Misc. Ramblings

Being old is bad enough, unfortunately, that's the not worst of it. In Hawai'i, over the last three years, 10 elderly people have died from neglect or abuse. In the last decade, 33 people 65 years or older died from pressure "bed" sores associated with neglect on the part of their caretakers.

So it is no wonder that there is a legislative bill to allow the Hawai'i Department of Health (DOH) to conduct unannounced inspections of adult residential care homes to detect this very type of neglect. Unannounced health inspections are already done for other types of businesses such as restaurants and bars, but not care homes.

But now comes the new Republican head of the DOH testifying that she supports unannounced inspections as long as the care home is given one week notice ahead of time. I don't know whether to be outraged at the stupidity of this statement or just sad that our elders are under the "care" of people like this.

Yes, I know, who would want to be a care home operator knowing that Big Government could come knocking at their door without your being able to clean things up a bit before they came. But that's the whole point folks. The unannounced inspection is there as an incentive to all operators to keep things clean and safe at all times. If they know ahead of time an inspection is coming, it is trivially easy to put up a façade of good care. But I guess this is too obvious.

Posted by DanS at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I hate to see lop-sided sporting events because they just aren't very entertaining. I mean, where's the drama in a 47 to 0 football game? Or a three - love tennis match? So you may understand my disappointment in the America's Cup races going on in the land of Hawai'i's ancestors - New Zealand. While there has been some very exciting match racing, the four to nil result is nothing but a Kiwi catastrophe.

Yesterday's fourth race of the best of nine series saw the Kiwi boat again having equipment failure. As in race one, their boat took on massive amounts of water over the transom. And as in that race, the additional weight, in addition to poor sail selection, trimming of those sails, and sea conditions caused the the tip cup, a fitting that holds the end of the rod to the mast, to explode - followed almost instantaneously by the snapping of the 110-foot (~34-meters) carbon fiber mast. More dangerously, three crew members were swept overboard, although thank God, none were injured and all were rescued. It can not be emphasized enough how dangerous it is to have a mast snap while under load. Huge amounts of energy are released and anyone who is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time can be cut in two.

It appears the Kiwis have designed and built a boat that operates well in a very narrow range of wind and sea conditions. If she sails outside of her comfort zone, either she goes very slow or things fail. But more importantly, the crew seems very inexperienced in how to sail their boat in varying conditions. You would think that this being their home court, they would have the most experience of all in every type of condition the area has to offer. But this appears not to be the case. Strange. One wonders if the emphasis was to build a technically superior boat, but not to spend the time needed to train the sailors in sailing her?

While I don't want to count out the New Zealanders, with one more win to go for the Swiss challengers, thoughts go to where the cup race would be held in the land locked Swiss alps (the first time in 152 years the cup will be back in Europe).

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Good advertising may not be art, but sometimes it can delight, make a point, or evoke feelings we may not remember we even had. Herewith are a few examples found at the Advertising Educational Foundation site (see it here):

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:14 AM | Permalink

All that is old is new. Steam powered ships. Nothing new you say. Well, what about a steam powered jet boat (see the story here)? It seems an Australian inventor sold the design of such an engine to a British company who is trying to make a commercial product out of it. I don't know whether this thing actually works but it is an interesting twist on an old power source. The article says it works like this:

A separate boiler heats water to generate steam, which is pushed at about four times normal atmospheric pressure through a hollow tube submerged in the water.

When the steam hits the water, it immediately condenses to 1,600th of its previous volume. The resulting effect is a dramatic drop in pressure, essentially a vacuum, that sucks water from the front to the back of the tube and thus produces thrust to move.

Speaking of old modes of power. How about paper airplanes? No, they haven't discovered a way to build 747s out of paper. I'm talking about the kind you make out of folded paper and toss over to the cubicle across the aisle. Follow this link here to the WRPA Fliers Club and learn how to fold'em and how to hold'em. Included at the site is the 1994 record holding plane that stayed aloft for 18.8 seconds.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

They're back. The termites that is. Those wood eating monsters that will not die. After more than a year of peace, we found over 10 new mud tunnels. Subterranean termites, as the name suggests, live underground but create tunnels into your house where they invite themselves for dinner. And lunch. And breakfast.

