blivet 2.0

Sandra and garret went for a drive this afternoon, up to the Santa Fe ski basin. I bet it was nice up there …

Dave points out some interesting possibilities for a Firewire equipped iBook. He’s looking to the stars, which is very cool and I’d like to do that. I’m sure John Martello would have some insight into that too. But I’m thinking you could go the other way as well, into the realm of the very small via the video out from a good microscope. Trying to explain something with a series of slides that at some point you have to flip back and forth to illustrate some bit of analytical significance could be real easy with a 20 second QuickTime clip that you pop up on the display in the conference room. Yes, I’m obviously referring to Yet-Another Powerpoint infestat^H^H^H^H^H^H presentation … ” … and that is why I need the combination of the Graphite iBook, 30 gig Firewire drive, and the Zeiss ’scope with video out.”

Good News: Al’s iBook and AirPort came today. Great! Bad News: Al wasn’t home when they tried to deliver it and he needed to sign for it. They’ll be back on Monday. Augh! Once you’ve ordered and paid for the darn thing, you want to hold it, feel it, use it, walk around clicking on web links from the living room, the kitchen, the backyard. However, unlike Al I have no compunction about linking to the George Dubya Dance. I suppose all we need now is a Gyrating Gore, a Nattering Nabob of Naderism and some Browne-ian Motion. <ducking, running> (historical footnote: The Original Hampster Dance)
Later: Apparently this is ‘Blog the hell out of Al Saturday’. Through him I encountered RedCricket. Pretty darn good stuff. I can only dream …
Still later: Yep, Al knows how I get when it becomes systemic, Audrey just rolls her eyes …

Crew of 100th shuttle mission set for space station balancing act STS-100. 100 is really just a mission number, but it still looks good. Liftoff is scheduled to October 10th.

Lets see what is happening in the larger world …

Good morning! A little bit of sage trimming out front, a smidgen of newspaper reading, a dose of dawn watching, an extended session of scratch the kitty on the chin. Early Saturday is pretty good so far.

Susan points to Time’s photo essay on solar flares, Good Day Sunshine. Still, since I saw the link first at 2020Hindsight I can’t help but wonder if she made those pictures in Bryce and will detail how in Chapter 15 of the book that has been shipped to the printer! Yea!. Congratulations Susan.

6 pm PDT Long week, long day, something to do with the new moon doubtless will explain the general lunacy with homebound traffic. I’m going to decompress a bit before perusing the offerings on weblogs and news sites out there, catch up on things going on with my lovely bride and take a deeeeep breath. For those of you who are at the end of your work week congratulate yourself, the rest of you hang on, its coming. We’ve got a line on an alternator thanks to Al, somehow we missed that site on the internet. I’ll be back in a bit, the rest of my life beckons.

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Busy day, hence the late flippin’. Hopefully there will be more later, say 6-ish (PDT). I’m back at it….
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Sheila points to Management Jean-Luc Picard style: Make It so: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek The Next Generation.

Audrey is searching the web for auto parts outlets that might have an alternator for the Daihatsu Rocky. She’s found several ‘fan’ sites for the vehicle in Australia as well as in Arizona. Everyone remarks the finding parts is getting pretty tough after they wax rhapsodic about how wonderful their Rocky is. We have some promising leads, but we’ll see what happens when it comes to the critical ‘do you have it in stock and how soon can you get it to me?’ segment of the conversation. That mini-van just keeps runnin’ along.

[working] The worst thing about being the ‘guardian’ (as in, you can put a trench in here, but not over there) of a place that will have construction taking place is that you utterly lose control of your schedule. Your own deadlines and responsibilities don’t change though. 

[Reuters] FDA approves RU-486. U.S. health officials approved the abortion pill RU-486 on Thursday, clearing the way for its sale after 12 years of political battles and delays that kept it off the U.S. market.

[Reuters] Former Canadian prime minister Trudeau dead at 80. He always seemed to me to be a good man. (I assume he wa a good leader, especially when contrasted with what we had here farther south.)

Apple bitten by lower sales; shares plunge; Apple’s Devastating Warning. Sales are down elsewhere in the industry and the cube can’t offset that. Shares droped 45% after trading closed today. If you’re in the market for such things now might be the time to buy. (disclaimer: I don’t know squat about stocks, trading or any of that stuff.) I’m just bringing it up ’cause I wish I would have bought APPL when it went below $20. pointer to the wired story via garret.

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Running late. I’ll try to post in a bit …
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From The Motley Fool Andreessen: Leave the Plumbing to Loudcloud. I had lunch with SirDeath and John today, two of the finest folks you’d want to meet. John will likely sign his offer letter from Loudcloud and go to work for them. Mike (AKA Señor Muerto above) will likely follow Mason, Dan, and now John to that promised land in California. Sadly, I don’t think any of these companies need a archaeologist cum Zen Buddhist priest, even one who a fairly accomplished computer geek end-user behind those other monikers. I miss John and Annette already and they’re not even gone. If Mike follows (and I suspect he will) a bit of the goodness and comfort of this most improbable of cities in the American West will disappear with him, closing a chapter of my (our) life that included a group of people deeply conversant in servers and network architecture, but whose curiosities roamed widely through art, literature, film, and science, drinking deep from seldom visited founts. More importantly, they are an accepcting bunch of folk, requiring only that you have the mental horsepower to keep up with the conversation and recognize some of the in-jokes of the trade and subculture. And offer what you have found to the discussion as well, for you’re rapidly a peer with them. Its been nice.

