Taxes are Done!

Time: Start to finish (minus stamp and dropping in mailbox) , 40 minutes.
Results: Refund of $74.37.

Once again my simple filing status means that my withholdings are close to, and just slightly more then my actual tax liability. Which is just about the way that I want it. Since I moved last year and never received my form packet from the IRS, I just downloaded the 1040ez form and instructions off the web, used Adobe Reader to fill it in and an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet to do the computations. The most time consuming single task was printing out the envelope, as the 1040ez instructions kept giving me garbage when I tried to copy the IRS address.

If I could e-file online at the IRS.gov website, or by clicking a button on the 1040ez PDF, I would have done so. But finding a provider, setting up an account, and entering the information would have taken too much effort for what it would have been worth. If the IRS really wants to get away from the manual data entry they really need to eliminate the middlemen and directly accept e-filings through their website.

AVA Annual Meeting

I had a good and productive time at the American Vaulting Association's Annual Meeting, held this past weekend in Cupertino, CA.  I attended many committee meetings, both the board meeting and the general membership meeting, as well as a couple of training sessions (Tom Oakes' on using the AVA's CompWeb and Nancy Stevens-Brown's on using digital photography as a coaching tool).  I volunteered to serve on the AVA's competitions committee (because I manage a competition that is very different from most) and to serve as the leader of the Membership Sub-committee on Contests for Vaulting World and the AVA Website(s).

I also attended the AVA's annual awards and recognition banquet. A few Region III vaulters were recognized for their outstanding performance during the 2007 competition year. 

Per a request from the AVA's VP of membership, I delayed my flight plans home so that I could attend a meeting Monday morning with the AVA's website developers.  The AVA is very impressed with what we have been doing with the CascadeVaulters.org, VoNW.org and Region3Vaulting.com websites and would like to use them as prototypes for future development (two or three years out) of the AVA's websites.

My changed plans had me arriving back into Sea-Tac about 7:30 PM.  My Alaska flight from San Jose arrived into Portland early, and I could have caught the 6:00 PM Horizon shuttle to Seattle. However I opted to wait for my scheduled (6:30PM) shuttle flight because I had checked a bag that probably wouldn't have mad the earlier flight and I preferred to wait air-side in Portland and grab some dinner then at baggage claim in Seattle where there are few services. 

The 6:30 PM shuttle flight (Horizon Air 2496) actually left five minutes early and arrived at Sea-Tac a few minutes after seven.  I was impressed with the speed, efficiency and level of service provided on what is essentially a shuttle service between Seattle and Portland.  It was one of the best air travel experiences I've had in years.

Also my favorite airport parking service, ExtraCar, again did a nice and convenient job at a good price.

Report from the AVA Annual Meeting

This is my frist time attending the AVA's annual meeting, and it has been interesting and productive.  The only news items to really report are from the competitions committes and the technical committee.

 

From the competitions committee, it sounds like the USEF/AVA National Championships in 2009 will be rather early (second weekend of July?) to be part of a larger multi-dicipline event that will test the facilities for the World Equestrian Games in 2010.  From the Technical committee it looks like the rest of the country will be following our lead and will make all individual barrel classes 60 seconds.  Also Individual Trot will promoted from the Appendix A of the Guidelines into the "Rules for Vaulting" and become an AVA Recognized Event.  All of the above still needs to be approved by the Board of Directors and/or the general membership meetings (today and tomorrow) before they are actually approved.

 

Other news out of our regional meeting, it looks like we might have a regional championships either the second or third weekend of July at Trails End Arena in Olympia (same place as Spring Fest.)

 

So far I've managed to avoid taking on any additional responsibilities, except for chairing the "Membership Subcommittee on Vaulting World & Website Contests".  I also got asked to attend a meeting on Monday morning with our VP of membership and the company that manages the AVA website.

 

I hope to see all the Cascade Vaulters on Wednesday and others next weekend at the NW Spirit of Vaulting Conference.

TTFN

     Tom Sayles

     Head Coach, Cascade Vaulters

Has music DRM run it's course?

Back in early 2005, in a blog post headlined "Microsoft in decline", I mentioned that DRM, digital rights management, is a myth and was likely to be a big flop.

It looks like the music industry is finally figuring out what the PC software industry realized back in the mid-'80s. That is if your product is encumbered with copy protection that gets in your legitimate customer's way, then your product won't get purchased and the copy protection will get removed, routinely.

DRM Officially Dead: Last Major Label Sony BMG Plans to Finally Drop DRM:

Prediction: The next major wave will be the movie studios dropping DRM, but I think that will take another two to five years. The detrimental effects can be seen in problems like this one where an HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix, which I recently read about on Slashdot.

One of the big outstanding questions in my mind is what will happen with poor old Microsoft, as they have committed heavily to DRM by making it a fundamental "feature" of Vista called Trusted Computing. If Windows Vista gets in the way, will consumers install the free Ubuntu to get around the annoying DRM?

Cleaning up the subtropical gyres

A recent item on Digg.com (with an inaccurate headline) linked to a Sydney Morning Herald article reporting on the build up of plastic in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. After reading the article I recalled hearing about using solar powered Autonomous Surface Vessels for harbor security and ocean research, either on the internet or more likely on TV (as I can't seem to find much information about ASVs by searching the internet). The idea then occurred to me that a small fleet of solar powered autonomous plastic skimmers, might be able to play a role in cleaning up the world's subtropical gyres.

Essentially the idea is this:

1. One or more Collection Vessels, probably solar powered, are fitted with equipment to collect sea surface plastic (and other inorganic garbage) and separate it from sea water and, to the best extent possible, from sea life.
   
2. The collected plastic would then be either ground into pellets and stored on board or compacted, bailed, and stored overboard for retrieval and recycling.

Expanding on the basic idea:

1. One or more additional Transfer Vessels, likely solar and/or wind powered, would rendezvous with the Collection Vessels.
2. The vessels would then transfer the collected plastic (and other inorganic garbage) to the Transfer Vessel(s).
3. The Transfer Vessels would then sail to a designated port facility where the plastic could be properly recycled and the and other inorganic garbage properly disposed.
   

Initially these vessels would likely have to be staffed, but as the techniques are refined and equipment developed, more and more of the work could be automated and remotely monitored.

Free Speach & Self Censorship

Having had a first hand experience with my employer visiting my website, I know that such a future possibility does effect what I post here. 

This NY Times article illustrates a real problem facing free speech in our society.  As I see it there are three solutions that in some combination will hopefully mitigate this over the long term, but we must be vigilant.

First legal protections, such as those in Colorado and Minnesota and/or judicial protections under the First Amendment will help.  Second, many companies and union contacts also have policies or provisions against religious or political discrimination when activities are off of company hours and property.  Third, as public disclosure of personal information becomes more common, then individuals will hopefully become more accepting of the diverse opinions and activities of others. 

