Injured and sidelined Brazilian star player Neymar was sorely missed in today’s game. This is a mask that fans were encouraged to print out and wear at the game – all to no avail.
So the poor Brazilian soccer team made World Cup history today, and not in a good way, by losing in an eye-popping score of 1-7 to the German soccer machine in the semi-final match.
Sofrimento, frustração e perplexidade (Suffering, frustration and bewilderment)said a Brazilian newspaper – and kühl, nüchtern, effizient (translates to cool, sober and efficient, or would that be German for ‘cool, calm and collected’?), was the way a German newspaper summed up the German team’s efforts.
Well. I hope the Brazilian coach, and the team will be OK. Tennis player Boris Becker once said (he won Wimbledon at only 17 yrs old in 1985) : ‘When you are a young man, you are looking for your own identity, and winning is a way of expressing yourself. When I lost, I wanted to die. And because I thought in victory I became somebody, in defeat, it followed, I was nobody.’
I have a little break from the travel to Denver this week, and so I could go for a walk after my work was done today. It was a beautiful summer day (79 °F/ 26°C) and I ended up at Volunteer Park at sunset. I believe (I’m a music barbarian!) the group of musicians I found there was a wind quintet. From Wikipedia : a wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players (most commonly flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon). The term also applies to a composition for such a group.
Unlike the string quartet with its homogeneous blend of color, the instruments in a wind quintet differ from each other considerably in technique, idiom, and timbre.
Here is the scene at sunset in Volunteer Park in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum. A quintet of musicians played for all of us right there and drew a smattering of applause now and then. Look for the Space Needle in the distance, by the pink cloud.
I decided to take a Sunday afternoon drive today to the ‘east side’: the east side of Lake Washington, that is. That is where the cities of Bellevue and Redmond, the home of Microsoft, are. My timing was bad – or good – depending how one looks at it. As I approached the bridge, a warning sign said to prepare to stop. The bridge had closed for some 30 mins due to allow for a draw span opening to let through sailboats and other vessels. It’s the first time I actually stopped on the bridge – and it is definitely floating. While sitting in the car, one feels the small shifts that the pontoon underneath the road surface makes as it floats on the water.
Meanwhile, right next to the bridge to its north, a massive construction project is on-going. Two cantilevered piers have been completed on the east side, and there is one more to go. This is to connect a new, replacement floating bridge, to the shore. The new bridge will accommodate road traffic as well as a light rail line.
There was a drawspan opening on the State Route 520 floating bridge when I tried to cross it this afternoon. So we switched off our engines, and took a look at Lake Washington while we were waiting. Mt Rainier is visible in the distance on the horizon on the far right.And here is a diagram from Washington State Dept of Transportation (say ‘Wash Dot’) that shows the plans for constructing a new floating bridge made of pontoons that will eventually replace the existing one.
From NBCnews.com : Fireworks explode over the East River with the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn bridge in the background as part of the 38th Annual Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks in Brooklyn, New York. [Picture : Andrew Gombert / EPA]Here is an extract from the Declaration of Independence, signed by representatives of all thirteen founding states of the nation on July 4, 1776 : .. we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. …
Here’s a screenshot of the telecast of the fireworks on Seattle’s Lake Union. Look for the Space Needle is at the bottom right.
This is the Spirograph set I recently bought at a Target store. It says ‘original’, but it’s really a modified version of the original sets that were developed by British engineer Denys Fisher and first sold in 1965.Happy Fourth of July! The Spirograph pattern is a ‘hypotrochoid’ with 15 petals, made by using the 56-toothed wheel inside the 105-toothed ring.Here’s a cool animated illustration from Wikipedia’s ‘Hypotrochoid’ entry. The red curve is a hypotrochoid drawn as the smaller black circle rolls around inside the larger blue circle (parameters are R = 5, r = 3, d = 5).
I bought a Spirograph set last weekend and finally had some time to play with it today. It brings back happy Spirograph memories! I do have a few quibbles with this so-called ‘original’ Spirograph .. the original had 17 wheels (this one has 15) and two toothed racks (this one has one). Yes, they threw in three additional geared shapes, but I don’t care too much for those. Finally, the felt-tip pens are terrible. I made the drawing below with a Parker Pen with a roller ball tip : much better.
It is a short work week for us in the United States with the upcoming Fourth of July holiday on Friday. I added Thursday as a day off to my weekend, so by Wednesday night I was done with my work week. Way to go!
The sun was just setting shortly after 9 pm Pacific Northwest Time as we stepped off the plane from Denver. This is Terminal A at Sea-Tac airport.
A Waffle House here in the USA with its characteristic yellow top and black letters.
We were supported to ‘boycott’ Belgian waffles* here in the USA today – a call also made by the premier purveyor of waffles here in the USA, the ‘Waffle House’ franchise.
*Because of the USA-Belgium soccer match – but per Wikipedia : What is known in North America as the ‘Belgian waffle’ does not exist in Belgium. No single type of waffle is identified as a ‘Belgian waffle’ within Belgium itself, where there are a number of different varieties, including the Brussels waffle and the Liège waffle.
