Measuring Ignorance

I was browsing my new favorite catalog and ran across a description of a "self-centering tape measure." Here's the description of the tool:

It's that easy! As opposed to, say, just dividing the measurement by two.

Are we really so arithmetically-challenged that we need special markings on a tape measure to do that calculation for us?

*sigh* I suppose so. I saw a recent survey that showed that 75% of Americans were uncomfortable with fractions, and the other half simply refused to consider them.

I hereby acknowledge the almost sub-conscious influence on this post by Soccer Dad's comment to this other post. In other words, it's practically his fault.

Lode Code

Update: MLB just pointed out that I omitted one of the words in the mystery phrase. I've added it; did you notice?

OK, here's a quiz. If I was to say to you, "Camels often sit down carefully; perhaps their joints creak," what would I really be telling you, aside from some obscure and overly-general zoological observation?

Leave your answer/guess in the comments, but if you haven't a clue, the actual response can be found by selecting the following lines of text with your cursor.

This phrase is a mnemonic for remembering the proper sequence of geologic eras: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. Source: The April, 2008 issue of Seed Magazine

HP King

Gazette readers with sadly uncluttered minds and dormant social lives will remember this post in which I spent an amazing amount of time and HTML coding to construct a table comparing weight/horsepower ratios for various machines (including Lance Armstrong). My exhaustive research revealed that on this basis, a Kawasaki motorcycle reigned supreme, with a ratio of 2.04 lbs/hp, handily beating out the $1 million McLaren F1 sports car.

Well, I'm here to tell you that a new king has been crowned. The unimpressively-named MTT Turbine Superbike sports a Roll Royce-Allison gas turbine motor that runs on kerosene or diesel, and generates a nifty 320 horsepower. It also weighs in at only 500 pounds, thanks to its aluminum chassis and carbon-fiber dressing, giving it a weight/power ratio of 1.56. Even if you go with the more practical comparison of weight-to-HP at the rear wheel (286), the ratio is 1.74, 15% better than the Kawa.

The motor produces an astounding 425 ft-lbs of torque, more than a 2009 5.7 liter Dodge Hemi V-8. Theoretically, all that's preventing you from towing an Airstream trailer on your next vacation is finding a suitable trailer hitch.

Even better, with a price tag of $175,000, you won't even notice that you're paying over $4/gallon for diesel (I have no idea what kerosene is going for nowadays). Perhaps Jet-B would be a good substitute.

So, who needs a bike like this (other than Jay Leno)? If you have to ask that question, then I respectfully suggest that you return to washing your Prius with eco-friendly water strained through organic linen recycled from Al Gore's used underwear.

When CDs Ruled the Mail - Pt 2: The AOL Commodities Collection

In the first installment of When CDs Ruled the Mail, some of you commented about the ubiquity of America Online's floppy disks. I suspect I still have a couple of AOL floppies in an unpacked box; like you, I erased the original content and used them for other things. However, we're focusing here on the higher steps of the evolutionary ladder.

I don't know if AOL was the ISP who pioneered the use of mailed digital media to promote its product, but the company certainly seemed to corner the market when it came to sending us CDs.

When you're sending out about a billion disks a week, it's probably difficult for your ad department to provide some differentiation among them. But, bless their hearts, they gave it a good try. Here, for example, is AOL's "bling theme" collection, beginning with a classy gold lamé disk, suitable for framing on black velvet. Even at version 4.0, it's apparent that AOL was feeling some competition and/or disenchantment with its services (how else to explain the tagline, "Come back and see the difference"?).

The next step up was AOL Titanium, distinguished by its soothing stark blue background. However, the disk provides no clue as to what else might distinguish this edition from the myriad others provided by the company.

Finally, the pinnacle (we assume) of the AOL Precious Jewels collection: the Diamond edition, featuring "Cutting Edge Internet!" (as opposed to the other blunt object versions), 500 free hours, and seven (7) email addresses.