Until these happen and are universally accepted, many people (perhaps including myself) will find it necessary to blog anonymously, which in light of recent and well minded efforts by some groups to protect children and/or security, could itself becoming a suspicious activity. 

As I recently stated in a reply to a comment, advances in communication, transportation and the hard sciences [physics, chemistry and biology] have brought not only awareness of differences in cultures and  peoples often profound differences in closely held beliefs, but also outright confrontations, especially where two groups both have strong but opposing views of what is right and what is wrong. 

In the early years of the internet (before the world wide web), this most often took the form of simple "flame wars".  But as the Internet has gotten easier to use and the population using the Internet has expanded, so to have the off line consequences expanded for expressing decenting or unpopular opinions.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that a former boss may have substantially changed his opinion of my abilities and work performance because he didn't agree with political / religious views expressed or implied in this blog.

Mom & MySpace

With a degree in sociology and strong interest in geeks, nerds and kids, it shouldn't be surprising that my mom has discovered MySpace. But I was a little taken aback when I received an e-mail linked to her MySpace page, urging me to join MySpace too.

When I first set up a profile on myspace (a couple of years ago), I mostly just copied sections of my various dating site profiles. Later on I added a survey module, that found somewhere. Until now I hadn't shared that page with my family or with certain groups of friends.

So after I made a pass to ensure that there wasn't anything there I wouldn't mind my niece and nephews seeing, clicked the link to add my mom as a friend. [I also did the same for my brother and niece, who were already on my mom's friend list.]

In our daily lives most of us display a certain persona to our co-workers, a different persona to our family and yet another to our friends. Thus it can be a bit awkward when these groups intersect, particularly if the groups may not have the same political and/or religious views. It makes sense that our online identities, profiles, etc. parallel these real world projections, but the growing the interconnectedness and search-ability of these profiles is making these intersections more common and sometimes less obvious.

As social networking sites get more sophisticated, most people will want the ability to group their associations and share different information with different groups. I don't think that most people necessarily want to hide who they really are. However they don't necessarily want to advertise everything about themselves to everyone.

Fifteen Hour Drive.

It took just about 15 hours to drive from Santa Rosa, CA to Maple Valley, WA, via my originally planned US-101->US-199->I-5 route, which is about an hour more then I really like to do in a single day. If I had made it to Eureka as planned Thursday night, it would have been only about ten to twelve hours today.

But I made it home safe and sound and in time for practice Saturday morning.

Stuck in No.Cal., due to snow

I got as far as Ukiah, CA before the CHP was turning everyone around because US-101 was closed due to snow.  Went back to Santa Rosa, so I could get a warm motel room with good Internet access, where I will spend the night.  Plans for the Friday will depend on road conditions in the morning and the evolving weather forecast. 

At this point I'm not sure when I'll get back to the Seattle area, but will call Jennie & Holly, if I can't make it to practice on Saturday.


TTFN
    Tom

Christmas in SoCal with family

The drive down from Washington was very much as planned, though I didn't get to check e-mail along the way. As expected there was snow in the Siskiyou Mountains, so I followed my regular alternate route from Grants Pass, OR out to Crescent City, CA and down US-101.

Stopped off and had a nice visit wit my Aunt, Uncle and Grandmother near/in San Jose on Friday evening / Saturday morning. Went straight from my parents place out to dinner with my brother and his family.

Certificate of Excellence

Certificate of Excellence
Originally uploaded by TSayles

Today I was taken out to lunch by the other members of the Golden Gate Project team (on our employer's tab). While there I was awarded this certificate and told that I was receiving a "kudos" award that will also include a special bonus in an upcoming paycheck.

It sounded like the results from the project review were good enough, that development on the equipment (or a similar set-up) will continue next year as resources become available. So I might get to do more work along these lines in the future.

Senate postpones consideration of spy bill

In the news late this evening, it looks like the pressure is paying off.
Senate postpones consideration of spy bill - Yahoo! News:

Still Contact your Senator and ask for  S.2248 immunity to require "Full public disclosure" AND "Full assistance in the investigation and prosecution".

Support Filibusterer of Telco Immunity

Contact your Senator and ask them to support Sen. Dodd's filibusterer of S.2248, unless/until any immunity is contingent on:

1. Full public disclosure, including but not limited to, the scope and timing of all warrantless surveillance activities; AND
   
2. Full assistance in the investigation and prosecution of all government officials that may have broken the law by requesting and/or authorizing surveillance without a court order.
   

The biggest enemy of liberty and freedom is an unchallenged government.
-- Tom Sayles

Bush's phone immunity bill wins Senate vote - Yahoo! News

How about starting Wiki-Mathica?

Posted as a comment in reply to In reply to Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs?" on Slashdot

I can visually see why the Wikipedia elite, might be disinclined to include formal mathematical proofs in general audience articles. They look intimidating.

It seems to me like the mathematics community on Wikipedia ought to be able to set up a new, top level Wiki-media project, along the lines of what Wikimedia Commons has become, dedicated to the sharing, presentation and interlinking of math proofs. The formal proofs could then be easily linked to from within Wikipedia, without making the Wikipedia articles harder for laypersons to understand.

Also such a top level project might be able to introduce some structure to proofs that would, not only allow input and output in formats like Latex, but also allow automated symbolic math processors [wikipedia.org] to work directly with the public proof base. Then some enterprising Google geeks and/or college students ought to be able to bring some sophisticated search techniques along with the computing power of something like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud [url] to the party. And that just might allow some truly amazing breakthroughs.

An exception to the Google rule?

the Google rule

Don't overplan something. Just do it half-assed to start with, then throw more people at it to fix it if it works. Worked for every successful Google project from AdWords to Google Maps.

-- Submitted by dmarti on 13 December 2007 to LinuxWorld Community

Based on the rest of the post, another rule should also apply, something along the lines of:

If something isn't working.  Stop doing it, and try something else. 

--Tom Sayles

Wanted: Java Developer Job using Eclipse & ImageJ

I think the time has come to officially be in the market for a new job, preferably in software development, ideally working in Java using the Eclipse IDE and perhaps continuing to develop image processing projects with the ImageJ APIs.

I've just finished up a special assignment working on a project with my current employer's R&D department. For a little more than the past six months, I've been working with a few other engineers and an experimental piece of test equipment, intended for use by the R&D department to speed up development of new products. Now that the project has reached the end of it's current test plan, it will spend the remainder of the year under review to determine if the experimental test equipment is producing promising enough results to warrant continued development.

As a regular member of the production department (in a manufacturing environment), I was brought into the project primarily to help bring operational efficiency and experience to the testing and development process. Much of this was in managing materials, conducting tests, and documenting or updating testing procedures. However, I ended up also providing some key software development and image analysis skills to the project team.

