Friday/ to Frankfurt

My bags are packed, and I’m heading to South Africa for my dad’s memorial service. I have a long layover in Frankfurt, so long that I should check into a day hotel there to get some sleep.  There are some right at the airport, and I may just do that.   I only arrive in Cape Town at about 12 noon on Sunday.

Trip to SA
Here’s my itinerary : 10, 10 and 2, Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and South African Airways from there to Cape Town.

Thursday/ a rainbow after the rain

It rained on and off all day here in Seattle, and so when the sun came out and struck the new green leaves on the tree in the street, I went to the upstairs window to take a look. That’s when I noticed the rainbow. I ran downstairs and took a picture.  All rainbows appear opposite of where the sun is (so I am looking east), and they are actually are full circles! – but most observers just see what is to them, the upper half of the arc.

IMG_1864 sm
This rainbow was visible at 7.30 pm from my front porch.  And is it my imagination, or is there the faintest secondary rainbow out there above it? I think I do see it !

Wednesday/ a birthday long ago

I am re-posting this picture that my brother had posted on Facebook on Monday.  If I go by the two candles on the cake, it is September of ’67, his second birthday.  My dad must have been 33 at the time, and had just lit the two candles on the birthday cake.  He made the patio furniture frames (in the background) and my mom the flowery cushions of sponge and vinyl cloth.  I am in the middle, mesmerized by the cake.  I remember that plastic table cloth with the ribbons so well, and the candle holders.  One was an elephant, the other a springbok (antelope).

Birthday 1967

Tuesday

It was a somber day for me .. late afternoon I went for a walk to Volunteer Park.  We are all flowers, fragile as flowers in the wind, I thought, when I saw these.

IMG_1847 sm
These spring flowers are outside the Conservatory in Volunteer Park here in Seattle.

A Tribute to my Dad

Our family received very bad news today. My dad had passed away somewhat unexpectedly at the age of 79, on Monday tonight in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
He leaves behind my mom (to whom he had been married some 55 years), his four sons, seven grandchildren and a brother.
He was born in 1934 in the district of Calvinia
in the Cape willem2005 002 smProvince of South Africa, the middle one of three boys.
He was a mechanical engineer, a no-nonsense kind of guy that said once : there’s no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, just follow the logic, and there you have your answer. For a large part of his career he was the managing director of a small tools manufacturing factory in our home town of Vereeniging, where I attended both primary school and high school.
In his spare time my dad loved to work with metal and especially iron.  He could design and make anything from garden furniture to trailers for his motorbikes and boats.  He also installed a small-block racing engine in one of his beloved Chevrolet trucks, a truck that took the whole family on many tours through Botswana and Namibia.   He and my mom also oversaw and had built a number of houses, two of them in Vereeniging, and most of the others in the coastal town of Plettenberg Bay where the family would spend a few weeks for many summers.
We will all miss him very much.  We feel blessed and lucky to have had him for a long time.
The picture : One of my favorites, one that I took in 1986 of mom and dad at home in Vereeniging in South Africa.

Sunday/ the University Temple church building

It was a gorgeous Sunday here in Seattle, but it was almost 4 o’clock before I chased myself out of the house to go for a walk.  So where to go, I thought?  I chose the University District; took the No 43 bus out there and walked around, and made a stop at the great bookstore that is run by the University of Washington.

IMG_1794 sm
The main tower of the University Temple building.   The church is on 16th Ave across from the University of Washington campus.  It belongs to the United Methodist Church. The building was designed in 1925 and constructed just a year later, in 1926.
IMG_1793 sm
.. and here is the beautiful artwork of the main entrance of the church.

Saturday/ OpenSSL is bleeding

On the internet front, news broke this week of heartbleedresearchers discovering an widely-used internet security door (an encryption protocol called OpenSSL) that has been left ajar for almost two years now.  It is called the ‘Heartbleed’ bug because it draws encryption keys (!) and password information (!) from the back-and-forth sending of encrypted data between a server and a client computer. Hackers using it leave no trace, so it is unknown how widespread its exploitation has been.