Wonder how many people stopped to do the math and realized that to take advantage of AOL's free hours, they'd have to tie up their phone line for 16 hours each day during that first month? That's a lot of time to spend in the "Teen Wiccan Bikers Who Macramé Cat Toys" chatroom.

Up next: AOL gets funky

Abbye and the new digs

Some of you have kindly inquired as to how Abbye is doing in her new surroundings. The short answer is an unqualified "OK."

We were concerned that moving into a new house would be stressful on her, and she doesn't handle stress well. So we were (and are) pleasantly surprised that the move itself hasn't seemed to affect her, health wise.

Of course, she lost all of her cues for finding things, and that's an ongoing problem. She's gotten pretty good at navigating the path between her crate in our bedroom (where she spends most of her time) and her water dish in our bathroom, and she can eventually find her way into the kitchen around meal time. But more often than not, she gets disoriented and has to be rescued from behind furniture, in corners, or down hallways.

In her defense, until we can completely clear the floor of unpacked boxes and unhanged (is that a word?) paintings, her wanderings will be unavoidably complicated.

On the other hand, some of Abbye's disorientation is no doubt due to a slow-but-steady decline in her overall condition. She's lived for more than two years now with Cushing's Disease and the diabetes that blinded her, and our vet's best guess is that she's about fourteen years old. She could well have a few more years of life ahead of her, but odds are that she doesn't. In addition to being blind, we think her hearing is worsening, and even her sense of smell doesn't seem to be as sharp as it was only a few months ago.

Still, she gets out for a daily walk in the morning, and a shorter one in the evening if it's not too hot, and she knows well when she's due her quota of treats. Losing her eyesight was even a blessing in a strange way, as she's much calmer now that she's no longer got a hair trigger when it comes to being startled by things like blowing leaves. And the daily dose of glucosamine has worked wonders for her arthritis.

I guess you could say that for a dog that's as sick as she is, she's in remarkably good health. We should all be so fortunate.

Easter Hill Country Tour 2008

MLB and I returned Sunday from our annual pilgrimage to Fredericksburg, where we participated in the 35th edition of the Easter Hill Country [Bicycle] Tour. We haven't been cycling for 35 years – although it sometimes feels as if we have – but we've missed only about a dozen of those events.

This year's EHCT was sponsored by the Fort Worth Bicycling Association (pronounced "Foat Wuth" for the benefit of my dear non-Texican readers), and the ride was well organized, with one glaring exception that I'll address below. Unfortunately for MLB and me, we had managed to ride a total of 23 miles this year leading up to the event, not exactly a desirable training base for bicycling in what is arguably one of the toughest regions in the state. But we exercised uncommon (for us) good sense, picked some shorter (although not necessarily easier) routes, and managed to survive another year.

Here are some observations from our visit to the Hill Country:

• It's not all about the wildflowers - With Easter coming so early, coupled with the lack of rainfall, we weren't surprised that there were no wildflowers to be viewed anywhere we rode or drove. However, that didn't seem to affect the size of the mob that invaded Fredericksburg for the long weekend. The sidewalks were just as packed as ever. This was probably due to the fact that many schools were out for spring break, although F'burg is not the greatest destination for kids.


• Wildflowers are on their way - If you have your heart set on a wildflower tour, don't despair. Within a couple of weeks, you should start seeing a great crop, as we saw the first bluebonnets popping out on the Sunday drive home. Check this website for flower sighting reports and maps of good viewing areas.


• One is not enough - As I mentioned earlier, the FWBA did a good job of organizing the tour, but dropped the ball badly in one important area. At the first rest stop of the first day's ride, there was only one Port-A-Potty. That's a serious logistical oversight, especially considering that all of the day's routes included that rest stop, and that most of the hundreds of riders were by that point dealing with a serious need to offload the morning's pre-ride coffee.


