08:08 – Our editor sent us the QC2 galley proof yesterday, so I’ve been reading through it and making final corrections. I’ll probably finish that today, or maybe tomorrow. At that point, the book goes to the printer, and should be in the bookstores within a month or so.
Meanwhile, our stock of biology kits is starting to dwindle. We have enough to carry us for the next couple of weeks at the current sales rate, so I plan to get another 30 biology kits assembled and ready to ship over the coming week or so. We’re in reasonably good shape on chemistry kits, with a decent number in stock and another 60 kits a-building.
13:11 – As always, I’m enjoying going through the QC PDF. I really enjoy writing about and reading about forensic science. Also, as always, for some reason I’m surprised as I read to discover that this guy sounds like he really knows what he’s talking about.
And I think about stuff that for now remains in the realm of science fiction. For example, right now I’m reading the group of lab sessions on fingerprinting. I’m thinking about how often a questioned fingerprint is useless in the absence of a suspect because that print is not on file, and I think to myself that there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to reverse-engineer a fingerprint into the nuclear DNA fragment that caused that fingerprint to be expressed. Similarly, given a questioned nuclear DNA specimen for which no match is on file, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to use that DNA to construct the fingerprints of the person it belongs to. Every loop, every bifurcation and whirl, every pore, is programmed into that DNA. We just don’t know enough, yet, to reverse-engineer fingerprints to nDNA fragments or nDNA to fingerprint patterns. But I have no doubt that we’ll do it eventually. I’ve seen nothing in the literature about this idea, but it’d make an interesting project.
Whose errors? Yours or theirs? (Or a mixture?)
Both. Mine are things that I just didn’t catch while I was writing it or on any of the previous read-throughs. Obviously, I’m not the best person for that, since I tend to read what I thought I wrote rather than what’s actually there. Theirs are mostly artifacts of the conversion process.
Every time I see galley proofs I have flashbacks to my early days in print, with reams of proofs hot from the Compugraphic!
Finally had a chance to sit down and actually unpack the science kit. It was like the Clown Car of Science Kits! It took a moment to put everything back, and now I have to see if I can find a toolbox or tackle box that can hold all this stuff!
Very neat, and well down, by the way. It’s like you’ve been building science kits all your life!
Cool. Glad you’re happy with it.
I am convinced that packaging is an art, not a science. Some of the stuff I get from Amazon totally amazes me (Clown Car description is perfect!). Others are like, did you really want to give me 3 lbs of boxes!!!
there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to reverse-engineer a fingerprint into the nuclear DNA fragment that caused that fingerprint to be expressed
Nuclear DNA isn’t the whole story, or identical twins would have identical fingerprints instead of very, very similar ones. The biology community has been scrambling since the human genome was decoded and it was determined that nuclear DNA is not the whole story on physical development – cellular RNA, mitochondrial DNA, environment (especially in the womb), gut flora, etc. all have a role to play.
Of course they do. I was simplifying, obviously. In particular, we’re beginning to realize how important RNA is to many things.
Instapundit had a link to the following: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/07/robert-farago/olympic-pistol-shooting-explained/
A video that explains the Olympic pistol events, as told by one of the top shooters in the world. A little over 14 minutes long. One interesting factoid – in the 9 months after the last Olympics and the world cup the next year, he only shot 500 rounds (even though they are essentially free and he works at a range). But he did over 100k dry fires.
Sometimes, mail solicitations are over the top. A company called Vectren delivers natural gas to Tiny House. I just got an envelope from them, but it really was not from them, but from some “insurance” outfit that wants to insure—not my outside natural gas pipes, but—my water and sewer pipes. Why is a solicitation from the gas company crossing the line to a city service, water and sewer? Fact is that the Tiny Town water utility tends to all pipes up to the house itself, so this is a definite scam. It is also couched in super-urgent language, as if I MUST make a decision before a deadline they set for next month, or I will lose money in the process.