They are fast. They can go through several board feet of wood in a matter of days. They spread out and cover the house in a matter of weeks. In a few months, they can eat through beams a foot thick.

They are smart. The common approach of tenting houses and filling them with poisonous gas does not work with these things. All they do is cap the ends of the tunnels and wait underground until the coast is clear. Then they open the ends and go back to work.

They are persistent. Even flooding the ground with poison only means they look for another way to get in. And take my word, they will get in.

They can be controlled, but they can not be eradicated. The current state of the art is to leave baits out that include a slow acting poison. So slow that they don't raise an alarm to it. Tomorrow, the termite company will be coming out to install some of these baits. It will then take a month or more until the current colony is reduced in size or they move on to another house.

Posted by DanS at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sigh. I have more medical tests to do. I've already taken all kinds of tests. Blood tests. Urine tests. CAT scans. MRI scans. X-rays. I've been poked and prodded. And now, an MIBG (iodine-131-meta-iodobenzylguanidine) scan. This one features the injection of a radioisotope. Then, I get scanned on three separate days for about one-and-a-half hours per scan. At the end of this procedure, I will be glowing like a candle. At least I will be able to see the clock at night without having to turn on a light.

I start the testing next week.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:52 AM | Permalink

Duck Taped

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE

I'm kind of tired. I take that back, I'm not kind of tired, I am very tired. Things are very busy around here. Our school project is due in about five weeks and things are going very slowly. I'm going to list some of my ideas of why I think they are going so slowly so that others that follow can learn from our mistakes.

What it boils down to is this: Choose your group wisely. You must be compatible with them and they with you. Further, they must be focused and goal oriented.

• Are they as motivated as you? They must want to graduate on time, as much as you do (some are going on to get a PhD., so whether they get their Masters now or next year doesn't matter to them). Otherwise, they will not have that sense of urgency that is needed to complete the project on time.

• Choose good writers. Choose people who can write clear declarative sentences and who can string them together to express clear ideas. On the other hand, avoid those who write flowery, complex sentences that have no clear meaning or those who can not write in English.

• Know what your role needs to be for the group to be successful. Hence, choose people who can lead as well as follow (programs such as our tend to train people to be leaders, but having five leaders in a group is a recipe for disaster).

• Good communication is critical. Have regularly scheduled meetings with the group so that everyone has the opportunity to tell how things are going and problems can be identified early enough to solve them. Keep meticulous minutes of the decisions made in those meetings.

• Assignments don't get done by people who only talk. They get done by people who talk and then work. So avoid people who see the meetings as social gatherings rather than tools towards a goal. These types of people love to hear the sound of their voice and will take every opportunity to do so.

• Get people who have experience in the area of study. If you don't, these people will spend most of their time just trying to understand the lay of the land and will have little or no time to actually do any constructive work towards the project.

• Try to spread the assignments around so that everyone does their fair share. Note that fair share does not necessarily mean the same amount of work. Some will be more able than others. But everyone must understand that each has their own strengths and weaknesses and the work should be divided so it plays to each person's strengths.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:14 AM | Permalink

A local lake is being smothered by the uncontrolled growth of a common fish tank plant called salvinia molesta. The plant, probably brought to Hawai'i to decorate someone's pond or aquarium eventually was released into the wild, including the 300-acre Lake Wilson sometime in 1999. When first seen there, it was a very small patch and was quickly identified by wildlife officials and fishermen.

Said fishermen called for an immediate attack on the weed, using herbicide, before it spread. Unfortunately, government by crisis indicated that nothing should be done because other things had higher priority. In either case, it was just a small infestation so why bother with it now?

