Light, Sweet

Does anyone else find it slightly disturbing that a certain grade of crude oil is described as "light, sweet"?

Does it sound a bit like a particular grade of olive oil?

Time for some research I think ...

light sweet crude
Well that wasn't particularily descriptive or helpful. It did say it's the "most liquid" of the grades of petrolium, whatever that means. However it introduced the phrase "crack spread options" which is only more disturbing ...

petroleum
Ah, much more information. The "light" refers to it's boiling point (how the various grades are commonly separated). Lower boiling point grades produce different things (ether/solvent is the lowest and auto gas is next to it, diesel and jet fuel is the heaviest). The "sweet" referes to the amount of sulfur it contains (and thus the amount of sulfur byproducts that burning it may produce).

Man, wikipedia is cool.

Just for reference, olive oil is categories as to it's "virginity" (oddly not at all related to it's sexuality), or how many times the olive paste is "pressed" and it's relative acidity. "Extra virgin" is the first pressing and contains less than 0.8% acidity. "Virgin" can have no more than 2% acidity. Just plain "olive oil" contains 1% acidity but may contain "refined" olive oil and it has almost no taste (so there are certain uses that this is very good for). "Imported from Italy" only means that it was bottled there, not that the olives were grown there. "100% Pure Olive Oil" sounds like it's good stuff but it usually means it's the lowest grade of natural oil. "Made from refined olive oils" means that the acidity and taste were chemically produced. And "Made from hand picked olives" means absolutely nothing at all since there is no evidence to suggest that hand picking the olives affects the oil (tree-shaking is normally the method of picking the olives).

There, now we learned something today!

Knowing I'm lucky

We got an email this morning from the section who tracks our ID cards. We use those instead of a key to get into our buildings. We got new ID cards and they become effective on the 30th. However sysadmins and some others have to get into our secured server room downstairs and that takes some separate tracking and such. So this email said that we had to use our old ID cards until the 19th but the new card would be required to gain access to our office on the second floor (of the server building).

Kind of annoying. Inconvenient.

Until you think about other people in the country who may still not have a place to live or a job to earn money for food and clothing. I read on Doctor Grace's blog she volunteered in a clinic in Louisana and things are still pretty nasty down there. She says (I haven't seen this on Google News yet but it wouldn't surprise me at this point) that FEMA still has more than half the money Congress allocated for Hurricane relief and they may take it back since it's not being used. And bureaucracy in the Red Cross likewise seems to prevent aid from getting to where it's needed.

When you think about other places in the world, no one is planning to blow up one of the cars outside in the parking lot. We have running water and have had continous service lately, no benezine in the river. No explosions in nearby coal mines. I'm not locked up in a secret CIA prison in Europe. No one I know has pled guilty on fraud charges or anything.

So while Matt and I may have our difficulties, overall in comparison things are actually going pretty well. The car outside runs and I have money to buy gas for it (reminder: do that on the way home tonight), I have a house with power, heat and food to go back to, my new dryer got delivered today so I can dry our clothes and everyone I know and love is in (reasonably) good health and spirits.

Win-win I guess. :)

Noticed anyone you know missing lately?

This

Flashback: A Lifetime in Limbo

is pretty frightening. I've heard about how the Patriot Act is taking away our civil liberties but it never had so much meaning so clearly until I read the Voice article.

So if the President declares you an "enemy combatant" you're basically screwed, even if you are an American. No right to a lawyer being present while you're being interrogated, no limit (at the moment) on what they can do to you during your interrogation, no limit on the time they can hold you, no requirement that you face your accusers or be allowed the right to defend yourself, the only thing that you can do is hope (since you can't call them) that your family notices you're missing and calls the media about it. Then the public furor results in the President being replaced at the next election.

Talk about long shots!

Not again

Well it happened again. I had a bunch of things (some funny, some ironic) to talk about here but now that I'm sitting in front of this cool monitor (at work, a big wide Dell flat panel) I can't remember them.

