bloglips - douglips blog

Goodbye, Bevatron.

2009-05-22T22:13:00.001-07:00

The Bevatron is being destroyed. It's been sitting idle for 16 years, so I suppose it's about time, but it still makes me a little sad.

I worked there in 1992 and had a grand old time playing with radioactive doohickies and programming computers to control enormous superconducting magnets. I can't imagine a cooler job for a college student. There were so many amazing things like the huge crane on rails that could go anywhere around the accelerator ring, enormous power supplies, and motor generators that looked like they could have powered an aircraft carrier.

Spend some time walking through the photos tagged with bevatron on flickr - there are some amazing shots there. Telstar Logistics has some nice ones, including this shot of the radiation safety key board. The notion is that they can't turn on the beam unless all the keys are in, so if you're going inside the accelerator you take a key with you.

Goodbye, Bevatron!

Strawberry Margaritas

2009-04-22T06:43:00.001-07:00

4 oz pureed strawberries
2 oz tequila
2 oz Grand Marnier
1 tbsp fresh lime juice (about half a lime)
1 tbsp sugar

Blend with ice.

This worked out a little sweeter than I'd like, but Laurie really appreciated it.

Kiwi Margaritas

2009-04-10T21:24:00.001-07:00

These turned out OK, but I noticed as I blended the kiwis that at low speeds the seeds stayed intact, and at higher speeds they started to blend. So, it started off as a bright green mix with dark black seeds but ended up a light brown mix with darker brown flecks in it. I also think this gave the drink a slightly woody flavor. Next time I'll try just blending on low speed the entire time.

4 ounces pureed kiwis (about 2 kiwis)
2 ounces tequila
2 ounces grand marnier
2 tsp Rose's lime juice

Next time, try less lime juice. Zero is definitely the wrong amount, but I think maybe 1 tsp would be right.

Peach Margaritas

2009-03-11T21:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a recipe I fudged together:

4 oz. peach puree (from fresh peeled & pitted peaches, about 1.5 peaches)
2 oz. tequila
1 oz. Grand Marnier
1 tbsp. Rose's Lime Juice
1 tbsp. peach schnapps
1/2 tbsp. grenadine

Mix in a blender, then add sufficient ice and blend - makes two. I didn't try saving the ice-free mix in the fridge like I have with strawberry margaritas, I don't know if it would keep.

This was pretty awesome. In the future I will try some with fresh lime juice as well.

Wicked

2009-02-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Last night Laurie & I went to the opening night of Wicked in San Francisco. Very fun. It did feel a bit like the lead actress was an Orion slave girl, however.

To complete the Star Trek theme, we ran into Zachary Quinto outside - he had flown up to the opening night show to support some friends of his in the show. Really down to earth guy.

We ended the night with drinks at a club in SF, then spent the night at the Hotel Whitcomb.

Overall a success, if we did learn one valuable lesson: It's a bit too hectic to start off at work, then take the kids somewhere, then try to be at a theater on time for a play - next time, we do it on a weekend or a day off.

American Cargo Cult

2009-02-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

Ouch.

Your opinion matters as much as anyone else's

When a person has studied a topic, he has no more real knowledge than you do, just a hidden agenda.

The herd should be followed

The contemplative lemming gets trampled

Conservatives against Republican Government

2009-02-07T20:45:00.001-08:00

Somehow I failed to post this two years ago. Much less relevant now, but still stunning.

But compare Clinton’s 3.4 percent growth rate to the spending orgy that has dominated Washington since Bush moved into town. With Republicans in charge of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, spending growth has averaged 10.4 percent per year. And the GOP’s reckless record goes well beyond runaway defense costs. The federal education bureaucracy has exploded by 101 percent since Republicans started running Congress. Spending in the Justice Department over the same period has shot up 131 percent, the Commerce Department 82 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services 81 percent, the State Department 80 percent, the Department of Transportation 65 percent, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development 59 percent. Incredibly, the four bureaucracies once targeted for elimination by the GOP Congress—Commerce, Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development—have enjoyed spending increases of an average of 85 percent.

Question of the Day: How can your eyes see if they're made out of meat?

2009-02-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

The twins are nearly six years old, and every night at bedtime it becomes question time. Lately, Mikaela has been obsessed with bodies and death, so a few nights ago she asked how people's eyes go away after they die - she was asking how skulls ended up with empty eye sockets. I told her that eyes are made out of meat, just like the rest of us, and that after we die animals or worms or bugs will come and eat it all up until there is nothing left but bones.

So last night her sole question was "How can your eyes see if they're made out of meat?" I laughed. I didn't show her this video.