Four years later and the lake now looks like a table top smooth golf course (see some pictures here). Only the "greens" are made of salvinia, not grass. The entire surface of the lake is literally covered in this weed. Fish are dying due to lack of air, the lake can not be used because boats can not navigate through this mess, and in fact the lake was closed to public use yesterday.

One estimate is it will take 50,000 dump truck loads to clear the lake. The problem is, salvina spreads through fragmentation. That is, bits of it break off and a new plant grows from each bit. It then doubles in size every two to eight days. Hence, to rid the lake of this pest, you must either get every single piece of it out, introduce an alien species of weevil that feeds on the plants, use herbicides, or a combination of all.

Had this been done when the weed was first identified in the lake, we could have saved the millions of dollars it will cost to get rid of it now. But then, that would have been too obvious.

Open for business. At least, that's how the new Republican governor wants to portray our state. But the governor is in the curious position of reducing a tax credit for high tech business development. First, I should say there is very little evidence that using the tax system is an efficient way of altering business behavior. That is, businesses usually will do whatever they do despite the tax code, not because of it.

Having said that, when government makes changes to the tax code, by giving away money to companies in the hope of attracting more activity here, you would think the law would be written such that the cost of the tax credit would be less than the benefits (i.e., income taxes) generated by the hoped for new business.

But then, that would have been too obvious.

Posted by DanS at 09:02 AM | Permalink

Recently, I've started to get more and more spam. Unwanted and unsolicited email has begun to clog my mailbox with advertisements for lasting longer, growing bigger, getting out of debt, or getting into debt (via mortgages). So much so that I've even thought about closing the email account and opening a new one. But before I get to that point, I decided to see what kind of anti-spam software there is out there.

One of the better known is SpamAssasin. Be aware that there are only so many automated ways to identify spam. SpamAssasin uses:

• header analysis: spammers use a number of tricks to mask their identities, fool you into thinking they've sent a valid mail, or fool you into thinking you must have subscribed at some stage. SpamAssassin tries to spot these.

• text analysis: again, spam mails often have a characteristic style (to put it politely), and some characteristic disclaimers and CYA text. SpamAssassin can spot these, too.

• blacklists: SpamAssassin supports many useful existing blacklists, such as mail-abuse.org, ordb.org or others.

• Razor: Vipul's Razor is a collaborative spam-tracking database, which works by taking a signature of spam messages. Since spam typically operates by sending an identical message to hundreds of people, Razor short-circuits this by allowing the first person to receive a spam to add it to the database -- at which point everyone else will automatically block it.

Another is called CRM114 (from the Stanley Kubrick movie Dr. Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb in which a radio device called the CRM114 plays a pivotal role in the plot). CRM114 uses "sparse binary polynomial matching with a Bayesian Chain Rule evaluation" to determine what is or is not spam.

Another is called ifile and is different from others in the following ways:

1. ifile does not require the user to generate a set of rules in order to successfully filter mail
2. ifile uses the entire content of messages for filtering purposes
3. ifile learns as the user moves incorrectly filtered messages to new mailboxes

ifile is not dependent upon any specific mail system and should be adaptable to any system which allows an outside program to perform mail filtering.

I have not tried any of these yet, but I plan to. More as I learn more.

Posted by DanS at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

That sound you hear is the seventh seal of the apocalypse being ripped open. National Geographic (see their site here). The phrase brings back memories of the staid magazine with the yellow border that everyone seems to collect years worth of. As a youngster, I can remember that every time I went over to a certain relative's house I would spend hours going through their old copies. If it wasn't the pull out maps, interesting articles, or fantastic photography, it was the hope that a glimpse of a third world bare breast might be seen (I kept wondering why they didn't go to St. Tropez sometime. In fact, I wondered if there wasn't a kind of racism taking place. Namely, it was OK to show non-Caucasian breasts, but not the reverse. But I digress, or maybe not).

