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Monday - 24 September 2001

Declare War? What are our objectives, for this war everyone wants to declare? Yes. Let's do. If that's what the majority of the people want to do. But before doing so, we need to define what are our achievable objectives and what criteria we will use to determine when the objectives have been met and we can declare peace.

Why do all that? Because if we don't, we may well get stuck in a never ending war of attrition. [A war that would drain our precious bodily fluids - ed.] A never ending war that wanders from place to place with no clear purpose. A war in which we chase ghosts up and down the mountains of Afghanis'nam (thanks Sjon), while spilling the blood of our youth.

Should we declare war? Absolutely. But only after we've figured out what we are fighting for and what "victory" will look like and what we are willing to give to achieve it.

For a better perspective on this whole situation, feel free to visit fellow Daynoter Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I don't agree with everything he has to say but he is a very wise man, and we are very low on wise men right now.

By the way, one last thing. Many insurance policies will cover you for acts of terrorism, but not acts of war. Was what happened an act of war or terrorism? Think about it.

In Local News. The Governor convened a closed door conference of local businessmen and politicians. On the agenda was ways to keep our island economy afloat. As you may know, tourism is our number one source of income. And as you may have noticed, people aren't flying. Did I mention recently that we're on an island? In the middle of the Pacific?

Unless you have your own yacht, you get here by flying. Last time I looked, the airlines were canceling flights and laying off thousands. Obviously, the problem is not that the flights are being cancelled, but that no one is flying. So why are we trying to give money to the airlines? Heck if I know.

Some geniuses (guess which side of the political aisle) say what needs to be done is cut taxes. While that is surely a noble goal, it will do little to get people flying (Hey Marge! Hawai'i just cut their taxes by one-quarter of one percent! Yee haw! Pack the bags and drop the dog off, we're going to Hawai'i!</sarcasm>).

It's even a sadder situation when you realize anything government does won't go into effect for at least a year, maybe longer. But by then, it won't matter. So why do people automatically look to government for solutions? I guess it beats having to think for yourself...

As usual, I have a lot of stuff to do today. There's class, and two meetings to get ready for. I was also asked to speak to the current first year students tomorrow on what my experience with my practicum taught me, so I gotta' go.

Aloha!

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Tuesday - 25 September 2001

YAOEV. Yet Another Outlook Email Virus. WTC.exe attachment. Need I say more?

YABSG. Yet Another BS Generator. You've probably seen web sites that automatically generate phrases which sound proactive but are just so much BS. Come to think of it, who needs a web site, just pick up a prospectus for any of the failed e.com sites and you'd get the same thing. For those who are too lazy to do that, go to dack.com (See it here) and use their automatic generator. Doing so will unleash leading-edge action-items. Note that the site requires, hawk, spit, javascript.

Speaking of envisioneering integrated bandwidth. The trans-Pacific fiber optic cable called the Southern Cross is ramping up capacity to 240 Gbits/s of dense wave division multiplexing (I'm not making this up) by 2003. After that, the plan is to have 480 Gbits/s. Hmmm. I wonder if they'd notice a small tap leading to my house? I wouldn't use more than one Gbit/s. Honest. Cross my fingers.

Aladdin's Rug Pulled Out. Remember, earlier this year when SWMBO and I went on vacation to Las Vegas? Remember, we stayed at the brand new Aladdin Hotel? Remember how the Las Vegas newspapers had headlines about the hotel's impending bankruptcy? Well, the hotel got extensions from its creditors. Until now.

The Morning Paper(tm) is reporting the hotel will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If they can't reorganize under Chapter 11, they could close as early as the end of this year.

It seems the same tourism slow down that is afflicting Hawai'i, is hitting Las Vegas. According to the paper, the hotel laid off 500 employees yesterday, or about one-sixth of its entire staff.

I have to prepare for a morning meeting on whether to out source the Judiciary's web site so I gotta' go.

Thought for the Day: You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk only to me.

Aloha!

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Hump Day Wednesday - 26 September 2001

Public Administration. This is for those tens of you out there thinking about going to graduate school. It is based on the presentation I gave last night to the class of students that just started their journey towards a Masters degree.

First, go to class. "Well, duh"; you say. But it's not as easy as you may think. People working on their Masters degrees tend to be older and have therefore started their families, have full-time and sometimes second jobs, they're scout masters, baseball or soccer coaches, husbands, wives, and parents.