However this time I realized that almost all of them were spawned when I was in the shower (no, not spawned like *that*!) as I listend to Morning Edition on NPR. So if I go to their site and see what the topics are that should spur my memory.

We'll see how it works.

---

Okay here goes. This is a mishmash of thoughts.

Great, the House has passed a bill cutting programs for the poor while keeping the capital gains tax intact. Rich people stay (and get) rich(er) while poor people struggle even more. But it is awfully clever. If Dems try to slash the capital gains tax then the Scum can claim that they're "raising taxes" since that's the effect. This will raise all kinds of alarms in the minds of the middle class who can squeek by but would have problems if taxes go up. Never mind that they don't have any (or many) investments so they wouldn't be losing much of the ROI, the Scum won't tell them that!

In 1964 there was a tsunami in California. It destroyed most of a town called Crescent City, which is way out there in the water on the coast. They had an alert back in June and one of the radio jocks was putting out public announcements so people could evacuate. After it proved to be a false alarm a bunch of people called in and some were headed down to the beach to watch it. With their kids. Got a new entry for my dictionary now.

It just can't be. There had to be corruption, graft and fraud in Washington while the Dems were in power. There just had to be. It can't be that now that the neocons are running things these folks came out of the woodwork. Or are just getting caught now.

Lawmakers Probe Group's Ties to Abramoff

How many states is this guy being brought up on charges in? Florida, Texas maybe?, the Senate is investigating him for two different things, Federal procurement stuff.

Oh and to finish things off we've seen how the administration is counter attacking it's war critics, calling them various names (but asiduously avoiding calling them "unpatriotic"). I haven't seen a single case where the president, vice president, national security advisor or press secretary has directly refuted the claim that they twisted the intelligence to suit their own purposes and garner support.

All they've done is sound like a six year old claiming that his brother did it too!

Old and weepy

Man, I'm getting old and weepy.

I get emails from 1up.com and I go read some of the blogs, they get the coolest new games (well they get the lame ones too I guess). I read one where the girl was promoting a charity.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

Started by Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade. They got pissed at some west coast journalist who wrote a piece blaming games for teaching kids to kill and all kinds of other spurous "logic". So they mobilized their readers and set up the site to buy games and movies for kids stuck in the hospital during the holidays.

Some of the letters made me cry.

Hmm, not as cool as I thought

Yesterday I pointed out a couple of cool new words I'd found on http://www.doubletongued.org/. It was a neat site that had a lot of cool, ironic, funny new terms on it.

However I found one, AWOL which it showed to mean "Alcohol without liquid".

To me that first meant "Absent Without Leave", a military term for someone who just takes off. I registered and posted a comment about it also meaning this. The fellow who runs the site responded (in comments so in public) snidely pointing out that it was commonly known. I asked then (also snidely by this time) why "mortar" had to be defined and this didn't. When I say snidely I posted this

"Sorry, my bad for trying to help. Won’t happen again."

At the end of my question. And so he was just as snide back again. Suffice it to say that while the site is pretty cool, the guy who runs it is an ass.

What is this stuff?

This "scrapbooking" thing?

I mean I've kept a few books with pictures, photo albums, over time and sometimes I put newspaper articles that pertained to the events portrayed in the pictures. Some of them got to be pretty big and unwieldy. Some fell apart or the pictures came out. In one the sleeve of picture holders came off the cover binding.

But what is "scrapbooking" and what is everyone's fascination with it? I think I know three or four people who claim it as a hobby and my sister-in-law sells supplies.

A new American motto!

"Ignorance is Instantaneous"

Sounds about right.

New Words

Rummy's Dummies

Been perusing this dictionary looking at the new words making their way into English.

Spinky!!

It's a conspiracy

And it's brilliant!

Suicide Attempts Increase in Katrina's Aftermath

* First, start a war somewhere or otherwise rack up some significant spending to increase the Federal debt.

* Next introduce legislation for tax cuts. Target them mainly for capital gains taxes and other things which try to get money to run the government from the wealthiest people. But put in enough other stuff that many middle class families get a check. It shouldn't be enough to actually do anything with, but enough that it's not considered "small potatoes". A few hundred dollars should do it.