• Bambi gets revenge - We were able to return to our favorite B&B which is located a couple of miles outside of F'burg, out in the woods. Our friends, Tommy and Toni, flew in for the weekend, staying at the Hangar Hotel where they could park the plane less than 100 yards from their room. Tommy brought his new night vision binoculars and we tried them out on Friday. Here's a tip. If you have an active imagination, and if you've watched The Blair Witch Project and found it terrifying, then it's probably not the best idea to peer through night vision goggles into thick woods just beyond your little house in the country, and see gleaming eyes of...something...peering back at you, right before bedtime. Just sayin'.


• It's the gearing, not the engine - Even though we picked shorter routes to ride (43 miles on Friday, 25 on Saturday), owing to the aforementioned lacking of training, we found that shorter doesn't always mean easier. Friday's challenge was weather: temps in the 50s and 20mph+ winds (headwind coming back, of course). Saturday's ride included a hill we'd never ridden before, and felt fortunate to survive. There's a ride that leaves from Kerrville, heading toward Ingram, that includes a stretch of Bear Creek Road (there's a Bear Creek Road outside of F'burg also). We've ridden that road many times, and it's a pretty route. This year, though, we were instructed to turn onto a road called Freedom Trail or Trail of Tears or Bataan Death March Redux or something similar. The first half mile or so is uphill...waaaaaay uphill. My wife's GPS gently informed us at one point that we were pedaling up a 16% incline. For comparison purposes, if you've ever driven up to McDonald's Observatory outside Fort Davis, you'll no doubt recall that you feel like you're going vertical; most cyclists will swear that that's the toughest road to climb in the great state of Texas. That incline is, in fact, 17%. But, I'm proud to say that we made the climb, albeit at a snail's pace, thanks to our granny gear and a desperately illogical passion to avoid joining the overwhelming majority of our fellow cyclists who had succumbed to pedestrianism.


• Jason knows pickles - By the way, if you ever find yourself just on the edge of muscle cramps, due to, say, riding a hill you had no business tackling, and you come to a sag stop and the volunteers are handing out 8 oz bottles of something sickly green and called "Pickle Juice Sport," take the advice written on said bottle and just drink it. You might be amazed at the difference it will make.

That's my report, and I apologize for the lack of photos. We had two cameras, and in four days we took exactly one picture (and that was of the line in front of the lone port-a-john at the rest stop). After riding a few thousand miles through the Hill Country over the years, the scenery is still as beautiful as ever but the absence of flowers makes it less photogenic.

Oh, one last thing. A mile or two out of Fredericksburg, on FM 2093, there's a new but somewhat nondescript warehouse-looking building with a sign referring to "muscle cars." You might be tempted to pass it by, thinking it's a parts store or perhaps a mechanic's shop. But you need to stop and go inside, and be amazed.

Happy Easter!

Whew! Five consecutive days of in-depth posting have left me unbearably fatigued. I think I'll take some time off!

Hope you and yours have a blessed Easter weekend. Catch you next week.

Details, Details

Overheard this morning on a local news broadcast: It's reported that the recent winners of the big PowerBall drawing were co-workers. Eight of eleven women working in the same office went in together to buy the winning ticket. Can you imagine how the other two feel today?

To her credit (but also probably out of self-defense), the reporter later joked about her inability to count.

This is one reason why I have great respect for anyone willing to appear on live TV on a daily basis. There's nowhere to hide. Having a sense of humor would seem to be a requirement for survival.

When CDs Ruled the Mail

I know that Jim hates delivering NetFlix envelopes (although the reason remains obscure) but he could have it worse. He could have been a carrier back in the olden days when ISPs filled mailboxes to overflowing with CDs touting their services.

One of the discoveries I made during the packing and unpacking process was a collection of said discs. At one time, I was sure that I could come up with a creative use for a thousand free CDs (I'm still working on how, exactly, to armor our recumbent tandem with them), and while I've given up on any kind of physical use, I've convinced myself that the internet needs another useless collection of quasi-historical trivia, and I'm just the guy to deliver.