I actually found the software development and associated documentation work to be the most fun and rewarding parts of the project. While it had been somewhat over six years since I had done serious software development, it didn't take me long (about a week) to get back into the swing of hardcore object oriented development, even though the project's software is in Java, a language I hadn't used before professionally. The biggest hurdles were getting up to speed on the syntax and learning the Eclipse development environment. I even managed to get in some unit testing and test driven development, using the JUnit features I found in Eclipse. I also learned to really take advantage of the Javadoc features of the Java language and integration with Eclipse.

For many years, I've heard several of my my programmer friends, particularly my college roommate Joshua Engel, expounding on the many positive attributes of the Java language and it's run time environment. Before the Dot-Com crash I was a hadcore object oreinted Visual Basic programmer automating distributed Access databases reporting back to a central office. A few years back I read Java 2 Exam Cram by William B. Brogden and taught my self many of the language's fundamentals. In the development tasks that I recently completed I made some very effective use of inheritance, polymorphism (overloading) and the JRE's automatic memory management. I found that I actually liked the strongly typed nature of Java. If this recent project gets continued, (i.e. the test results are good enough to make continued development of the tester worth while,) I'd like the opportunity to make use of Java's network / database connectivity and multi-threading capabilities.

I was also very impressed with the Eclipse development environment. Early on I found a series of video tutorials on Eclipse by Dr. David J. Powell at Elon University that were very helpful getting started and up to speed. Though out the project I made extensive use of Eclipse's hot-key access to the Javadoc APIs, primarily at Sun but also from a few other locations. I really like a number of the features in Eclipse particularly the code completion and the refactoring tools. Once I learned the interfaces, the ability to quickly generate and modify code was really amazing. At times, even as a relative Java and Eclipse novice, I was able to code almost as fast as I can think, resulting in productivity that continually exceeded project expectations. One thing I wished I had been able to make use of was/is the visual editor, but because my current employer's network is so locked down (or unreliable) Eclipse was never able to establish a connection that would allow either upgrades or the installation of enhancements.

Like many pieces of test equipment, the one I have been working with generates a series of digital images as it's end product. When I came onto the project we had a fairly simple, single class, ImageJ plug-in that one of the mechanical engineers wrote. It would use a macro to do some preprocessing, scan for the main region of interest then preform a few built-in measurements. It then wrote the results to a CSV file, that would later be opened in Excel, combined with test configuration information and finally cut / pasted into a statistics package. I initially modified this older plug-in allowing the use of some alternate testing materials, which resulted in images that required additional preprocessing. Soon afterward I developed a new plug-in that implemented more sophisticated measurement methodology and took into account certain physical characteristics of the specific test configuration. I also started developing classes in a new java package specific to our project, thus allowing effective reuse of code via Java's import features.

One of the biggest project breakthroughs came when, on my own initiative, I began outputting the measurement results, not only as tabular data [this time in TabSV files with an .xls extension so they open easily with Excel], but also as marked up copies of the original image, showing the specific areas being measured. This allowed the project's function engineers to identify anomalies and unwanted sources of variation as they analyzed the data, leading directly to improvements in the testing and measurement methods. During the qualification of my new software, I actually went back and added my image mark up capabilities to the initial ImageJ plug-in, and we immediately discovered, and then fixed, a significant bug in the old software. Also as part of the qualification I wrote detailed documentation of the measurement methodologies, including explanations of each field in the results file(s) and examples of the marked up images with visual notations showing how they related to the fields in the results file(s).

As part of the development of the new plug-in, I wrote a number of test classes that provided unit test coverage for a modest but significant portion of the software project, which really helped catch bugs later in the project. I was even able to achieve a small amount of real test driven development. This was mostly around the routines that actually preform the measurements. I would initially make the measurements on a sample image using the standard ImageJ user interface and intermediate computations in Excel, then write a test case for that measurement on the sample image, followed by the implementation of that measurement in the plug-in. I used some similar techniques to create test images and routines to check portions of the image mark-up classes.

During the later portion of this part of the project, I was also able to go back through all my code adding detailed Javadoc comments for nearly all of the public and most of the private fields and methods in my software. Which is something I would normally do before checking code into a revision control system, but we have not been using one on this project. The last software development tasks I was implementing included one last enhancement to the marked up images and packaging the new plug-in with it's package full of class files, along with versions of the older plug-in(s), all as a single .jar file. That .jar file can now be easily installed, by simply copying it into ImageJ's "plugins" folder and used by anyone throughout our company that has ImageJ installed.

In the future I'd really like to get back into a team development environment, most likely as a junior programmer or as a tester, writing Java in Eclipse and testing with JUnit. I'd also like to do more extensive work with user interfaces in Swing, XML / HTML and/or Ajax. Since I've recently spent time working with the ImageJ APIs, more work developing image processing and analysis software would also interest me, perhaps as part of the growing biomedical community. [ImageJ was originally developed at the National Institutes of Health for analyzing medical and laboratory images.] I'm also very interested in working on and with Open Source projects, like Eclipse, JUnit and ImageJ. Alternately, I wouldn't mind an opportunity to get up to speed using C# or to apply my programing skills along with my manufacturing, traffic engineering and/or geodetic expertise.

While my compensation requirements are quite modest, I would rather like to stay in the Seattle / Eastside area as I have a significant volunteer activity as Head Coach of the Cascade Vaulters in Fall City, WA, that I'm not willing to give up just yet.

Fixing Deepest Sender again

Back in August I took the time to patch the version of Deepest Sender (a blog posting add-on for Firefox) that I'm using to fix a date formating bug that prevents version 0.8.0 form working with Blogger.

I think a recent Firefox update some how reinstalled the unfixed version. So I had to reinstall my patched version tonight.

Coincidently I also got a comment tonight to my old August 18 post, asking if I had a patch to add Tag support now that Blogger supports tags.  While I don't have such a patch, I'd be willing to write one if I had the time and/or someone wanted to pay me to build one.

For $5, I'll make sure that tag support for Blogger is listed as a feature request on Deepest Sender's bug tracking (once MosDev's Bugzilla is back online). For $10 I'll e-mail the main developer. For $100, I'll work on it when I get a chance.  I figure for $1000 (or ten people at $100 each), I ought to be able to find / make the time before New Years.
[Remember, I'm a for-profit individual, so these gifts are not tax deductible.]

Emoticon Stamp

For many years my mom was into rubber stamps. Now days she's more into reading blogs and mailing lists. So when I saw this as something that Gretta had read and shared, I thought it's the sort of thing she'd like. (I'd e-mail a link to her, but I know that she reads my blog.)

Craftzine.com blog: Emoticon Stamp

Slashdot Ad Overlay Error

Slashdot Ad Overlay Error
Originally uploaded by TSayles

Flash ads are annoying, if for no other reason then they might cover up an ad you might actually want to read.