* Then push the tax cuts through again. With a precident it shouldn't be too hard. Those middle class families should really want to get some taxes back since they squandered their first one. Now they want to do something with it.

* Now wait for some sort of emergency or natural disaster. When it comes (the bigger the better), pledge lots and lots of money for it, no matter where in the world it is (if it's at home so much the better). After all, it's only the christian thing to do (Federal debt gets even bigger). Set things up so your cronies get quick, lucrative, poorly regulated (or overwatched) federal contracts to provide "services" and "help" for those stricken (the kickbacks should be nice).

* Sit back and watch as the poor people who've been devistated by this situation slowly go mad and kill themselves. A nice nifty package to rid them (the wealthy) of those pesky poor people who always want so much help from the government and won't vote the way you want them to.

Yup, a brilliant plan! (why no, you can't pry my tongue out of my cheek with a winch and a bulldozer, why do you ask?)

Rocket Surgery

Talk about bad decisions ...

Experts: Sony plan widens security hole

Know I've had lots of experience with Sony's (mostly the game division) bad decision making process. Look at some situation, think about what you would do in their shoes to fix things, take the worst solution, twist it 90 degress (left handedly) and that's what they pick. I've given up on Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest 2 because of their poor decisions.

But that takes the cake (as well as proving that their game division aren't the only morons the corporation has). Be careful, the cake has a virus!

Jim's Dictionary

For years now I've been noticing people who are examples of something. Lameness, goofiness, stupidity, pretty much anything. A convention of speech, an afectation if you will, that I use when describing them is to say that their picture should be in the dictionary under the definition of that word. That seemed to me to be the opitimy of the essence of whatever word we were talking about.

So Friday, in an ultimately futile effort to stave off boredom, I decided to start a webpage.

Jim's Dictionary (first pass)

It looked pretty good so I sent out a note to my ... the first word which pops into my head was "pisanos" (I used to use "pisos" until I learned that not only was that not Italian, it wasn't a word either) but I guess the correct term today is "my peeps". Somehow that just seems strange to say. And a bit pretentious. Not the sort of pretentious which says (or implies) "I have more money than you, I make more money than you and therefore I am better than you" (pure rubbish btw) but the "I'm not really one of these cool kids but I'll use their words and try to pretend to be" sort. Anyway I sent a note out. Erik (who sits next to me when I'm in the Op Center on Fridays) pointed out that I should try to use one of those free wikis to allow other people to add to my dictionary. So I got something called qwikiwiki (man that has more "i"'s than my name).

Installation was a bit of a stretch since I had to make that folder world readable (a Very Bad Thing which I turned off as quickly as possible) but I got it in. Then I had to figure out how to put my first two entries in. That took a little while but eventually I got it down. So now Jim's Dictionary is open for registered users to add to.

Jim's Dictionary

I added the first two entries and Yvonne suggested one more. I'll put that in soon. So everyone else can have at it if they find someone who is a perfect example of some word (good or bad, mine are negative so far). I retain the right to edit things if I don't like them (usually meaning they're meaner than they need to be or abusive of other people who may read it).

New defnition of "Lame"

And her name is Judith Miller.

I heard her on NPR where she tries to defend herself. I hear (and I'm listening to it again since I was incensed the first time I heard it) in order:

1. It was the "new management's" fault.
   
2. She's blaming her editors for her shoddy "journalism".
   
3. I don't remember and I didn't take notes (what kind of "journalist" doesn't take notes out their ass?).
   
4. Everybody's doing it (this "addribution" crap she's using to blame the fact she lies about who told her what).
   
5. I'm so good and jail was so hard.
   

Okay so I haven't been to jail as a journalist but still, it's not like it's solitary confinement in Joliet. My guess it that it was a white collar prison. And it's not like she didn't choose to go there (apparently to revitalize her flagging credibility) or spent "five to ten".