Says internet security expert Brian Krebs on his blog : It is likely that a great many Internet users will be asked to change their passwords this week (I hope). Meantime, companies and organizations running vulnerable versions should upgrade to the latest iteration of OpenSSL (1.0.1g) — as quickly as possible.   So the company has to upgrade its OpenSSL, and the users have to change their passwords as well.  The problem is, given the growing public awareness of this bug, it’s probable that phishers and other scam artists will take full advantage of the situation.  (Sending users fake and infected requests for clicking on a link to changing a password, for example.  ALWAYS go directly to the website by typing in the URL or using an established ‘favorites’ link, when changing a password).

Here are Krebs’s 3 Basic Rules for online safety, that should drastically reduce the chances of handing control over of one’s computer to the bad guys.

Rule 1) If you didn’t go looking for it, don’t install it.
Rule 2) If you installed it, keep it updated.
Rule 3) If you no longer need it, get rid of it!

HackedPC2012
The myriad of uses a hacked PC can be used for, from http://krebsonsecurity.com/. In a way, I could care less if a hacker reads my boring e-mails or blog posts. The leaking of bank account data and financial credentials – now you have my attention!
heartbleed
This diagram is from a video clip at http://vimeo.com/91425662 that explains how the OpenSSL’s flawed implementation is exploited with the Heartbleed bug.

Friday/ gallium

031 sm
The entry for gallium from an 1960s Time-Life Book on the Elements.

I had some credit on Amazon after sending in my old iPad for recycling, and browsed around for items of interest to buy.  (The challenge with Amazon is not what to buy, of course.  It is what not to buy, with the overwhelming variety of items on sale).   Anyway, I checked out the section that sells little bits of scrap metal (yes, there is one). Why would I buy a bit of metal? Well, the notion of a little bit of 100% pure metal appeals to the alchemist in me.

And there are some curious metals.  Mercury is definitely at the top of the list, but it is very poisonous. So I settled for a vial of the metal called gallium. Gallium is a brittle, soft metallic element that becomes a liquid at around only 85°F (29.4 °C), meaning it will melt in one’s hands or in warm water. (Even though it’s not poisonous, it’s probably not a good idea to touch it, since it sticks to one’s skin, I read on-line).   Check out this YouTube clip of a gallium spoon used to stir hot water, here.

IMG_1757 sm
.. and here’s what the vial of Gallium looks that I ordered from Amazon. It’s not cheap! .. but not super expensive, either. This vial cost about $55.

 

Thursday/ going to watch the paint dry

It was a beautiful day outside here in Denver, much too nice to spend it in the office.  I see there is sunny weather on tap for Friday and the weekend in Seattle as well, though. That’s a good thing : the new green paint on my house will be able to dry nicely.

IMG_1731 sm
This is early Wednesday night.  Katie Mullen’s Irish Pub with the cute toucan on 16th Ave in Denver downtown is still quiet. ‘See what toucan do’ is sometimes written under the toucan mascot. The toucan comes from a Guinnesss beer advertising campaign a long time ago.
IMG_1727 sm
The urban cowboy bronze statue on Broadway no longer have to endure a coat of snow some mornings.   The tall building in the back belongs to Wells Fargo Bank, the top meant to imitate a cash register.
House sm
Here’s a picture from the home front (courtesy of Bryan). The north side of my house shows off its new coat of green paint. The square window is where my study is on the second floor.  (Yes, that’s my neighbor’s roof and gutter on the right.  Definitely needs work!).

Wednesday / the Delectable Egg

IMG_1744 sm
There is French toast on the menu of the Delectable Egg breakfast restaurant here in Denver as well.