Hitting news stands this month is the National Geographic swimsuit issue. I kid you not. The issue takes a look at swimsuits over the last 100 years. I haven't seen the issue myself but the cover shows a fetching female clothed in three sea shells. No, I don't know if they went to St. Tropez or not. You'll have to buy the issue to find out.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The home court advantage is more than just an idle phrase. While I can't say it applies to every sport in the world, it does seem to fit most. So when the home team doesn't win you have to wonder if they are up to the challenge. So far, for a series in which it appears the boats are even in speed, we have seen what I can only describe as extreme sailing.

Due to the long weekend in the US, I was able to watch live the second and third races of the America's Cup yacht race (and parts of the first race on tape) being held in the beautiful waters of New Zealand. As of this writing, with the fourth race scheduled for this afternoon, Hawai'i time, the Swiss Alinghi (see their site here) team is leading three to zero, needing to win only two of the last six races to win the series. Or to put it another way, Team New Zealand (see their site here) needs to win five of the next six to win - something no team in the history of the cup has done.

The first twelve minutes of race one looked like it was the start of an exciting series. Neither boat appeared to have a commanding speed difference which means tactics, experience, readiness, and a bit of luck could decide the series.

Unfortunately for the NZ boat, they seemed to be in short supply of all of the above. For some strange reason, they ran their boat heeled so far over that water constantly entered the boat. So much so that they could not pump it out as fast as it was coming in. Why they felt they should angle their deck so much is unanswered, but the result was several tons of water acting as dead weight.

This extra weight, in combination with stiff 20kt winds caused the high-tech carbon fiber boom (the horizontal spar that holds the bottom of the mainsail) to exceed its design specifications and snap like a toothpick. Four minutes later, at sixteen minutes into the race, with the mainsail now dangerously full of air and straining under the force, the titanium tack ring that holds the bottom forward corner of the genoa (a large sail, overlapping the mast) to the deck exploded into pieces. The Kiwi crew tried valiantly to rig up something to keep the boat in the game but it was for naught. Nine minutes later, at 25 minutes into race one, despite the courageous efforts of the crew, the Kiwis retired, something not done in an America's Cup race since 1920.

Race two was fought in much different conditions. The race was postponed seven times, waiting for the wind to pick up. Once under way, the light 10-kt winds seemed to favor the home team, especially on the first downwind leg where they powered back from being 4-boat lengths behind to three ahead. In sailing this is just not done and could only reflect a wind shift that favored the Kiwis. The question is was this luck or superior strategy and seamenship?

Nothing much happened until the final beat where Alinghi decided to force the issue and begin a tacking duel unequaled in the series. A total of 66 tacks were performed by the boats, a new record. But through it all, New Zealand not only held off the Swiss, but increased their lead. This clearly showed the superior boat speed, handling, and seamenship that the Kiwis are justly proud of.

And yet. And yet in the final leg to the finish, after rounding the final mark, Alinghi's decision to jibe set around the windward mark, versus Team New Zealand's bear away and then jibe, may have been the difference. Their respective decisions allowed Alinghi to get inside to the right where the wind was stronger. Even though the Swiss were behind at this point, they ever so slowly moved closer and closer to the Kiwis and eventually blocked the wind from their sails. The New Zealanders then slowed and were not able to catch up in time to get past to retake the lead.

Race three proved the old adage that it is possible to catch up with the leading boat, but getting past them is another thing. From the start, where Alinghi's afterguard was able to position their boat to the right side of the course, where the wind was forecasted to be stronger, the Swiss led the race. While New Zealand was able to nibble away at that lead over the length of the race, things only got interesting near the last mark.

At that point, there was about one boat-length between the two. But after rounding the mark, the Kiwis made a mental mistake and showed their apparent lack of experience. The crew was set for one type of jibe set, but their skipper called for a switch to another very late in the turn. This caught the crew unprepared and resulted in them having trouble getting the spinnaker pole hooked up once on the run. With the finish line a mere three miles (~4.8km) away, the Kiwis were not able to recover sufficiently and Swiss won pulling away.