I did go down to the lobby to watch some of the USA-Belgium soccer match, then was stuck in a meeting when the three goals in extra time happened! Belgium 2-1. The USA played well, but the best team won, says people that know soccer. Now can we go and have a waffle at a Waffle House? I want one right now!
So here it is, the midpoint of 2014. My firm’s ‘FY15’ (Fiscal year 2015) starts tomorrow! It’s warm and sunny in Denver. Here’s a picture of the Brown Palace Hotel close to our office, and two graphics from Monday’s Wall Street Journal that I liked.
I walk by the Brown Palace Hotel every day on the way to work. They serve up tea, pastries and scones with Devonshire cream in the afternoon, I hear. I should go and have some one afternoon. If only I can get away from work !Delta is making Seattle airport a hub which is presumably good news for Seattle-based travelers. I’d hate to see the business of our own Alaska Airlines get hurt, though.And are the contenders for the World Cup that made it to the knock-out round. (France and Germany are through to the last 8. Tuesday will see the USA play Belgium).
My firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is still the only Big Four accounting firm represented in the parade. Go team !
I made it out to the Pride Parade on Sunday. The weather was very pleasant, and the rain held off – always good since rain on a parade makes for a lot of trouble! I had to leave a little early to go to the airport and fly out to Denver. This is a short work week for me with the Fourth of July coming up.
Microsoft had a large contingent in the parade, showcasing their involvement and support of the gay community over the years.Come on, let’s go! says the cure little doggie.And here is the Facebook group; they were at the tail end of the parade. Facebook has a Seattle office with some 100 engineers.Alaska Airlines employees handing out treats and token items to parade watchers (nice hat!).
It is gay Pride week in Seattle (and several other cities in the USA, notably San Francisco and New York City as well). The first parade – more a protest march, in those days! – was held in 1974. The parade in downtown Seattle is tomorrow, but the festivities has been on-going throughout the weekend and especially on Capitol Hill here in Seattle. Bryan, Gary and I took a walk around Pike-Pine Streets and down to Broadway to check out the revelry (after which we called it a night and went home!).
The friendly guy with the flag noticed my interest and wanted to sell me one – only $20, he said. I was tempted to buy one but ended up not doing so.
My neighbor has sold his house and is moving south to California.
It was raining now and again on Friday, but not so much that it interfered with filling up the ‘U-haul’ storage/moving boxes.
The view from my front door on Friday with my neighbor’s U-haul boxes on the sidewalk. This time of year the rainfall tapers down a lot – so the green in my lawn is starting to fade.
The auxiliary power unit (APU) is an engine, typically located in the tail of the airplane.
Our flight was delayed by at least an hour, the United Airlines agent announced, ‘they are working on the APU, the air .. ‘ Auxiliary Power Unit! chimed some mechanically- minded passengers to help her out. But right after the announcement, she said ‘Don’t go anywhere! The APU has been fixed!’.
Honeywell invented the APU in the early 1950s. It is really a gas turbine engine, typically in the tail of the airplane, providing electricity for starting the main engines, enabling the air conditioning, running lighting and flight equipment, and more.
Here are some answers a pilot provided on a message board I found on-line (the questions can be inferred from the answers!).
1. Yes, an aircraft can be operated without an operating APU – it can be a maintenance-deferred item for a certain period of time.
2. Yes, the airport needs to have the following in the event on an inoperable APU :
a. Ground Power Unit (GPU) or land-side power connection – to power the aircraft while the engines are off
b. Air Start Cart to provide pressurized air to start the engine without the APU
3. Yes, engines can be restarted in flight without an APU
4. Yes, the APU is usually turned off on the ground when the aircraft is connected to ground power and it is also turned off in flight
5. Yes, regional jets are somewhat more prone to APU issues
P.S. Alright, so the USA lost the game against Germany 0-1. I watched the last 10 minutes or so in the building lobby (and reportedly President Obama took time out to watch the game on Air Force One). The US team still goes through to the knock-out rounds though, where it will face Belgium on Tuesday.
Getting there .. a few more floors of the new Denver airport hotel have gotten glass panels since last week.
Google’s homepage doodle of the day shows the USA vs. Germany World Cup soccer match.
It’s the Big Day for the USA in the World Cup : we’re up against Germany, and we need at least a draw to go through to the next round. What will German-born USA team coach Jürgen Klinsmann do? ‘I will sing the German anthem because I am German, and the US anthem because it is beautiful’ he told a reporter. Check out the flowchart below that showed up in my Twitter feed, credit due to Faux Pelini.
It was Bike to Work day here in Denver today. The Denver Post reports that Denver is second only to San Francisco in its Bike to Work day participants (30,000 to SF’s 40,000). We were skeptical of the 30,000 number reported for Denver, though. We did not really see more-than-usual bikers out on the street this morning. Anyway : the idea is that encouraging people to try biking to work one day will result in some of them doing it regularly. Of course, if one lives far away, one can bike to the nearest bus station or train station, and then bike to work from one’s arrival bus stop or train station.