Case Study: Metabolic Effects of High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Dr. Nestle --

    In a recent Seattle PI article, picked up by MSNBC, about PCC Market banning high-fructose corn syrup, you were quoted as saying that if removed from products, high-fructose corn syrup would "be replaced with sucrose (table sugar) or honey or organic cane juice, all of which are basically the same as HFCS, or artificial sweeteners."  While the total caloric content of the products might stay the same, there are metabolic effects of corn syrup and HFCS that are very different, at least in a part of the population.

    As a person with first hand experience with the differences, I want to share my story with you in the hopes that you can lead (or at least encourage) research into what it is about HFCS and other corn sweeteners that makes them different and how their wide spread use effects public health. 

    As an engineering student at Virginia Tech in the early '90s, I noticed a strong correlation between products I ate that contained HFCS and acne breakouts. Specifically I noticed that I was getting similar reactions about four hours after drinking Sprite and about four hours after eating a certain type of bar cookie that my grandmother makes.  After investigating I found that the only common ingredient was corn syrup.  These breakouts (which continue to this day) are typified by the formation of small (~0.5 mm) white or light yellow nodules that have the consistency of (fresh, not dried) walnut or pecan flesh in or near sebaceous glands. 

    Over time I found that by carefully reading food labels and avoiding products containing corn syrup (and it's derivatives), I could greatly reduce the number and severity of my acne breakouts.  I also found that much of the time when I did have a breakout, I could trace it back to a specific product I had consumed.  On several occasions I've even found out that a product I initially started buying that hadn't used corn syrup had changed their formulation, because it caused a breakout and I went back and rechecked the ingredients. A specific example of this was Sara Lee Cinnamon Raisin bagels (the last brand of bagels on most national chain shelves that had been free of corn syrup). 

    I have not found any other sweeteners, natural, processed or artificial, that cause similar problems for my body.  I have found that other forms of fructose (mostly in products from outside the US) and that other corn based products or ingredients do not cause reactions.  I haven't ever found an organic corn syrup so I can't draw any conclusions about the effects of industrial scale farming or processing.  I also suspect that the main culprit is something (enzymes used in production?) in the corn sweeteners that, presumably, get more concentrated along with the fructose as it is processed from corn syrup to high-fructose corn syrup to corn syrup solids.  For example I've found that my body can process the corn syrup in one Oreo cookie a day without a reaction, but not two, and that the small amount of corn syrup solids in a single Necco Wafer causes a significant breakout.

    For background, I'm a nominally healthy and active male, now 38 years old, weighing about 165 and 5'7" tall, with no other known allergies or adverse reactions to food products.  I would be willing to participate in controlled academic studies to confirm and better understand my personal observations.

    Over the years I've met a number of other individuals that also get adverse reactions from corn syrup, but seem to do fine with other sweeteners. Not all of these reactions are identical or even similar to mine, but there is significant anecdotal evidence that HFCS is not the same as other sweeteners.

    Thanks for your time, and I hope that this informal case study will help you understand that, from a public health stand point, there are differences between high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners that we don't fully understand and that these differences deserve serious academic research. 

TTFN
    Tom Sayles
    Maple Valley, WA

BTW -- This is also posting to my blog "Tom's Words of Wisdom" at http://www.soot-n-smoke.com/tsayles/

Using flash drive as swap

I'm in the process of building a new home server, in a converted big hulking heavy steel AT server case, that will mostly get used for file serving, local http serving, and routing / firewall between my wired home LAN and the wireless router to/from the Internet. One of the setups I'm contemplating is using a $50ish flash drive as a swap partition and/or disk cache, and I'm wondering if this is a good idea. I know that it might not be as fast, but it might allow the HDDs to spend more time spun down.

A cure for Global Warming?

Ground said rising at Yellowstone Park

Be careful what you wish/pray for, you might get it.  One sure fire way to end or at least postpone global warming would be for a full scale caldera eruption at Yellow Stone.  That would probably cause a volcanic winter, leading to many years "without summers" much like 1816.  If a caldera eruption induced volcanic winter causes enough snowfall and polar ice formation, the resulting reflective surface could cause enough solar radiation to bounce back into space to bring on the next ice age.

And at that point, we'll all need big SUVs to get around AND help the planet.

Telcom Immunity = Domestic Surveillance Cover-up

Senators Cantwell & Murry --

    As a tech savvy constituent, I'm writing to make sure that you are aware of the truly devastating risk to civil liberties that the equipment widely reported (see links below) to have been installed at domestically strategic surveillance locations poses to American citizens living in the US.  It is very important to our future freedoms that these reports be fully, publicly and independently investigated as a condition of any blanket grant of immunity, epically if such an investigation might find that governmental officials exceeded their statutory authority.

Sincerely,

    Thomas J. Sayles


Washington Post
A Story of Surveillance Former Technician 'Turning In' AT&T Over NSA Program

NY Times
U.S. Focused on Obtaining Long-Distance Phone Data, Company Officials Indicate
 
San Francisco Chronicle
Secret court may end up hearing AT&T illegal surveillance lawsuit
Legislation backed by White House would allow transfer

Seattle PI
NSA able to spy on AT&T users, group asserts, Internet advocates sue to end monitoring

Programmer time...

One of the fundamental limiting factors is available programmer time.
~Tom Sayles

... also stated as "One of the fundamental limiting factors of _______ is available programmer time." Where the blank can refer to almost any thing, process, system or group.

This is true of all (or almost all) modern systems, projects, products and even societies. It is probably also true of overall economic efficiency, output and per capita income.

I've finally gotten the opportunity (at work) to brush off my programing skills. For about the last two weeks I've been writing plug-ins, in Java, for ImageJ (an open source image processing package). These have been the first few projects I've done in Java, and I've also been able to get up to speed using Eclipse and JUnit.

Eclipse is hands down the best programing IDE I have ever used. Its integration with JUnit has allowed me to quickly learn and implement "test driven development".

Postel's Law

"Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others"
~Jon Postel, in RFC 793 § 2.10

This is often reworded as "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you receive".

Inventor of the Web

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee did in deed invent the World Wide Web, almost single handedly. He wrote the first web editor, web server and web browser. Furthermore it was his openness (no patent and no royalties claimed), building on the neutrality of the early Internet, that allowed others to make their contributions to the Web transforming it into what we think of as the Internet today. And this is the primary reason we have one single public Internet rather then several large private and only loosely interconnected networks (AOL, MSN, CompuServe, etc.).

Along with Jon Postel, Guglielmo Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell, Tim Berners-Lee is probably one of the most important people in the history of modern communication.

----- Original Message ----
From: Carol Sayles
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 8:43:01 AM
Subject: good one

"When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission."
~Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality

# posted by TomS : 6:10 AM

OK Tom, now that is a very good Quote ! ! ! !

But did he really "invent the Web" ?

I recall Ivan Sutherland talking about the possibilities of all the small computers the world over being connected and how much bigger than the largest main frame that will get and quickly!

