to measure droplet size with usable precision.
Anybody want to guess what this box would cost? Remember, it needs to be painted in sand color, powered by either battery or AC mains, and handled by high-school graduates. Over-engineer it a bit.
13SEP16805769
20030122
Our elements are burnt out, our beasts have been mistreated, I tell you it's the only way we'll get this road completed
13TER14935702
Another installment in my saga of the disappearing hrefs. They disappear when I edit my template with Netscape 7. Every time, it seems. Not every time I use the version of MSIE included with MacOS X. That is, caeteris paribus, considering that Norton Personal Firewall and AntiVirus stand between my Mac and Blogger.
So I must reset the template once again, and load my blogroll, commenting, SiteMeter, and other stuff back up. Sorry.
13TER14935702
Another installment in my saga of the disappearing hrefs. They disappear when I edit my template with Netscape 7. Every time, it seems. Not every time I use the version of MSIE included with MacOS X. That is, caeteris paribus, considering that Norton Personal Firewall and AntiVirus stand between my Mac and Blogger.
So I must reset the template once again, and load my blogroll, commenting, SiteMeter, and other stuff back up. Sorry.
20030116
20030113
. . . never did like it all that much, and one day the axe just fell
I am so much at peace with being laid off this time, it is scary. We're going out to dinner tonight.
Options on the BDU side of the career are available; the kids missed me while I've been traveling to Kansas and now I get to put them to bed for a few more nights; I just took the second exam to qualify for E7. There's nothing to sweat.
I am so much at peace with being laid off this time, it is scary. We're going out to dinner tonight.
Options on the BDU side of the career are available; the kids missed me while I've been traveling to Kansas and now I get to put them to bed for a few more nights; I just took the second exam to qualify for E7. There's nothing to sweat.
20030102
20021228
Reason to quit
Some eight hundred thousand unemployed persons will soon stop receiving unemployment compensation.
Naturally there is pressure from certain quarters for Congress to find some way to extend this compensation.
The first instinct of fiscal conservatives and libertarians would be to attempt to persuade the public that this extension of benefits would hurt the economy. Let me suggest an alternative.
Pressure Congress and the White House to offer an escape hatch. Go ahead, offer an extension of benefits, but with a catch. In exchange for accepting the extended unemployment compensation, the unemployed person agrees in writing to be exempted from all future Social Security benefits of any kind, and will no longer have FICA collected from him or her.
In short, "if you take The Package, it's over. Ninety more days, then you're out for good, no coming back. No paying into it either. Deal? Sign here."
Update: did I mention that anyone taking The Package also receives a handsomely-framed certificate stating that future employers of said person will no longer collect from nor contribute FICA for that person?
Some eight hundred thousand unemployed persons will soon stop receiving unemployment compensation.
Naturally there is pressure from certain quarters for Congress to find some way to extend this compensation.
The first instinct of fiscal conservatives and libertarians would be to attempt to persuade the public that this extension of benefits would hurt the economy. Let me suggest an alternative.
Pressure Congress and the White House to offer an escape hatch. Go ahead, offer an extension of benefits, but with a catch. In exchange for accepting the extended unemployment compensation, the unemployed person agrees in writing to be exempted from all future Social Security benefits of any kind, and will no longer have FICA collected from him or her.
In short, "if you take The Package, it's over. Ninety more days, then you're out for good, no coming back. No paying into it either. Deal? Sign here."
Update: did I mention that anyone taking The Package also receives a handsomely-framed certificate stating that future employers of said person will no longer collect from nor contribute FICA for that person?
Been through this once already
After reloading this template, then adding my blogroll back in, then Sitemeter, BlogHop, and Enetation, I figured I had WeckUpToThees back on line and fully functional again after some sort of terrible hacking.
How mistaken I was. Less than one day after things were restored, whatever hosed me up in the first place hosed me up again. All links in the template have lost their href arguments. Every g*****ned one.
After reloading this template, then adding my blogroll back in, then Sitemeter, BlogHop, and Enetation, I figured I had WeckUpToThees back on line and fully functional again after some sort of terrible hacking.
How mistaken I was. Less than one day after things were restored, whatever hosed me up in the first place hosed me up again. All links in the template have lost their href arguments. Every g*****ned one.