They're made out of meat

How strangely appropriate that we are meat's dream.

Michael Lewis on the financial implosion

2008-11-23T12:27:00.000-08:00

Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, has a gripping article on the financial crisis. Must read.

“We just shorted Merrill Lynch,” Eisman told him.

“Why?” asked Hintz.

“We have a simple thesis,” Eisman explained. “There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there.” When it came time to bankrupt Orange County with bad advice, Merrill was there. When the internet went bust, Merrill was there. Way back in the 1980s, when the first bond trader was let off his leash and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, Merrill was there to take the hit. That was Eisman’s logic—the logic of Wall Street’s pecking order. Goldman Sachs was the big kid who ran the games in this neighborhood. Merrill Lynch was the little fat kid assigned the least pleasant roles, just happy to be a part of things. The game, as Eisman saw it, was Crack the Whip. He assumed Merrill Lynch had taken its assigned place at the end of the chain.

Radioactive Decay Rates tied to Earth-Sun Distance

2008-09-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is pretty interesting. Some physicists have noticed that radioactive decay rates are not constant, but for some nuclides has a seasonal variation.

From the article:

Another interesting possibility is that terrestrial radioactive nuclei are interacting in a novel way with the neutrino flux Φ_ν emitted from the interior of the Sun. This flux also varies with 1/R², and the resulting seasonal modulation of Φ_ν has been observed by Super-Kamiokande [16, 17]. This possibility is supported by the data we report in Ref. [18] in which we present evidence for the possible detection of a change in the decay rate of ⁵⁴Mn during the solar flare of 13 December 2006.

As noted in Ref. [18], the coincidence in time between
the change in the ⁵⁴Mn counting rate and the solar flare,
along with other observations, is consistent with a mech-
anism based on a change in Φ_ν during the solar flare.

Here's a link to the PDF: http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/0808.3283v1

Google's new Privacy Policy

2008-07-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Gee, I wonder how that happened.

Anniversary #9

2008-06-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend was our 9th anniversary. To celebrate we had arranged a weekend away with no kids camping out at a hippie music festival up in Laytonville. Unfortunately, the entire state of California was on fire that weekend, and the smoke level was ridiculous.

So, we kept driving up the coast to Arcata, where the smoke was much less noticeable. We were able to get a hotel room right on the plaza, and enjoyed a lovely dinner. Later we hit a bar for some drinks and so Laurie could regale me with tale of her college days.

The next day we went to the farmer's market and got some supplies - a loaf of bread and some olive spread and fruit, and we went for a hike in the Arcata redwood grove. We found a picnic table in the middle of nowhere and sat down and had a lovely picnic.

Later we drove to Trinidad and found a great little place with cabins - the Bishop Pine Lodge. We then had a dinner in Trinidad at the Eatery, which looked like a dive but wasn't. We topped the evening off by snuggling under blankets and watching bad movies on HBO.

We'll have to see if we can do this again before Anniversary #10.

Hours of No Power

2008-01-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

We're entering our 36th hour with no electricity in the wake of some pretty good winter storms. We've had days with just as much or even more rain, but it's never been with as much wind as we had. I was watching sizeable redwood trees, with trunks 5 or 6 feet in diameter bend like reeds.

PG&E says they'll have more information for us in about 24 hours, so it could be a few days before we get power back.

I'm not worried, as long as our generator keeps purring along. Hopefully there will be a break in the rain tomorrow so I can change the oil...

We Can Buy It Today, Daddy!

2007-10-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

"We can buy it today, Daddy!"

Those excited words came while Sabina and the twins were watching a show. Uh-oh, I thought, I let them see a commercial.

I was right, Sabina had seen an advertisement for Barbie Island Princess, and she was excited because they told her we could buy it today! I explained that we weren't going shopping just then, but perhaps she could ask for it for Christmas. This was a very popular idea, so she instantly started using her newfound ability to write to compose a Christmas gift wish list. She invited input from the twins as well. Here is what they came up with:

Sabina

Barbie Island Princess movie (Ilind Prisses Moove as she wrote)
Barbie Princess Rapunzel (doll I suppose, need to check if she already has this)
Toy Table and Toy Stove ("that I can cook real food in!")
More Barbies

Calvin

Car with a Roof - he's got a red remote control convertible, he wants one with a roof.
Firetruck
Toy airplane that comes apart, bigger than the one he already has

Mikaela

toy instrument (drum)

All

Tinkertoys
Umbrellas
3 Candy Canes
3 pumpkins
Christmas Decorations

She finished off with:

I wil lev sum coocees owt. I love you

Welsh Rabbit: Now With Actual Rabbit!

