09:18 – I did go ahead and make up one liter of the 0.1 M IKI solution from solid iodine and potassium iodine. A tenth mole of each in 20 mL of water forms a brown-black sludge that looks like tar. So, with the IKI I already had on hand, I now have enough to make up 40 or so 30 mL bottles. Once the other liter finally goes into solution, I’ll have enough for 30 more.
I almost finished the glass and plastic analysis group of lab sessions for the forensics book yesterday. I’ll finish that today and start on the fingerprinting group. That’s a pretty large group, but I should be able to finish it this week.
Speaking of forensics, Barbara and I recently started watching Crossing Jordan again. We’d already watched the first season, which was released on DVD some years ago. But there was then some issue with music copyrights that for several years made it impossible for the studio to release seasons two through six. In March, all six seasons showed up on Netflix streaming, so we started watching it again where we’d left off.
The cast is good. The writing is generally competent, if not great. Sure, they put their characters in a lot of unrealistic situations, but that’s TV. What’s interesting is how they present forensic science. Unlike Bones, with its imaginary forensics, with minor exceptions Crossing Jordan sticks pretty much to the real deal. Yeah, they sometimes do things that are imaginary in 2012 and would have been really imaginary in 2002, like putting two blood samples into a desktop gene sequencer, punching a button, and four seconds later having Southern blots show up on the computer display, which flashes “DNA MATCH!”. But overall they get the science pretty much right. They also get the personality traits right, particularly with Bug (a forensic entomologist) and Nigel (a forensic technician).
We’re also well into season three of Heartland, which a lot of people think of as the Canadian version of McLeod’s Daughters. We liked the first couple seasons of McLeod’s Daughters, but it quickly went down the tubes after they killed off Claire. As long as Heartland doesn’t make the mistake of killing off Amy, they should be good for a 10 or 15 year run. The cast is first-rate, as is the writing.
Over the years, I’ve rated several hundred series and movies on Netflix, and given fewer than a dozen of those five stars. Heartland gets five stars, at least so far.
We are getting a see-saw whip from the jet stream here in Tinyland. Either we have daytime temps into the 80’s F, or it does not get much higher than 50. After a couple weeks of what I would call seasonal temps–highs into the low 50’s,–it was nearly 85 yesterday. Looks like that will continue for the next week–as far as I can find jet stream projections. I would not mind a cool summer (1967–the summer of love–comes to mind), but we sure are not started in the right direction.
It was a see-saw briefly here, too, Chuck; a week of nice late-spring-type weather with temps in the 60s, sun and blue sky, daffodils, forsythia, etc. Then suddenly back to the 30s during the days, with sideways freezing rain, sleet, hail, fog and howling winds, plus snow above 600 feet. 20s at night and with the wind, a chill factor down to zero. This week so far, just temps in the 40s and more or less steady drizzle. March showers bring April showers bring May showers which will hopefully bring June flowers here, and not another year like last summer, when it rained every frigging day from March until September and we had two record floods.
Ah yes, the Summer of Love. Just watched the PBS version of it with our daughter, and I was able to show her that the cops back then were absolutely right; they told all those hippies to stay home or at least stay away from SF, not because they hated them, but simply because the city could not support the logistics necessary to safely take care of the crowds expected. It would be unpleasant, uncomfortable and a safety hazard for all concerned, which turned out to be true. Even the hardcore hippies in SF told the hordes of others to stay away, but they came anyway, with flowers in their hair and in the following years found Desolation Row.
OFD was out there in ’72, five years later, and by then it was hard drugs and then some, and a really unpleasant, depressing scene, except for the decent clubs and concert venues, where I caught all kinds of great acts, including one Frank Zappa, at the Berkeley Community Theater. I had known him as a wise-ass maniac with the Mothers and lo and behold, what an amazing guitarist that guy was. He was awesome, and easily in the league with Clapton, Beck, Santana, et. al.
Let’s see. Even if I’d known about the Summer of Love at the time, I couldn’t have gone. For one thing, my younger brother was only a year old and so my mother couldn’t have taken me. For another, I couldn’t have gone by myself because my legs were too short to reach the pedals. And I hadn’t been out of diapers that long myself, so I’d probably have had to make an awful lot of rest stops along the way, even if I could reach the pedals.