20021224
Holidays make me think about such things
While preparing our large list of Christmas cards, Mama-san and I were faced with the grim task of reprinting several envelopes. Divorces and separations, in addition to a death, have caused several "Mr and Mrs" to become just "Mr" or "Mrs."
Being an INTP, it struck me that one's way of dealing with that event would be useful as a personality type indicator. Expect to see the following question on a Meyers-Briggs test someday.
Do you:
While preparing our large list of Christmas cards, Mama-san and I were faced with the grim task of reprinting several envelopes. Divorces and separations, in addition to a death, have caused several "Mr and Mrs" to become just "Mr" or "Mrs."
Being an INTP, it struck me that one's way of dealing with that event would be useful as a personality type indicator. Expect to see the following question on a Meyers-Briggs test someday.
Do you:
- strike through the "and Mrs" with a pen,
- cover the whole address with an adhesive label, and fret that the thin paper label still allows one to read the mistake (and the strikethrough) through it,
- ask Mama-san to print a new envelope (only two or three left!),
- kick yourself viciously for having let the mistake through in the mail-merge stage?
- All of the above.
I am not a number! I am a free man!
One of my Christmas gifts arrived already, but was not gift-wrapped inside the shipping carton. So I feel guilty that I know what it is already: a boxed set of the first three episodes of The Prisoner. Mama-san, aka Barbaloot, will not let me watch it until Christmas day.
One of my Christmas gifts arrived already, but was not gift-wrapped inside the shipping carton. So I feel guilty that I know what it is already: a boxed set of the first three episodes of The Prisoner. Mama-san, aka Barbaloot, will not let me watch it until Christmas day.
Merry Christmas!
We hope this letter finds you well.
Boy is a two-year-old Force of Nature, who is growing into his maternal grandfather’s physique.
Middlechild wears glasses now at age four, and is doing well at school. She is daddy’s girl.
Firstborn reads very well at six, and enjoys learning Spanish. She has tried climbing an indoor pinnacle at the local REI shop, and has expressed an interest in skiing. She is a self-described chatterbox.
Fuze is back from a year of active duty with the Air Force, serving in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Qatar. He returned to regular work with a systems integration firm, but this job takes him away from home too much.
Barbaloot participates in a mothers’ group, Bible study, and the choir. Until recently she signed regularly for some deaf people in our parish. She is the center of our home, and still manages to give time and attention to church and neighbors.
We are thankful for everything we have, and all we would ask is more time with each other.
Please enjoy your Christmas season, and may this time renew your faith and energy for the coming New Year.
We hope this letter finds you well.
Boy is a two-year-old Force of Nature, who is growing into his maternal grandfather’s physique.
Middlechild wears glasses now at age four, and is doing well at school. She is daddy’s girl.
Firstborn reads very well at six, and enjoys learning Spanish. She has tried climbing an indoor pinnacle at the local REI shop, and has expressed an interest in skiing. She is a self-described chatterbox.
Fuze is back from a year of active duty with the Air Force, serving in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Qatar. He returned to regular work with a systems integration firm, but this job takes him away from home too much.
Barbaloot participates in a mothers’ group, Bible study, and the choir. Until recently she signed regularly for some deaf people in our parish. She is the center of our home, and still manages to give time and attention to church and neighbors.
We are thankful for everything we have, and all we would ask is more time with each other.
Please enjoy your Christmas season, and may this time renew your faith and energy for the coming New Year.
20021218
Met fellow blogger Walter in Denver the other night, at a party of a mutual friend. He immediately knew who I was. Pseudonymity is a pretense.
20021211
My blogroll is hosed
Either Blogger has come down with another bug, or someone has hacked it to the point that the hrefs are all gone from the links in my blogroll.
Bastidges!
Update: partially restored. Will validate links to blogs who have moved. Please let me know if you link to me but I have not reciprocated.
Update to the update: partially restored my a**. The template keeps losing the href arguments to all links on the blog.
Either Blogger has come down with another bug, or someone has hacked it to the point that the hrefs are all gone from the links in my blogroll.
Bastidges!
Update: partially restored. Will validate links to blogs who have moved. Please let me know if you link to me but I have not reciprocated.
Update to the update: partially restored my a**. The template keeps losing the href arguments to all links on the blog.
20021209
Ah ayahm ruh'miss . . .