I don't know how the series will end but I wonder if the Kiwis have the faster boat, while the Swiss have the more experienced skipper, tactician, and crew.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The posts for today will have something in common - they will all be obvious to everyone except, it seems, to those involved.

First Saddam, then France. The morning papers says the European Union (EU) is giving Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti "one last chance." Until, of course, the next time. Then they'll really, really mean it.

As British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it:

If Iraq is not cooperating fully and everyone accepts they are not cooperating, why is Iraq not then in material breach?

Almost anything, taken to extremes is not a Good Thing. For example, some people refuse to think of themselves as being part of a community because it may imply taking responsibility for more than just yourself ("Am I my brother's keeper?").

So it should not be surprising that the Catherine "Kitty" Genovese syndrome (see one account here) should be repeated, over and over again.

The most recent incident made the headlines over the weekend. A man was shot at a Washington, D.C, area gas station. Sadly, this is not the part that has thoughtful people in a rage. There's more (see the story here).

After the shooting, one witness -- who was just feet away from the gunman -- looked for a moment at Price's body and then turned away. Not only did he finish pumping his kerosene, but the man paid for the purchase and drove off...

For the next few minutes, the [video security] camera records a series of cars pulling away from the station, with at least one new car pulling up to the kerosene pump where Price lay. But it is not until about 9:13, more than three minutes after the shooting, that the gas station's manager is seen approaching the body.

It seem obvious that when someone is shot, and you are in a position to at least notify the police or call an ambulance, that you would do so. But I guess that's not obvious to the people there.

Small things are important. Sometimes they're critical - especially if you are getting an organ transplant. Ask the teenager from Mexico who came to Duke University Hospital to be healed through a heart and lung transplant. Only, people weren't paying attention to the small things - like matching the blood type from the donor to the teenager. After waiting three years for the life saving operation, she is now is near death due to the obvious error. Obvious, that is, except to everyone there.

If we've learned nothing else over the years, know this: Just because something is obvious does not mean people will perceive it, acknowledge it, and then appropriately attend to it. If anything, they will do just the opposite. So it's up to us to point out the obvious, get people to acknowledge it, and then act on it. Because if we don't, it is obvious that no one will.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From top to bottom, we live in unstable times.

The pillars of stability are dead or dying. The major religions are under attack for their misdeeds, real or imagined. NATO is impotent, guarding against a foe that is no longer. The UN, if it ever had any power, is deadlocked. Our national security has been breached. Our federal government sees enemies under every bed and passes laws more onerous than that could be forced on us by external governments. Our state government is preoccupied with style, while the substance is left wanting. Our county government is in caretaker mode while services go down the tubes.

Never before have there been so many breaches in the bulwarks against evil. During the US Depression of the 30s, government was there to help heal the economic wounds that stole the very soul of American optimism. During the world wars, the great armies of men were directed by leaders seeking to stop madmen bent on using power towards evil purposes. During the Reformation, light was brought to the darkness that was man's plight. These are no more.

We are at once in great danger and great opportunity. For 10 years, the US economy had bountiful harvests. The wise saved to provide for themselves during the lean years. Those lean years are now here. I wish I knew which situations were opportunities and which lead only to danger, but I don't. So good luck Mr. and Mrs. America, wherever you are.

Posted by DanS at 07:33 AM | Permalink

Move over Dirty Harry, there's a new big gun in town. Smith & Wesson unveiled their 0.50-caliber magnum revolver recently (see it here). Billed as the most powerful production revolver in the world (there are various other makes that chamber rifle rounds, or cut down versions of rifle rounds) it has 2,600 ft/lbs of muzzle energy. So, do you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

Posted by DanS at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Movable Type 2.6 is out. I downloaded the update without problems so I guess the thundering herds have not hit the server yet. Get'em while they're hot here.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:30 AM | Permalink

Understanding any language hinges on understanding the words, and the context the words are used in. However, sometimes, the words are unclear so too then is the meaning unclear. Similarly, implementing the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standard (see them here from the W3C) hinges on understanding the words. But sometimes, the meanings of the words are unclear. Hence, different companies, each using the same standards, can create pages that look markedly different - even when companies make good faith efforts to meet the standard. Conversely, some companies don't see the standard as keeping them from extending or interpreting the standard as they see fit and others see no market advantage to implementing it at all.