I have told both my Senator and Congressman that I want junk mail rates to end and all users of the post office to pay first-class rates for everything except packages (parcels, my grandmother used to call them). I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to live in Germany where—in nearly 10 years—I think we got 2 solicitations by mail, because all those had to pay first-class rates. I get no less than 6 pieces of mail a day, 6 days a week, and only about 6 items a month are real letters or bills. I throw all of them into a particular trash container, and when it is full (about twice a month) it has to weigh over 20 pounds. What a waste of my time and effort—even if you are not an environmentalist.
“I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to live in Germany…”
Oh YES you CAN!
Just funnin’, Chuck.
We get a huge amount of junk mail. First, my wife does a lot of Christmas and birthday shopping via catalog. She gets 10-12 catalogs a week during off season. Second, we take a cruise every other year on average, so the cruise companies send us stuff. Third, she is a physician, so she gets deluged with credit card offers, luxury car offers, medical device and drug updates, education and scientific meeting notices, etc. We fill up a large PO box every week with this stuff. From October to the end of the year we have to go twice a week.
The car guys are barking up the wrong tree – we run our cars until they fall apart. My wife’s Lexus RX-300 has over 250k miles on it and counting. Still runs well.
“…remains in the realm of science fiction”
Part of your first novel?
Chuck wrote:
“I cannot tell you how wonderful it was to live in Germany…”
The, ah, scenery isn’t bad but they speak a really strange dialect of English. 🙁
ech wrote:
“The car guys are barking up the wrong tree – we run our cars until they fall apart. My wife’s Lexus RX-300 has over 250k miles on it and counting. Still runs well.”
Amen brother, I can’t be bothered swapping cars till I have to. Bought my first car, new, in 1980. A Chrysler Sigma. Traded it in in 1993 (with 247k km on the clock) on a new Holden Berlina. The Sigma was having lots of minor problems and I got sick of spending dough on a car I didn’t really like driving -(no air conditioning, for example.)
The Berlina was wonderful. When I got the Sigma I’d just started work and couldn’t afford anything elaborate. The Berlina was larger, had a more powerful engine, automatic transmission, air conditioning, and so on. I just traded it in as it was developing lots of faults. It was 18.5 years old, had done less than 150k km. I think age more than km took their toll.
So now I have a Subaru Forester. Damn thing, I have to look up the manual for *everything*. Want to know how to lock the car? Read through four pages of manual, with lots of “If you have model-a do this, if model-b do that…”. I’m also having to re-learn gear changes after 18.5 years in an automatic. But I still like it.
Shout out to all the resident flashlight experts…looking for a good light to use while out at night walking the dog on unlit streets…thinking perhaps a two C-cell or four AA-cell model might have the right heft…not necessarily looking for Fenix quality, perhaps something one level down…thanks.
http://strangeweaponoftheweek.com/tag/fmg – the ultimate flashlight if you are worried about four- or two-legged predators.
Fact is that the Tiny Town water utility tends to all pipes up to the house itself, so this is a definite scam.
In most cities the piping is owned, and maintained, by the city up to the meter including the meter. After the meter it is your problem. Sewer line is generally to same point as the water line because in my case the sewer connection is under the street and a private individual cannot dig up streets.
Shout out to all the resident flashlight experts…looking for a good light to use while out at night walking the dog on unlit streets
Go with the Fenix lights. You will not regret it. What I like are the multiple levels and that requires circuitry in the light. Low for the dark areas where you don’t need much light with instant access to full power when needed. Avoid the CR123 lights unless you really need lots of power. AA cells cannot deliver the current needed for the really bright stuff.
Fenix are considered high middle (or low high end) lights and work quite well. I have several. In fact on my body right now I have 3 lights which is about normal for me.
Barring the Fenix you would do well with the Maglite LED 2AA or 3AA lights. They are not that expensive and can be found at many local stores. Get much below the $30.00 range and the lights have poor optics, off color LEDs, poor efficiency, etc.
But for my money I would get http://www.fenix-store.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_421&products_id=362 this light. AA batteries, 4 light levels, really bright and durable. You pay more but you get a lot more.
