Willem – Page 240 – Willem's Planet

October 20, 2012October 21, 2012

Friday/ new substation

Seattle City Light (electrical utility company) is moving ahead with plans for building a new substation in the city, the first one in 30 years. The site used to be a Greyhound bus maintenance facility a long time ago. Early planning is that 115kV or 230kV transmission lines will come into the substation. The three alternatives under consideration are:
– A downtown underground route, primarily along Sixth Avenue
– A route that utilizes the downtown Metro bus tunnel
– An aerial route that crosses I-5 twice and traverses Capitol Hill << this does not sound good! Yes, it’s cheap, but unsightly and not nearly as safe as an underground route.

From Wikipedia : The typical electricity grid. The substation is the green one, and our homes are ‘secondary customers’ that get electricity at 120V or 240V.

Denny Substation 1 — Here is a map of the proposed Denny Way substation (part 1). From http://www.seattle.gov/light/dennysub/substation.asp

Denny Substation 2 — Map of the proposed Denny Way substation (part 2). From http://www.seattle.gov/light/dennysub/substation.asp

IMG_3374 sm — I took this picture just a few days ago .. the old Greyhound bus maintenance facility, site of a new substation near Denny Way and Stewart Ave. Now the windows are already out, and I am sure the walls will follow soon. G R E Y H O U N D L I N E S, says the lettering on the building.

October 19, 2012October 19, 2012

Thursday/ Washington State is already voting

Washingtonians vote by mail only. So we have no walk-in polling stations where get ink on your fingers and go into a little voting booth. The ballots arrive in the mail, and you mail it in, or go put it in a designated ballot box in your area. I got my ballot in the mail as well, on Thursday. I don’t think it’s legal to publish a picture of it, so I won’t. We have lots to vote for! Of course there is the President to vote for, but we also vote for a Governor, whether to legalize and control marijuana sales, whether to legalize same-sex marriage, and if charter schools should be funded by the state, among other things.

IMG_3424 sm — Picture from the election issue of the alternate Seattle newspaper The Stranger. The newspaper fully endorses our tongue-in-cheek ‘Kenyan Muslim overlord President’. I suppose that is him they are depicting, marrying two women in a field of marijuana.

2008-0134 — [From Wikipedia] The two heavyweight contenders for President in 2012 ..

2008-0135 — [From Wikipedia] .. but these two other candidates have ballot access sufficient to also theoretically win the election by a majority of the electoral college: former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee; and Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee. Virgil Goode will no doubt draw some Tea Party votes away from Mitt Romney in the swing state of Virginia : bad news for the Republicans.

IMG_7038 sm — A full blown article in The Stranger pleads with its readers to NOT vote for ‘moderate’ Republican Rob McKenna for Governor. ‘If is looks like an elephant and walks like an elephant, then it IS an elephant’. (The elephant is the mascot of the Republican Party).

October 18, 2012October 18, 2012

Wednesday/ the ‘eagle’ has landed

My new refrigerator arrived early Wednesday morning. The Sears delivery truck blocked the entire street in front of my house. Oh well. And the monster made it through the front door, but only with a special trick : sideways and tilted with the top doors completely open. The door handles are very stylish and nice to use but they stick out a few inches. And there it is .. what is this gleaming thing? I still think for a split second when walking into my kitchen. Oh, it’s your new fridge, silly. And I am so thrilled to close the fridge door and know it is frrosty inside!

IMG_3413 sm — It’s shiny! And the top left does take fridge magnets. For now it’s only the crocodile, the hippo and the flower magnet that got to go onto the fridge. We will see how long THAT lasts.

IMG_3409 sm — Yes, life is good with a new fridge.

IMG_3411 sm — Here’s the chilled water and ice dispenser, with the LCD panel showing the temperatures inside the two main compartments. -1 ºF is -18 ºC and 35 ºF is 2 ºC. It’s cold inside !

IMG_3395 sm — Ready to be filled up with all kinds of goodies and some beer, and some drinks. It’s so w-i-d-e inside, since the freezer section is a drawer at the bottom. My old fridge had side-by-side compartments.

October 18, 2012October 18, 2012

Tuesday/ Romney’s ‘binders full of women’

It was the second Presidential debate last night and President Obama was FIRED UP. He won the debate, even though the Republicans say it was a ‘draw’. Uh-huh.

Asked if he would support equal pay for equal work for women, Romney didn’t really answer the question, said he had ‘binders full of women’ (their resumes, that is) when he was governor of Massachusetts. But he didn’t solicit the resumes. It was given to him by an equal opportunity group. He did appoint lots of women to the state government and would have done better to just say that. Instead the blogosphere and twitterverse lit up with the phrase ‘Binders full of women’.