So, this is your introduction to the fascinating world of scanned internet access disks from the late 20th century. At some point, there will be a permanent repository for this collection of trivia (not unlike someone's collection of Analog magazine covers). But for now, the Gazette is your go-to destiniation to relive this important part of history, filling that hitherto unrecognized gap in your existence.

Our first examples come from Juno, an ISP which is still in business. Its survival is no doubt traced to the fact that in 1999, it understood the marketing importance of being "Y2K Compliant." Does anyone remember Y2K?

Y2K compliance was a big deal to Juno as it apparently allowed them to justify nearly doubling their price, after they had a chance to think about just how big a deal it was:

Although, since I can't actually date these disks, perhaps it was the other way around.

Next up: The AOL Commodities Collection

Sound Pride

• 360 feet of 2- and 4-conductor Monster speaker cable, 1 Niles Modular Speaker Wiring Panel, and 2 Niles Remote Volume Controls – $400.00


• 4 8" Polk in-ceiling speakers with pre-construction mounting brackets – $300.00


• Connecting all the wires five months after running them through the newly-framed house and finding that every single speaker and volume control functions perfectly – Priceless

Now, if only the installation of the flat-panel TV will go as smoothly. I'm afraid I'm a non-native HDMI speaker.

From dust to dust

Want to know what a West Texas spring is like in an under-construction neighborhood on the edge of town during a severe drought?

That's the eastern edge of the Gobi Desert, aka our driveway. The thing that looks like a phone line laid across the concrete and under the occasional dune is, in fact, our phone line. Smooth move, AT&T. It's a long story, but the image is the tech equivalent of a car up on blocks in one's front yard. Anyway, I shoveled four wheelbarrows full of sand from the driveway (in order to make way for more).

That's the lovely view from our front door, taken yesterday afternoon as the winds began to hit 30+ mph and the humidity dropped below 6%. The trees barely visible on the horizon? They're about 2 blocks away.

That's the result of a windstorm from a week or so ago. We got the same amount of blowing dirt, with the added bonus of copious quantities of tumbleweeds. These are stacked on our front porch. After cleaning our yard, I helped our neighbor do the same with his, and together we hauled two trailers stacked over six feet high with these nasty critters. I'm not telling where we hauled them, so don't ask.

Mac Worshiping

I was trying to clean-up the rat's nest known as my bookmarks and I ran across a link to the Christian Macintosh Users Group. I couldn't remember the last time I visited that site, and I was curious as to whether it was still active. Sure enough, it is, and it sports the graphic shown at right.

I'll ignore the temptation to repeat the old computer-related joke about how "Jesus saves," but I confess that this image is vaguely disturbing-yet-winsome. We Mac users have often been accused of elevating our computer choices to the level of a religion, and this photo seems to reinforce the anthropomorphism such a view implies.

On the other hand, I submit to you that there's never been a cuter or more expressive office machine than the desk lamp "mascot" that appears at the beginning of Pixar's movies. And we all know who is pulling the strings at Pixar, don't we?

In the final analysis, to the extent that one's choice of computers defines one – and also ignoring how sadly true that seems to be – this is an appropriate icon to represent those who know the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and not just from an operating system perspective.

Drill Thrill

After an extended break from blogging (don't tell me you didn't notice), I can't think of a better "first post" than to call your attention to this article in today's Midland Reporter Telegram which profiles The Nephew's involvement in Texas A&M's Fish Drill Team (something I reported on here, a while back).

I don't know that most people – including many current students – would necessarily agree that the FDT is "famed," but in the niche of precision military drill teams the adjective certainly applies. It's great to see some recognition extend beyond that niche, and we appreciate MRT's managing editor, Stewart Doreen, for picking up on the story and producing a well-written article.

And to The Nephew we say, "way to go...we're proud of you...now, HIT THE BOOKS!" ;-)

And, by the way, if you have trouble finding printed copies of today's MRT, it's simply because his mom has bought them all.