blivet 2.0

[array]

today’s update on the viveash fire is not good. from 6500 acres estimated last night, to 22,000 confirmed via infrared this morning, this fire is fully 1/2 as large as cerro grande (los alamos) in THREE DAYS.

Oh man…

[sonicnet.com] Guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen does not have cancer, a spokesperson at the Houston hospital where he underwent cancer tests on Thursday said, correcting earlier news reports. via Ed

Just a late page flip. More around 6 or 7 in the morning.

I noticed a mispelling on a previous day’s page and pulled it into Eudora Pro to check. There were way too many! embarrasing!
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[Viveash Fire] garret at array has a very unboring midnight update (with pictures):

local news reports temperatures of 2000 degrees in this fire. the heat is billowing debris and clouds up to 30,ooo feet, creating a true ‘firestorm’ … complete with severe hail … endangering firefighters. what was 1500 acres this morning is now 6500 acres.

Angus at Latte has a pointer to Space Activists Demand Better Space Program which he quotes:

America’s space program is going no place fast. As shuttle astronauts fiddle with pieces of a megabillion-dollar International Space Station built for six, exactly where the U.S. space enterprise is taking the ground-bound, tax-paying public-at-large remains unknown.

Al at View From the Heart and Angus at Latte point to the Professional Quiz at Chaos Manor: “The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and establishes whether you are qualified to be a “professional “”. Or a 4-year old, it depends.

array: “new fire: the name is ‘viveash’, and it is in the pecos wilderness, <…> this is the area that i talked about earlier having a 3/1 dead/live pine ratio. this fire is hot, fast, and isn’t going out anytime soon. <…> i pray i’m wrong, but i fear this one’s going to cause casualties. i know that country too well.” It just doesn’t let up. Time to make rain snakes and have the dances performed.

Craig at Book Notes has lots of quotes from W., but really, the message is: “Dan Quayle was like the son George Bush already had.”

Happy Monday, errr …, Tuesday!
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I hope all the Americans had a good Memorial Day weekend and fostered some recognition of why we do this to our children. I was a little surprised at how many people (adults) I knew asked about the red poppy on my shirt that I got for contributing to the Veterans today.

OK, I’ll tone down the Manila Express entries. Its just too easy to add links this way! I miss the of bit extra thinking that takes place with multiple cutting and pasting … I’ll adjust.

John at Curmudgeon contributes his personal experience with The Lessons of a Lost Career. “College administrations do not always have academics as their first priority. (A bit tangential, but …)” and of course, that is where it gets interesting.

[have browser] Jim Roepcke is having major problems with his wisdom teeth. I’d watch out for that lower right one too! Ow! Been through that, more on the way elsewhere in the mouth.

[CNN] Rare Mars meteorite discovered in Middle East (a couple of days old but new to me)

A meteorite hunter combing the deserts of Oman found a stone thought to have originated on Mars. Of the 20,000 known meteorite discoveries, the brownish gray stone is only the 15th identified as coming from the red planet, scientists said this week. <…> The rock has chemical similarities to a Mars meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984, which some NASA researchers said exhibits fossilized signs of microscopic life.

more [CNN] Rocker Eddie Van Halen receiving cancer treatment Apparently its an experimental preventative treatment for cancer of the tongue. Man! Another guy my age battling the big C.

David Anderson at Montana News Daily writes: "James V. Smith, the editor of the Shelby Promoter, has written a fine reflection on Memorial Day. Lots of good stuff in this piece. Here’s a teaser:

We disdain reflection in others and fear it in ourselves.

We pack our lives with ferocious activity as if that will somehow give worth to living. In fact, what do we say about somebody not being busy? That he is wasting his life away.

But do not equate activity with achievement, nor reflection with idling and most importantly, do not fail to reflect on Memorial Day.”

They Write the Right Stuff: The right stuff kicks in at T-minus 31 seconds.

At T-minus 6.6 seconds, if the pressures, pumps, and temperatures are nominal, the computers give the order to light the shuttle main engines — each of the three engines firing off precisely 160 milliseconds apart, tons of super-cooled liquid fuel pouring into combustion chambers, the ship rocking on its launch pad, held to the ground only by bolts. As the main engines come to one million pounds of thrust, their exhausts tighten into blue diamonds of flame.

Then and only then at T-minus zero seconds, if the computers are satisfied that the engines are running true, they give the order to light the solid rocket boosters. In less than one second, they achieve 6.6 million pounds of thrust. And at that exact same moment, the computers give the order for the explosive bolts to blow, and 4.5 million pounds of spacecraft lifts majestically off its launch pad.