. . . in welcoming to my blogroll, Jakester and Chicago Boyz.
My feeble connections to Chicago amount to one memorable lunch at the Berghoff and many plane changes at my least favorite airport (so far), O'Hare. Sorry.
Seattle holds more for me, as I had a customer in Bellevue, and still have a friend in North Bend. And a coffee mug from Poulsbo.
Update: . . . and my wife's cousin in Seattle proper, and two trips to the pie shop in North Bend, featured in the show Twin Peaks.
. . . in welcoming to my blogroll, Jakester and Chicago Boyz.
My feeble connections to Chicago amount to one memorable lunch at the Berghoff and many plane changes at my least favorite airport (so far), O'Hare. Sorry.
Seattle holds more for me, as I had a customer in Bellevue, and still have a friend in North Bend. And a coffee mug from Poulsbo.
Update: . . . and my wife's cousin in Seattle proper, and two trips to the pie shop in North Bend, featured in the show Twin Peaks.
20021208
Darwinian testimonials
James Rummel asks why many people who depend upon handguns in their professions appear to be so emotional about the caliber .45 Automatic Centerfire Pistol cartridge.
The very unscientific answer to James's question is that many users either survived a lethal encounter, or know closely someone who has, while using said caliber. Those who entered similiar lethal encounters with arms or cartridges dispensing less power, uh, are less likely to have survived them, so there are fewer people available to testify to their effectiveness. Doubtless many cops have shot their way out of such encounters with a 9mm, for example, but I seriously have never heard anyone in that business say "If the 9mm Parabellum weren't such a potent and decisive manstopper, son, I wouldn't be standing here today." I have heard quite the opposite, from people who were skilled or lucky enough to survive in spite of the round. Reports of orcs absorbing multiple hits from .45, or from 10mm, are met with head-scratching puzzlement, because they are so rare.
Consider the term Darwinian testimonial, though perhaps a better term can be found. I do not claim to have had such an experience either way, but I know enough people who have, and their consensus is that the 9mm is an inadequate round for the application, all other things being equal. That suffices. If recoil, expense, platform, or other reasons require that one choose the 9mm over a larger caliber, its lesser effectiveness could be compensated, say through training to emphasize shot placement.
Update: Please visit James's post, and the comments thereunto. This argument is as old as either cartridge is, and will not be resolved any time soon. Your humble narrator is mulling a further post on the "conceptual space occupied by a handgun" the better to frame my flimsy argument.
James Rummel asks why many people who depend upon handguns in their professions appear to be so emotional about the caliber .45 Automatic Centerfire Pistol cartridge.
The very unscientific answer to James's question is that many users either survived a lethal encounter, or know closely someone who has, while using said caliber. Those who entered similiar lethal encounters with arms or cartridges dispensing less power, uh, are less likely to have survived them, so there are fewer people available to testify to their effectiveness. Doubtless many cops have shot their way out of such encounters with a 9mm, for example, but I seriously have never heard anyone in that business say "If the 9mm Parabellum weren't such a potent and decisive manstopper, son, I wouldn't be standing here today." I have heard quite the opposite, from people who were skilled or lucky enough to survive in spite of the round. Reports of orcs absorbing multiple hits from .45, or from 10mm, are met with head-scratching puzzlement, because they are so rare.
Consider the term Darwinian testimonial, though perhaps a better term can be found. I do not claim to have had such an experience either way, but I know enough people who have, and their consensus is that the 9mm is an inadequate round for the application, all other things being equal. That suffices. If recoil, expense, platform, or other reasons require that one choose the 9mm over a larger caliber, its lesser effectiveness could be compensated, say through training to emphasize shot placement.
Update: Please visit James's post, and the comments thereunto. This argument is as old as either cartridge is, and will not be resolved any time soon. Your humble narrator is mulling a further post on the "conceptual space occupied by a handgun" the better to frame my flimsy argument.
What she said
This is just one more reason I admire Megan McArdle's writing. Conciseness, and an appeal to shared experience.
I've said such things more times than I want to remember.
This is just one more reason I admire Megan McArdle's writing. Conciseness, and an appeal to shared experience.
I think we've all had the experience of saying something accidentally that appeared to have an unequivocal horrifying meaning which was not at all what we had meant to say.
I've said such things more times than I want to remember.
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