A large number of bicyclists were out on the street shortly after 9 pm tonight. This is the view from my hotel room at the corner of Welton and 14th Streets. I am not sure if these were ‘Bike to Work day’ bikers !
A golden fire hydrant on Lincoln Street .. an unusual color. The National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) recommends that hydrants with a capacity of below 500 GPM be red, 500-999 GPM be orange, 1000-1499 GPM be green, and 1500 GPM or more be blue.And here is the first Tesla I spotted in Denver, a nice red one, and brand new.
I went to lunch by myself today, a somewhat rare occurrence since all three colleagues I normally go with were tied up with other commitments, or out of the office.
But that way I can walk around a little bit longer and take a picture here and there of anything that moves – or doesn’t move! -and catches my fancy.
The guy in front of me in the security line this morning had his Eddie Bauer polo shirt on inside-out. Hmm. Should I tap him on the shoulder, and tell him? I thought. I decided to mind my own business and not to. He was not on a business trip and not likely to embarrass himself too badly, anyway.
This is 5.45 am this morning at Seattle airport. The sun had been up for 30 minutes already, and we are passing by the South Terminal to take off for Denver. It would have been much nicer to be on this Hawaiian Airlines plane (presumably bound for Hawaii), though !
Do you know the other cities in Brazil (other than Sao Pualo, Rio and Brasilia?). Here’s a map from the FIFA website with the host cities. Manaus is in the Amazon, at the confluence of the Negro (Black) and Solimões (how the Amazon River is known in this part of Brazil) rivers.
I watched the USA-Portugal game this afternoon, played in the city of Manaus in the middle of the Amazon in a controversial $300 million stadium. (The city has no top-flight professional sports team, and Manaus is 4 hours’ flying from any other city).
From the New York Times : Here are the groups and the teams that have secured a place in the next round, those that still have to battle it out, and those that have already been disqualified (notably Spain and England).
Anyway, as everyone was watching the clock run out on the match with the USA at 2-1, Ronaldo made a perfect cross-kick in literally the final minute. His teammate Varela scored a goal with a dive header to make it a 2-2 draw. Man!
Illustration from the USA Today that shows how the earth’s tilted axis of rotation makes it summer here in the northern hemisphere.Graham crackers, banana, vanilla ice cream, cream in the blender .. one cannot go wrong with such a combination !
Saturday marked the summer solstice for us here in the northern hemisphere of our spinning blue planet.
Here in Seattle it was sunny, but temperatures were still mild, barely making it to 70 °F/21°C. Bryan, Gary and I sat outside soaking up a little sun, and Gary made a banana vanilla ice cream shake for us in his new blender.
So with the Dow Jones Industrial Average approaching 17,000 here in the USA, the questions for all of us (millionaires or not) about a pull-back – or worse – in the stock market remain. Our Vampire Squid Investment Bank* wrote to its clients that it expects a ‘10% pull-back’. Some analysts are pointing out though, that such a prediction really says nothing, since a 10% pull-back is quite possible – and even expected in a long bull-market. And are stock valuations ‘lofty by any measure’? Well, the S&P 500’s price-earnings ratio is admittedly high historically. But then we have the super long-term view from Richard Ross, Global Technical Strategist at Auerbach Grayson, shown on CNBC that says we may very well be breaking out of a 13-year sideways band and still go up, up, up. (Whoah). Fortune 500 companies sit on tons of cash, the Fed is not about to raise interest rates drastically, the economy is supposed to grow 3% this year, and demographics favor the USA (compared to other stock markets). But then we have a student loan bubble here in the USA, and as always the peace in the Middle East is tenuous, or is it unraveling and turning into a full-blown crisis? Better not to put all one’s retirement eggs in the stock market basket. As always. That has not changed.
*Referring to the famous quote about Goldman Sachs from the New York Times : ‘The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money’
My scheduled flights back to Seattle are now a half hour earlier. As I get into the taxi to get home from Seattle airport at 10 pm, there is still a band of light sky on the horizon. (The sun sets at 9.10 pm!).
I read about the problems that national parks in the western states here in the USA are having with mountain pine beetle infestations : it’s scary. Mountain pine beetles attack several types of pine tree, including ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, limber pine, bristlecone pine, Scotch pine and Austrian pine. Beetles seek out the oldest trees, preferring ones over 80 years old. Th ousands of years of instincts help the pine beetle locate the oldest, most stressed trees. In the natural cycle, pine beetles are important factors in helping to maintain the health of a forest .. but this surely is too much of a good thing at work!
What can be done? From the Colorado State University’s website : For a long-term remedy, thin susceptible stands. Leave well-spaced, healthy trees. For short-term controls, spray, cover, burn or peel attacked trees to kill the beetles. Preventive sprays can protect green, unattacked trees.
Picture and information from an article in Bloomberg Businessweek.This is gate B22 at Denver airport and I am about to step on for my flight back to Seattle. The new airport hotel and train station is in the distance at the airport’s terminal. (The external window pane fittings have progressed no further from the previous week).