I test drove a manual Jeep wrangler unlimited (4 door) earlier this year. The wife said I shifted like a spastic monkey. I drove manuals from 1982 to 1996 but looks like I lost the skill.
I test drove the manual Subaru Forester last year. Loved it, was almost as good a shifter as my wife’s 2005 honda civic ex coupe which has the best ever manual shift / clutch combo. You can shift it with one finger, the effort is so low. And she gets 27/35 (city/highway) and drives it like she stole it.
Ah, the old flashlight quality debate.
I have no doubt that everything Ray says is true. On the other hand, I bought a pack of ten three-AAA LED flashlights a couple years ago at Home Depot for $9.99. For a buck each, including batteries, these things are perfect for our needs. They work fine. They’re bright. The batteries last a long, long time.
So we have them scattered all over the place. I carry one with me. We have them in each of our cars. I have one on my desk, as does Barbara. We each have one on our nightstands.
To get all that stuff that Ray talks about, I might pay as much as two bucks apiece, but not more. I just don’t see any point to it. As Voltaire said, the best is the enemy of the good. And these things are Good Enough.
Monkeys don’t get good press nowadays…
Lynn changes gears like one, and there was a saying 25 years ago at my workplace that “a trained monkey could operate a Cyber” – Cybers were the brand of mainframe we had.
I’m getting better at changing gears again, but 18.5 years is a long time and I’m still embarrassing myself, especially at traffic lights where I stall the Forester too often.
Flashlights. Check.
City water, pipes, meters and sewage. Check.
Junk mail. Check.
Manual transmissions. Check.
Life being grand in Germany. Check.
Spastic monkeys. Check.
I wonder sometimes if anyone else comes across this site and ponders the characters who abide here….
Middle-aged guys with grey hair. Check.
Lots of guys with bees in their bonnets about some issue/s or other/s. CHECK!
My hair’s not grey, but it’s pretty damn receded. I do have a fair amount of grey in my beard when I grow one, but it’s all in the area where I ripped off part of my face and had it put back on.
Other than that, yah. Bee in my bonnet, bug up my ass, whatever.
Ah ha! Another baldie!
Have you gone the combover route, the bare skull route, or the wig route? 🙂
I used to know a couple of guys whose toupées were so obvious I thought they were real hair. I mean *nobody* wears a dark brown toupée when the hair at the back and the sides are grey. Eventually they both gave up the pretence.
(Spoken as a guy who started going grey at 20 but at least still has plenty of hair, unlike his older brother.)
I have always loved the eclectic nature of this forum. You have to be here every day to understand it.
Heard on BBC news this morning while showering, that the US generally is having the driest weather in more than a century, and that crops are failing so miserably that prices are right now 40% higher than last year. Nearly every day, I hear from someone new that either their corn or soybeans are complete losses. Heard from another one today. Sharecrop owner of modest acreage, and his loss will be $4k on beans alone. He is a retired gentleman, and this is only the second year in the history of his farm—going back 3 generations—that there will have been a loss, instead of a profit. This is going to have an effect on land prices around here, depressing prices that have been really good, having rebounded only a couple years after the real estate bubble burst.
Weather people on the media around here say we are in a “heat dome”—which is supposedly why we had such a mild winter. Their prediction is: no end in sight to current conditions. Too bad people around here proclaim themselves dedicated Bible bangers, but never build up anything during the good years to use during the bad.
My electric bill topped $100 this month, so that is worse than last year. Rates could have gone up, but I think the central air is running more than last year. Heard some crickets outside tonight for the first time this year. I am surprised by that, because there just are no bugs. Not sure what the birds are living on, but there are plenty of them—except for the rare breeds.
My electricity bill is going ballistic too, and I don’t even have air conditioning. And it’s getting worse. The Greens, the puppet masters of our ALP federal government, twisted the lovely Julia Gillard’s arm and foisted a carbon tax on us, which will drive up electricity and other prices even more. The carbon tax was ALP policy but initially they decided to shelve it. At the last election the ALP became dependent on the Greens and the latter demanded and got their pound of flesh.