Seems to me he said all his Grad students were excited too. At that time in the 80s local connections were starting to out grow main frames I think?

At Iowa State as I recall one of the Foods Professors said that the very same bread recipe with special extras and exact quantities have been arrived at by people a world apart and no one stole it, they just both experimented until they found the same great taste. Both could prove their experiments. I think this was 19Th century restaurants.

Love, Mom/Carol

Freedom is not free

"When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission."
~Tim Berners-Lee on Net Neutrality

Server uptime

What if all computers could do as well as a linux server?

tsayles@PopsHP:~$ uptime
16:51:11 up 287 days, 18:51, 1 user, load average: 0.05, 0.02, 0.00
tsayles@PopsHP:~$ sudo reboot

Vaulting Videos

Here's all the Vaulting Videos I've found on YouTube.

Way cool image editing

If you've ever done some digital editing of your photos you need to watch this video on a new technique / plug-in called liquid rescaling.



Liquid Rescale GIMP plugin

Reforming patents, promoting innovation

Found a link to this in a recent Lockergonme e-mail.

Google Public Policy Blog: Reforming patents, promoting innovation

Both ends of I-90 in one day

On my home from the airport last night I made a little detour around the Seattle Stadiums to drive the western most 1/4 mile of I-90. Earlier in the day, I had been driven around Boston's Logan airport, which put me at eastern terminus of the USA's longest Interstate Highway.

I guess this points out that I'm a true highway geek.

Liberty Quotes

I hate flying these days.

Liberty - Wikiquote:

• The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
  • Thomas Jefferson

• Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
  • Thomas Jefferson

• It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
  • Thomas Jefferson
    

This last one was on the same Wikiquote page, and I thought it was cool, though not applicable to passing through an airport.

• It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.
• Earl Warren

• Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.…The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.
  • Ronald Reagan

Photos on Wikipedia

Looks like several of my longeing and vaulting photos have been used on Wikipedia in the longeing and vaulting articles. Who would have thought that one of my mentors, Tammy, and one of my longeing students, Holly, would get pictured as world class examples of longeing. And I don't know quite what to make of the fact that not only are two of my vaulters are shown as examples of vaulting, but I'm there too.

Fast bits

I like my fast pipes.

NASA Employees Fight Invasive Background Check

I don't find this too surprising, as I suspect that NASA is much more involved in the "Technical Measures" our country uses in international intelligence then most people realize.

Scientists sue NASA, Caltech over deep new background checks - International Herald Tribune:

It sounds like there was a blanket decision to basically require security clearances for all NASA employees and contractors.

The computer monitor I bought surplus from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center back in about 1998, has a little red plaque that states "CLASSIFIED USE AUTHORIZED". Given the proximity of GSFC and the NSA facilities at Fort Mead and the interruption of NASA TV coverage of shuttle missions during certain strategic international events, I suspect that there are some fiber optic cables linking the two carrying highly classified data. If NASA and NSA are sharing various communication and maybe even computing resources, I can see how such a blanket security decision might get made.

I predict that the government lawyers in the lawsuit will push to have the case dismissed on the grounds that defending against the complaint would require the disclosure of national security information.

Supporting TOR

Looks like Chris Prillo, the guy behind Lockergnome, is thinking about using TOR.

TOR or VPN? ~ Chris Pirillo:

IMHO, I think that supporting and using TOR is very worthwhile way to promote freedom not only on the Internet, but also in the off line world. In many parts of the world TOR allows users to access information that their government or ISP choose to censor. Take a few minutes and set up your own TOR server.

"information wants to be free" -- Stewart Brand

Re: old laptop & linux

Barry --

    There are a couple of flavors of Linux that will load and boot off a floppy and PCMCIA Ethernet cards are actually better supported then wireless cards.  So you should be able to boot of the floppy connect to the Internet via the Ethernet, then download and install just about any "distro" [distribution] you want to try.

    There might also be one or more "appliance" distros that could do something useful with your old computers. I'd start by looking at some of the rPath distros.  Perhaps you could mod the laptop case and turn it into a web connected picture frame?

    Linux actually does a decent job with more legacy hardware then you might think, especially if the HW was popular for small servers and/or with the geek crowd. For example Linux grew up on SCSI drives and have very good support for most SCSI devices built in.   Also if you're into tweeking drivers, with Linux you can always write or modify your own drivers. 

    I've got an old 486 file server in a beefy steel case sitting beside my desk waiting to have the new motherboard, processor , power supply, etc. installed. It's so old that it won't boot off the CD without a BIOS upgrade, otherwise it would already be running as my disk back-up server. 

    But like with an old jeep, even with Linux there is a point that the best thing to do with a system is take it to the recycler or post it on Craig's list.

TTFN
    Tom

Barry Briggs wrote:

Tom,

 

Did I mention this laptop does not have CD, ethernet or USB.  It has an PCMCIA (not cardbus)  I have an ethernet card that goes in the PCMCIA slot.  Normally I load things over the floppy or the ethernet port.  It does not have backup since the battery pack died a long time ago.

 

This is sounding more and more like a futile, time consuming job.  I have another big computer, but it is even older (P100) and has lots of strange hardware in it - SCSI CD, NEC 4 CD changer, backup tape drive (floppy) 720k 5 1/4 floppy, etc.  It was my web server running tiny until I ran out of disk space and bought a Fry's $300 wonder and moved to Apache.

 

Barry

 

On 8/22/07, Tom Sayles  wrote:

Barry --

   Laptops in particular tend to have more proprietary hardware and
software, so some of the custom designed devices might not work or be
fully supported.  If you have (or get) a wireless card with good open
source drivers for it, you should be able to set it up for lightweight
web browsing [don't expect to surf youtube] or maybe even as an
X-terminal.

   I've also heard of people having success using old laptops as web
server / internet gateway / firewall because they have a small footprint
and built-in back-up power.

   Assuming that the bios supports booting off a CD and that by modern
standards it's memory challenged, my first suggestion would be to try a
Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux live CD on it.

   Another fun item might be to try the OLPC os on it.