It seemed to me to be a grand-standing effort in order to look like the "poor little journalist going to jail to protect her sources". It doesn't seem to have worked well. Her fellow journalist are lambasting her.

http://www.slate.com/
(this one is pretty harsh)
http://newyorkmetro.com/
(this one not so much but does point out that she never seemed to let "facts" or "truth" get in her way)
http://en.wikipedia.org/
(and this implies - "Libby reaffirmed" - that she didn't really go to jail to protect her sources; the jail was the Alexandria City Jail, not Alcatraz by my guess; some of her works contained "a number of factual errors with regard to historical context", sounds like she doesn't do much "research")

I couldn't find (finally did) what she got the Pulitzer for. The whole New York Times staff got it for "Explanatory Reporting" on the global war on terror. Given her "reports" on WMD I wonder who many "facts" wandered into that place.

Dictated by conservative middle aged white men

Hmm, that sounds familiar in a larger scope as well. However, it seems the students may have spoken.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

The most interesting passage to me is

John Calvert, of the Intelligent Design Network, said: "This is on the cutting edge of science education. It is opening up the minds of students, the minds of teachers, the minds of the public, and developing a fascinating debate." But Mallory Fletcher, an 18-year-old student, told National Public Radio: "These middle-aged men are deciding what we are learning in our classrooms, saying that students are going to love this. But we are the students . . . and we are ashamed."

Wonder what John thought if he heard that ... ;-P

Other advanced scientific topics

After reading

http://abcnews.go.com/

I wondered if they were going to start teaching alchemy at KU. So I went to

Kansas State Department of Education

And looked up how to email them. I found the secretary's name and email and drafted up this;

---

Dear Ms Plamann,

Given the recent news I read at

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1295774

I wondered if the universities in Kansas were planning on begining the teaching of alchemy. The subject has always fascinated me and I believe since Kansas is leading the nation in efforts to change circula if that might be the place I should try to study the subject. If not the universities then perhaps vocational institutions perhaps. Please inform the board of my interest and let me know if there are programs available.

Thank you for your time.

--
Jim Heivilin

---

In the end I only sent it to my cronies rather than to them, since they may find it less than humorous. But I was tempted, seriously tempted ...

HIP

Homework Improvement Plan.

Or maybe it should be SIP (or SwIP) - Schoolwork Improvement Plan. Anyway I was in the mindset to shift the work-reward system I use for Matt from me taking away his game time when he doesn't behave/perform up to snuff to a system when he earns his time when he does what he's supposed to. More positive based, rewarding good behavior rather than punishing bad. Seemed to be more motivating to me.

However I had no good idea how to implement this. I mean how (besides end of quarter grades) do I measure "good behavior"? Kind of like the Army days when you had to fill out your yearly performance review. At the beginning of the year you have to set goals and you pick things which the boss will like and which sound good. "Improve platoon training". But how the heck do you measure things and determine if you have improved platoon training? So I learned to pick things to put on there that not only sounded good (which would get the boss to buy-in) but were actually quantifiable so I could measure them. One of the best examples is "improve physical fitness". It sounds good and you can usually tell when you've done it but you can't prove that you have on a document. So you pick the standard, the Army Physical Fitness Test. You look at your number for last year, say a 238. You write down that this year you'll get a 250. There, numbers. When the year is over you look at what you did and if you got a 255 or a 260 it looks like you even exceeded your goal, which sounds really good on paper. Given that the max score is 300, that's not really that great but if you put it in context it's actually not too bad.

But how do I do that on a weekly or monthly basis with Matt and his school grades? I'd have to track every assignment's progress from assignment by the teacher through completion and turn-in. That'd be great if I was retired and didn't have to work or if I had a partner to help with running the house or something. But it's not going to work in my situation.

My idea what to use the school district's Student Information System to track his progress. However I have no idea when teachers are supposed to input the data or how regularily they do. And I suspect it changes from teacher to teacher, influenced by their schedules and computer skills (among other things). But my first workable idea was to check it weekly and use my tracking spreadsheet (yea, I am not only a nerd but anal as well, since I like to play with numbers and spreadsheets) to determine the delta. If his grades stayed the same or improved (as shown by a zero or positive change percentage) then he'd get his game time that week, if not then no.