The ALP (and hopefully the Greens) are headed for a monumental train wreck at the next election, which can’t come soon enough for me.
(Yeah, I like this forum too, most of the Northern Hemisphere members are certifiable, which adds to the interest.)
Chuck wrote: “I have always loved the eclectic nature of this forum. You have to be here every day to understand it.”
Yeah, I’ve been here everyday for over ten years and I can’t profess to understand it. It IS eclectic!
Bill wrote:
“I can’t profess to understand it. ”
That’s okay Bill, we all make allowances for you being a Cannuk. (I’ve heard that Cannuks have the highest proportion of Neandertal genes in the world outside Port Adelaide.)
Electricity bills – I have a different perspective, since my wife’s business is in the same building as where we live. As soon as you have commercial equipment – especially commercial kitchen equipment – your electric bill goes crazy.
Just as an example: my wife has a commercial freezer. The damned thing seems to run practically all the time, which got me to wondering how much power it sucks, so I plugged it through a meter yesterday. Would you believe: 600 watts! At our electrical rates, assuming it runs 50% of the time (an underestimate – at least in summer), that’s about $10 / week just for the freezer.
I really wonder at the commercial kitchen equipment. The primary features are (1) all stainless steel, easy-to-clean and (2) the standardized “gastro-norm” sizes, so you can take a tray of stuff out of the freezer and shove it directly into the oven. Beyond that, it’s crap. Deliberately crap. Our private freezer is “just works”; the commercial one needs serviced at least twice per year. The same for the commercial dishwasher, the commercial fridge and the commercial oven. It reminds me of printers and toner: the real money is made in repairs and service.
I have always loved the eclectic nature of this forum./i>
“Everyone is somebody else’s weirdo”. I figure that’s a credo to live by.
I used to think Bob was the weirdo-in-chief here. Now I *know* it’s OFD.
I don’t suppose you’d like to trade electric bills, Chuck? You really must live in a tiny house.
I’d settle for $100 month average anytime. It’s around $250 at the month now as it’s winter here.
Your evaluation criteria are skewed. We’re both much closer to normal than you seem to think. In fact, I’d call us average in many respects.
Average? Maybe for the group of us who hang out here… I think both of you are three standard deviations away from average.
“I think both of you are three standard deviations away from average.”
One in one direction, the other in the other.
I used to know a couple of guys whose toupées were so obvious I thought they were real hair.
I worked with a guy that was bald so he bought of Ron Popeil hair spray. It was supposed to make it look like you had hair. When he arrived for work it was really obvious that he had spray painted his head. He also had a habit of scratching his head. As the day work on you could see white scrape marks all over his scalp. Really looked bad. Never saw the paint used again.
My electric bill topped $100 this month, so that is worse than last year.
You will no sympathy from me. My bill is averaged out over the year at $156.00 per month. Last month I topped $250.00 for electricity. I have a 4 ton unit for a 3400 sqft house, plus a 1hp pool pump that runs 14 hours a day. Everything is electric except the heat. So I get socked big time.
“he bought a can of Ron Popeil”
Obviously, it depends on what characteristics you’re talking about. In terms of height, I’m only 2σ above the mean, and OFD is a bit more, maybe 2.2σ.
In terms of religious devoutness, OFD and I are both well within the average group. Neither of us actually believes any of that shit; one of us pretends to, and the other doesn’t.
In terms of number of firearms owned, OFD and I both probably fall into your estimated +3σ range.
re Electricity rates and costs: Years back, when the Enron and Greyout
Davis crisis was peaking in California, the news mentioned that poor,
poor Californians had just had another 40% rate hike forced on them,
which had almost doubled their rates in two or three years. Wow, sounds
really bad… until you see that their new, higher rate was 7.9
cents/kWh. I, in upstate New York, was at the time paying 9.7 and was
looking at another 20% hike “to pay for equipment upgrades”. (All
numbers are from memory. Not worth researching because the patterns are
correct even if the figures are not.)
