Point Lookout
Musings from the hillside

Well, the scale said exactly 200.0. It’s a fanatically accurate digital thing so it must be accurate. It just seems to refuse to let me drop below the leading 2. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow it will let go of its 2 fetish.

After a spectacular weekend here, it dropped fifteen degrees or so, stayed windy all day, and clouded over. No rain of note but threatening. There were showers all around us but nothing here.

Jordan, the village inspector, found nothing wrong and reported so to Emmanuel Ursu, Planning Director, yesterday morning. It was still warm and nice at the time. Jordan was in a fine mood as was Emmanuel to all appearances. I really must introduce myself to “The Public Works Guy” … we see him all the time and he was especially nice to Jordan yesterday. Perhaps today we will go to Peet’s for a scone then to Safeway for more Halloween supplies (I ate the last batch, weight loss notwithstanding).

Nothing from Nihola (the other Dutch cargo bike manufacturer who claims global shipping). Nihola is pointed to from Cycle Chic, a very clever and attractive bike-hype blog. So is Christiania which doesn’t catch my fancy quite so strongly. Sad that Nihola hasn’t replied.. I don’t know if it is cheaper than the Bakfiets branded bike available in Portland from those lovely people at Clever Cycles. I like the two-wheel Bakfiets look but the Nihola tricycle is worth a look. Neither is very practical here with my cliff but the idea just tickles me.

Jim Tiemstra sent the Oakland radio docs so we’re a step closer. K6ORI.com is registered but the home page is empty … gotta do something about that later today.

It’s a gorgeous day in Orinda. I feel guilty given the disaster that’s befallen Southern California and most of our friends down there. In spite of the guilt, the warmth and sunshine feel good.

Pacificon is over for 2007. The post-mortem will be held in a couple of weeks but it’s all over but the paperwork.

We had at least 15% more people attend, maybe 20%. All reports from vendors and the hotel confirm that. Our primary co-conspirator in this, Ham Radio Outlet or HRO, saw that kind of increase in sales. It was terrific.

Of course, that meant the forums (lectures) were 15 - 20% more over crowded and the hallways and exhibit hall were 15 - 20% more crowded. But that’s OK. The one-day license class was as successful as ever. Testing went swimmingly and our 85 year old who struggled with the class passed finally. She went home with a very nice shiny new radio.

The ARRL arranged for Dan Henderson, their rep to the DOD in this PAVE/PAWS saga. Dan’s a good guy with a tough assignment. He spoke three times to packed and vocal rooms and did as good a job as can be done under the circumstances. We tried real hard not to shoot the messenger …

It was interesting. With the increase in attendees we didn’t see a dramatic shift in demographics. It’s like there were just more hams coming out. We didn’t see an obvious drop in age level or change in any other visible change in the mix. But it was lovely to see folks turn out and have a good time.

Meanwhile, there were numerous valuable informal meetings and discussions. The Northern California Cactus Radio Association’s East Bay Hills conundrum looks to be solved (along with some other “challenges”). The same may be true for some of MDARC’s “challenges”. The new wave of emergency radio teams seems to be gelling (we’re somewhere between water and soft jello at this point). It was all good.

Yeah, right! Micro-bursts. Who was the genius that found this one. Warm up … say … a mere 15 minutes (I’m tired already) and then do ten minutes of 15 seconds of heavy load followed by 15 seconds of light. Repeat to kill time … then another mere 15 minutes of cool-down (I didn’t/couldn’t). Then I took Jordan for a walk to keep moving.

Great theory. Hope I can walk in the morning. I need to get something that tells me rear wheel speed on the trainer so I can try to work out the power output and track progress.

Sigh.

turns into another quarter of an inch during prime walk-time.

Under 203 again this morning. It’s drying out a little. maybe I can get the bike on the trainer for a bit this afternoon. Funny twinges in left knee and lower back but I’m not convinced they matter.

Got the Pacificon banner to the sign guys … sigh. Another $100 to the cause

The public-minded stuff is happily off elsewhere. This is just the view from Point Lookout. Jordan got tired of the rants

The weight came down into the low 200s and has hung. Lots of reasons, all good. I am such a sucker for wedding cakes, for example. The last ride (Saturday) was 9.75 miles with over 560 feet climbing … I mostly walked the worst of the climb. Bought a bell and new riding gloves but no big tune-up. Was going to ride yesterday but had to go to San Francisco and give Apple a second try at fixing the super-drive. And today it’s raining.

Continuing to grind my way through Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. It’s very scientific and all that. A major work, I’m sure. Nobody seems to talk about it which comes as absolutely no surprise as it debunks the orthodox view of Darwin. It is a slog, though. I find myself reading how-to books on unicycling for a break.

The unicycle needs to take a trip to the bike shop for a new tire. They sell the nice Torkers so they’ll understand this one. Haven’t gotten up on it (to fall off) again as the tire frightens me. Soon.

In a Reg Developer blog entry, this scion of history goes off on optimization. Quite amusing stuff actually. Amusing unless you’re the CIO of Google with over 450,000 servers because optimization shouldn’t be done. His arguments are, essentially, claims that nobody can do it, that hardware is evolving so fast it will make the optimizations irrelevant, and that since nobody can do it, they’ll screw things up.

It’s a classic example of being unclear on the concept. ‘Nuff said.

A Washington Post Article merely confirms what critics warned about USA PATRIOT Act and friends. The title”FBI Finds It Frequently Overstepped in Collecting Data”, a report from an internal depeartment auditor, merely reports what you’d expect. The rules and procedures are inadequate and the FBI (among others) routinely violates citizens’ civil rights.

What a surprise. So when Mr. Self-Righteous Hatch (R-UT) got righteously indignant that We The People didn’t trust the FBI (government as a whole) to respect the laws and protect our legal rights, he was wrong. What a surprise. What a hypocrite.

Now, he’ll ignore this on his way to the next step of implementing the Republican Party’s much-desired police state. Wonder who the Party’s benevolent dictator will be next.

Not feeling any better about the Democrats. They seem generally in agreement with all this. No hew, cry, or even a pompous expression of mild concern.

In eXile, the War Nerd Gary Brecher answers the question recently asked, sarcastically, in he Senate. The Nerd’s answer is not as sarcastic and is very much on point.

The bottom line: Iran, China, and India, in roughly that order. And it’s hard to argue. The losers? In similar order: Iraq, the US, and Britain. In reality, the biggest loser in absolute value is the US. Iraq is the biggest loser in relative value.

The Home Page of this Greenwashing organization. I’m completely sure this is a well-intentioned initiative from the industry. Completely.

Of course, it’s generally brain dead.

The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a measure proposed. There are two very large and well produced (read that as form is TERRIFIC but function/content is, well, less than brilliant.

“If the datacenter were 100% efficient, ll power supplied would reach the IT loads. This would represent Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.0.” This is all made clear (we hope) in their PDF Green Grid Metrics. But it is certain that the corporations funding and supporting the Green Grid iiniative are making sure that the work is making their products look good.