I talked to Ethan and he told me that when his boy (whose a year older than Matt) had trouble with his grades, they negotiated their schoolwork agreement with him rather than trying to impose it. That struck me as the way to go, to get his buy-in and to let him partially "own" the process. So we avoid the whole "your rules aren't fair", since I can counter with "well you helped draft them, you should have thought of this then!". Kind of takes the wind out of the sails there.

When we talked about it he got unhappy but that was mostly because he realized that it was one of those "must do" things that I harp on and he didn't have any ideas about how to make it better for him.

We'll see how it works out.

FEMA?

Now we seem to find out that it stands for

"Fashion Estimates Most Awesome"

Katrina boss's poser: tie or not?

If this doesn't scream he wasn't fit to be an Emergency Services Manager (and imply that Dubya appoints worthless cronies to important jobs) than nothing does. I nominate his picture for the new Webster dictionary under the definition of "Doofus".

Punctuation Drive

To help Coke with their apparent problem with missing punctuation, Ailaenea has gratiously donated

",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"

And she's pledged to refrain from using punctuation in her writing for one week to help out. She maintains that people won't be more confused than they normally are and some coworkers may mock her (but most of them are snobs anyways so We Hate Them) but still she sticks by her pledge.

A woman to admire folks. Let's have a big round of applause!

Punctuationally Challenged?

Okay when I told Sharon, Jack and Andy about my theory of regarding "Give Dead Love", she corrected me. She told me the logo on the new coke cans was probably meant to be

"Give, Live, Love"

So they lost their commas somewhere. So I think we should start a drive now. To "send a shout out" to all my "homeys" who are educated, articulate people everywhere. Coke obviously is Punctuationally Challenged and in dire need of a large number of commas (there have got to be lots and lots of these cans, surely).

So everyone, send your spare commas to ... (let me find an address) ...

The Coca-Cola Company
P.O. Box 1734
Atlanta, GA, USA 30301

Give Dead Love?

I got a 12 pack of Diet Coke the other day and printed on the box (and the cans) it says

"Give Live Love"

What does this mean? I'm totally puzzled here. I'm familiar with a number of the adjectives commonly used to modify the word "love". Doomed, forsaken, unrequited, cursed, tragic, happy, joyful, etc. But I've never heard or seen the word "live" used to modify love. It's immediate implication is that if there is "live love" then there must be "dead love" ...

Well now a use of the term "dead love" does spring to mind. In some stories where the hero is haunted by the thoughts/memories/spectre/ghost of his now dead wife I've seen "dead love" used as a noun to describe her (or him I suppose). But I've still never heard of the still living spouse (or lover I suppose) being called a "live love".

And even if they were, how would you "give" them? Or what?

Maybe ...

you're not going to get any wisdom Woody. After all it doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to know you don't fool around with the daughter of your wife. <insert something here about how smart a box of rocks is> (even if you were pretty damn funny 30 years ago)

"W" is for Wrong

I occasionally see bumper stickers from the election last year. The big "W" ones. This morning I saw a different one. And this thought occurred to me (see title).

My new computer came today. Now I have to install the OS on the hard drive and then see about installing all the software and transferring all my data from the other one. Matt thinks that he'll get my old system. He will but it will be contingent upon his grades so he's likely to be disappointed when he finds that out.

However he did well last night passing out Halloween candy. He was sort of pouty when he finally remembered to ask me about the costume he wanted to wear. Had he asked this weekend I would have found out then that it was packed away in one of the boxes and we might have had time to find it. As it was I wasn't in the mood last night to go digging through all that stuff and he was put out, which put me out when he sulked as I showed him some other costume ideas. More drama. At least it was little drama instead of big.

Oh, and a pastor who didn't pay enough attention in high school science class. Or perhaps they don't teach science at seminary (I have no idea but I wouldn't think so). (and yes, I do sympathize with the family that a husband and father has died but it also strikes me as hilarious that Natural Selection is at work here)