This translates into having to deal seriously with managing your time. You must prioritize what needs to be done so that you can at least be there for class. Missing even one, three-hour class, will put you way behind. And getting back to current is harder than staying current in the first place.

Second, do the readings. That is, read all of the assigned books and articles. Part of doing this is time management, but part is being able to either read very quickly ("speed reading" helps), or being able to pick up the main points of an article without having to read each and every word of the article.

The reason for reading everything is because the professor wants you to incorporate themes and or insights found there in the papers you write and to be able to discuss the articles in class. In other words, don't look at the required readings as something separate from the lecture because it's not. Everything is intended to work together, so read everything assigned.

Third, this is a learning experience for everyone. So if you think you've written the best paper since "War and Peace", but it comes back from your professor covered in red ink, don't get mad. Don't even get disappointed. Pick yourself up and learn what needs to be done. Do it, and then move on because you don't have the time to dwell on things (there's that time management again).

Lastly, band together. As your first-year unfolds, doing all of the above will become a constant drag on your psyche. Help yourself by banding together with your fellow classmates and helping others, if for no other reason that misery loves company. But also because your fellow classmates are your best support group because they understand what you are going through. They can help you get through your first year and, I bet, some of them will become your life long friends. Just make sure they don't become too close (marriages can come to an end, because of that).

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Bugtoaster.com. InfoWorld's Brian Livingston has a link to www.bugtoaster.com. They have free software that logs software crashes and sends the information to their central database. The goals of doing this include:

• Collect crash reports from as many computers as possible.

• Notify the software vendors of their crashes and enroll them in providing resolutions.

• Build up the database of crash resolutions to provide ever increasing value to Bugtoaster citizens.

• Educate computer users about why computers crash and what they should expect from future generations of software.

• Provide an avenue for computer users to express their frustration and exasperation with computer crashes.

• Communicate the pervasiveness and severity of computer crashes

I'll leave it to you to decide whether to install the software, but just looking at the information accumulated so far is interesting.

For example, the top five programs are (you can view the top 50 here):

1. MS Explorer
2. MS Internet Explorer
3. Netscape
4. MS msimn.exe
5. AOL waol.exe

Aloha!

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Thursday - 27 September 2001

Will We Never Learn? I read in the Morning Paper(tm) that the US may back Afghan gorillas, or guerillas, as the case may be, opposed to /bin/laden. We do this only because they oppose him and would probably not approve of what they would want to replace him with, if we were smart enough to think that far in advance. Yet, an enemy of my enemy is my friend, seems to be the operative phrase.

Do we really want to replace one terrorist with potentially another?

On the other Hand. Thanks to fellow Daynoter Frank McPherson for this link to the Economist apologia article on the 9/11 attack. It looks critically at the idea that the US somehow brought this upon ourselves.

I appreciate the author putting the responsibility exactly where it should, on the shoulders of those who planned and executed this atrocity. Personal responsibility, if only more people had this value.

Of the People. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863), excerpt.

-- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Aloha!

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Aloha Friday - 28 September 2001

It's Friday! [Thank God]

The LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.

The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: "Okay! Okay! I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!"

Speaking of BBQing. One George Goble (I'm not making this up), a systems engineer in Electrical Engineering at Purdue University, was having a BBQ one day with some of his friends. As sometimes happens, they got to talking about how there should be a faster way of getting the grill ready for their burgers.

So he got out a hair drier to provide forced air to the fire. This worked well enough, but of course, it could be made better. The second go around used a vacuum cleaner (I don't know if it was used to push or pull air through the grill). While this worked better, this just wasn't good enough.

They switched to using a propane torch, then an acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with a reducing agent (the charcoal) [see also this interesting article from NASA, comparing four different propellant types here].

Finally, being part of a university gives you access to things most people would have some trouble getting. Like three gallons (~11 litres) of liquid oxygen (LOX). Oxygen becomes a liquid at about minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees Celsius). While in this form, its density is approximately 600 times as dense as gaseous oxygen. This gives you a much better "bounce to the ounce".

The resulting reaction turned 60-lbs (~132 kg) of charcoal into about 20 lbs (~44 kg) of ready to use coals. In three seconds. Let's repeat that last part. The coals were ready in three seconds. Sounds about right.

See the complete story here, with pictures:

I've got all kinds of stuff to do at work and just as much at home, not to mention a paper due for Monday's class, so I gotta' go.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

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