But that’s ok. I’m laughing at all you boomers because you’ll be dead or in nursing homes soon and I’ll be sitting back enjoying this wonderful world and wonderful economy your generation has left for those who come after.
Er…
Dammit!
Zappa’s record album persona was pure invention, I believe. I never met him, but he played Indianapolis frequently, and a close friend who worked in concert promotions at an ad agency was involved in most such events around here back then. He said Zappa was not only a really nice guy, but super-intelligent and could talk about anything. My own assessment was that Zappa could easily have been a symphony orchestra conductor, but then, there is not as much money in that as in being a successful rock star. He played to an audience, and knew that audience well.
Same with Iggy Pop. He’s in it for the audience and money. We were born within days of each other, and he sure looks a helluva lot better shirtless at our age than I do.
Anybody have any experience with something like an online conference room scheduler? We have a studio that is becoming so busy it needs some kind of scheduling. We have no company intranet, so it needs to be something entirely outside web-oriented. People from all walks use the studio–so the schedule needs to be accessible by about a dozen different people.
Does not need to do anything fancy–just a calendar to let others who use the studio, know when time is available, who is using it when it is occupied, and be able to sign up themselves for vacant hours.
Ol’ Frank knew the classical repertoire and modern stuff very well, and of course he pushed that persona for all he was worth. The Mothers are still around, sort of, and doing various things musical. Iggy looks OK shirtless if one admires the anorexic, nearly skeletal male torso and accompanying viz. And Alice Cooper turns out to be a right-wing radio dj.
This SteveF character is evidently significantly younger than us so-called boomers and apparently expects there will be a chance of a better world and a better economy after we old buggers is gone off to graveyards and nursing homes. I have sad tidings for him.
In any case, no nursing home for OFD; I’ll go out in a blaze of glory first.
Chuck, I’m pretty sure a colleague used Google Calendar for that purpose. His team set up the conference room as a “person” and scheduled meetings for it. This would have been about two years ago; presumably the app’s features are even better now.
(Bear in mind the usual caveats whenever I say anything: I’m a burnout, I’m an idiot, I’m prone to babbling with no attempt at coherence, I am known to the State of California to cause cancer in small mammals.)
Great idea! I’ll look into that. Thanks!
Bill, the PDF utility I was thinking of was FoxIt. I remembered after I posted the question.
Steve, thanks for the details about DXDiag. I was thinking of a utility called Everest by an outfit called Lavalys. They used to have a freeware utility, but I think they discontinued it and now ask that you pay for a souped up version.
Chuck, I’ve had Firefox 12 running for three days, no problems. Did you say you have only one computer now, a laptop, that has the problem?
Ah, I haven’t used FoxIt for a couple of years. Don’t even remember why I changed?
Foxit screwed me over–that’s why I changed. I bought what they called a ‘lifetime’ upgrade for around $50, specifically in order to be able to save fill-in PDF’s. At that time there was no alternative I was aware of, which was not bloatware and allowed one to save a PDF with info filled-in. About 4 months later, the auto-upgrade feature upgraded me to their latest version. The paid-for key stopped working. I called them on the phone, and they told me my ‘lifetime’ upgrade was for the previous version–a lifetime key to that version only–and not for any future upgrades. This was NOT explained anywhere on their site, and certainly I did not expect to have only 4 months use of the damned thing before it expired. AND to top it off, they no longer posted the version I had the key to, and would not send me a copy of it without paying them more money.
English is not the native language of the people in charge at Foxit, and I must admit I had very bad thoughts about people who use Asian syntax in their English for a good many weeks. Grrr. I will have nothing to do with Foxit, ever again. It is bloatware now, anyway.
As I mentioned before, I am pretty sure that my troubles with Firefox are because I have only 3gb of addressable RAM, running XP. If you have a more modern system with more RAM, I suspect there will not be much problem. All I can say is that I previously had no problems whatever with versions prior to about 5. I have a 750gb hard drive with over 80gb free, so hard drive should not pose any problems.
It is definitely Firefox that is the problem, not swap space or anything like that. When the computer becomes virtually locked up, I can go in and kill the Firefox process, and the drive thrashing instantly stops.