We walk by the cute ‘Delectable Egg’ breakfast restaurant every day on the way to work here in Denver, and it always seems to be packed.  Since we stay in the Sheraton is right across from it this week, we decided to give it a shot.  Of course the menu has a Denver omelette on  : omelette filled with ham, cheese, green peppers,  onions.  One legend has it that the name was given by cooks working on the transcontinental railroad (although no mention of ‘Denver omelette’ appears in documents of the time).    Anyway  : our verdict is that the eggs served up are quite ordinary.  One more criticism : the coffee was too weak. So we will not go back frequently as regulars.

Check out the beautiful colors in the sky from my hotel room window on Wednesday morning.

Tuesday/ the depth of the problem

The Washington Post published this enormously long picture to illustrate how deep the ocean is where possible flight MH 370 black box signals have been picked up the last three days (but none on Tuesday).   Wait for it to load and keep on scrolling down to the ocean floor!

depth sm

Monday’s gone

IMG_1721 sm
We just had dinner in the hotel’s retsaurant tonight.   Firestone Walker brewery is from California, but they offered this cool 3D coaster that make the lion on their logo stand up and ‘roar’.

The project team stays in the Denver Sheraton this week. There is a big conference in the Colorado Conference Center, and the Hilton ‘kicked us out’ for the week.  (They can get more money from the conference goers.  We are on a special low long-term rate with them).

Anyway : I am too happy just to have a hotel room to go to, relax a little and then go sleep.  I tested the bed’s mattress already : firm, just the way I like it.  Who wants to sleep on a bed that is soft as a marshmallow?

Sunday/ a new coat (of paint)

My ole house needs a new coat of paint! .. and I’m going for a shade greener compared to what I have put on some 10 years ago.  Below is a picture I took this morning of a little experiment we did on the back of the house.

IMG_1690 sm
The little patch of test paint is still wet, and the green color will become darker as the paint dries. In order to steer clear of a ‘Christmas’ house (red and green), the trim color on the door and window frames should probably be changed to an earthy brown, is the thinking here.

Saturday/ all things domino

800px-Mexican_Train
[From Wikipedia]  Mexican train, a game that is played with train tokens and dominoes.  Our game rules did not allow the double branches, though.  I think next time we should! 
960678-berlin-wall-ceremony
[Photo by Associated Press] Here’s a scene from the 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009.   A 1.5 km (1 mile) series of dominoes was arranged where the wall ran by the Brandenburg gate, and then made to fall down from one end to another.

bBHiC
This picture shows the ‘domino’ logic behind mathematical induction : a method of mathematical proof typically used to establish a given statement for all natural numbers.
Dominoes
Logo of Dominoes Pizza (Aw. Only a lowly 1-2 domino? Guess they wanted to keep the logo simple).

Six of us ordered in Dominoes pizza on Saturday night, and then settled in around a few games of Mexican train.  Everyone starts with 11 dominoes, and tries to be the first to dispense of all of them on the ‘Mexican train’.  Chess or scrabble it is not, as far as strategy or mental sharpness go, but hey : great for socializing and teasing the ones that get stuck and have to draw extra dominoes from the pool.

Friday/ in the news

IMG_1670 sm
All fixed up with a new joint from my house into the line that goes out to the main line in the street.

In the news from the home front this week for me: what started as a blockage in a downstairs toilet, turned out to have been caused by a serious blockage in the sewer line going from my house to the street (it was plugged up with several feet of a fine network of plant roots).

In the news for the USA this week : 1. Obamacare enrollment for its inaugural year ended Monday. The new law is a success: 7.1 million people signed up, exceeding the target despite the glitches in the healthcare.gov website all October of last year.   2. An Iraq vet being treated for mental health issues killed thee people on the Ft Hood base in Texas before killing himself.   3. The March jobs number is 192k, falling short of the 200k expected. Unemployment unchanged at 6.7%.    4.  Will the searchers ever find that lost Malaysian Airlines jet?