Within this context of varying understandings and differing values, it should not be a surprise that CSS is a Tower of Babel of differing interpretations.

If things are so confusing, what can be done? The obvious answer is to find the lowest common denominator that all can decipher. Unfortunately, even current browsers interpret things as simple as tables in different ways. So this won't work.

The way I've decided to go is to use CSS that seems to work in the current browsers. Hence, I've switched from the theme known as Gettysburg to GeorgiaBlue (GB). GB seems to solve the two problems noted earlier (thanks Sjon, JHR, Phil, Paul, Jonathan, and Mike). Sometime, when I have the time (like when they start having snowball fights in Hell - ed.) I'll do a comparison between the two and see why one works and the other doesn't. In either case, onward and upward.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I understand that there are at least two problems with how this page is rendering. The first is in IE 6.0.2800.1106. The post at the top of the page does not display the date or if it does, it shows only the bottom fraction. The other is in Opera 5/6 (but works okay in 7.0). The links in the post at the top of the page do not work. The other links in the page work fine. When the top post is replaced by a newer one, the links start working in the replaced day.

I do not know if the problem is in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or if MT itself is the culprit. But in looking at the underlying HTML, I don't see anything wrong - especially the links problem. This is straight HTML and should work in all browsers. But for some reason it doesn't.

I've started searching the support forum and see there are quite a few problems related to how different browsers work with CSS. When I have the time, I may get back to working on getting Geeklog (see their site here) working. Geeklog has the advantage of being OpenSource, while MT, although "free", is not.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The public good, is in nothing more essentially interested than in the protection of every individual's private rights. - Blackstone

Programs generically called spyware invade your privacy by secretly sending back information about how you use your PC to their masters. How this information is used may or may not be in your best interest. But be assured it is in the best interest of advertisers and perhaps the government.

To combat this, there are a couple of free programs that scan your PC looking for spyware. One is called Spybot and can be found here. The other is Ad-aware (see their site here) and of the two, is probably the better known. Ad-aware recently came out with version 6.0 so if you haven't updated yet, you may want to head over to their site. But whether you choose Spybot or Ad-aware, you probably should be using one of them.

Over and above any privacy issues is the practical one of CPU usage. These spyware programs can consume much of your CPU's time, thus dramatically slowing everything else you want your PC to do. So if your PC seems to have slowed to a crawl, and you've ruled out the usual suspects of low disk space or memory, then perhaps you might want to download and install one of these.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:12 AM | Permalink

Not much new going on around here today so why not a short rant? Are you able to increase your salary in anticipation of being busy? Do you raise your price when you think your time will be in short supply? I guess you could if you owned your own business or their wasn't any competition.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a gallon of "supreme" gasoline is just under $2.00USD. This, in anticipation of short supplies. Don't you just love monopolies?

In other local news, our governor went out on a limb this weekend and refused to increase the threat level indicator. Even though the federal government went from "yellow" to "orange" (the second highest level), the governor felt it would be counter productive since no specific threat is known, or at least publicly released. Hence, the state, unlike the feds, will not run in circles trying to catch its own tail.

On the labor front, our union is officially at impasse with the state. If nothing is settled by the end of June, we will need to take a strike vote and see where that may lead. While I am not looking forward to it, I think it may be necessary to strike. Just in case, I'm now beginning to save, rather than spend so no new toys for me until after June. I guess the economy will just have to struggle on without me spending my copious amounts of cash.

And finally, I'm almost to where I want to be with the look of this page. I still want to tweak the CSS in a couple of places and I want to research if there is a way of having replies to comments, via email, be automatically entered into the system. Right now, the system notifies me vie email when a comment is left by someone, but if I reply to the email, my reply, as far as I know, has to be copied and pasted into the comments. Surely there must be a better way of doing this?

