Rant

In the seven years since my first radio contacts, I now have a process for logging amateur radio contacts. However, it wasn’t until I started working remotely more that I appreciated how **logging amateur radio contacts accurately is complicated.**This inaccurate logging was the cause of much frustration during the final throes of my completing the ARRL Triple Play where, for example, the Parks on the Air person I worked “in Michigan” would log their home state (not Michigan). I now understand why. ...

In September, I was invited to participate in “Birdwatch,” now known as “Twitter Community Notes.” The concept is a misleading tweet can be annotated with additional information or context by the community. Image source: XKCD 386: Duty Calls For example, consider this headline: Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd holds press conference after agency says it seized enough fentanyl to kill 2.7 million people. WFLA, October 21, 2022 ...

Some time ago, I’d been in hiring mode for a business analyst for my team and “had a few thoughts” that I have kept in draft form for some time. As this is now an ex-company/team, I feel okay writing about it, but am somewhat lazy about changing present tense. How I think the process should have worked: Hiring manager (me) transforms needs into requirements. Human Resources (HR) discusses it with me then initiates a search. HR is the gatekeeper, protecting the interests of the company and doing first-level screening. Potentially-qualified candidates are forwarded to the me for review. If there’s interest, HR will set up a meeting between the candidate and me. If the results are positive, an interview may be scheduled with an extended group. If the results are positive, there is a verbal discussion of terms. If an agreement is reached, a formal offer is generated. Employee and employer have a productive relationship How it actually worked: ...

About three years ago, on the way to our summer camping trip to Mt. Rainier, I launched a travel bug: George is young, enthusiastic, and poor as a student George’s stated (and optimistic) goal was to visit its eccentric cousin who spends his days in Concourse A of Terminal 3 in Cincinnati’s airport doing street performance art for spare change. The Concourse has had a rough couple of years, being closed in 2010 (because Delta and Northwest merged) before being reopened in 2011 as its sibling, Terminal 2, closed. ...

My kids were feeling somewhat left out each time I dropped a Star Wars reference in conversation – something I apparently do a lot. Hoping to shore up this gap in their cultural education, I rented and watched all three(*) movies from Netflix with them. Parenting can be tough! (*I am, of course, referring to A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I’ve heard rumors that there is another trilogy using the Star Wars name, and it even had Samuel L. Jackson asking “ __‘What’ ain’t no planet I ever heard of. They speak Bocce on What?” But the ones I saw were CGI-frenzies. (There’s also rumor of two sequels to The Matrix. Yeah, riiiiight.)) ...

Supercomputing 2010’s keynote was Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (and its numerous follow-ons), whose research, studying the demise of companies over time, is utterly fascinating (to me) and I can’t believe I hadn’t read before. He has studied the demise of companies over time — think Digital Equipment Corporation (cut up into bite-sized chunks in 1998, the rest of which was eaten by Compaq, which was eaten by HP), SGI (a darling when Jurassic Park came out, but ultimately liquidated in 2009, assets bought by Rackable systems), and Sun (bought by Oracle). He’s observed recurring patterns of market disruption. For example, in the case of DEC, their rise was predicated on being cheaper than mainframes. As they gained more experience, the minicomputers became more reliable, but were still in the $100k range. DEC itself was subject to PCs meeting a nascent market need willing to tolerate PCs being utter crap (early-on), but at a far different price point. As PC technology evolved, it became compelling enough that few were buying VAXen. ...

I’ve been researching date/time formats for inclusion in a software product, and wanted to share some of the thought processes involved.Use case: an engineer or scientist wants to plot something over some time period. All time periods are possible, so we must provide years down to minutes. For example, a coastal engineer surveyed said he: “visualizes the results of the global wave prediction models we run. I am typically dealing with long term (20 – 40 year) datasets of hourly to sub-hourly model data.” ...

There are a variety of milk-based products available in the store. Just sticking to cow’s milk for the moment, here’s the periodic table of viscous milk products, ordered by decreasing fat content: Butter – 81% milk fat. A stick of butter (8 tablespoons) has 97.2 grams of fat (880 calories!), which breaks down into 62% saturated and 25% monosaturated. Trivia: West of the Rockies, butter sticks are 3 1/8″ x 1.5″ x 1.5″.4 Heavy Cream – 36 – 40% milk fat. Whipping Cream – 35% milk fat. It’s used to make whipped cream. Obviously. Sour Cream – 16 – 21% milk fat. Like buttermilk (see below), except it starts from cream instead of milk. Low-fat sour cream has thickening agents like carageenan or corn starch. (I was surprised at its fat content.) Light Cream – 18% milk fat, used for pouring into coffee.1 Half and Half – 10% milk fat, also used for pouring into coffee. Its fat content is insufficient for whipping. Evaporated milk – 6.5% or more. Liquid obtained by the partial removal of water (only) from milk[5]. 1 C condensed milk is equivalent to 1 C evaporated milk plus 1 1/2 C sugar. Whole Milk – 3.5% milk fat3. After drinking skim for a few weeks, this tastes soooooo creamy. Yogurt — 3.3% milk fat. Lowfat Milk – sold as 2%, 1%, 1/2%. Sometimes it’s fortified with skim milk. Skim Milk – Usually “0%,” but it’s technically less than 1/2 gram per cup. Sometimes protein is added, making it more viscous. **** Buttermilk – usually non-fat; “traditional” buttermilk is the tart liquid leftover from churning butter. 2 It can also be made by adding 1 tablespoon white vinegar to 1C low-fat milk, letting it stand for ten minutes. These amounts are squishy, so your mileage may vary. However, to put the fat content into perspective, a cup and a half of whole milk would be equivalent to a tablespoon of butter. (1.5 cups * 240g/cup * 3.5% fat = 12.6 g fat; 1 Tablespoon butter = 15 g * 0.81 fat = 12.2g fat) ...

I don’t drive as much as I used to, but yowza, $54.87 to fill up my gas tank today. For some historical perspective, the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy who publishes weekly gasoline prices. Here, they attempt to explain gas pricing, best summarized as: World crude oil prices reached record levels in 2007 due mainly to high worldwide oil demand relative to supply. Other factors contributing to higher crude oil prices include political events and conflicts in some major oil producing regions, as well as other factors such as the declining value of the U.S. dollar (the currency at which crude oil is traded globally). ...

Inspired by Spring being officially upon us in the northwest (while the rest of you in North America are having “summer”), I went on another cleaning rampage the weekend before CROC, this time focusing on the garage. For the most part, this involved coming to acceptance that the 17″ piece of baseboard, fractional container of petrified plumber’s putty, sourdough incubation chamber, and various other home improvement remnants Are Not Going To Be Used. Ever. Throwing out all this stuff freed up a lot of space on my “workbench,” formerly known as The Horizontal Surface On Which Crap Is Dumped. ...