IMG_1667 sm
Here’s the sunset I saw in Denver on Thursday night.  I’m about to step onto the Seattle bound plane.
IMG_1676 sm
Spring on 16th Ave in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle.
IMG_1685 sm 2
Check out CNN’s summary of the search areas for the flight MH 370 jet, and where they will focus the search efforts next.
Jobs Gap
[Source : www.hamiltonproject.org]  There is long way to go to recoup the job losses of 2008’s crisis. What the graph shows is that at the current rate (the purple line), we will only have regained the 2008 job losses in 2018. Even the most optimistic number will have us arrive there in 2015. The composition of the workforce will change dramatically over the next two decades : about 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 EVERY DAY for the next 19 years!

 

Thursday/ snowy day

Denver Average Monthly Snowfall
[From weather.com] Denver gets an average of almost 6 inches of snow in April.  Why are the monthly totals not forming a nice bell curve? The weather.com presenter offered no explanation.
IMG_1657 sm
Here’s the Colorado Convention Center with an inch or two of snow on the roof from last night, taken at about 6.30 am. 

It’s April, but we had an inch or two of snow on the ground this morning, and snow flurries while walking to the office.   We always fret a little when the weather is bad on Thursdays, because it could impact our flights back home.  We have people from Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Seattle (moi) and even New York, working on the project.

Wednesday/ the bears are out

I have a nice view from my Hilton Garden Inn hotel room this week, looking out on the Colorado Convention Center with its blue bear (looking in).  It’s spring, and there’s been reports of bears roaming around in the ‘burbs in California, looking for food.  Colorado has an estimated 15,000 black bears.

In the distance is the Pepsi Center, home for the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association, the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League, and the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League (yes.. didn’t know there was a National Lacrosse League here in the USA, now did you?) .

IMG_1655 sm
The Colorado Convention Center.  It opened in 1990, and was expanded in 2005. The blue bear is in the shadows on the far left.
IMG_1643 sm
The Convention Center’s 40-ft blue bear is made from composite materials, and coated in a lapis lazuli blue polymer concrete. The form and shape of the bear was digitally abstracted creating a faceted surface structure. The bear appears as if it is pushing its nose and paws against the glass of the building. The cost for the artwork ? An eye-popping $425,000.

Tuesday/ Watercourse restaurant

We had dinner tonight at the Watercourse restaurant : a place that serves up tasty vegetarian & vegan food on 17th Ave in Denver.  I had a stir-fried Thai pasta with tofu .. quite good, actually.

IMG_1650 sm
An assortment of animals preparing dinner for themselves, at the restaurant’s entrance. The listing in the frame says that there are : 3 antelopes, 2 beavers, 3 big horn sheep, 1 bison, 1 caterpillar, 4 chipmunks, 2 deer, 3 lady bugs, 3 mice, 1 porcupine, 2 prairie dogs, 3 rabbits, 1 rocky mountain goat and 3 squirrels.  (I don’t see the caterpillar; it may be because I could not capture all of the picture).
The artwork was done by local artist Ravi Zupa.

 

Monday/ to Denver

plane shadow
Is it a drone? No, it’s my little time lapse sequence of our Boeing 757-200 about to touch down at Denver International Airport at 9.00 am this morning.

It’s Monday, and it’s the already end of March in 2014.  Time flies !

Sunday/ stay some more! (or not).

IMG_1615 sm
From Blue to Sliver to Gold to Diamond in 6 months of staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Denver. (Are they saying a hot balloon ride is the ultimate travel experience?).

Here’s what happens when you stay at the same hotel 3 or 4 nights every week : you become a ‘Diamond’ member in six months or so.  (Or ‘Platinum’ – it depends on the hotel chain).  The membership cards arrived in quick succession from the Hilton, each promising more exciting travel experiences.   Or the frequent traveler can get an upgrade to a nicer room, or stay for a few more free nights at any property of the hotel.    I see Conde Nast says there was a major program devaluation in March, so Hilton points don’t go nearly as far as they used to.   Oh well.  So there’s a little less of a free thing.   And if you travel year-round, the nicest vacation is staying put right at home.