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:26 AM | Permalink

I did some additional digging on the bookmarks problem I noted in yesterday's post. From what I can read in the the Opera support forum this is literally a feature and not a bug. According to one post, Opera decided that you didn't need to have more than 50 links displayed at one time.

Since they know best, they arbitrarily and capriciously changed it for 7.x so that you shall delete or move links into folders. Sigh.

Competition is good. There are alternatives to Opera. I will avail myself of those alternatives.

Posted by DanS at 08:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There are only so many ways to do a state government budget. If revenues are not meeting expenses, you have three choices: cut expenses, raise taxes, or a combination of both. It is an illusion to think otherwise. But some want to believe in illusions because the alternative would lead to hard decisions.

The University of Hawai'i (UH) faculty union supported the Republican candidate for governor in the last two elections because they felt they were getting a raw deal under the Democratic administration (who had the unenviable task of cutting spending due to lack of revenues). The union said higher education was not getting the emphasis it deserved and was "dying a death of a thousand cuts."

So they supported now Governor Lingle because they wanted to believe what has been described as voodoo economics. Specifically, the governor could cut revenues, by cutting taxes, while at the same time increasing spending on everything, including higher education. This, even as spending was already far out pacing revenues.

Comes the dawn and the Lingle administration is proposing cuts to the University. Shocking. UH officials are now complaining that any more cuts would "be destroying the future of this institution."

Unfortunately, the UH is not helping their case by refusing to indicate where those cuts would have to come from. Hence, they can not point to the concrete effects that a budget cut would have that would "destroy the future of this institution."

On the other hand, the Lingle administration, including her Budget Director, is shooting themselves in the foot by telling the UH, and other departments, that even though they were told to make cuts, without chance for appeal, the administration didn't really mean that. That if the cuts were in fact too much, then of course you would tell the administration and they would look at making some changes.

The lessons the departments will learn from this is the administration can not be trusted. That what they say and what they mean are two different things. That nothing is final and that you can continue to appeal and tie up the movement of government until the cows come home at night.

Before the election, I said that Governor Lingle did not have the experience to be an effective leader. Not only has this been confirmed, but it is now clear that neither do at least one of her appointed administrators. The fall out from this will be an administration constantly falling behind and unable to make quick, decisive decisions.

Have a great weekend everyone -Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:07 AM | Permalink

I'm sure even the great tenor Placido Domingo had nights where the voice wasn't up to snuff. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised when a company releases an update before its time.

I recently installed the Opera 7.01 browser (see their site here). Long-time readers, all eleven of you, will remember that I have been a proponent of Opera for years. There is much to like about a program that is relatively small, fast, secure, and standards compliant.

But I can not recommend this browser in its current state and am very disappointed that Opera would release this obviously unfinished version. Here's why.

This version of Opera has what I consider to be several show stopping bugs - some of which are intermittent and some not. The transfer window, even though it has a place for the amount of bytes transferred in real time, fails to display anything, even when the transfer is done. When I click on the bookmarks menu, it opens three panels, but refuses to let me see any other book marks past the third panel. When setting preferences, I went from the "Browser look" heading to accessibility and found that the display was not fully updating. That is, parts of it changed to the new section, parts of stayed the same, and parts of it became transparent and I could see the wallpaper behind it. The next time I went in it worked fine.

This version has apparently moved valued features and made them complex to implement. Version 6.05 included, in Preferences, the ability to customize the browser's layout. Included here were options for displaying only icons or icons with text, whether the icons should be fixed width or variable, and whether the "Go" button should be displayed. While you can now right click on the icons and set text below, you must turn off the the special effects found under "Skins" if you want the text to be displayed all the time (as opposed to only when you hover your mouse over them). This is different, but is it better?