‘Binders full of Women’ STORY HIGHLIGHTS from CNN

NEW: Barack Obama, Joe Biden take on Mitt Romney’s ‘binders’ comments on campaign trail; Romney responds on Twitter
Romney’s comments on using “binders full of women” in hiring; contraception could hurt his standing with some women
Obama and Democrats rush to paint Romney as someone who doesn’t have the best interests of women in mind
Romney will now have to score messaging points on the economy while clarifying stance on women’s health issues

121017052102-cardona-facebook-binders-story-top — The main page of an impromptu Facebook group inviting a discussion about equal opportunities for women – ‘Binders Full of Women’.

tumblr_mc0nksv3qD1rj8amio1_500 — And watch out for the most powerful woman in the USA, Mitt. The Secretary of State needs to upgrade that Blackberry to an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy III. (I found the picture with a Google search, not sure who created it).

October 16, 2012October 16, 2012

Monday/ got my shot

Flu shot, that is. The 2012-13 Northern winter season’s flu shot offers protection against three strains of the flu : two strains of human flu H1N1 H3N2 and one of swine flu. (Sounds like pig farmers should still not get too close to their piggies!). Here’s a nice YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-M1nIhfIA that shows how flu viruses mutate, and explains where the H1N1 and H3N2 numbering comes from. P.S. Got to love those words hemagglutinin and neuraminidase from the video .. sure to leave your Scrabble opponents in a ‘dase’ if you build one of those bad boys!

October 15, 2012

Sunday/ under the spell of Spelltower

Alright, so I never thought I’d find a word game to seriously challenge the fondness I have for Scrabble, but Spelltower does. (Check out the video at http://www.spelltower.com/). It is very addictive. (‘A great time waster’ says one reviewer. Aw. Is that a way to compliment a game that makes you think hard?). It reminds me of a little bit of the ’80s classic Tetris. In Spelltower you cannot move the tiles around, but you can build words forwards, backwards and diagonally. Any which way you can, as long as the letters are directly connected.

October 14, 2012October 14, 2012

Saturday/ big buy at Sears

And what did I buy? Why, a new LG refrigerator. Yes, it’s a lot of money – but I cannot go on with my old fridge that has been repaired a few times before, and is again on the fritz.

IMG_3379 sm — Sears will deliver the fridge in a few days and gave me this handy paper tape measure to ‘walk the path’ the new machine will have to follow to its place in the kitchen, to make sure the doors and openings are wide enough. (Sears should come up with a better tag line than ‘where it begins’ .. don’t you agree?).

October 13, 2012October 13, 2012

Friday/ all things pumpkin, and Sidney Montana

There was a little bit of rain in the city on Friday, more on the way Saturday night and Sunday. Friday night found me at the Elysian Brewing Co. on Capitol Hill. With Halloween looming and Thanksgiving after that, the pumpkin ales come out, in the same way that Starbucks is offering their pumpkin spice lattes. (Horror or horrors : there have been reports of Starbuckses running out of pumpkin spice lattes).

IMG_3368 sm — The Elysian’s Nightowl Pumpkin Ale is brewed with 150 lbs. of pumpkin in each batch. Also with Pale, Munich and Crystal malts and green and roasted pumpkin seeds, bittered with Horizon hops, and spices such as nutmeg, clove, cinnamon and ginger.

One of our regular waiters at the Elysian is packing up and moving to Sidney, Montana to start a food-serving truck business with a business partner. It is all part of the North Dakota oil boom : http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/apr/29/north-dakota-oil-boom-provides-hope-and-prosperity/. They will serve up gyro sandwiches to the oil industry workers there. (A gyro is a Greek dish of meat roasted on a vertical spit. To make a sandwich, add tomato, onion, and tzatziki sauce, wrapped in pita bread).

bakken_fields — Picture from the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper. From the newspaper article : The Bakken shale formation stretches across 200,000 square miles, including parts of Montana and Alberta, Canada. It’s one of North America’s largest contiguous oil reserves, and industry experts say it could enable North Dakota to surpass both Alaska and Texas in oil production within a decade.

October 11, 2012

Thursday/ here comes the rain

Alright : barring a cataclysm of some sort, some serious rain is finally on the way for the Puget Sound region. We have only had 0.03 inches TOTAL in 80 days! The air here smells dusty and of the dry leaves I swept off the garage roof and cleaned out of the gutters today. And is that smoke I smell in the air? .. from the wildfires on the other side of the mountains that are still not completely out. All of that will be cleaned out with the rain.