TTFN
   Tom Sayles

Barry Briggs wrote:
> Tom,
>
> I have an old (12 years) Sharp laptop that currently has windows 95
> installed.  It would make a good candidate for linux.
>
> Questions:
http://bdbriggs.dyndns.org/DayTrips/USSHornetFlashlightTourAugust2007/index.html>
> Do you think there is any chance the old hardware would work with linux.
> If so, which version is my best bet?
>
> Any luck selling the old Jeep???
>
> Jon was just here and we took lots of pictures of the places we went:
>
> http://bdbriggs.dyndns.org/DayTrips/USSHornetFlashlightTourAugust2007/index.html
> http://bdbriggs.dyndns.org/DayTrips/RosicrucianEgyptianMuseum2007/index.html
> http://bdbriggs.dyndns.org/DayTrips/HistoricCarRacesLagunaSecaAugust2007/index.html
> http://bdbriggs.dyndns.org/DayTrips/CaliforniaRailroadMuseumAugust2007/index.html
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Barry

Fixing Deepest Sender

I was running into a problem with Deepest Sender not being able to post to my Blogger Blog. After much searching I found a post on community.livejournal.com that might help. (This post will be a test.)

deepestsender: Can't post to Blogger.com because of a date/time format error:The steps I followed were:

1. I downloaded a fresh copy of the modified the "deepest sender-0.8.0-firefox+sm.xpi" file from addons.mozilla.org.
2. Dug though the archives and made the replace "var iso8601 = this.date.toISO8601String(4);" with "var iso8601 = this.date.toISO8601String(5);" change to the "atom.js" per the community.livejournal.com posting.
3. Saved the file to my desktop and replaced the one in the archives. This also involved saving a copy of the deepestsender.jar file to my desktop to update the "deepest sender-0.8.0-firefox+sm.xpi" file.
4. I also updated the version number in both the install.rdf and install.js files to append my initials, aka 0.8.0-TJS.
5. I uninstalled deepest sender 0.8.0 and restarted firefox.
6. I dragged the updated deepest sender-0.8.0-firefox+sm.xpi file from my desktop to the firefox address bar, reinstalled and restarted firefox.
7. I deleted my blogger account from deepest sender and readded it with my blog's url as the posting url.

And it now seems to be working again!!!
My fixed xpi file is here.
Also it looks like the fix was made in the CVS source at MozDev.org, so it should be in the next official release.

Fixing F-Spot exporting to Flickr

I was having trouble after some Ubuntu update/upgrade earlier this year when I tried to export photos from F-Spot to my Flickr account. When the problem first cropped up my Google searches didn't turn up a solution. But now that I'm back from Nationals, I again looked into fixing the problem and found the following.

Re: Error while trying to auth flickr,:

It took a little more searching to figure out that the "/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/http/" was a gnome key and that I needed to use the gconf-editor to up date the keys. But I was able to fix the problem.

Geek Jeep For Sale!

It's time to get rid of my white 1992 Jeep Cherokee.
it's posted on Craig's List.

I'd like to sell it really cheep [<$100] to someone local who wants various parts off it and has the space to store it and will let me come and pull a few parts off it now and then.

If you're only interested in specific parts please leave a comment here, and your include contact information.

Vaulting in Denver

The trip from Washington was uneventful. All are well following practices in Ft. Lupton on Sunday. We will move the horses, starting this afternoon with Storm and Joey, over to the National Western complex. Tuesday and Wednesday morning are practice and setup days. The "Para-Nationals" in on Wednesday with competition starting on Thursday and running through Sunday.

Re: Tom, Can I get your assistance?

Kody --

Please let me apologize for my less then "couth" response.

Part of bing an effective coach (especially to teenagers) is knowing exactly what to say that will quickly and efficiently achieve the desired performance goal(s). In this case my goals were:

1. Break the attention barrier.
   Due to the detailed contact information I deduced that you probably were a real human and not just a spambot. I needed a way to standout from other "sorry not interested" replies.
   
2. Make a strong memorable impression.
   At a physiological level, strong emotions build the strongest neurological connections in the brain's memory centers. A good coach knows when and how to exploit this fact.
   
3. Again try to point out that the information you're working with has serious quality issues.
   Both your 07/16/2007 08:41 AM and your 07/25/2007 07:24 AM e-mails have data quality issues that give a first impression that you don't know what's going on. The employer information in the first one was more then ten years out of date. The data in the second one is just plain false. Thirdly the tools you're using really should have brought to your attention that you already contacted my tsayles {-at-} Soot-n-smoke.com address and got a "sorry not interested" reply.
   

Because you wrote a personal reply I can assume that I successfully achieved goal 1.

Your reference to my "vaulters" indicates that you probably followed the link in my July 16th reply, most likely because your somewhat upset and wanted to know just who you were dealing with. This indicates that I likely achieved goal 2. And now when my name shows up in your data, you will hopefully remember it and act on it accordingly.

At this time I have no way direct or indirect way of knowing if I achieved goal 3. (Some lessons are only achieved through repetition.) If I did/do get this point across and you act on the information, it will probably improve your success rate. This would then have been a positive response to the request for "assistance" in subject line your form letter e-mail. You're welcome.

BTW, I'm posting this conversation on my blog.

Sincerely,

Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Tom,

I apologize for the mistake as I would not waste my time with someone that is not interested or as uncouth as yourself. I hope your vaulters see more patience and understanding from you when they make meaningless mistakes. Rest assured that nobody from our firm will waste their time on you!

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

---

From: Tom Sayles [mailto:tsayles@Soot-n-smoke.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 11:35 PM
To: Moore, Kody
Subject: Re: Tom, Can I get your assistance?

Kody --
Get your face out of your !$$ [crude reference to hind end body part replaced] and pay attention to what your doing. You information is incorrect as I have never worked for MDSHA and I replied, nicely, to your inquiry last week. See my e-mail timestamped at 07/16/2007 05:02 PM PDT.

If you contact me again about these same positions, I will inform your supervisor and track down the firm that you are recruiting for and report the contact as harassment.

Disrespectfully,

Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Tom,

I am a recruiter in the land development and transportation industries, and my understanding is that you are a Project Engineer with the MDSHA. I represent many clients but am presently involved with a full service engineering company in the Baltimore area, that is looking to expand its transportation department with a team of three individuals. They include a PM with a transportation planning or design background, a highway engineer, and a traffic engineer. This firm has been in the business for over 50 years, operate our of 4 offices(2 in Maryland and 2 in Virginia), and employ around 200 individuals. The reason they are expanding is that they have multiple large projects(MD DOT, DC DOT, and MD State Hwy Admin) that need to be staffed. These are full-time positions with a company that last year was ranked in the top 25 engineering firms in the DC Metro area, recognized to be in the "Top 15 Mid-Size Engineering Firms to work for in the Nation" by CE News in 2006.

If you know anyone that would be interested in an opportunity like the ones mentioned, could you please pass along the information. I would be happy to go into greater detail about the position. As always all conversations I have are completely confidential, and I appreciate any and all help you can provide.

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

---

Kody --

Your information is only 10.5 years out of date, as I haven't worked in Civil Engineering or for VDOT since December 1996. Current resume is here.

While I am somewhat interested in getting back into Traffic Engineering, I am not interested in relocating back to the Baltimore / Washington DC area. I'd only be interested in opportunities in the Seattle area, preferably on the eastside in cities such as: Woodinville, Bothell, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, Snoqualmie, etc.