Breathtaking and awesome - Fountains of Fire on the Sun. via garret.

The morning is cool and crisp, perhaps Fall is knocking on the door.
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More busyness tomorrow. I’ll flip the page and update as I’m able. Have a great day.

Dori at Backup Brain follows up on her Fray 4 posting and our weblog community reactions to it: “If everyone’s perceiving themselves on the outside and everyone else as being on the inside, who’s really in/out? ” When I’ve gotten into similar discussions with my friend Greg, he insists ‘they’re all hoping we don’t notice that they’re faking it’. Sometimes I think he’s dead-on right.

I have a real love/hate relationship with tv. I find if I stray too far or too long from something like PBS (public television) I lose all semblance of centeredness and am prone to what can only charitably be called ‘fits’. I rant. I rave. Worse, I begin to pontificate. People who pontificate generally bore me. It disappoints me to bore even myself. The tv makes me read less, think less, react more. This comes up again, actually, here for the first time, it comes up a lot in my inner spaces, because of trying to watch the Olympics and being assaulted by the commentary. The Olympics occupies a special, elevated place in my imagination, somewhere noble, where it is not necessarily ideal, but those participating strive at some level for it to be so. Something about the commentary and advertising just aggravates a place in me where I delude myself that I’m even-tempered, if not at least under fairly firm rein. I point at the tv and lecture it, sternly. Audrey is in the other room, but I hear her voice in my head, or at least a voice that has taken the form of her voice reminding me that ‘they can’t hear you’. And I laugh, such that both the dog and cat wake and stare at me as though (so I imagine) I have lost my mind. More laughter, further disturbing the cat. So many illusions of progress, the illusory part starkly illuminated by the rants and emotional excesses as I gaze into the pail of muddy water roiling that I thought was settling. Sometimes I think that these attempts at emotional and spiritual progress are measured on a logarithmic scale, each increment a tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold greater than the previous one. I am reminded here as I waver towards the ‘its so hard and I have so far to go’ attitude of a quote (probably paraphrased) from a forgotten author that ‘when measuring how far one has to go, one should occasionally be mindful of how far one has come’ and the ever-present truth that it is the journey rather than the goal. Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have, even ourselves. Perhaps the hardest one to extend charity to is yourself.

Al is back doing clinical nursing tonight. Sort of. Have a good night at work Al.

Brent writes about the Presumption of Nixon today. I was a Junior in High School when Watergate broke (Democratic Party Offices Burgled). When things started to get sticky for the President later in the semester I ended up in a screaming match with my American Government instructor, Mr. Colglazier. (Its funny the names you remember). I ended up getting kicked out of class and sent to the Principal’s office. This was one of the seminal episodes in my life when I learned the value of shutting up in front of authority figures. I really got in trouble when i called then President Nixon a ‘lying son of a bitch’ in class. Mr. Colglazier was then the county chairman for the Republican Party. (point of information-I grew up in small town eastern Kansas which is staunchly Republican.) Oops. I ended up having to apologize to him and the class not only for profanity in the class, not only for yelling at my instructor after he said ‘The President of this country does not lie to the citizenry’ (I did call him a deluded idiot, oops again) , but also <cough, cough> ‘for presuming to question the character of the President of the United States’. Oh well. It was a different time and I was a different person. Sort of. I guess this is a long, roundabout, and excessively personal way of saying ‘I agree Brent, me too.’

Craig at BookNotes has way too many good pointers today to link to separately. Margaret Mead, Banned Books Week, Archaeology and Historic Preservation. Heck, just go there and stroll about …

Long day with lots of balls in the air, the first day of a big construction project. A good day, but with some fatigue at the end.

Lets see what is out there.

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Lots of work related activity, starting with the Contractor’s orientation at 8 followed by field assistance to the contractors and their subs. I’ll catch up as I can…

Good Morning!
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WTF!?! via Dave at Scripting News:

Name withheld: “I just heard a rumor from a good source. The Republican party is feeling that Cheney is a liability on the ticket. There’s a rumor that a few weeks prior to the election in a desperate attempt to win, Cheney will resign because of a trumped-up heart problem or potential ‘threat to his health.’ Then either John McCain or Colin Powell will be asked to come on the ticket and save the party. This move is afoot in top circles and to try to squelch it please send this letter to as many people as you can.”