2006-11-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

A SPICY sausage known as the Welsh Dragon will have to be renamed after trading standards’ officers warned the manufacturers that they could face prosecution because it does not contain dragon.

Brilliant!

Next you'll tell me that Welsh Rabbit must contain actual rabbit, and that Long Island Ice Tea must contain actual tea.

Microsoft Design Principles

2006-09-25T11:59:00.000-07:00

Those tricky ellipses.

Surprise! You've got a cat, AND a huge vet bill!

2006-09-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

I live in a rural neighborhood, so we have our fair share of racoons, skunks, and other varmints running around. We also have some cats of varying ferality roaming, along with genuine bobcats.

This summer I noticed that something had pushed open one of my crawlspace vents. I typically get rats in the winter, and I've noticed one or two small cracks that they might be getting into, but this was a big 16"x6" vent that was wide open for any critter to get in. This lit a fire under my but, it being September and rat weather just around the corner...

So, after a trip to Home Depot to prepare for the job (vent covers, spray foam sealant for the cracks, a roll of mesh screen to cover various weird utility slots in the walls) I was ready to go. Today was to be D-Day.

Yesterday, I heard a meow under my deck, but try as I might I couldn't find the meower. Today, I heard it again, and realized it was coming from my crawlspace. 20 minutes with a flashlight later, I found a little cute as a button kitty cat. Later the vet told me he was probably 5 weeks old.

Oh, one more thing. His front paw was caught in a rat trap. :(

So, I got the leather gloves out and put him in a box. He hissed and spat at me, but never tried to scratch or bite.

After I took the trap off his paw, he settled down. I could see bone exposed, so off to the vet hospital we went. Sunday prices, of course. Why couldn't he have meowed a bit more yesterday? $400 dollars later, we probably need to get the paw and/or portions of the leg amputated. I didn't get an actual estimate from the hospital, they want a real surgeon to take a look at it - but the ballpark seems to be 1 to 3. Thousand.

She did say that a local vet might be able to do it cheaper though, so I think we'll give that a shot. I don't know how much money I want to invest in this thing, but the damn thing was so cute and cuddly, never once hissing, scratching or biting after I got the trap off. I think I might be in love, dammit.

Fiery Bitter Golden Dragonfly

2006-08-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

Five years ago a challenge was issued in my company:

It has been suggested that we adopt code names for the various software releases, which is a great idea. The "3.x.x" or "4.x" etc. names are both boring and confusing (they may change during the development cycle). I have proposed to use bug names (large supply available), and since no one has stopped me (too late now), let us go with this idea.

You are therefore invited to vote for the bugs of your choice, for the 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 releases.

Spoiler: Today I'm working on 6.1.4, so you know how this is going to turn out.

Here, in its entirety, is my response to this challenge:

4.0 Hornet
5.0 Mantis
6.0 Scorpion

Before anyone protests about that last one, Merriam-Webster says:

Main Entry: 2bug
   Function: noun
   Etymology: origin unknown
   Date: 1622
1 a : an insect or other creeping or crawling invertebrate

So I believe scorpion is acceptable as a 'crawling invertebrate'.

On another note, let me suggest that intermediate releases have some kind of adjective name so that if they get rolled together we can just merge the names. I further think that naming 'releases' is the wrong approach, but naming 'feature sets' is the right approach, for example Decision Tables could be "Cyan", BRTG mk. II could be "Shiny", Deployment Manager can be "Tempting", so that we can later release "Shiny Cyan" or "Tempting Cyan" and know what's in them.

But, if we are stuck with naming "releases", I propose colors for single point releases (3.x) and temperatures/textures/flavors/other adjectives for minor point releases (3.x.x).

For example, we had 3.2.1, 3.2.2, and 3.3, and then 3.2.2 got rolled into 3.3. If the code names for these were Hot, Smooth, and Blue, then when Smooth and Blue were merged we'd have 'Smooth Blue'. Everyone would immediately know that if they were working on Smooth, now they are working on Smooth Blue. If all three of these releases were merged, we'd have "Hot Smooth Blue". Colors can also be merged, for example if 3.3 "Blue" and 3.4 "Green" are merged, you could have "Hot Smooth Blue-Green".

Furthermore, since we use colors for point releases we can merge them onto the corresponding main release name and refer to "Smooth Blue-Green Hornet" or "Funky Cold Magenta Scorpion".

