a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I am in Pittsburgh, with a stop in Denver this time. The flight for Denver left Seattle at 5.20am this morning .. uff. The TSA security check point opened at 4 am, but the special short line for Mr Very Important Frequent Flier (me) was not open that early, so I had to wait in the ‘long’ security line with everyone else.
.. which we are very thankful for. Stop the madness! Here is a set of pictures which I have to post today! – because who knows for sure what will happen tomorrow? But time will soon tell.
The US Postal Service loves me, I’m sure. I cannot resist buying a sheet of stamps that catches my eye when I go there for some reason. And then I don’t use them, I file it away in a folder! Check out these stamps, a tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs and ‘Tarzan’.
It is just past 11 pm on Saturday night here in Seattle. In three more hours, at 2 am, we will turn our clocks back one hour to make them Standard Time again (except the state of Arizona, since they don’t observe Daylight Savings Time). Watch out if you walk around after dark with traffic nearby! A Carnegie Mellon University study found that pedestrians are three times as likely to be hit and killed by cars in the few weeks after the time change back to Standard Time.
We watched Hugo* last night. In one of the boy’s nightmares, he dreams of the Oct 22, 1895 accident at the Gare Montparnasse station. The train was fitted with the famous Westinghouse air brake but was going at too high a speed for to stop in time.
*Martin Scorcese’s 2011 movie (based on Brian Selznick’s book), set in 1930s Paris, about an orphan who lives in one in the Gare Montparnasse railway station.
Multiple utility companies are working around the clock to restore the damage done by the storm Sandy. The Edison Electric Institute is the association of United States shareholder-owned electric power companies. They have a web site with maps that show how the wide-spread repairs to the grid in the North-East are progressing.
Happy Halloween! A good thing I stocked up on candy to hand out, because my doorbell rang numerous times tonight with trick-and-treaters. Lucky for them, there was a break in the rain.
I really shouldn’t have said (in yesterday’s post) ‘the worst is over’ as far as the storm goes. As someone said tonight : with any storm there is the storm itself, there is the immediate aftermath, and then there is the long-term to consider. The NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/ reports that 8 million people were without power by Tuesday afternoon and that the recovery will be daunting. The US Army Corp of Engineers has sent their ‘National Unwatering SWAT Team’ to help rid the flooded NYC subway of its water. This team typically operates in the New Orleans area. It is the worst disaster in the 108-year old subway system’s history.
P.S. I made it as far as Chicago, and then learned that our workshops in Pittsburgh for Wednesday and Thursday had been canceled. What to do? I could continue on to Pittsburgh (my flight was still on); or I could have stayed over in Chicago for a night or so. But United Airlines had a Boeing 757 three gates away, scheduled to depart for Seattle in 45 minutes and with a first-class seat they could put me in for no extra fee. So it was an easy choice, and Tuesday night found me home in Seattle, very grateful that I have a home with electricity and no flooding to deal with.
The hurricane is now a ‘post-tropical cyclone’ and the worst seems to be over now that it has made landfall – but there is still a lot of wind and rain associated with the massive storm sytem. United Airlines have not canceled my flight out to Chicago (and on to Pittsburgh from there) so I will try to get to Pittsburgh tomorrow. Pittsburgh is right outside the white cone in the rectangle that where it says 8 PM Tue! And no, I’m not stubborn : I have client meetings to go to that have not been canceled.
I helped Anheuser-Busch put their SAP system in (this started in 1995). A major article about the company and its beer just appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek. Taken over by InBev in 2008, the A-B company, its iconic Budweiser beer and its packaging have been targeted with cost cutting by 52-year old Brazilian-born CEO Carlos Brito. As far as investors are concerned Brito has done extremely well. For beer-drinkers and traditionalists, it’s a different story. No more Hallentauer Mittelfrüh hops from Germany for Budweiser, no more whole grain rice (broken rice will do), and out of business goes one of its two beech wood chip suppliers in Tennessee. Check out this cool ’99 Beer Facts’ chart from the Bloomberg Businessweek’s on-line issue.
Check out the commercial (I like it) that runs here on TV for Windows 8, officially released on Friday- http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/15/microsofts-new-windows-8-commercial-has-lift-off/ . The Microsoft entry into the tablet market is called the Surface (go ‘Wikipedia Surface’ to check it out), and is now on sale as well. The Surface gets Windows 8, as do Windows smart phones and all new Windows computers. I wouldn’t spring for the Surface since I already have an iPad, but I would like to have Windows 8 for a new desktop computer or notebook computer. It has been three years in the making : development on it started even before Windows 7 was released in 2009. Which makes one wonder what those legions of Microsoft programmers are working on today?
The maple tree from next door is shedding its leaves the way it always does in fall. I run out and sweep them up every other day or so, when there is a break in the rain. I’m also keeping an eye on Hurricane Sandy that is moving up on the East coast. I am scheduled to fly out to Pennsylvania on Tuesday, to the projected eastern edge of the hurricane.
We went to Columbia City Alehouse in the south of the city tonight for some beers and food. Check out the cute white pup outside patiently waiting for its masters inside.
Less than two weeks, and we will know the outcome of the 2012 US Presidential election. It is safe to say those of us that care about politics are a little on edge, given the razor-thin margins in the polls. President Obama’s stop at The Tonight Show (hosted by Jay Leno) was part of a 48 hour whistle-stop tour around the country. (OK, so he flies on Air Force One and does not go by steam train). He was very well received, and poked fun at Donald Trump’s supposed ‘bomb-shell’ announcement that was to upset the campaign*, and at Governor Mitt Romney forgetting his own long-held positions in the final weeks of the campaign (it is ‘Romnesia’ : a pre-existing condition and Obamacare can help out with that).
*Trump pledged $5 million to a charity of President Obama’s choice, provided the president makes public his college applications and transcripts and releases his passport history. Trump is a ‘birther’, refusing to believe Obama is an American citizen.
Don’t be too shocked, but I have never owned a rice cooker! So I picked up this little Black and Decker model that can cook all of three cups of rice. It went for only $16 on a department store sale.
Put the rice and water in (a cheat sheet tells you how much of each), and switch the machine on. And 25 mins later you have perfectly cooked rice. How easy is that?! And how does the cooker know when to switch from ‘cook’ to ‘warm’? Well, water boils at an even temperature (and the steam escapes through a hole in the cooker’s lid). As soon as the water is gone, the temperature of the rice rises, the signal to the cooker’s thermostat to turn off the heat and switch to ‘warm’ mode. And there it is, waiting for you – warm fluffy cooked rice.
P.S. And here is the most famous South African brand of rice that I remember from my childhood. ‘It’s so easy, a child can do it’, said the commercials on TV back then. It is parboiled (partially boiled) in the husk before packaging, and takes less time to cook. About 50% of the world’s paddy production gets this treatment.
The word meme (pronounce ‘meem’) was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976). Wikipedia says a meme is ‘an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture’. An internet meme spreads via the internet (Facebook, Twitter, blog reposts, e-mails forwarded, web sites). So as I looked up ‘horses and bayonet’ memes from tonight’s third Presidential debate already circulating on the internet, I stumbled across the longcat meme. I think it is very funny. Check out the pictures!
I stopped at Bellevue Square today. The Apple store in there has been moved into a bigger space. Weather-wise there was some nice sun breaks and blue sky to be seen today, but it was chilly outside, in the 50s (about 10 C).
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.
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.
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!