This just gets me all squinty eyed, especially if it isn’t a rumor. Hell, especially if it is a rumor! Its dirty pool either way, underhanded if its an idle rumor sent to Dave because he has a wide readership and they knew he would post it (this little meme has ‘will spread like wildfire’ written all over it). Its underhanded if someone in the Bush camp is concocting these kinds of schemes. What a bunch of TBs. Besides, the Republican ticket’s liability isn’t Cheney …

Jeff comments “Looks like Brent synchronized the ETP server with Coordinated Universal Time.” I noticed the ca. 11 minute difference was gone too. Thanks for explaining why Jeff. I set my watch by the time server in Colorado, but no one ever agrees with my watch except the hard-core geeks.

Ed at Calebos.org points out two things I think I’m going to have to read: Footprints In New Snow: Postmodernism Or Cultural Appropriation? and Cultural Appropriation and Subcultural Expression: The Dialectics of Cooptation and Resistance. The first has a distinctly anthropological bent since it deals with the Inuit and their group ownership of music and the second because the subject just fascinates me. I’m still trying to figure out this world I live in … sometimes I get very confused with my own culture. Later: Cool. Ed also points to Graphics and Web Design Based on Edward Tufte’s Principles, on his reading list. Now it’s on mine too. Thesis? What thesis? OK, I’ll defer that reading list a bit …

I’m glad to hear your facial burns (Ow!) are not worse than they seem to be Al. I wasn’t sure what to do yesterday when I read his post, … “I hope he is OK, should I write, should I post, should I call?” In the end I did nothing, figuring that he’s not the only nurse in the house and he can take care of himself. Plus I didn’t want to impose. It’s interesting how these weblogs draw us all together though we’ve never met face to face.

Dori at Backup Brain has posted My thoughts on Fray Day 4. Wow, I often feel like that. Exactly like that. Thanks Dori.

(following up) Its interesting, if I’m in ‘teacher’ mode (or priest mode for that matter) I can talk to and with anyone, about almost anything. But in purely social situtations or ‘business casual’ venues I fell like I’m from another planet. Usually I have to go into some sort of ethnographer mode to shut that screaming monkey of an ego up. Once I’m engaged it seems goes away …

Audrey’s parents were in town during Behind the Curtain, so they’re included here. They had just moved back from Vienna, Austria, where they had been living and working for three years. They moved over there right after we were married. Ellen is on my right and Tom is on my left. And of course, my best friend Audrey who does double duty as my wife. We’re standing in front of the blivet hacienda on the morning that they left, which was actually Wednesday the 20th. Its still too early for me to have put my contact lenses in. This is the first time they’ve been here since they’ve been back to the States.

My Mom is the other half of the extended family and now lives in Fort Worth, Texas (Benbrook actually) and was not around during the blivet BtC shoot.

Thanks for letting me show you a little bit of what’s Behind the Curtain at blivet.

Pax,

Hal Rager, chief cat herder and blivet wrangler
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This picture was actually taken on Tuesday September 12. Our intent was to make a going away gift for our boss Kim, who had selected us for this project. She has been forced out by newly hired upper management (did I just say that out loud?) and we’re pretty bummed. Still, this project is bigger than any one of us.

From left to right:
seated in the front is Becky Kubart - Geology intern, Marci Henson - Environmental Biologist, and Lilly Quarrell - Executive Assistant Extraordinaire

standing in back is Russell Harrison - Horticulture intern, Hal Rager - Archaeologist, Kristen Bardeen - Biologist, Greg Seymour - Archaeologist, Jerry Carter - GIS Analyst, and Von Winkle - Restoration Biologist.

The picture was taken in the landscaped ‘Wash’ in the Desert Demonstration Gardens where I work. We thought the camera had color film in it, honest, so we’ll have to do it over. There is that problem with shadows too, can you tell we’re technical people and not real photographers?
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Here is where I do my office work, along with the folks you’ll see in the next page. I work at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve as an Archaeologist. The Burnt Rock Spring Mound lithcs analysis is ongoing on to the right, several other projects in various stages of disrepair on the left. Windows NT in the middle. Our job: get ten pounds into the five pound sack, on time and under budget. Its a good job and I work with a great group of people.
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This is where we live in suburban Northwest Las Vegas. Keats the wonder dog can’t understand why I’m not taking him for a ride, that is my job after all. One day we’ll rip out that water sucking turf and finish putting in Mojave natives. We’ve got a start with the sages by the porch, but thats is as far as we’ve gotten. Its a nice neighborhood, full of great people and a lot of kids.

Its a good little house, about 1,150 square feet, but we have way too many books between the two of us. Audrey bought the house in 1993 and I moved in when we got married in 1997. Trouble is, I have a huge professional library of several thousand volumes and we were both set up for ’single for life’ living. There’s still lots of book boxes in the garage along with the camping gear, the temporarily down Daihatsu Rocky (AKA Rocky Rocky Race Truck) and a lot of other stuff, most of it mine. I’m not sure what we’ll do when Starship blivet takes on more passengers (children) during it’s epic voyage of discovery. Probably a relocation to a different quadrant.

So after I leave here, Audrey and I drive to work …
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