We should avoid having contradictory adjectives in adjacent releases to avoid things like "Cold Hot Luke-Warm Dragonfly", if we plan the names just a little better we could have "Fiery Bitter Golden Dragonfly", for example, which would make a really cool martial arts movie title.

(In case anyone things I'm joking, I'm serious about naming things with adjectives and merging the names when needed. I'm not so serious about particular names like "Icy Purple Sticky Dung Beetle", though.)

-Doug "Hotblack" Simpkinson

Virtualization to End IT Slump?

2006-06-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

An article in the Washington Times claims that tons of unused server hardware exists, purchased in preparation for massive Y2K failures that never happened. Now finally that hardware is being put to use, primarily because of virtualization technology.

It's hard for me to imagine people running two different servers on two different pieces of hardware if the same processes could run on one box. Why not just unplug one of them instead of paying the "$800 per month electric bill"?

tags: virtualization, y2k, dotcom bust

Kimberly Mine Tragedy

2006-05-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

Four people were killed at the Sullivan mine in Kimberly this week. The linked story gives as many details as are known about the incident, but I asked my Dad about his time working there:

I worked in the Sullivan mine in the summer of 1954 as a mine surveyors helper. We would go into the mine in the morning and survey all the new advances in the tunneling from the day before (they would blast at the end of the shift). We would go out of the mine about lunch time and rush through the change room and showers before the miners came out as the safety people would dump cans of very fine aluminum dust into the hopper on whistle like devices connected to compressed air. When they opened the valve the black aluminum dust would fill the air and get on your skin and clothes. The aluminum dust was meant to get into the miners lungs and form aluminum hydroxide, a phlegm-like substance that would float the silicon particles out of the lungs as they coughed. After we got back in the office we would plot up all the advances on several different scales of map for all the levels and perspectives of raises coming up out of the various levels

There was an area of the mine where the lead and zinc sulfide ore was oxidizing and releasing SO₂ if the air got at it. This area was sealed off and called the "hot box"; when you were in tunnels adjoining this area it was uncomfortably hot as the heat came through the rock, the rest of the mine was a comfortable 60 to 65F or so. I think it was SO₂ that got the people, I don't know what they were doing, probably something to do with decommissioning in an enviro-friendly manner.

His speculation on the SO₂ was probably premature - from the first article we saw on this it wasn't clear where the victims were. It now appears they were above ground in a water monitoring shed - who knows what could have contributed to an oxygen poor condition in there. Perhaps some dissolved substance in the water oxidized in the shed. At this point, thought, anything my Dad or I could say about this would be pure speculation. I'll be interested to follow this story to see if they determine a cause.

tags: Kimberly mine, Sullivan mine, mine accident, mine tragedy

Virtual Account Numbers

2006-05-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Elliotte Rusty Harold has a bit on Citibank's virtual account numbers. This is a great service I've been using at MBNA for several years now.

One thing he doesn't mention is that in addition to making a "one-time-use" credit card number, you can specify a maximum credit line and an expiration date.

Here's what it looks like on MBNA when you choose the credit limit and expiration date. This way you know that not only can only one person charge the card, but that they can't exceed the amount you actually bought.

They do have some bits in the terms of service about how they have the right to extend the credit limit by a small amount to account for sales tax and shipping charges, but you can be sure that they'll refuse a charge that is significantly higher than you specify.

Good stuff.

tags: virtual account numbers, credit cards

Portable Rotary Phone

2006-04-17T00:56:00.000-07:00

This is a classic. The guys at Spark Fun Electronics have built a cell phone into an old rotary phone body. The rotary dial actual dials the cellphone circuitry, and it comes complete with obnoxious bell ringing "ringtone".

tags: homebrew, rotary phone

Comcast: Evil, or Just Stupid?

2006-03-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Until February, I was a somewhat satisfied customer of Comcast. I was happily paying about $50/month for digital cable, and everything seemed just fine. Until the day he called - with his annoying telemarketer script and his headphone and his predictive dialing - to offer me discounted HBO. I wasn't interested, but he had to wave the prospect of a full refund in front of my face, so I thought it was easier to let him sign me up for HBO than it was to deal with the salesdrone. Of course, I made sure to note on the calendar the deadline.

I specifically asked him "So, if I cancel in less than 30 days, I can go back to what I had before?" He said yes. If he had not said yes, I would have said goodbye, but he said yes, so I allowed him to sign me up.

Lying sack of Comcast. After 25 days, I called to cancel HBO. I said "Put me back on what I had last month before I got HBO."