TTFN
Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Thomas,

I am a recruiter in the land development and transportation industries, and my understanding is that you are a Traffic Engineer with the VDOT. I represent many clients but am presently involved with a full service engineering company in the Baltimore area, that is looking to expand its transportation department with a team of three individuals. They include a PM with a transportation planning or design background, a highway engineer, and a traffic engineer. This firm has been in the business for over 50 years, operate our of 4 offices(2 in Maryland and 2 in Virginia), and employ around 200 individuals. The reason they are expanding is that they have multiple large projects(MD DOT, DC DOT, and MD State Hwy Admin) that need to be staffed. These are full-time positions with a company that last year was ranked in the top 25 engineering firms in the DC Metro area, recognized to be in the "Top 15 Mid-Size Engineering Firms to work for in the Nation" by CE News in 2006.

Another is a 13 year old firm that is already in the top ten engineering firms in the Metro DC area. The President of the company is a former president of Greenhorne and O'mara who grew the firm from 150-200 employees to over 1800 employees. They are a growing firm and looking to bring in the right team of individuals to ensure it continues to grow. They are the General Engineering Consultants for Spotsylvania county, are the on-call engineers for Fairfax County, involved with the Dulles Rail Extension, and are the prime Contractor for the work on VDOT 495/395 hot lanes. The firm is fully networked and all employees have their own workstations. They are looking for Professional Engineers that are looking to work with side by side with the main principles in the firm on these and many other projects. These individuals have to be willing to put in the time and effort to keep this firm growing and become the premiere firm in the area.

If you know anyone that would be interested in an opportunity like the ones mentioned, could you please pass along the information. I would be happy to go into greater detail about the position. As always all conversations I have are completely confidential, and I appreciate any and all help you can provide.

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

Note: I made some minor edits to this e-mail when I posted on this blog, first to eliminate a crude body part reference and second to obfuscate my e-mail address in an effort to cut down on th spam I have to wade through each day.

I love the linux command line

I recently had an external hard drive die. It had been kind of flaky since I fell down the stairs at x-mass and dropped it about 6 ft. Since I knew it wasn't working well, I was using mostly as yet another location for backing up data (like from my parent's home network). So when I finally gave up on it this week, I had lost any data.

In planning for the replacement, I was trying to remember the hardware in the Ubuntu server, PopsHP, I have setup for my parents in their condo. A quick search of Google showed me the lshw command. It was already installed on PopsHP and when I ran it (via an ssh connection), it suggested that "you should run this program as super-user". Which I did and piped the resulting text to a file. Next I ran a little script I have that uses rsync to transfer files to a subdirectory in my home folder on my main desktop machine. So in under five minutes I had a complete and detailed listing of the hardware in PopsHP, on my local machine.

Then as a bonus, as I was typing up this blog post, I discovered that lshw will format its output as HTML. So in under a minute, I reran the entire process adding in the HTML command line switch.

What can I say except that I love linux.

Printing catastrophe

This printing catastrophe video was sent to me by one of the vaulters. I was able to quickly find it on YouTube.

Back on the road again.

Turns out the problem with the Jeep Noir was just the crankshaft position sensor, even though the mechanic kept calling it the cam sensor. (And yes sensors occasionally fail on older jeeps.) If It's the sort of think I could have fixed myself but would have had a hard time diagnosing on my own. I probably could have even pulled the sensor off the Geek Jeep, though that would have left it immobilized and thus harder to sell.

Chocolate Blog

I saw this linked to from my friend Gretta's blog and thought some of you might like it.

http://cacaolab.wordpress.com/

Is this what's wrong with Jeep Noir?

Cam-Crank Sensor Relationships:

My mechanic was too booked up to get a look at the Jeep Noir today, but he said that it sounded like the cam sensor.

More Jeep trouble?!?!

Aaack!

After tune-up on 7/13 at Model Garage in Fall City, I drove the Jeep Noir two miles to Patterson Creek Farm, where it was parked for several hours. Friday evening I drove from Patterson Creek Farm 20 miles to home in Kingsgate area of Woodinville, where it was parked overnight.

Saturday morning I drove the Jeep Noir from Kingsgate the 20 miles back to Patterson Creek Farm for regular vaulting practice. About midday I drove from Patterson Creek Farm toward Issaquah. On Issaquah – Fall City Rd approaching Klahanie Dr. (4.5 miles form Patterson Creek Farm) the Jeep Noir stalled while decelerating down hill and would not restart.

At the time of the stall Radio and A/C with fan on high were running and vehicle was coasting (clutch depressed) and breaking to stop behind traffic at signal.

On the side of the road, I then checked various superficial possible causes:

• checked for loose coil & spark plug wires,

• confirmed fuel under pressure at fuel bar test port,

• visually inspected various ignition related fuses,

• rotated positive battery terminal to avoid possible grounding on battery bracket

After each of these the engine would crank but would not start. Sounded like lack of spark or possibly lack of fuel. [Did not check exhaust pipe for fuel smell, and tank is 2/3 full.]

During repeated cranking and 45+ minutes of flashing hazard lights, voltage indicated at instrument panel gradually dropped from ~12v down to ~9-10v, at which point the starter motor would no longer engage / rotate engine.

So I ended up having the Jeep Noir toed back to Model Garage in Fall City, where I'm hoping they will be able to quickly fix the problem, especially if it ends up being one that they caused.

Bucking Hay

While the Jeep Noir was getting a tune-up today, I pent several hours "bucking hay", i.e. helping to bring it in from the field. Hutch and I hauled in about 150 of the estimated 600 bails that the neighbors cut and bailed this week. It was a hot sweaty and strenuous job that doesn't pay much, but it needed to be done and was a big help for the barn. The neighbor's hay is good quality at a good price.

Before bucking hay, we had a short vaulting practice for our Nationals bound vaulter and did a little bit of a vaulting demo for the Natural Horsemanship camp that has been taking place at our barn this week. Several of the campers were very interested and I hope that we will get another vaulter or two.

Planning for Nationals 2007

The Cascade Vaulters entries are in and my plans for Nationals are coming together.

Nationals this year are in Denver on August 9-12 at the National Western complex.

I have only one vaulter going to nationals this year. She will be part of composite trot team with the Warm Beach Vaulters and will be using their horses.

It looks like I will again be hauling horses to Denver with Tammy Denault, now with the Mtn. Wind Vaulters. I should be in the Denver area from about August 5th until August 13. For the return trip, Tammy will be flying back east from Denver to be with her family, and I will be driving her truck trailer and horse back to Kettle Falls, WA.


We'll also be traveling with and hauling a horse, Joey[?], for the Harbor View vaulters who are an off shoot of Tammy's former club, the Emerald City Vaulters.

Jeep Noir ready to go!

It took all day Wednesday and big chunks of Thursday and Friday, but I got almost everything switched / moved from the Geek Jeep over to the Jeep Noir.

• The passenger side rear door window has been switched with the one from the Geek Jeep.
  