RBT and OFD are Great Americans too!
It was just raining again here in Sugar Land, Texas. For the 6th ? 8th ? 10th ? day in a row. I’ve lost count. But my ponds are full and hitting the overflow channels!
I am paying 8.5 c/kwh at my home (4,000 kwh last hour weeks) and 8.3 c/kwh (6,000 kwh) at my office. Totally awesome rates but Mr. Obummer has declared that our lignite and coal power plants in Texas must shut down starting with the units that do not have SO2 scrubbers (about 7 or 8 of them). That is currently in litigation with a federal court stay so we are still OK here but if those shutdown, we are immediately in crisis here with meeting our power needs. BTW, about 40% of our power comes from coal in Texas and Texas is an electric island (google ERCOT).
Texas is totally unique in that we only pay for power produced, we do not pay for power in reserve. It looks like that is getting ready to come and bite us, maybe next summer.
Of course, about half of the USA is moving to Texas so our power needs are jumping considerably. Texas is now the 2nd most populous state in the union with 26 mil ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population ). Everybody I know that wants a job has a job here unlike most other states. There are a LOT of California and New York license plates running around the place and the new home builders are kicking in high gear.
I don’t remember what I’m paying for water now but I think it’s several dollars per 1000 litres. I remember seeing my parents water bill in 1970, the rate was 4 cents per thousand gallons.
I am paying about $4 per 1000 gallons of water per month. We are supposed to convert to surface water from ground water so we have a 100% penalty on all water usage right now since my area uses ground water. My house typically uses 20,000 gallons per month since we have to water the yard (we quit watering recently due to all the rain). In 2013, the penalty goes to 200%. I don’t even even want to know about 2014. There is no more surface water to convert our area to so we are sticking with ground water until the aquifer runs outs.
Since we have used so much of the ground water over the past several decades, our area is dropping several inches per decade. In fact, we had to raise the levee between us and the Brazos river by four feet a couple of years ago. My particular subdivision pumps 3 to 6 million gallons of water per day out of the ground. This is for 4,601 homes plus all of our common areas.
“RBT and OFD are Great Americans too!”
No, Robert, you are too kind. We are merely average.
From what I see you’re both just cranky old Yankee geezers… 🙂
Lynn, if you’re raising the levee on the Brazos I assume there’s plenty of water in it. How come you don’t just use river water?
Robert ain’t a Yankee no mo; and although I AM one, my sympathies are with the South, so a Copperhead, literally and figuratively; still got almost all my hair and it is still dark auburn/chestnut.
My sympathies are with the South, almost. If I’d been Lincoln I would have let the Deep South nutters go in a flash. That would have short circuited succession almost everywhere else, and the nutters would soon have been back, begging for re-admission on any terms they could get. Sort of like people on welfare.
I’ve been reading recently how many Southern generals were strongly opposed to succession, but served the South when it did occur.
As to the term Yank/Yankee, almost any non-American will use the term to refer to any American, even Southerners.
Glad your hair is still coloured. Is it natural or, like our prime minister, does it come from a bottle? 🙂
It is perfectly natural; and my youngest brother, ten years younger, had the same color chestnut but his has gone gray now, probably from the chemo treatments recently.
I realize the rest of the world considers us all Yanks, but a genuine Yankee is found here in rural New England, period. A Swamp Yankee is found in the swampy areas of northern Rhode Island, specifically. Their own dialect and customs, etc.
Lincoln and his thug war criminal generals and the railroads and banks had zero intention of ever letting the South go, and went about destroying them and their culture and bringing about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the destruction of families and property, and the consequences redound to us to this day and age here. If they were “nutters” then so were the New Englanders who’d tried TWICE to secede years earlier, and that would have been perfectly OK, of course.
The victors write the history books, and unfortunately the country and apparently the rest of the world have been sold a rotten bill of goods as to Lincoln as the Second Coming and the brave heroic Union troops ending slavery, the only reason the war was fought, etc., etc. All utter bullshit.