It’s an awesome display of hardware prowess. But no human pushes a button to make it happen, no astronaut jockeys a joy stick to settle the shuttle into orbit. <…> What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program — each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

The space program has always been a part of my life. I stayed home from school in the first grade to watch John Glenn fly the Friendship 7. I stayed up for three days in the middle of July 1969. I wept for several hours and was depressed for days after the Challenger disaster. These folks who write the software for the Shuttle are fantastic purveyors of their craft. One error. Wow. For whatever reason it reminds me of an interview I read once with Reinhold Messner. He was a high altitude climber who did his climbing solo. He soloed Everest, Denali, and a number of peaks in the Hindu Kush, as well as a lot of ice climbing (waterfalls in the winter, that sort of thing). He was asked if he made mistakes climbing solo in these extreme conditions and he replied: "I don’t think so, You only get to make one."

[Book Notes] A Happy 25th Anniversary to the Jensen’s!

[Book Notes] “I’m reading A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I mentioned it last Friday as a title I was adding the Books as Characters project.” What a fantastic book! As a Science Fiction reader, I love that book. As an archaeologist I love it even more, not only as a reminder that the past (in this case the book’s far past is our present) should be spoken of with care, but that we can never fully imagine what ir was like then … Or as Anne McCaffery wrote in the Dragonrider series - somewhen.

[Metafilter]

Jeremy’s CyberCafe and Beer Haus is up for sale, but what’s really cool about it is that it is located just outside of Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert, and they have a full T-1 line that they’re selling along with the business. Hmm…T-1 access plus nearby national park? Maybe we should take up a collection and buy it ourselves?

I couldn’t agree more! I’ve given some thought to doing CRM archaeology based out of Joshua Tree but the nagging question is “is there enough work there and in the vicinity?” Still, … a cybercafé in the Mojave desert!

I just posted that with Manila Express - This is very cool. Thanks!

[Manila Express] Earlier today Brent released Manila Express for the Macintosh. Manila Express makes it easy to add links to the home page of a Manila site (like this one) without having to go there. Brent has written a How I Did It piece to help us get set up.

Dave notes that Themes are in the pipeline, also largely due to Brent’s efforts.

Al at View From the Heart used a term in his weblog this morning that is new (to me at least) and is so self-evident I don’t understand why its not more widely used in the lexicon. EditThisPage friends. Yep…

I hadn’t been to Ed’s Weblog for a while, I think I have too many bookmarks to keep up with. He has a nice clean layout (which I don’t know how new it is) that I like. Lots of interesting pointers and a candid style that gives the reader (OK, me) the feeling you know him. Anyway, the pointer I was most interested in (I was involved in the Cold War/Atomic Archaeology Project at the Nevada Test Site) is The Bomb Project:

The Bomb Project seeks to re-utilize and distribute declassified images of atomic tests made during the Cold War and to raise public awareness by re-contextualizing the very media that remained hidden from the public eye for decades.

[c|net] Ram Prices To Increase? (via slashdot)

Micron Technology, the biggest U.S. maker of memory chips for PCs, may boost contract prices on its mainstay product in the next two weeks, as supply dwindles in the face of rising demand, analysts said.

[Space.com] Mars: A Visual Feast: (via Angus)

To celebrate NASA‚s recent release of over 25,000 Mars images snapped between March and August of 1999, Space.com presents our picks for the 20 most beautiful and geologically interesting images of the bunch.

I have posted two distressing links to stories about academia as well as being rather negative myself about life in the academy as a graduate student. It would be a grave disservice to not further point out that my own dour view colored by the loss of a childhood dream taints my selection of stories to point to. I think the chances of having a good experience in the pursuit of a Master’s or Ph.D. are contigent on you doing your footwork first, finding an advisor you have a rapport with and a school that is at least beginning to emerge form the fudal serfdom that characterizes much of the training for the academy.

It sounds like Al is physically feeling a bit better, but not out of the woods yet.

Early page flip on my way to bed. We had a great evening with Glen and Pam who came down for the reunion and will be heading back to northern Utah early Sunday. Pam is the GIS/Remote Sensing Lab coordinator at Utah State and Glen is an Applications Engineer at Campbell Scientific in Logan, Utah. Good, good people. They live in Hyrum outside of Logan, where their backyard is bigger than several house lots here. We met over at Sir Death’s (Mike) house. Bruce, John and Annette came over after a bit and we all went out for supper. John and Mike are the System Administrators at Vegas.Com and Annette is a graphic designer. Bruce is, well, a Netscapee (employee #106), so he does whatever he wants!
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[Lingua Franca] THANKS FOR NOTHING: Chris Brown tells his thesis advisers how he really feels.