2008-0122 — Weather map from www.king5.com, as of 10 pm on Thu night.

2008-0123 — And here is an extended forecast with rain forecast for every day next week (source: King5.com). Temperatures are in Fahrenheit! 56 F is 13 C.

October 11, 2012October 11, 2012

Wednesday/ Andy Warhol’s Queen of Swaziland

I made my way back to Seattle on Wednesday morning, starting out in Pittsburgh’s airport. This print of Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland*, is one of a series of four ‘Reigning Queens’ made by Andy Warhol in 1985. The prints are in concourse C of the airport. The other three queens are Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Warhol once said ‘I want to be as famous as the Queen of England’.

*Swaziland is a tiny kingdom, land-locked by South Africa and Mozambique. I have to confess I did not know about the Queen of Swaziland’s existence while I grew up in South Africa. The Queen has since been succeeded by her son, King Mswati III. Check out http://www.gov.sz/

IMG_3363 sm — A screen print on Lenox museum board, of Andy Warhol’s Queen Ntombi Twala of Swaziland, made in 1985. (There is a yellow light reflection in the top left that I could not avoid when I took the picture).

This is an Andy Warhol print of Queen Elizabeth II, one of a series of four of Elizabeth II in different colors, that the Queen’s trust bought for the Royal Collection just this year (reportedly for several £100,000).

October 9, 2012October 9, 2012

Tuesday/ dinner at the Great Eagle

The Great Eagle is a grocery store here in Cranberry township north of Pittsburgh, and what a bargain its hot food buffet is! Get exactly what you want, without waiting for your meal in a restaurant after a long day of meetings. The store also has an amazing collection of beers for sale from all over the world.

IMG_3356 sm — Here’s my comfort food : Brussels sprouts, carved turkey (got to warm up for Thanksgiving, no?) and mac-and-cheese.

IMG_3357 sm — A keg of beer from a microbrewery set up inside a restored Roman Catholic church (!) here in the Pittsburgh area.. check out http://www.churchbrew.com/ for photos of the church.

IMG_3358 sm — Here is the Kasteel Triple Ale from Belgium (not to be confused with South Africa’s award-winning Castle Lager).

IMG_3359 sm — And can you see the hidden-in-plain-sight lettering that says this is a white ale from Kiuchi brewery in Japan? Look again!

October 8, 2012October 8, 2012

Monday/ Pennsylvania politics

We don’t see any Tea Party political ads in Washington State – we’re a blue state and an Republican hoping to win office had better position himself more or less in the middle (left is liberal and right is conservative in American politics). But here in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr. is running for re-election to a second term against Republican nominee Tom Smith. Tom Smith is for (see http://tomsmithforsenate.com/): a flat tax code with no loopholes, for reducing annual spending to 20% of GDP (that is a massive reduction, given that the US is almost at 40% of GDP), for ‘ending oppressive regulation that suffocates growth and kills jobs, for energizing our future (mostly by producing more oil and using coal) and for reducing health care (repeal Obamacare) and Social Security.

IMG_3339 sm — Republican/ Tea Party candidate Tom Smith in a TV commercial running on local television. Balanced budget amendment is a reference to change the US Constitution, so that the country stops running deficits. He is also for a flat tax with no loopholes.

IMG_3336 sm — Here’s a teacup with Tom Smith on it, from a political TV ad from Senator Bob Casey.

October 7, 2012October 7, 2012

Sunday/ in Chicago, Pittsburgh bound

It takes all Sunday to get from Seattle to Pittsburgh : there are no direct flights! (Boo! to the airlines). So I got up early this morning for an 8.15 am flight and have made it into Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s another hour or so before I will go on to Pittsburgh and I will arrive there at 7.30pm. Pittsburgh is on East coast time, so the time zone change moves the clock forward by three hours.

IMG_3304 sm — O’Hare airport is northwest of the city of Chicago.

IMG_3318 sm — This is the underground pedestrian tunnel connecting my arrival concourse (C) with concourse B for my flight to Pittsburgh.

IMG_3326 sm — And here is the industrial-style skylights of terminal B. Have you spotted the dinosaur, or its skeleton, then? It’s a Brachiosaurus altithorax. This one lived 150 million years ago in what is today Utah and Colorado.

October 7, 2012July 20, 2021

Saturday/ dishwasher guts and glory

I am not much of a handyman, but I am lucky enough to have a friend who is ! – Bryan :). So we thought we’d take a crack at it with a Google search for ‘asko dishwasher D1760’ and see if someone out there had run into a problem similar to what I have. The dishwasher fills up and starts washing, but then fails to complete the wash cycles and does not get to the rinse cycle. To make a long story short, a combination of the symptoms and taking a look at what’s going on underneath the washer pointed to a valve and controller that failed. I ordered the part on-line. It arrived after a few days, we put it in, and voila! it fixed the problem.