So, if the South didn’t have slavery do you think the CW would still have happened. I know Northerners had mixed motivations in fighting the war but do you think it made economic sense to try to keep the South in? I don’t, and would just have let them go and kept trading with them if I’d been Lincoln. As I said, they’d have been back pretty quickly once the initial enthusiasm had died down.
Well, I’m glad your hair colour is still natural. That’s quite an achievement at your advanced age. Of course, it means that many people who see you in person will think it comes from a bottle. It also means that people will think you don’t look as distinguished as me and our host.
If it came from a bottle than why wouldn’t I also do my facial hair, which is red but heavy on the white?
And I am not as distinguished as you and our host anyway. Just a poor old IT drone in a tiny little corner of the country, fiddling around with firearms and explosives…
“If it came from a bottle than why wouldn’t I also do my facial hair, which is red but heavy on the white?”
Cuz you’re a freak of nature, or all that radiation from guarding the nukes in Main when you were younger mutated your head hair follicles but not your beard ones.
*Maine
The Brazos River water is owned by Dow Chemical. It was given to them back in WWII as a part of them manufacturing magnesium for the airplane engines, parts, etc. They needed fresh water for all that but ended up never using it. But Dow still owns it and may some day start using it.
Of course, the Brazos is a highly variable river and during droughts almost flows nothing. It was 3 ft deep and not flowing before the recent rains. It is now 6 ft deep. I have seen it 45 ft deep, a mile wide, and people having to run for higher land.
Yep, guarding nuke warheads in central Maine as a young whippersnapper; that could very well have scrambled my hair genes, and did Lord knows what to brain cells that had already seen fields of pot smoked and over a hundred acid trips. And several tankers of lousy American lager.
And looking in the mirror, yeah, people probably *would* figure I dye my hair if they knew my age; it is still dark auburn with maybe a couple of gray hairs around the temples, and then the mustache and beard are red with a lot of white and blonde. Both grandfathers kept their hair until they checked out, and my dad’s dad stayed red. My dad, OTOH, was bald by the time he was 25 and his hair had been black. I have one brother with the strawberry blonde type red hair, still that color, and my little brother’s was the same as mine until recently. Third brother’s is dark brown and our sister’s is anybody’s guess over the decades, various shades of brown, blonde, red, and mostly from a succession of dyes and bottles. No idea what it really is anymore. Mrs. OFD’s is red-red, and she has big blue eyes. Mine are hazel/green.
73 today and another gorgeous day in Vermont; gotta pick her up at the airport tomorrow AM and then she will crash for a day or two, at least. Back to work on Monday where we are upgrading a cluster of 155 RH 4 nodes to RH 5, and already, having done the firmware, we are running into issues with network stuff and rpm’s missing, and it will be a cold day in Hell when one of these gigs runs smoothly and correctly from start to finish. And a lot of it is hands-on and needs a clearance to be in the DC, so this gig ain’t going to Kuala Lumpur or Uttar Pradesh anytime soon, not so long as our DOD still flies fighter-bomber aircraft around the globe.
I just fragged a 2 TB Caviar Black drive! I was pulling the 2nd SATA cable through the file server case and did not notice that the cable had connected with the first drive’s cable. I gave a little tug (NEVER TUG A SATA CABLE!) and the WD’s SATA port broke right off. I’m standing staring at 8 copper wires staring back at me. The entire black plastic assembly that holds those dudes in place and keeps them from touching broke right off.
Sigh. $200 down the drain. I screwdrivered the platters and got my spare. Sigh.
Hey, don’t feel bad, Lynn; couple of weeks ago I was attempting to re-seat a CMOS battery on a motherboard at work and the procedure simply involves pushing it a bit with one’s finger until it sort of pops out. Nope; the shitty plastic housing that holds it is attached to the board with three tiny, tiny soldered points and it snapped right off.
We have a running joke there; any potentially complex procedures that we do to fix something or build something invariably does not work as advertised and we laughingly boast about how we broke it even worse.