This version seems to begin the display of web pages slower than 6.05. I opened both versions and pointed both to a website neither had recently cached - www.novell.com. Version 6 almost immediately began to display the site while downloading the approximately 90k of html code. I stopped version 7 after it said it had download over 1MB of HTML! This, when it hadn't even displayed anything yet!!! I decided to try another site - www.disney.go.com. Version 6.05 still started to build the page before version 7.01, but version 7.01 did finish a fraction of a second faster. I figured I'd do one more test so pointed both to www.sun.com. Once again, version 6.05 began displaying the page first but version 7.01 finished first.

Based on these problems, you may want to stay with 6.05 or Mozilla until Opera 7.x stabilizes. YMMV.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:21 AM | Permalink

Working with the legislature is sometimes like walking in a minefield - one misstep can lead to a very bad day. Such is the case as our group of graduate students begins to survey members of the legislature as to their opinions on the employees' retirement system.

Many legislators don't like taking positions, or at least they don't want to publicly say what their positions are. One reason is because doing so will alienate one group or another since most issues have at least two sides. Another may be the legislator's opinion differs from the those of the majority of constituents in his or her district. And finally, stating one's opinion leaves a paper trail. A trail that an opponent can then twist and use to their advantage.

If forced to state their opinion, many will switch to Plan B - issue a non-statement. That is, something that sounds like an opinion but really doesn't take a stand one way or the other. If pressed further, they may hunker down and support a study, in the hope that the issue will die down and go away by the time the study is completed. But if forced into a corner, she may come out shooting.

It is at that point that things get interesting for those within range. I fear that we have entered such a killing field but hope we can pass through quickly and not loose any precious bodily fluids.

As a side note, be aware that corporate leadership tends to act in similar ways. In fact, things are actually worse because there isn't any public accountability. So don't think you can avoid these problems by staying in the private sector. <G>

Posted by DanS at 08:24 AM | Permalink

I took the day off yesterday to complete some additional medical tests. This after spending some time at the clinic being poked, prodded and x-rayed on Saturday. I've seen the blood suckers so many times I'm almost beginning to know them by first name. Even the CAT scan guy already knows my face and recognizes me every time I come in.

I'm not sure if this is a Good Thing or not but I guess it beats the alternative.

Otherwise, I'm still recovering from the cold that will not die and still working on contacting the various people I need to talk to about my capstone project relating to the employees retirement system.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 07:36 AM | Permalink

Catastrophic engineering failures tend to follow certain critical paths. One path is multiple failures, which each alone would not cause the catastrophe, but in combination, in a specific sequence, under specific conditions can lead to the failure. This is sometimes known as the cascade effect.

While it is certainly too early to speculate on what caused the Columbia failure, I would not be surprised if it isn't a series of events that may have occurred before, but not in the sequence, or to the extent, required for the failure.

I would not be surprised that the failure began earlier than NASA thinks it may have.

I would also not be surprised if some of it is related to the low level of funding NASA has endured over the last 20 years or so.

Whichever the case, the investigations will begin, reams of reports will be made, and I hope, the shuttle or its replacements will fly again.

Aloha!

Posted by DanS at 08:23 AM | Permalink

As I got home this morning my wife was watching something on TV. It looked like a shot of a meteor streaking across the sky. I didn't think much of it until she told me it was a NASA shuttle breaking up.

To say I was stunned would be the understatment of the year. All I can say is our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the crew and I hope they understand that their loss was not in vain. That the struggle to explore and work in space is frought with danger. That the only way to pave smooth that road is to boldly go forward to overcome the challenges that lay there.

To close, I heard the words of the old Simon and Garfunkle song "Homeward Bound" echoing in my head while I watched the news conference from NASA. To have gove so far. To have "touched the face of God." And then to perish while so close to home. Homeward bound.

Tonight I'll sing my songs again,
I'll play the game and pretend.
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me.
Homeward bound,
I wish I was,
Homeward bound,
Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.
Silently for me.

Aloha

Posted by DanS at 12:25 PM | Permalink