IMG_3292 sm — Here’s the offending part. It had a much cheaper price on one website compared to another ($66 vs $168). I ordered the $66 part .. looks like it’s been used already, which explained the price difference. But hey, it works.

IMG_3295 sm — Here’s the valve-and-controller part installed. The water from the house’s plumbing comes in through the tubing covered with the silver coat (on the right), goes through the valve and goes out at the back into the dishwasher.

October 6, 2012October 6, 2012

Friday/ are the job numbers red or blue?

.. the surprising 7.8% September unemployment rate for the USA, that is. Scarcely were they out, or ex-General Electric CEO Jack Welch (and very obviously a Republican) accuses the Obama Administration of interfering with the Bureau of Labor Statistics! Quite outrageous, his claim, and dismissed by just about everyone.

jack welch tweet — Jack Welch’s tweet cam out just 5 minutes after the September job numbers were released. While interviewed by Chris Matthews from MSNBC, he admitted he had absolutely no evidence of any interference from the Administration with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (That would be a scandal of epic proportions).

‘Grandpa Simpson’ says the numbers are fake, too. From the website quickmeme.com at http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3r7rdd/

Republican Party View — From the New York Times : here is the way Republicans have viewed the unemployment numbers, and will no doubt continue to view it.

Democratic Party View — Also from the New York Times : the way Democrats view the unemployment numbers. So .. are you wearing blue glasses, or red ones?

October 4, 2012October 4, 2012

Thursday/ clash of the database titans

It is not only statements from the Presidential debate last night that are getting fact-checked. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has made some contentious statements at the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference this week, disparaging SAP ‘s latest technology called SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance).

From Vishal Sikka’s blog at http://www.experiencesaphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2012/10/02/setting-the-record-straight–sap-hana-v-exadata-x3 : ‘The statement Mr Ellison made about HANA, when talking about the release of a new Exadata machine, that has 4TB of DRAM and 22TB of SSD, is false. He referred to HANA being “a small machine” with 0.5TB of memory. He said his machine has 26TB of memory, which is also wrong (SSD is not DRAM and does not count as memory, HANA servers also use SSDs for persistence)..

.. the largest HANA system deployed so far is the 100-node system built earlier this year with Intel and IBM. It has 100TB of DRAM and 4000 CPU cores. Mr. Ellison is welcome to come to Santa Clara and see the system working himself, with workloads from several customers’.

October 3, 2012October 4, 2012

Wednesday/ the first 2012 Presidential debate

I watched most of the first of three Presidential debates tonight with friends over beers and pizza. We were a little dismayed that the consensus among the political pundits (and a poll conducted by CNN) was that Romney ‘won’ the debate, even though there were no obvious zingers or knock-out punches. CNN summed it up in one line as ‘The Republican candidate says the president’s vision is one of big government, while Obama challenged his rival’s plans as unworkable’.

IMG_7006 sm — A graphic from MSNBC TV channel here in the USA that covered the first 2012 Presidential debate.

October 3, 2012

Tuesday/ ‘complete plant’

I like this sign across from the grocery store two blocks from my house for two reasons. 1. It has a vintage neon sign that looks really nice when it gets dark. 2. The ‘complete plant’ in the building (see it on the right?) actually points in a way to the 21st century where new buildings may very well have their own complete (power) plants. As power generation becomes more common from rooftop solar and wind generators, or diesel or natural gas generators inside buildings, the differences between distribution and transmission grids will continue to blur.

IMG_3254 sm — I like the vintage neon sign of Superb Cleaners on 15th Ave in Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

October 2, 2012

Monday/ it’s October

It’s the start of Halloween month, the start of the final 2012 quarter (will the Dow Jones crack or not?) and we’re into the final stretch of the 2012 US General Election (will President Obama prevail?). The sun is still shining brightly almost every day here in Seattle. I have all but given up expectations for any rain at all to fall down on Rain City this year (I’m joking, but that’s how it feels).

IMG_3248 sm — Street art that I found outside the gate of the Ghost Gallery on Summit/ Olive Way on Capitol Hill. Is that a Halloween incarnation of Mickey Mouse being scared by the pterodactyl?

October 1, 2012

Sunday/ Uwajimaya

Uwajimaya is a grocery store chain here in Seattle’s International District that carries Asian food and other specialty items. I happened to drive by and wanted to take a picture of the dragon on the lamp post – and ended up in the store’s parking lot. Oh well, might as well go inside and buy a few items, I thought.