On a bright morning last June, Chris Brown stepped into the cool of the UC-Santa Barbara library clutching his master’s thesis: seventy-three pages on the growth of abalone shells. His thesis committee had signed off on his work, and it was now bound for the silent grave of the archives. Brown would not continue into the doctoral program. It was the last day of his graduate career˜or so it seemed.

There was only one problem: Brown had appended an unusual two-page statement to his thesis, a dramatic j’accuse! both profane and hilarious, and aggressively specific in its grievances. “I would like to offer special Disacknowledgments to the following degenerates,” Brown railed, “for being an ever-present hindrance during my graduate career.” The dean and the staff of the Graduate Division, he wrote, were “fascists … the largest argument against higher education there has ever been.” All dealings with the administration, he complained, “have ended in sheer frustration. I’d rather take a hot stick in the eye than deal with your bureaucratic nonsense.”

It goes on. It gets better. The University reacts like you might imagine they would. Chris reacts with the stubbornness only a graduate student can muster. Why no, I’m not done with mine yet, how could you tell?.

Hide Itoh’s superb sets of icons for Macs, Windows and Linux has moved.

[BBC] Arthur C. Clarke knighted.

[Underwater Archaeology] Divers search wreckage of historic Confederate sub.

Divers searching the wreckage of the Confederate submarine Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink a warship in battle, have discovered a gaping hole in the vessel’s stern, rekindling the mystery over how it sank, officials said on Friday.

When you’re a critical care nurse with a lingering cold and you’re looking at a three-day weekend that historically is one of your occupation’s busiest, what do you do? Al at View From the Heart muses…

Paul Vigay’s Collection of Collective Nouns. Things like a conspiracy of ravens, a muster of storks, a skulk of foxes, a murder of crows … I love this stuff! link from Lark Farm.

Reading Code is Like Reading the Talmud - Tips for reading other people’s source code. from Joel based on emailed suggestions by Seth Gordon.

The sudden din of inactivity has me a bit off-balance. Three day weekends* are like that for me. I guess I’m defining myself overmuch by what I do at "work". Actually, thats good. it points out to me that I need to practice what I preach more. The key to centeredness after ‘returning to the market carrying a gourd’ is to use the periodic episodes of realizing your off center to snap back. Sometimes thats all it takes is the realization. The tendency to immerse yourself in hurriedness is profound, plus it feeds our sense of self-importance so satisfyingly (is that a word?). Hmpft. The tangents are so easy to come by. I just got distracted by my need to have a spell checker in IE so I could check that word. One of the guys in the back of the bus reminded me that I could be using Eudora’s built in spell checker and I retorted ‘I’m in a hurry!’. Hee hee. Oh we are a bit self important tonight aren’t we? Must be time for bed …

* It’s Memorial Day weekend in the USA, when we honor the men and women who have died in battle.

[Version Tracker] Theres a new release of WhatRoute 1.0b7 a Macintosh freeware utility for internet connection monitoring. New in this version is access to the new domain to location database Netgeo, as well as faster Map window drawing and new animation to routes plotted in the Map Window.

Happy birthday to Craig at Book Notes!

[Mojave, my Mojave] I had heard murmurings that the phone booth in the Mojave desert had been removed. Rafé reports "the removal of the phone booth at the request of the federal government because it attracted too much traffic (the area where the phone booth is now part of a national park)". I know this area well, and can confirm that the increased traffic can be attributed to the phone booth Web page. link from Rafé Colburn who in turn thanks Lake Effect. Update: Audrey tells me that this was on the news a couple of days ago. So many people were calling the phone booth that no one could call out. Kinda defeated the purpose…

The reunion was fun. Everybody is older and more responsible. Lots of kids and tales to tell. How did we get older?!?

We’re off to a reunion of biologists who worked for EG&G at the Nevada Test Site and the Yucca Mountain Project. Audrey worked there for eight years, I worked there for seven. There may not be any more additions to blivet until tomorrow. Take care.

[Geology] Fiery birth of new Pacific Island. An international science team has witnessed the dramatic birth of a new volcanic island in the Pacific. The rare event was witnessed by scientists during a research expedition to the Solomon Islands on the CSIRO research vessel Franklin. link from slashdot.

garret reports that the Cerro Grande fire is 100% CONTAINED!. The information on the aftermath is here.

Thank you Firefighters!

Al covers the answer to my question very well at View From the Heart. Reccomended reading. Don’t forget to get CPR training too. What would you do if one of your parents suddenly clutched their chest and was obviously having problems? Update: Al follows up on the NPR story that was on All Things Considered tonight that really confused me:

NPR screwed up. I expect better from them. So do I Al, so do I.