It took me a couple of days to notice that the cable was not working at all. All of my DVR recorded shows were completely black and silent. Fortunately, I have a ReplayTV so I could easily (and legally) download the shows I missed from my "friends." Unfortunately I had to spend more time on the phone, again specifically asking to get back on whatever I had before the entire HBO fiasco. Finally I verify that my digital channels are working again, and all seems right in the universe.

One more month passes, and we arrive at Tuesday. I'm paying bills when I see my Comcast bill. It was $65. Sixty five freaking dollars. Instantly I was on the phone with a customer service representative, who seemed very nice and even spoke English very well. Unfortunately, my situation did not seem to evoke any sympathy in her.

I explained my situation to her, and that I just wanted to be on whatever freaking service plan I had before the asshole called me and convinced me to change anything about my service at all. At that point, we arrived at this conversation:

Me:  Why did my bill go up by so much? Did you add more channels? If so, please take them away and put me back on what I had before.
Drone: Can I put you on hold?
Me:  Sure. [seethes]
Drone: Sorry to keep you waiting sir. We no longer offer the package you had before, the digital plus plan we offer is $65/month.
Me:  If I had not changed plans would I have been able to continue on at $50/month?
Drone: Well, we did make some adjustments to cable rates in your area, so it would have gone up.
Me:  I'm quite used to rate increases, and I would have silently paid a rate increase of 3 or perhaps even 5%. But this is a 30% rate increase! Are you seriously tell me that if I hadn't done any changes to my plan that you were just going to send me a bill for 30% more than the previous month? Did you just expect I would bend over and take it?
Drone: Can I ask you to hold again sir?
Me:  Sure. Whatever.
Drone: Sorry to keep you waiting. We did an audit of our service offerings and found that we were not charging as much in your area as in some other areas, so we made some adjustments.
Me:  30 freaking percent? I had service in Sunnyvale before I moved here, and the rates were similar. Are you saying that you just raised rates for the entire Bay Area by 30 freaking percent?

So I'm pretty sure she was lying to me, because I know that if that jerk had never called me and my rates shot up, I would have been on the phone to satellite providers the very next instant.

The upshot of this all is that I had the drone turn off my digital service and just give me standard cable for $33/month. I'm going to look into getting satellite service, but I just don't have the freaking time available to research providers and see if I have too many trees etc. etc. So I have no idea how long it will be.

But for now I take comfort in the fact that the original sales drone's rate of return on the call he made to me was -$17/month.

Tags: Comcast, customer service, cable

The Cafes: Confirming GETs Considered Harmful

2006-03-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

Elliotte Rusty Harold says:

In particular I was using a GET to make something happen: confirm a message. What really shocked me was that Google’s GMail and possibly other clients will prefetch such URLs, maybe even before the user ever reads the e-mail. In other words, the confirmation can be accidental. Oops. As soon as Bill pointed it out, I saw my error. Google is absolutely within its rights to prefetch such a URL. I should not be using a GET to confirm the message. That needs to be done with a POST.

Is this really an issue? What email clients pre-fetch links in the email message? GMail uses such links to confirm an email address you'd like to send mail from, so I can't believe GMail will trip this. Here's how you can test this:

Get a gmail account, call it foo@gmail.com
Set some other account foo@example.com to forward mail to that gmail account.
In Gmail, add foo@example.com to your "accounts" settings. Google will email foo@example.com with a GET link to confirm you actually receive this email.
You'll receive that email at GMail, and can click the GET link to activate it.

Now, technically it is within a client's right to pre-fetch any URLs they desire. But in an email client that seems irresponsible, when some of those URLs might be:

Click here to confirm for my spam list that your email address is valid! (Note, this is the same reason email clients don't usually display hotlinked images in-line by default anymore.)
Click here to give me a fractional penny in some referrer/clickfraud scheme!

In short I find it hard to believe that any email client, even a browser based one, would pre-fetch any link in any email. It's just a bad idea. Does anyone have an example where this actually happens?

Tags: REST, CMS, web development

White Guys + Rapping = Crazy Racist

2006-01-12T10:21:00.000-08:00

Baltimore City Paper's Vincent Williams, actin' like he never seen parody before, just about has an aneurysm over the Lazy Sunday video.

... you know what? I just find the whole thing vaguely racist. No, hear me out. It’s like, the very concept of Parnell and Samberg, who appear to be two suburban white guys, rapping about going to a nerdy movie is intrinsically funny. Why is that? Is it because rapping is expected to be reserved for hyperviolent, hypersexualized, and, of course, hyperblack discussion of killin’, jewelry, and, of course, bitches?

Yeah, that must be it. I guess we can call him Johnnie Cochran by the way he's droppin' race cards.

Tags: lazy sunday, racism