• The stock speakers and some of the stock wiring for them got switched from the Geek Jeep as the after market speakers in the Jeep Noir didn't really fit. They interfered with the window cranks.
• I had to repair the stock wiring harness for the radio as the previous owner had wired his directly. For the Geek Jeep I had an adapter harness that plugged into the stock harness.
  
• All my "jeep stuff" has been moved from the Geek Jeep into the same places in the Jeep Noir, so I still know where to find everything and can pull almost any needed item out of my jeep on short notice.
  
• The tune-up is scheduled for next Friday (7/13).
• Windshield will probably get done sometime in the next few weeks, but it isn't an urgent fix.
• Still need to get the hitch package ordered, as moving the old one isn't easy. (It would require fishing nuts out from deep inside box beams of the Geek Jeep frame and threading them into the Jeep Noir frame without the aid of the special springs that initially came with the kit.)
  
• The breaks will likely need get done some time between Ben's wedding (in September) and Thanksgiving.
  

I've been driving the Jeep Noir around this weekend and I think it is now ready for the hard core daily use that the
Geek Jeep provided so well.

I still need to clean-up the Geek Jeep and get it posted on Craig's list or otherwise find it a good home.

Tom's JeepNoir

I signed paperwork this evening and received the key to my "Jeep Noir". It's has a black exterior with a small red sport stripe. The interior is the same gray as the Geek Jeep!

Tom's JeepNoir
Originally uploaded by TSayles

The "Jeep Noir" passed pre-purchase inspections this afternoon in good shape. [Much better then the Geek Jeep did in 1999.] The only serious hits were:

• Needs a tune-up
  (routine maintenance item)
  
• Breaks will need to be done later this year
  (routine maintenance item)
• The windshield is cracked
  ($244, including mobile instillation service while I'm at work, just had this done on the Geek Jeep about a month ago. )
  
• The passenger side rear door window is broken out
  (this can easily be replaced with the one from the Geek Jeep)
  
• And when the cooling system was pressure tested the heater valve exploded!
  (A common failure point on early '90 jeeps. I've gone through about six of them, and have a spare on hand most of the time.)

The inspection and the replacement of the heater valve cost under $80.

There are a number of cosmetic / comfort items that I will transfer from the Geek Jeep, including:

• Radio w/ custom cut cluster bezel
• Gray floor mats (new from Costco only a few weeks ago)
  
• Driver's seat, and possibly front passenger seat if they don't match,
  (Twenty / forty minute job. The Driver's seat in the Geek Jeep is in better shape.)
  
• Driver and front passenger door panels, including stock stereo speakers,
  (Jeep Noir has after-market speakers that don't really fit.)
  
• Passenger side sun visor
  (JeepNoir's is broken.)
• Driver and front passenger window handles
  (Jeep Noir has back and I think the gray looks better.)

An unexpected bonus is a Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio receiver module that should plug into the Kenwood Sirius Satellite ready radio that's currently in the Geek Jeep. So at some point I'll have to get and install the proper cable.

I think I found a replacemnet Jeep

I went and looked at a 1993 Cherokee Sport this afternoon. It has the main items I'm looking for and is in fairly good condition (for it's age) and has less miles on it then mine did when I bought it eight years ago. It does have a few items (seat, right rear passenger window, thermostat, shifter knob) that will need to get fixed sooner rather then later. But it is not only a year newer then the Geek Jeep, it is also one model up the product line (Sport vs. STD). Which means that it already has things like the nicer instrument cluster, the rear defroster and rear wiper without having the extras the will tend to break over the long haul, (power windows, power door locks, etc.). The only thing it doesn't have that I had wanted was a hitch. So I will just end up adding one like I did to the Geek Jeep in 1999.

I gave the current owner, James, enough of a deposit that he won't sell it to someone else over the weekend. The plan is that he will bring it out to my mechanic in Fall City on Monday Afternoon.

WANTED: early '90s Cherokee, Explorer or 6cyl midsize pickup

My '92 Cherokee with 359k miles had the #2 cylinder die and I need to find a replacement.

Things I'm looking for include:

* 6 cylinder engine (~4.0 liter)
* manual transmission
* working AC
* hitch / towing package (2" receiver preferred)
* about 200k or less miles (maybe a little more if all else is good)
* no major work urgently need
* no minor work needed to get too and from work

Willing to pay about $1400, depending on condition and features. (Maybe a little more for the perfect replacement.)

Ad selling my '92 Cherokee coming soon!

Geek Jeep Terminally Ill

I'm saddened to report that my venerable white '92 Jeep Cherokee, once upon a time known as "The Geek Jeep", is on it's last few miles. Late last week it began running a little rough. It did better over the weekend after having the fluids (including oil) topped off on Friday. But by Monday morning it was missing consistently on at least one cylinder. My initial thought was that this was likely due to the fact that it was over due for a tune up (new plugs, cap, rotor, etc.). I got it home Monday evening on the remaining five cylinder, and preformed the tune-up. However the number 2 spark plug was covered in oil and it was still missing when I got everything back together. So based on recommendations from a few friends I took it in to the Model Garage in Fall City, where they did a compression test, etc. and diagnosed the problem as the piston, piston rings or both, with an estimated repair cost starting at about $1500. For that price I could just about replace it.

It now has about 359k miles, 183k of which I've put on it in the eight years I have owned it. It started out it's life in California with an unknown owner. My friend Alan Duda acquired it in New Mexico around '97 when he moved with it to the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. I bought it from him for $1400 in June 1999, had a new transmission put in, and drove it from DC through Chicago, Seattle, Oakland, San Jose, Las Vagas, Los Angles, Dallas, Venice (FL), Atlanta and back to DC before the end of that year. In early 2000 it made trip down to Venice FL pulling a large U-Haul trailer to and from Atlanta. In late 2000 when I moved from Maryland, the Jeep pulled my little cargo trailer to L.A., then in early 2001 north to the Seattle area. Since then it's been down to California several times. In 2003 I drove it to the Vaulting National Championships in Denver, where it developed a crack in the radiator, which I replaced before heading home. This year it got new rear breaks, new tires, a new windshield and just last week, new floor mats.



So I'm in the market for a new (used) vehicle. Either another early '90s Cherokee or a six cylinder small or mid-size pick-up. If you know someone who might have such a vehicle (in the Seattle area) and might be willing to part with it for under $2k, please do let me know. For more specifics see this post on my blog.

Virginia Tech massacre

Yesterday was a very sad day for Hokies everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre

Among those killed was Dr. Loganathan, whom I believe was one of my hydraulics professors.

I'm not sure but he might also have been one of the young Tech profs that worked with my grandfather on quantifying the transient effects of closing check valves (i.e. water hammer) using some of the early PC based data loggers and pressure transducers.

2006 Taxes

1040ez.
Start to finish, 30 minutes including 10 minutes deciding that trying to free e-file wasn't worth the effort.
Refund due: $14.45.