Thanks Al!

[Reuters] Mouth-to-mouth may be unnecessary in CPR. This story disturbed me as the "results" are presented as rather definite, yet were not statistically significant. So its not really something we can use, its more of an anecdote. Yet, there it is as a headline, which gives a great deal of credence. What’s your take on this Al? This is your territory more so than mine…. The story is at CNN, Yahoo. Meanwhile, I’m going to continue to include mouth-to-mouth with chest compression if I have to do CPR until an authority like the Red Cross tells me not to.

Off to work…

[I laughed out loud!] garret finds himself in the twilight zone.

Al at View From the Heart points me to Jeffery Zeldman’s HTMHell:

While some of us were sitting around with curly fries hanging out of our mouths, the Revolution happened. And it wasn’t even televised

Well worth a read, and a more than idle reflection.

[I stroke my hoary whiskers and bore everybody] I stumbled onto this www thingie pretty early when Mosaic was, well, it. I wrote my first web pages in vi over a 300 baud Unix shell dialup to the university. And we liked it that way!And no, we didn’t like it that way at all… I couldn’t get a graphic dialup connection for love or money. It wasn’t available. If I did any web stuff it was from my Sun Box at work. Back then, the Internet was to remain forever non-commercial. I thought it was a great idea to open it up further. Lately, I’ve not been so sure. There is a lot more out there than www.conHUGEco.com and VegasHooters.com. But you’re reading a weblog after all, this is a bit of preaching to the choir. Still, Zeldman makes some great points, I’m glad Adobe is letting it out there.

Al also mentions Eric being in Florida and missing a shuttle launch. Oh man, I can’t imagine the disappointment he must feel.

We have a break in the weather, its back in the field in earnest tomorrow.

Please visit the Terra Institute and have a look around, maybe do a little reading. They have some very thought provoking information about conservative and progressive think-tank funding and objectives. Note: I really can’t talk about politics per my vows. …

garret has a timely pointer to The Lessons of a Lost Career, from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Very poignant. Very true.

[ZBOHY] A new essay - Zen Abuses by Ming Zhen Shakya

[Space] JPL releases 20,000 Mars Images. JPL/NASA has publicly released 20,000 new unprocessed Mars images. This is important because previously images were not released either in this quantity or without pre-processing and captioning. [JPL press release., MSNBC, AP] seen at ’slashdot”.

Heading home. Its hot. Oh my, it has gotten hot here in the desert. Update: Tonight’s local news said the high was 112 F. It promises to be a long summer. Maybe next week we’ll move to the 6 AM schedule or something.

Did I mention the heat? - Officially 108 F, functionally, it feels like we’re on the surface of Mercury. OK, I know its actually hotter in Needles, Laughlin, and several other places, besides where I am. Just wait ’til summer gets here bub.

Both Dori and Tom at backup brain comment on Salon’s new design. blivet gives it a hearty ‘thumbs down, waaay down’.

Meanwhile Al is methodically and deliberately proceeding in the opposite direction, towards legibility and a pleasing design.

I’m not sure what is floating around in the air today in the northern Mojave, but its starting out to be about an 8.5 on the sinus Richter scale. Additionally, it already 85 degrees F. It could be a long day.

[Burnt Rock Mound] We sent off 20 samples to Beta for radiocarbon dating today. We targeted the ceramic, ground stone, and Archaic component, the upper, lower and outer black mat (organic rich spring sediments), brown vent ‘jacket’ clay and vent sands. The last two will probably not be able to be dated, but the rest … We need a web cam just so you can watch how archaeologists deal with uncertainty. See them check the mail, fax machine, and email obsessively. See them second guess their choices. Marvel as they reassure themselves for the nth time about their methods. See them compare the results from Haynes et al. (1967) and Quade et al. (1998) to their own stratagraphic data for the 47th time. See them squint out the window in the general direction of the mound wondering, … thinking.

OK, its not quite that bad, but we are very curious about what the results will be.

Al is working through the first of his redesign at View From the Heart. Its sporting a new shade of F4A460. I bet it will look great.

[Cerro Grande fire] 95% containment - 100% projected for the 24th. link and news from array.

Its going to be a hot one today … The forcast is for 103 F which means 105-106 at the Preserve based on our informal calibrations of their temps at the airport versus ours. Update: Spring is over and Inferno has made its first appearance. Its HOT out there boys and girls.

Thanks to all who made our anniversary and Audrey’s birthday special.

The Shuttle Atlantis crew has been working on the Space Station in orbit. Inspiring stuff.

British actor Sir John Gielgud has died. Reuters, CNN.